No posts on this blog for an unprecedented two months. Reason (as if I need one) is mainly that I have had no inclination to sit down at a keyboard through what has been a good (if depressingly dry) summer when I had lots of other outdoor type things to do. A good fishing season has been chronicled by a single post and I may find the time to detail another week. In addition there has been little on the general goings on front to stir the fingers.
What then has caused the end of the hibernation? The bloody Wiahopai vandals that's what. I was pleasantly ensconced on a game boat off the Northland Coast when these three tossers were handed down the manifestly unjust verdict of 'Not Guilty' for slashing the flash tents covering the satellite dishes at the top of the South Island. What a trio of wankers. Weird beards on steroids. Unkempt idiots who belong to some ultra left peacenik commune that lives a life which became unfashionable somewhere at the end of the sixties. How the hell they got a jury to swallow the line that their actions were justified because by vandalising a satellite dish in New Zealand they were saving lives in Iraq is way beyond me.
I really don't care if people like this want to live in a cave, eat bark, wander round singing Cumbaya and spread their loony tunes view of things to each other. As long as they don't interfere with the proper world who cares? But when they are caught slashing public property with sickles (no planet wrecking chainsaws for these idiots) they are patently guilty of whatever vandalism/damaging property type charges you can think of.
OK (well not OK, really) the not guilty verdict passed me by. Not however yesterday's development. The government has been denied permission (from who - another bit of the government?) to appeal the guilty verdict. God knows why - there's an 'R' in the month? - and so they are considering suing them for the damage. Wrong. Don't consider it, just get on and do it. They reckon $1,100,000 should cover the embroidery for a new tent. Well I should hope it would. The reaction of the unkempt wankers and John Minto (one and the same thing, really)? It is unjust and you can't sue us because we only have $1000 between us. Where the hell is a debtor's prison when you need one.
Suing people for lots of money when they have none is a waste of time? Bollocks. If these tossers only have $1000 stashed in cocoa tins under their beds then take the lot. And the cocoa tins. And the beds. Then take every cent they bludge off other people (these are not the sort of oxygen thieves that ever earn any money by putting in an honest day's toil) from them on an ongoing basis until the $1,100,00 is paid off. To the last bloody dollar. If it takes the rest of their miserable lives all the better. If they still haven't paid it off when they mercifully die, even more betterer. Saddle their heirs (sic) with the responsibilty of the balance.
The bloody arrogance they exhibit by standing there and thumbing their collective snotty noses at society makes me sick. They are the dregs of society in all their self righteous, nay pious, warped leftist view of life. A casting into a pit to be fed snozzcumbers for the rest of their pitiable existences would be too good for them. The best we can hope for in the short term is that we deny them the oxygen of publicity they so obviously crave.
They have made be damned angry this morning and I gave up angry years ago.
Showing posts with label NZ Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NZ Politics. Show all posts
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Well, they been gone and done it
Just a couple of hours ago and the muppets in Wellington passed the damned Emissions Trading Scheme bizzo. Only Rodney Perky Hide had the balls to stand up and say they we didn't need any such thing but Pinko Smith just had the numbers and we are now on the fast track to the poor house. And we are on our way there for no reason. We have bought into the biggest scam in human history. And we bought into it during the very week that the whole thing is starting to unravel. But bloody Nick Smith couldn't wait could he? The arrogant little prick is right and the rest of the sensible world is wrong and we have this crap pushed through under sodding 'urgency' on the back of bullshit science that Smith believes so we have to. Well I dont and you have just made me the poorer, you git. We can now walk proudly into the talk fest in Denmark next month to hear the world sniggering at our stupidity. Our embarrassment will only be compounded when the iwi members we are taking with us as part of Pinky Nick's muskets and blankets deal start on the obligatory haka. God, we're a joke.
It is a great shame that I am to become a pauper at my stage of life as I really, really want a DB9. Now thanks to a bunch of idiots, some of whom who got my vote, I have to chose between a loaf of bread and an Aston Martin. I wasn't hungry anyway.
A plague of frogs on the lot of them - especially Nick Pinko Pseudo-Nat Smith. I'm off to rob a bank.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Normal service has been resumed
A year and a couple of weeks. Well it had to come to an end I suppose but NZ politics has drifted back into its bad old habits over the last couple of days; and it looks like it is going to get worse. We've had a year of the gummint doing stuff I pretty much approved of and then bloody Nick Smith (Doctor of what, pray) comes along and stuffs it up. All the ingredients of a right royal cock up New Zealand style are on display.
Damned Nick Smith is in the wrong party for openers. His behaviour over the last couple of days has been the sort of stuff Labour or the watermelons would be proud of. He is a disgrace to National and has to go. He has brought back the spectre of passing stuff under urgency that is in no way urgent. This stupid Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) is a garbage piece of legislation based on a garbage premise, based on garbage science (more of this later) that will deliver a garbage result - a f. expensive garbage result to boot. Bad enough yet? Wait there is more. To get this piece of unnecessary crap legislation through parliament under ersatz urgency he has sold muskets and blankets to the Maoris. Now I couldn't give a rats arse how much DOC land Smith gives to anybody (they run about 70% of the country so there's heaps to spare) to plant trees on. Who cares? They could do something more useful with it, like put an aluminium smelter on it, but if they want to fill it up with radiata that's fine by me. They can all prance around and pretend they are still in the 1830's amongst the pine trees to their hearts content. I don't care. They can take their snake oil carbon credits and sell them to Burkino Faso and I couldn't give a continental. But what really gets up my nose is that both sides of the deal (the Nats and Maori) are buying and selling policy. The Maori a month or so back wouldn't have a bar of an ETS. A few crates of fire water and a couple of mirrors and they are over it like a rash. The highly principled Nats were above the low life Labourites flogging off policy to anyone who would buy. Or they were until psuedo-Nat Smith gets the keys to the policy box.
And who is letting Nick Smith carry on like this? John Key, that's who. I had hoped that John Key was going to be the one who would at last run around shouting that the emperor has no clothes in the climate change department. I'm sure that at one point in the not too distant past he was agnostic at worst and seem to recall some encouraging signs of scepticism. However he had a private audience with the Gore Monster and came out a changed man. Well he has timed his conversion to the dark side of lunacy very poorly. He is the one who can stop Smith plunging this country into financial ruin for no reason and it doesn't look as though he will do it.
What is the bloody hurry to get this stupid bill passed? The Copenhagen conference next month ain't going to come to a consensus on anything because, as we shall see in a minute, potential fatal cracks are starting to appear in the IPCC. Many former warmists are saying 'Hang on a minute, maybe things aren't as we were led to believe'. Conned to believe, more like. So we don't need to front up in Denmark being the leaders of anything. Key has said that if we don't have a new ETS in place we are obliged to follow Labour's legacy ETS the details of which I have mercifully forgotten. I remember enough to know that it was a fiscal disaster though. Crap. All we have to do is replace Labour's ETS with absolutely nothing. That'll do very nicely - oh and build a couple of fossil fuel fired power stations while you are at it.
Timing is everything. All this climate change politicking is in the very week when all the leaked emails from the climate doom merchants have come to light. The litany of deception, lying, massaging of data, main stream media manipulation, crippling of the scientific peer review process - the list is endless - make any remaining science the IPPC and the sable hued minions of satan cling to like a shit soiled security blanket totally worthless. Even if any of the science was any good it is now so tainted as to make it totally worthless.
I trust we are all up to speed on the stuff from the Norfolk Broads. What appears to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals
But do we hear of this? Do we buggery. The bloody media are shielding even this from us. A few lines that there might have been a few naughty emails around but move along nothing to see here and please look at this footage of the Antarctic ice shelf getting smaller. There was actually a bit of this on the news tonight as a background to comments from a weird beard wearing an ethnic motive shirt. This makes me feel ill and it is cruel and unnatural punishment to show me this bollocks when I am trying to eat my dinner. The aforementioned current most evil man in the country, Nick Smith, was confronted by the collapse of the science his political chicanery is based on and he just laughed it off. His reply was typical of the left wing bigot that he obviously is. 'It doesn't coincide with my opinion or what I want to think and it is therefore wrong'.
I'm not happy. I had a year of not having to worry about what happened in Wellington but it has all come back again. But look on the bright side. That bloody woman is still in New York. I'm afraid even that doesn't cheer me up that much.
I know. I wonder if I can arrange for John Key to have a private audience with Lord Monckton before Friday.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Cake and eat it
As the more observant may have noticed this blog has moved away from its origins of late. Those origins were a daily commentary on Auckland's newspaper, The (Royal) New Zealand Herald on a fishing website, http://www.fishing.net.nz, and this inevitably led to shedloads of comment on then current New Zealand politics.I will openly admit that this was very easy as the then incumbent government were not of my liking (very much not of my liking) and negative, derisive commentary is an easy game to play.
Mercifully a year ago this coming weekend the nightmare finished and bloody Clark was given the bums rush and Cullen had the country's cheque book wrested from his hands before the Nigerian scammers got his email address. I wrote at the time that I thought commenting on NZ politics would maybe become a lot harder and would definitely become less fun. And so it has proved to be. I generally approve of the way things are being done by the current mob.
I reckon they are missing a few opportunities though. Their current popularity is around the 60% approval level. They ain't going to stay there for long and when it starts to decline they won't get it back. Now is the time to be bold and push through a few things that are a bit out there. You know the sort of stuff; cut the benefits for people who are a waste of space and are rorting the system, issuing overpowered, exceedingly expensive, British sports cars (a DB9 will do, thanks) to deserving semi retired doctors living just north of Auckland - that sort of thing.
Speaking of which they have a golden opportunity to really get revved up with the ACC stuff. The stupid and ineffective Goof typified the complete antithesis of what they should be doing at the weekend. There was a rally by 'victims' of the proposed massive and entirely justified increase in ACC contributions for motor bicyclists. I really can't see what their beef is. They use up a disproportionate amount of the ACC hand outs 'cos they get in accidents and break themselves and want me to subsidise their premiums. Well they can get some sexual gratification as they leave the building. This is how insurance works. If you are an old lady of 75 and drive your Morrie Minor to church on a Sunday your car insurance premium will be 4/6. If you are a sixteen year old yoof who drives a twin turbo Imprezza (if there is such a beast) and have had five accidents this week your premium is going to be $1,000,000. You don't, as the yoof, go up to AMI and say 'My premium of $1,000,000 is unfair, Granny is only paying 4/6 and she should pay her share of my premium.'
The Goof couldn't resist all this. It fits in with his 'two plus two equals about threeish' grasp of economics. He howls that the Government is dastardly in wanting to cut ACC entitlements - I am so over entitlements - but is double dastardly in wanting to put up premiums. Doh. To make the picture even more hideous he tells the nation he has been a biker forever and turns up on his newly acquired Triumph (never saw him ride it, just shots of him standing next to it with the motor not running) wearing a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. Pathetic.
But not nearly as pathetic as the images of Annette King at the same rally. If The Goof claiming to be a biker is stretching the imagination then King on a Harley only happens in Roswell. But as she is from the past gummint she aped her heroine who pumps gas wearing a safety jacket and was standing on the side of the road clad in fluoro yellow.
60% of the polls give you the mandate, Nick Smith, to tell the bikers to get nicked and then add another 10% to what you had proposed as their increase for insolence. Then start on scything the ACC counselling budget.
Mercifully a year ago this coming weekend the nightmare finished and bloody Clark was given the bums rush and Cullen had the country's cheque book wrested from his hands before the Nigerian scammers got his email address. I wrote at the time that I thought commenting on NZ politics would maybe become a lot harder and would definitely become less fun. And so it has proved to be. I generally approve of the way things are being done by the current mob.
I reckon they are missing a few opportunities though. Their current popularity is around the 60% approval level. They ain't going to stay there for long and when it starts to decline they won't get it back. Now is the time to be bold and push through a few things that are a bit out there. You know the sort of stuff; cut the benefits for people who are a waste of space and are rorting the system, issuing overpowered, exceedingly expensive, British sports cars (a DB9 will do, thanks) to deserving semi retired doctors living just north of Auckland - that sort of thing.
Speaking of which they have a golden opportunity to really get revved up with the ACC stuff. The stupid and ineffective Goof typified the complete antithesis of what they should be doing at the weekend. There was a rally by 'victims' of the proposed massive and entirely justified increase in ACC contributions for motor bicyclists. I really can't see what their beef is. They use up a disproportionate amount of the ACC hand outs 'cos they get in accidents and break themselves and want me to subsidise their premiums. Well they can get some sexual gratification as they leave the building. This is how insurance works. If you are an old lady of 75 and drive your Morrie Minor to church on a Sunday your car insurance premium will be 4/6. If you are a sixteen year old yoof who drives a twin turbo Imprezza (if there is such a beast) and have had five accidents this week your premium is going to be $1,000,000. You don't, as the yoof, go up to AMI and say 'My premium of $1,000,000 is unfair, Granny is only paying 4/6 and she should pay her share of my premium.'
The Goof couldn't resist all this. It fits in with his 'two plus two equals about threeish' grasp of economics. He howls that the Government is dastardly in wanting to cut ACC entitlements - I am so over entitlements - but is double dastardly in wanting to put up premiums. Doh. To make the picture even more hideous he tells the nation he has been a biker forever and turns up on his newly acquired Triumph (never saw him ride it, just shots of him standing next to it with the motor not running) wearing a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. Pathetic.
But not nearly as pathetic as the images of Annette King at the same rally. If The Goof claiming to be a biker is stretching the imagination then King on a Harley only happens in Roswell. But as she is from the past gummint she aped her heroine who pumps gas wearing a safety jacket and was standing on the side of the road clad in fluoro yellow.
60% of the polls give you the mandate, Nick Smith, to tell the bikers to get nicked and then add another 10% to what you had proposed as their increase for insolence. Then start on scything the ACC counselling budget.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
More disgraceful stuff
MPs are rorting the general public. Well there's a surprise. There has been a lot of this in the last ten days or so. The wheezes some of them come up with are nothing if not enterprising. Have a house in Wellington, sell it to a trust, rent it out, move to Wellington (that you are already there can be glossed over) and move into another house in Wellington which the taxpayers pays for. Good trick. I'm sure the bits that the taxpayer isn't paying is tax deductible or something. I'm hopeless with money - Mrs O's department. I open my wallet and if there is a bit of dosh in there all good; if there is not I don't have a cup of coffee. Pretty simple.
All this housing rorting is one thing but the travel is on a different level of deviousness. There ain't none. They just front up at a taxi rank, airport or flash hotel and spend our money like drunken sailors. The numbers these jokers run up are staggering. Cabinet approved trips by ministers that run into six figures in half a year. People like the foreign minister have to travel a bit, you know to foreign type places and the like, but Chris Carter (and we'll be seeing more of him in a minute) managed $200,000 in six months as education minister. Justification for this? He was encouraging foreign students to fill their boots at New Zealand's halls of learning. If I were a spotty youth sitting in Kuala Lumpur wondering where to spend the next three years or so and Chris Carter hove into view I'd be off to Canada like a shot.
Now it would appear that bloody Carter has failed to notice that his mob lost the last General Election and that he is no longer a Minister of the Crown. Isn't it reassuring that the last Minister of Education is such a slow learner. So our Chris and his bloke type wife (and I'm sorry to report that has nothing to do with all this) has been swanning around the globe to the tune of $57,000 in the first six months of this year. That is $313.19 a day. Every day. $313.19 a day if he is working (sic) in Wellington or Te Atatu. $313.19 a day if he is baled up in bed with swine flu - a very appropriate ailment for one whose nose is buried so deeply in the public trough. $313.19 a day if he is digging the garden. $313.19 a day if he is picking his nose. $313.19 a day if he is reading the newspaper. $313.19 a day whatever the damned man is doing. I defy any one to spend $313.19 a day every day for six months. It would be easy enough for a week or two but you'd start running out of ideas pretty sharpish. I mean how many elephant foot umbrella stands do you need?
How can you justify this profligate spending of my money? Well, of course, you can't. But the Speaker, of all people, has a go. A job as an MP is a wrecker of family life as poor MP has to be away from the family home so often. Well so does the travelling salesman of vacuum cleaners. Does Harvey Norman fund trips away for the wife of the man in in the car coat and Hush Puppies? Does Air New Zealand make sure wifey is always sitting in First Class as Capt. Bloggs flies to Burkina Faso for the fourth time this month? Of course not. No private company would stand for such nonsense. Back to Chris carter - if we must. If no one in their right mind would want to meet him when he was a Minister what possible reason can any one have now? Who overseas would want to meet a member of the opposition from a tiny country barely visible in the South Pacific? I'll help you out. Nobody.
Carter's own justification for all this? Well he doesn't have one but bleats that people are picking on him because he is gay. Bollocks. I couldn't give rat's arse if you have a strong affection for root vegetables. People are getting on your back because you are a greedy pig who thinks nothing of nicking my money in bulk quantities so you and your wife can ponce your way around the world.
Two things. You will stop doing it forthwith and you will pay back any money that is judged to have been unnecessary spending over the last, say, ten years. We'll have some one reasonable to make calls on this. Me.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
An utter disgrace
Bribery and corruption. Not a good look is it? Nor yet conspiring to pervert the course of justice. That Field was guilty was as plain as the nose on your face. The man is no more than a common crook and presumably will be treated as such in October when he is sentenced. A time in the big house looks inevitable and it couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.
A couple of things have been exercising me over the last day. One is that it has taken nearly four years to get to here. September '05 was when rumours and allegations first surfaced that when Philip Field was talking about tiling he wasn't recalling what a jolly good time he had just had at Bunnings. Our court and justice system seems to move at the speed of the continental drift and is one reason for this delay.
The other reason is inexorably involved with the second thing that bothers me more over all this. A corrupt Minister of the Crown is nowhere near as bad as the cover that was run for him by bloody Clark (in particular), Cullen and all the other nightmare people who used to run our lives. All her politicking slowed down even the start of a Police investigation. The break-in in at Watergate was bad, the cover up was way worse. Let us just hope that Richard M Nixon is a role model for Helen E Clark. We can only hope.
She was (is - who cares) an utter disgrace over this as in most things she touched. Her dealing with Field was a good rehearsal for lying and obfuscating over Winston Raymond Peters last year. Mendacious witch. She set up the Ingram enquiry with terms of reference so narrow and so irrelevant that it couldn't have established that the sun rose in the east. When this meaningless piece of horse manure suggested that there was a lot more that he (Ingram) was not allowed to comment on Clark just ignored it and said that the enquiry showed that there was 'Nothing to see here. Move along' Ingram was forced to keep his counsel and has had to wait a couple of years to get the vindication he richly deserves.
It is disgraceful that anyone can be so economical with the truth just for her own political ends. Clark needed Field's vote and was happy to use it even when he was suspended. Field was allowed to stand at the 2005 general election after all this had come to be widely known and was only kicked out of the Labour Party much later. Reason for ejection from Labour? Bribery? Corruption? No, sir. He was evicted for threatening to vote against Labour.
With Clark in New York you would think that the rump of her ghastly regime would now come clean and admit that Labour's defence of Field was just wrong. They are not even within a bull's roar of saying anything like it. Field's conviction is, according to Alfred E Neuman, disappointing. What a load of bollocks. Is that the best you can do, Goof? Well it is and that is why you are a political dead man walking. Is the tune for this still being called from a office in a tail building overlooking Central Park? You wouldn't bet against it. They seem to be hell bent on rewriting history rather than admit they were wrong. Presumbaly that is why that useless ginger headed Labour spokesman was saying nothing today; they haven't made it up yet.
The politicking that has been run around protecting a common criminal for hideous aims is an utter disgrace. My biggest hope from here is that before Field gets sent off to chokey he squeals like pig and takes a few more of the ratbags (and the more prominent the better, please) with him.
And is the first Minister of the Crown in New Zealand ever to be found guilty of such serious criminal offending the most news worthy thing to have happend in the Land of the Long White Cloud in the past day? You would have thought so wouldn't you? Not according to Granny Herald who filled the front page with a story about penguins dying on Auckland's beaches.
A plague of frogs on all of them.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Reluctantly, politics
In its infancy and previous life this blog used to be heavily biased to New Zealand politics. I wouldn't elevate it to status of a commentary on same but more a prolonged diatribe aimed fairly and squarely at the left. I dislike, nay hate, the left wing view of life almost more than I dislike anything else going. I accept that destructive criticism is the easiest form of comment to put together but I make no apologies for that.
My over riding emotion on the evening of the first Saturday in November last year was one of relief. Relief that the horrors of where the damned left was leading the country was over. My need to comment on the wastrels in the Beehive stopped virtually overnight. I generally approve of the way the country is being run at present. Sure there have been a few things I don't like (Nick Smith saying he will be doing anything at all about anthropogenic global warming springs to mind) but in general all is well. The country is bobbing around like a cork in troubled global seas and cutting its cloth according to its means.
Now those who used to have to be obeyed are in opposition and it is their job to oppose things. What sort of a fist are they making of this? Bloody 'orrible. They couldn't organise a nun shoot in a convent. Everything Alfred E Neuman touches turns to crap. It is scary that he and his ilk only recently had their nasty grubby hands on the levers of power. They just aren't good at anything. I'm sure the best way of getting The Goof into a small business would be to give him a big one and wait.
The government is getting on in a business like way of doing things. The cycle way? Who gives a stuff? Cycling is stupid, I mean why were vastly overpowered cars invented, but its harmless for the most and as planned will bring a bit of dosh into the country. And it will get a handful (and no more) blokes off the benefit for a while. All good. They can earn money which will be taxed and the government can spend this money on something useful. Which brings us to the nub of what is going on at the moment.
Alf and his mates are still playing politics circa 2005 whilst all this pragmatic stuff is going on. Scoring points in the Beehive is the most important thing. And what weapon have they chosen? Benefits. And it has gone tits up twice in the last couple of weeks. First we had the bloke who couldn't get a benefit and would have to sell his lifestyle block when he got made redundant. Labour parade poster boy as an example of the heartless capitalist pigs at their worst. Goof stands up all red faced with adrenals in overdrive shouting at Key who calmly asks if he (Goof) has all the facts at his disposal. Well no he doesn't. Poor downtrodden worker has an investment portfolio of a couple of properties worth north of seven figures.
Bad enough but now we get even worse. A couple of wummins are complaining about their benefit being cut. They go public all bleating and equipped with their victims visages on the back of only the information they want us to see to paint their plight in as grim a light as possible. Enough says Paula Bennett and tells all and sundry what the real score is. And these two aren't on the bones of their respective bums at all. Our victims then cry 'Privacy' (i.e. will the State please get these nasty people off my back) whilst all the time revealing their income status to all who are stupid enough to read the Trade Me bulletin boards. Bollocks. You pick a fight, you take the punches when they come your way.
The problem here is not $700 a week or privacy it is bloody attitude. The attitude that living off the state is a right. The attitude that when doing this it is a right to have as many kids as you please even if you can't afford them 'cos it is your right to have the state support said offspring. Well none of the above is a damned right. Anyone living off my taxes for doing nothing is partaking of a privilege and not a bloody right. The DPB and its many tentacled other entitlement mates were apparently introduced as a temporary safety net for those in need. Fair enough - ish. The metamorphosis into a lifestyle and a right is complete and must be reversed. We can't bloody afford it. I am reliably informed that the country's expenditure on 'Welfare' is measured in billions per week. Good grief even I couldn't spend that. I could buy a different colour DB9 for every day of the week, no every hour of every day, every week and still wouldn't scratch the surface.
So obald@home reluctantly comes back to politics for what I hope is a brief visit. And what brings me back? Bloody left wing crap again being blown like annoying smoke in the face of the pragmatic business of running a country. The opposition should just STFU if they haven't anything worth saying.
And they won't have anything worth saying because they never have and never will.
My over riding emotion on the evening of the first Saturday in November last year was one of relief. Relief that the horrors of where the damned left was leading the country was over. My need to comment on the wastrels in the Beehive stopped virtually overnight. I generally approve of the way the country is being run at present. Sure there have been a few things I don't like (Nick Smith saying he will be doing anything at all about anthropogenic global warming springs to mind) but in general all is well. The country is bobbing around like a cork in troubled global seas and cutting its cloth according to its means.
Now those who used to have to be obeyed are in opposition and it is their job to oppose things. What sort of a fist are they making of this? Bloody 'orrible. They couldn't organise a nun shoot in a convent. Everything Alfred E Neuman touches turns to crap. It is scary that he and his ilk only recently had their nasty grubby hands on the levers of power. They just aren't good at anything. I'm sure the best way of getting The Goof into a small business would be to give him a big one and wait.
The government is getting on in a business like way of doing things. The cycle way? Who gives a stuff? Cycling is stupid, I mean why were vastly overpowered cars invented, but its harmless for the most and as planned will bring a bit of dosh into the country. And it will get a handful (and no more) blokes off the benefit for a while. All good. They can earn money which will be taxed and the government can spend this money on something useful. Which brings us to the nub of what is going on at the moment.
Alf and his mates are still playing politics circa 2005 whilst all this pragmatic stuff is going on. Scoring points in the Beehive is the most important thing. And what weapon have they chosen? Benefits. And it has gone tits up twice in the last couple of weeks. First we had the bloke who couldn't get a benefit and would have to sell his lifestyle block when he got made redundant. Labour parade poster boy as an example of the heartless capitalist pigs at their worst. Goof stands up all red faced with adrenals in overdrive shouting at Key who calmly asks if he (Goof) has all the facts at his disposal. Well no he doesn't. Poor downtrodden worker has an investment portfolio of a couple of properties worth north of seven figures.
Bad enough but now we get even worse. A couple of wummins are complaining about their benefit being cut. They go public all bleating and equipped with their victims visages on the back of only the information they want us to see to paint their plight in as grim a light as possible. Enough says Paula Bennett and tells all and sundry what the real score is. And these two aren't on the bones of their respective bums at all. Our victims then cry 'Privacy' (i.e. will the State please get these nasty people off my back) whilst all the time revealing their income status to all who are stupid enough to read the Trade Me bulletin boards. Bollocks. You pick a fight, you take the punches when they come your way.
The problem here is not $700 a week or privacy it is bloody attitude. The attitude that living off the state is a right. The attitude that when doing this it is a right to have as many kids as you please even if you can't afford them 'cos it is your right to have the state support said offspring. Well none of the above is a damned right. Anyone living off my taxes for doing nothing is partaking of a privilege and not a bloody right. The DPB and its many tentacled other entitlement mates were apparently introduced as a temporary safety net for those in need. Fair enough - ish. The metamorphosis into a lifestyle and a right is complete and must be reversed. We can't bloody afford it. I am reliably informed that the country's expenditure on 'Welfare' is measured in billions per week. Good grief even I couldn't spend that. I could buy a different colour DB9 for every day of the week, no every hour of every day, every week and still wouldn't scratch the surface.
So obald@home reluctantly comes back to politics for what I hope is a brief visit. And what brings me back? Bloody left wing crap again being blown like annoying smoke in the face of the pragmatic business of running a country. The opposition should just STFU if they haven't anything worth saying.
And they won't have anything worth saying because they never have and never will.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Not much
I had occasion to spend some time with both my daughters over the last couple of days. The elder actually reads this stuff (the younger has more sense and I don't think can be bothered) and she commented on the recent lack of content. What is behind this - lost interest? Too busy? No to both.
There is great danger of becoming a one trick pony. One can only bleat so much about the lunacy of the new religion of anthropogenic global warming even though they are still attracting congregation in droves. As opined before the opportunities to ridicule the ideas of a left wing administration disappear when you haven't got one. Their stupid, stupid ideas look even more so when they are little more than pained bleatings from outside the tent. How much ridicule can you poke at bureaucrats for their 'Jobsworth' view of the world before it becomes boring? You may argue that the answer to that one is 'an infinite amount' but that too becomes tedious. Bureaucrats are for the most part mindless automatons functioning under rules of the stupid. It is their masters who really deserve our opprobrium and ridicule. At the moment the role of being a curmudgeon is a bit dull and samey.
The Left's pathetic whining over the appointment of a successful woman to a position they disapprove of is just that - pathetic. The only women they approve of are ugly, dress in paper bags and strictly adhere to nonsense party dogma in the face of commonsense and logic. Any person without a Y chromosome who deviates from the formula is assumed to have '666' tattooed on every cell of their being until proven otherwise. Thus Mrs Rankin (or whatever Mrs she is this week) is the devil incarnate. Thus so is Melissa Lee. Reasonably easy on the eye, wears clothes not bought from an Op Shop and has sensible ideas. Like there are some (not all) people who call South Auckland home who do not earn a crust by running merchant banks but by robbing them. This apparently is insulting. To whom, pray tell? It's the truth. Just as it is true that there will be some people who live in St Heliers who are not beyond a spot of petty (or grand) larceny. She apparently 'offends' some people. Well, so bloody what. The wingeing in response to her refreshing ability to tell it like it is gets up my nose. So what? I expect no one to give a big rat's backside whether I am offended or not.
The idea that branding all the denizens of a geographical area with one behavioural brush is absurd. Rotorua. What of people who live there? Fine upstanding citizens? Patched members of gangs the lot of them? Neither true of course. But Rotorua would appear to be the recent home of a couple who are into fraud in a big way. They are probably holed up in Honduras as I type and will soon be in need of Warren Zevon's solution to all problems - lawyers, guns and money; although they would appear to already have a good supply of the latter courtesy of a typo at Westpac. How much wold you need to see erroneously appear in your bank account before you did a runner? However, this rather amusing episode does not make every citizen of Rotorua a fraudster. As an aside, in true Butch Cassidy mode, we all hope they get away with it, don't we? They won't of course as there is always some spoilsport in a white hat.
No, finding fresh ideas for this blog is a bit hard at the moment. It will pass, I'm sure.
And whilst we are talking of repetition, who would ever want to live in Wellington? The weather is dire even on a 'fine' day, the roads are awful, the building stock is old and decrepit........
There is great danger of becoming a one trick pony. One can only bleat so much about the lunacy of the new religion of anthropogenic global warming even though they are still attracting congregation in droves. As opined before the opportunities to ridicule the ideas of a left wing administration disappear when you haven't got one. Their stupid, stupid ideas look even more so when they are little more than pained bleatings from outside the tent. How much ridicule can you poke at bureaucrats for their 'Jobsworth' view of the world before it becomes boring? You may argue that the answer to that one is 'an infinite amount' but that too becomes tedious. Bureaucrats are for the most part mindless automatons functioning under rules of the stupid. It is their masters who really deserve our opprobrium and ridicule. At the moment the role of being a curmudgeon is a bit dull and samey.
The Left's pathetic whining over the appointment of a successful woman to a position they disapprove of is just that - pathetic. The only women they approve of are ugly, dress in paper bags and strictly adhere to nonsense party dogma in the face of commonsense and logic. Any person without a Y chromosome who deviates from the formula is assumed to have '666' tattooed on every cell of their being until proven otherwise. Thus Mrs Rankin (or whatever Mrs she is this week) is the devil incarnate. Thus so is Melissa Lee. Reasonably easy on the eye, wears clothes not bought from an Op Shop and has sensible ideas. Like there are some (not all) people who call South Auckland home who do not earn a crust by running merchant banks but by robbing them. This apparently is insulting. To whom, pray tell? It's the truth. Just as it is true that there will be some people who live in St Heliers who are not beyond a spot of petty (or grand) larceny. She apparently 'offends' some people. Well, so bloody what. The wingeing in response to her refreshing ability to tell it like it is gets up my nose. So what? I expect no one to give a big rat's backside whether I am offended or not.
The idea that branding all the denizens of a geographical area with one behavioural brush is absurd. Rotorua. What of people who live there? Fine upstanding citizens? Patched members of gangs the lot of them? Neither true of course. But Rotorua would appear to be the recent home of a couple who are into fraud in a big way. They are probably holed up in Honduras as I type and will soon be in need of Warren Zevon's solution to all problems - lawyers, guns and money; although they would appear to already have a good supply of the latter courtesy of a typo at Westpac. How much wold you need to see erroneously appear in your bank account before you did a runner? However, this rather amusing episode does not make every citizen of Rotorua a fraudster. As an aside, in true Butch Cassidy mode, we all hope they get away with it, don't we? They won't of course as there is always some spoilsport in a white hat.
No, finding fresh ideas for this blog is a bit hard at the moment. It will pass, I'm sure.
And whilst we are talking of repetition, who would ever want to live in Wellington? The weather is dire even on a 'fine' day, the roads are awful, the building stock is old and decrepit........
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Pragmatism
I haven't seen fit to besmirch the blogosphere with my musings for a week or so. As I opined in the second week of November it has got a lot less easy to be a grumpy old sod since we gained a mainly sensible pragmatic government. Other things have been happening to keep me occupied over the last three weeks as well, but maybe more of that later.
But it is one and half billy's worth of pragmatism that has dragged me back to the keyboard this evening. If you drive from Auckland airport to go pretty much anywhere north of Mangere you speed along a jolly spiffy motorway for about ten minutes and are then spat out in to leafy Epsom. It's a joke and has been for ever. The 'motorway' (sic) just stops in the middle of nowhere. That particular nowhere is on the periphery of the Mount Albert constituency which, for those of short memories, was the recent fiefdom of she who used to have to be obeyed. The hideous witch had decreed that the only way the ersatz motorway was going to link up with anything remotely useful in the way of a road was through a deep tunnel. NIMBY to the max. No roads going through my back garden. Now I'm no civil engineer but deep road tunnels don't come free with a packet of Weetbix. Proper roads (how would we know; New Zealand has none, but no matter) are not cheap but sodding great tunnels are eye wateringly expensive.
Well in a previous time (i.e. last year) that mattered not at all. The party that spent money that wasn't their's like a drunken sailor couldn't have given rat's arse what a tunnel cost as long as it kept motor vehicles out of Helen's petunias. Mercifully along comes the pragmatic new Minister of Transport and says 'Sod a tunnel at $3 billion for a game of soldiers, you can have road for half that and like it.' About bloody time too. We can't afford a tunnel. And that's pretty much it. But not for those cretins time warped in the past. 'We will have to demolish 200 houses' Tough. 'And a school' Tough. 'And some valuable green space'. Bollocks - and tough. 'It is ripping the heart out of the community' Well, its not and tough. On the Six O'clock News they even had a year five kid (that would make him ten or so?) giving his reasons as to why an above ground road was a bad idea. I'm surprised he wasn't asked his opinion on the cause of cancer or the meaning of life; they would have been just as relevant. Oh by the way his Mum was a leader of the 'Tunnel or Nothing Campaign' What a surprise. Well she ain't going to get a tunnel so she had better sod off to where she can have nothing. People like her are a waste of food and certainly shouldn't be allowed to breed.
Mount Albert is a dump and a few kilometres of black top instead of some ancient and crappy housing stock is marked improvement for the area. I sincerely hope this refreshing wave of pragmatism continues and grows to tsunami proportions. We need more of this. Forget all this consultation bollocks. 'You live in some scungy housing in the way of a nice shiny new road. Well, here's market value for your hovel. Now bugger off and go and live somewhere else.' Love it. And what are the yesterday's men of the Labour Party saying on all this? They are going to fight tooth and nail to keep the Wicked Witch's damned burrow. They are prepared to spend one and a half billion of my money for nothing. They say that by ditching the tunnel National are kissing good by to the by election. And National quite rightly don't give a fat rat's backside. Labour are happy to buy a by election (or Buy Election as ACT so correctly puts it) and National are happy to save money and sacrifice a useless seat.
One of the bylines of this Blog is pragmatism and six months down the track I am happy that we are getting a nice dose of it. A couple of hundred civil servants got the 'Don't come Monday' letter today. My only beef with this is that it wasn't a couple of thousand. Chrisitine Rankin has been appointed to the Families Commission. I'm not sure that the Commission is needed at all (and nor is Mrs Rankin) but the appointment has royally pissed off Sue Bradford so it was a useful move just for that reason alone. SWMBO has been shipped off to the other side of the world. Short of the moon I can think of nowhere further away. History Boy has been given the flick in all sorts of creative ways. He can't be feeling all that comfy being employed by The Rich Prick. Good, the less comfy the better.
No, I'm happy enough that the country is in much safer hands than it has been for nearly a decade.
But it is one and half billy's worth of pragmatism that has dragged me back to the keyboard this evening. If you drive from Auckland airport to go pretty much anywhere north of Mangere you speed along a jolly spiffy motorway for about ten minutes and are then spat out in to leafy Epsom. It's a joke and has been for ever. The 'motorway' (sic) just stops in the middle of nowhere. That particular nowhere is on the periphery of the Mount Albert constituency which, for those of short memories, was the recent fiefdom of she who used to have to be obeyed. The hideous witch had decreed that the only way the ersatz motorway was going to link up with anything remotely useful in the way of a road was through a deep tunnel. NIMBY to the max. No roads going through my back garden. Now I'm no civil engineer but deep road tunnels don't come free with a packet of Weetbix. Proper roads (how would we know; New Zealand has none, but no matter) are not cheap but sodding great tunnels are eye wateringly expensive.
Well in a previous time (i.e. last year) that mattered not at all. The party that spent money that wasn't their's like a drunken sailor couldn't have given rat's arse what a tunnel cost as long as it kept motor vehicles out of Helen's petunias. Mercifully along comes the pragmatic new Minister of Transport and says 'Sod a tunnel at $3 billion for a game of soldiers, you can have road for half that and like it.' About bloody time too. We can't afford a tunnel. And that's pretty much it. But not for those cretins time warped in the past. 'We will have to demolish 200 houses' Tough. 'And a school' Tough. 'And some valuable green space'. Bollocks - and tough. 'It is ripping the heart out of the community' Well, its not and tough. On the Six O'clock News they even had a year five kid (that would make him ten or so?) giving his reasons as to why an above ground road was a bad idea. I'm surprised he wasn't asked his opinion on the cause of cancer or the meaning of life; they would have been just as relevant. Oh by the way his Mum was a leader of the 'Tunnel or Nothing Campaign' What a surprise. Well she ain't going to get a tunnel so she had better sod off to where she can have nothing. People like her are a waste of food and certainly shouldn't be allowed to breed.
Mount Albert is a dump and a few kilometres of black top instead of some ancient and crappy housing stock is marked improvement for the area. I sincerely hope this refreshing wave of pragmatism continues and grows to tsunami proportions. We need more of this. Forget all this consultation bollocks. 'You live in some scungy housing in the way of a nice shiny new road. Well, here's market value for your hovel. Now bugger off and go and live somewhere else.' Love it. And what are the yesterday's men of the Labour Party saying on all this? They are going to fight tooth and nail to keep the Wicked Witch's damned burrow. They are prepared to spend one and a half billion of my money for nothing. They say that by ditching the tunnel National are kissing good by to the by election. And National quite rightly don't give a fat rat's backside. Labour are happy to buy a by election (or Buy Election as ACT so correctly puts it) and National are happy to save money and sacrifice a useless seat.
One of the bylines of this Blog is pragmatism and six months down the track I am happy that we are getting a nice dose of it. A couple of hundred civil servants got the 'Don't come Monday' letter today. My only beef with this is that it wasn't a couple of thousand. Chrisitine Rankin has been appointed to the Families Commission. I'm not sure that the Commission is needed at all (and nor is Mrs Rankin) but the appointment has royally pissed off Sue Bradford so it was a useful move just for that reason alone. SWMBO has been shipped off to the other side of the world. Short of the moon I can think of nowhere further away. History Boy has been given the flick in all sorts of creative ways. He can't be feeling all that comfy being employed by The Rich Prick. Good, the less comfy the better.
No, I'm happy enough that the country is in much safer hands than it has been for nearly a decade.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Sir Obald
Has a certain je ne sais qoi about it, does it not?
Only a few short months ago our lives were ruled by the colourless commies. We all had to be equal. We got medals for turning up. We were not allowed to be better than anybody at anything. They stopped short of Castro's idea of paying neurosurgeons the same as taxi drivers, but only just. It was not an impossible flight of fancy that all those wearing glasses would be shipped off to (aural) rehabilitation camps as they could be seen as intellectuals.
How does an honours system sit with all this? Not at all. How does a titular honours system fit in? Well, even more not at all. If you decide someone is worthy of singling out for praise you make it even worse by calling them 'Sir' something. What to do? Even they decided that getting rid of the honours system altogether was a step too far, at least in the first instance. It was decided that those who were to be reluctantly honoured should be given an honour that was meaningless and had a silly complicated title that no one could remember and meant nothing. Thus Colin Meads became not Sir Pinetree but a Most Distinguished Companion of the Order of New Zealand (I think) . He would still thump you if you disagreed with him but you would not get thumped by a bloke bestriding the battlements in a ermine trimmed cape.
What does this totally unrememberable appellation mean? Nothing. You can be a companion of something animate - like your best mate, a maiden aunt or a goat. You cannot be a companion to a virtual object. You cannot take the plane to Wellington as the companion of Newton's Second Law of Motion or Parkinson's disease. You can be the companion to Mrs Smith at number 27 who has Parkinson's disease, of course. Thus you could not be a Companion of an Order of Merit as it is not something that physically exists. This suited the Mao jacketed ones perfectly. Dish out something meaningless and people will not object when it is removed completely.
This, of course, is just bollocks. People should be rewarded for doing well. Good grief they even enjoy it. This starts from getting a gold star in Primary School and extends right through to Sir Mick Jagger who gets an award for still being alive.
I am delighted that the current Pragmatic Government has got rid of all this equality bollocks and we are to have titular honours again. It is even retrospective so those who the mealy mouthed witch denied their proper gong can get it back. Miserable bloody woman. How heartening it is to see all the changes she wrought in our lives without any mandate whatsoever being rolled back one by one.
Privy Council next, please.
Only a few short months ago our lives were ruled by the colourless commies. We all had to be equal. We got medals for turning up. We were not allowed to be better than anybody at anything. They stopped short of Castro's idea of paying neurosurgeons the same as taxi drivers, but only just. It was not an impossible flight of fancy that all those wearing glasses would be shipped off to (aural) rehabilitation camps as they could be seen as intellectuals.
How does an honours system sit with all this? Not at all. How does a titular honours system fit in? Well, even more not at all. If you decide someone is worthy of singling out for praise you make it even worse by calling them 'Sir' something. What to do? Even they decided that getting rid of the honours system altogether was a step too far, at least in the first instance. It was decided that those who were to be reluctantly honoured should be given an honour that was meaningless and had a silly complicated title that no one could remember and meant nothing. Thus Colin Meads became not Sir Pinetree but a Most Distinguished Companion of the Order of New Zealand (I think) . He would still thump you if you disagreed with him but you would not get thumped by a bloke bestriding the battlements in a ermine trimmed cape.
What does this totally unrememberable appellation mean? Nothing. You can be a companion of something animate - like your best mate, a maiden aunt or a goat. You cannot be a companion to a virtual object. You cannot take the plane to Wellington as the companion of Newton's Second Law of Motion or Parkinson's disease. You can be the companion to Mrs Smith at number 27 who has Parkinson's disease, of course. Thus you could not be a Companion of an Order of Merit as it is not something that physically exists. This suited the Mao jacketed ones perfectly. Dish out something meaningless and people will not object when it is removed completely.
This, of course, is just bollocks. People should be rewarded for doing well. Good grief they even enjoy it. This starts from getting a gold star in Primary School and extends right through to Sir Mick Jagger who gets an award for still being alive.
I am delighted that the current Pragmatic Government has got rid of all this equality bollocks and we are to have titular honours again. It is even retrospective so those who the mealy mouthed witch denied their proper gong can get it back. Miserable bloody woman. How heartening it is to see all the changes she wrought in our lives without any mandate whatsoever being rolled back one by one.
Privy Council next, please.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
ACC is broken
Well of course it is. Take any enterprise and give it to a government monopoly and then make everyone use it and what do you expect. No competition and tenured workers is a sure fire recipe for disaster. The tales of waste and abuse in ACC are legion. If only ten percent of them are true we are being taken for a ride.
My wife tripped over in the garden , fell and broke her wrist a few years ago. Painful and a bloody nuisance. A policeman (or my then 16 year old daughter) could have made the diagnosis without recourse to Dr Roentgren's invention but we repaired to the hospital in the approved fashion. We required some analgesia, an Xray, a reduction and another Xray. In that order. What we got was an ACC form upfront well before the analgesia. It was (is) a culture. The ACC came before common humanity. I was puzzled at the time that this domestic incident even came within ACC's purview. But it did and no further progress through the 'system' was possible until I had filled in the form. The patient couldn't do this because she had broken her wrist, remember. What would have happened if I had not been able to play scribe I shudder to think. I got the impression if had filled in the demographics along the lines of F. Christmas, North Pole we would have been OK but not filling it was a non starter. Having declined all financial recompense (my wife was not working for money at the time) I thought the matter closed.
About six weeks later we received a 'phone call at 1900hrs asking if ACC could provide any home help as they were sure the high dusting had been neglected for a while. Common courtesy precluded me from telling them to get some sexual gratification as they left the building. What are we doing employing someone on time and a half or double time phoning to offer services that people almost certainly don't need for starters? A trivial story but with absolute veracity. There are billions of other stories for which I cannot vouch for detailing even greater profligate waste of my money.
Billions. I am not the first to point out that billion is the new million. Numbers associated with anything financial these days are followed by a quantity of noughts I didn't know it was possible to put after anything. ACC apparently has liabilities in the $200 billion dollar range (that's $200,000,000,000.00 I think) but has assets only half that. You don't have to be Adam Smith to know that is not going to fly. We are then told 'If this was a normal business it would be bankrupt'. No shit, Sherlock. And here in lies the problem. Why is it not a normal business? That is what insurance is, a business. It is not a business because it has morphed into welfare agency. There are businesses milking it as the cash cow it has become. The physiotherapy industry is whining this morning because it can see the farmer opening the gate prior to the herd leaving the milking shed.
Those who oversaw the transformation of ACC from an insurer to a welfare bottomless pit, the previous Labour government, are crying foul as they would . David Parker is bleating that ACC is the best system in the world and should not be tampered with. Here is a prime example of someone so blinded by ideology that he cannot see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Wake up, David, ACC is a lemon. It is a business basket case. The Goof whines that he thinks that the figures are being made to look worse than they really are and we are being 'softened up' for the privatisation of the Corporation.
Well Phil, I am as soft as the softest comfy cushion. I need no more tenderising. Just bloody do it. Give me some choice. The choice for starters as to which parts of my life I chose to insure. Everyone has to pay ACC levies for damned everything. A worker in a florist pays levies in case she is savaged by a geranium or inhales potting compost. A construction worker insuring against being sconed by a hod of bricks is fair enough but an accountant paying for protection against a calculator? If said number cruncher wants to keep the abacus at bay then let him chose to pay for it. Get over it Goof your compulsion, totalitarian way of leading our lives for us is over. It ended on the second Saturday of last November.
ACC is broken. Of course it is. To put Humpty back together again we need to make a bloody great omelette.
My wife tripped over in the garden , fell and broke her wrist a few years ago. Painful and a bloody nuisance. A policeman (or my then 16 year old daughter) could have made the diagnosis without recourse to Dr Roentgren's invention but we repaired to the hospital in the approved fashion. We required some analgesia, an Xray, a reduction and another Xray. In that order. What we got was an ACC form upfront well before the analgesia. It was (is) a culture. The ACC came before common humanity. I was puzzled at the time that this domestic incident even came within ACC's purview. But it did and no further progress through the 'system' was possible until I had filled in the form. The patient couldn't do this because she had broken her wrist, remember. What would have happened if I had not been able to play scribe I shudder to think. I got the impression if had filled in the demographics along the lines of F. Christmas, North Pole we would have been OK but not filling it was a non starter. Having declined all financial recompense (my wife was not working for money at the time) I thought the matter closed.
About six weeks later we received a 'phone call at 1900hrs asking if ACC could provide any home help as they were sure the high dusting had been neglected for a while. Common courtesy precluded me from telling them to get some sexual gratification as they left the building. What are we doing employing someone on time and a half or double time phoning to offer services that people almost certainly don't need for starters? A trivial story but with absolute veracity. There are billions of other stories for which I cannot vouch for detailing even greater profligate waste of my money.
Billions. I am not the first to point out that billion is the new million. Numbers associated with anything financial these days are followed by a quantity of noughts I didn't know it was possible to put after anything. ACC apparently has liabilities in the $200 billion dollar range (that's $200,000,000,000.00 I think) but has assets only half that. You don't have to be Adam Smith to know that is not going to fly. We are then told 'If this was a normal business it would be bankrupt'. No shit, Sherlock. And here in lies the problem. Why is it not a normal business? That is what insurance is, a business. It is not a business because it has morphed into welfare agency. There are businesses milking it as the cash cow it has become. The physiotherapy industry is whining this morning because it can see the farmer opening the gate prior to the herd leaving the milking shed.
Those who oversaw the transformation of ACC from an insurer to a welfare bottomless pit, the previous Labour government, are crying foul as they would . David Parker is bleating that ACC is the best system in the world and should not be tampered with. Here is a prime example of someone so blinded by ideology that he cannot see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Wake up, David, ACC is a lemon. It is a business basket case. The Goof whines that he thinks that the figures are being made to look worse than they really are and we are being 'softened up' for the privatisation of the Corporation.
Well Phil, I am as soft as the softest comfy cushion. I need no more tenderising. Just bloody do it. Give me some choice. The choice for starters as to which parts of my life I chose to insure. Everyone has to pay ACC levies for damned everything. A worker in a florist pays levies in case she is savaged by a geranium or inhales potting compost. A construction worker insuring against being sconed by a hod of bricks is fair enough but an accountant paying for protection against a calculator? If said number cruncher wants to keep the abacus at bay then let him chose to pay for it. Get over it Goof your compulsion, totalitarian way of leading our lives for us is over. It ended on the second Saturday of last November.
ACC is broken. Of course it is. To put Humpty back together again we need to make a bloody great omelette.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Idle blogger
Well not really but I look and realise I have only posted four posts all year and we are into February. Well I'm not obliged to post things if I don't want to but I do like to keep things trundling along. Excuses? Dog ate my keyboard? World price of tin falling through the floor? None really except that this is a busy time of year for doing things like enjoying life.
My fascination with politics has waned a little as there isn't any really. The Goof is pathetic and time warped in 2007. The PM announced a whole load of things he thought were a jolly good idea to ease the pain of the recession. I understand about 1% of what he said because I am not an economics/money type bloke. Nor is the Goof. He should just shut up and let the elected government get on with things. He wants, basically, Labour's election manifesto put in place in this area. Tough. You lost. Just keep quiet and let the people who won get on with it. If they are wrong and it goes even further tits up than it appears to be at present, then so be it.
When I started this blogging business I put in the headlines (and it is still there) that it would have a bit of gamefishing in it. Well there hasn't been much as I haven't done much. Went out not at all last year due to the moving to Obald Acres but normal order has been restored and I spent five days on the briny last week. Off for another trip tomorrow and a couple more weeks planned in March.
There is a report of last weeks fun (and it was) in the next post.
My fascination with politics has waned a little as there isn't any really. The Goof is pathetic and time warped in 2007. The PM announced a whole load of things he thought were a jolly good idea to ease the pain of the recession. I understand about 1% of what he said because I am not an economics/money type bloke. Nor is the Goof. He should just shut up and let the elected government get on with things. He wants, basically, Labour's election manifesto put in place in this area. Tough. You lost. Just keep quiet and let the people who won get on with it. If they are wrong and it goes even further tits up than it appears to be at present, then so be it.
When I started this blogging business I put in the headlines (and it is still there) that it would have a bit of gamefishing in it. Well there hasn't been much as I haven't done much. Went out not at all last year due to the moving to Obald Acres but normal order has been restored and I spent five days on the briny last week. Off for another trip tomorrow and a couple more weeks planned in March.
There is a report of last weeks fun (and it was) in the next post.
Monday, January 5, 2009
New Year, same rubbish
It is an absolute disgrace that Keith Locke is still being paid a wage from my money. What warped system have we allowed that enables such a nutball to be a Member of Parliament. We should be taking released prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into New Zealand so that they can recover from the traumas of their imprisonment at the hands of the evil Satan in the warm caring society that is the People's Republic of Aoteoroa. What a load of bollocks. New Zealand needs time expired Guantanamo residents like it needs foot and mouth disease.
The only good things I can think of that come from the Member for Cambodia's latest outrage are 1) it matters not a jot. Since November 8th his rants have even less relevance than previously. There is no Dear Leader's ear to get into - I can just see JK getting Keith around for a cup of Earl Grey, a chocolate afghan and a bit of foreign policy advice. 2) It further expose the Greens for what they really are, watermelons. When she in the need of tooth whitening and botox departs the green veneer will have gone and the red core will be exposed for even the terminally stupid to see. It has always amazed me why so many people would waste a vote on the Greens. Even the 'I know they won't get in but they are the conscience of the nation and have the best interests of the planet at heart' crap won't wash when they come up to you collecting for renovations to the Gulags.
The only good things I can think of that come from the Member for Cambodia's latest outrage are 1) it matters not a jot. Since November 8th his rants have even less relevance than previously. There is no Dear Leader's ear to get into - I can just see JK getting Keith around for a cup of Earl Grey, a chocolate afghan and a bit of foreign policy advice. 2) It further expose the Greens for what they really are, watermelons. When she in the need of tooth whitening and botox departs the green veneer will have gone and the red core will be exposed for even the terminally stupid to see. It has always amazed me why so many people would waste a vote on the Greens. Even the 'I know they won't get in but they are the conscience of the nation and have the best interests of the planet at heart' crap won't wash when they come up to you collecting for renovations to the Gulags.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
And just as I was ready for bed....
......I come across this.
I had a quick glance at Whaleoil to make sure all was well in the land of right wing vitriol before retiring to my litter and I come across this lot. I am grateful to the toothed cetacean for the quotes.
Here are some extracts from the maiden speech of Dr Kennedy Graham, a new Green MP. Are you sitting down?
He starts off thus:
Mr Speaker, I greet you and my colleagues in the name of our common spirituality, humbled as we are in the sight of the divine, whatever we each perceive this to be.
Not a clue.
Then we get:
As our materialistic lifestyle expands, our ecological footprint grows ever larger. Humankind today, casting precaution to the wind, is recording an ecological overshoot beyond the planet’s carrying capacity, anthropogenically inducing climate change of unprecedented magnitude and alarming danger. We are drawing down on Earth’s natural resources, borrowing forward on the human heritage, irretrievably encroaching on our children’s right to inherit the Earth in a natural and sustainable state. It is the uniquely dubious fate of our generation to have broken the eternal promise of inter-generational justice.
Bloody hell. We know from his opening that he is as a mad as a box of frogs but there are some pearlers in here. 'The planet's carrying capacity' We live in a wheel-barrow? He's bought the anthropogenic climate change bollocks hook line and sinker - but he wouldn't get his nut cutlet at smokoe if he hadn't would he? 'Our children's right to inherit the Earth, blah, blah, blah'. Please spare me this meaningless crap. I put in the blah, blah, blah to save me having to type sustainableedingbility - oops I just have. And then he finishes this stanza with the tosh about the 'eternal promise of inter-generational justice'. I doubt even he knows what that is - I certainly don't.
Up to flying speed now. Want some more?
Sustainability is the supreme political value of the 21st century. It is not a concept of passing political expediency - a clip-on word for post-economic environmental damage. It is now the categorical imperative of personal behaviour. Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed, but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living. The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.
A whole chunk about sustainableedingbility. For starters it is not 'the supreme political value of the 21st century'; it is a load of meaningless crap as I have been at pains to point out to anyone who will listen for ages. 'Post-economic environmental damage' That is about the fifth totally unintelligible thing he has said in the last thirty seconds. 'Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed'. So here we go. A few minutes of bat shit mad ecobabble to get the punters softened up for the real agenda of the watermelons - you will do as you are told. 'The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.' I don't understand that either but judging by its juxtaposition to the previous bit I assume it means you will do as you are told.
That's one of the myriad of troubles with these jokers. The words coming out of their mouths are English but they speak Martian.
There is more but I can't be bothered - you get the idea. It all confirms that this Kennedy Graham is a) absolutely, five star, barking, bat shit mad and b)he is but one of many similar organisms that gather under the Green Party banner and c) if they are not liberally and repeatedly sprayed with Raid they have the potential to be bloody dangerous.
You and I are paying this monkey good money to live in Wellington and bother people in Parliament. We shouldn't even be wasting food on him.
I had a quick glance at Whaleoil to make sure all was well in the land of right wing vitriol before retiring to my litter and I come across this lot. I am grateful to the toothed cetacean for the quotes.
Here are some extracts from the maiden speech of Dr Kennedy Graham, a new Green MP. Are you sitting down?
He starts off thus:
Mr Speaker, I greet you and my colleagues in the name of our common spirituality, humbled as we are in the sight of the divine, whatever we each perceive this to be.
Not a clue.
Then we get:
As our materialistic lifestyle expands, our ecological footprint grows ever larger. Humankind today, casting precaution to the wind, is recording an ecological overshoot beyond the planet’s carrying capacity, anthropogenically inducing climate change of unprecedented magnitude and alarming danger. We are drawing down on Earth’s natural resources, borrowing forward on the human heritage, irretrievably encroaching on our children’s right to inherit the Earth in a natural and sustainable state. It is the uniquely dubious fate of our generation to have broken the eternal promise of inter-generational justice.
Bloody hell. We know from his opening that he is as a mad as a box of frogs but there are some pearlers in here. 'The planet's carrying capacity' We live in a wheel-barrow? He's bought the anthropogenic climate change bollocks hook line and sinker - but he wouldn't get his nut cutlet at smokoe if he hadn't would he? 'Our children's right to inherit the Earth, blah, blah, blah'. Please spare me this meaningless crap. I put in the blah, blah, blah to save me having to type sustainableedingbility - oops I just have. And then he finishes this stanza with the tosh about the 'eternal promise of inter-generational justice'. I doubt even he knows what that is - I certainly don't.
Up to flying speed now. Want some more?
Sustainability is the supreme political value of the 21st century. It is not a concept of passing political expediency - a clip-on word for post-economic environmental damage. It is now the categorical imperative of personal behaviour. Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed, but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living. The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.
A whole chunk about sustainableedingbility. For starters it is not 'the supreme political value of the 21st century'; it is a load of meaningless crap as I have been at pains to point out to anyone who will listen for ages. 'Post-economic environmental damage' That is about the fifth totally unintelligible thing he has said in the last thirty seconds. 'Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed'. So here we go. A few minutes of bat shit mad ecobabble to get the punters softened up for the real agenda of the watermelons - you will do as you are told. 'The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.' I don't understand that either but judging by its juxtaposition to the previous bit I assume it means you will do as you are told.
That's one of the myriad of troubles with these jokers. The words coming out of their mouths are English but they speak Martian.
There is more but I can't be bothered - you get the idea. It all confirms that this Kennedy Graham is a) absolutely, five star, barking, bat shit mad and b)he is but one of many similar organisms that gather under the Green Party banner and c) if they are not liberally and repeatedly sprayed with Raid they have the potential to be bloody dangerous.
You and I are paying this monkey good money to live in Wellington and bother people in Parliament. We shouldn't even be wasting food on him.
It has all changed
Well, it has hasn't it. Parliament got going yesterday and it's all different.
Well it is for some of them but the losers are trying to carry on as if nothing as happened. Goof even referred to the blokes on the other side of the debating chamber as 'the Opposition'. That's you, you dumb arse. You lost remember. That poisonous witch was given the flick by the great unwashed and that is why you are now 'Leader of the Opposition'. Now as you are so slow I will tell you what that means. You sit on the otherside of the room and bleat your usual pointless bleatings about how everything is so unfair whenever someone has a good idea. The person who has had that good idea a) ignores you or b) scores a point off you with a smartarse remark and then ignores you. You see the smartarse remark is an optional extra as the end result is the same - you are ignored. In days of yore (six weeks ago) the smartarse remarks were the whole point.
The acknowledged (not by me, I hasten to add) master of the smartarse remark was History Boy. He had the 'sharpest wit in the house'; bollocks. He was and is the nastiest, meanest, petty, mealy mouthed ratbag ever to be a history teaching reject. Horrible little smarmy wretch. He used his 'rapier wit and procedural nimble footedness' to trip up the new speaker yesterday. Cullen knows the procedural jiggery pokery backwards and he used his superior knowledge of such irrelevant twaddle to make Lockwood Smith look like a plonker. The Speaker granted someone a point of order but then let him sit down before he spoke which lost him his right to speak - or something. He of the mind of a steel trap was onto this in a flash. Cullen forced the Speaker to rule in his favour as he was right and then asked that original bloke be allowed to speak to make Lockwood Smith look like a complete dork. I didn't see it but you can just picture Cullen's ghastly, arrogant 'I'm better than you' look on his smug face as he gazes around his fawning colleagues looking for approbation. God it makes me sick just to think of it. It's like that annoying pratt at a party who laughs at his own weak joke and then looks around the room to make sure people are laughing with him. At him is more often than not the case.
This is how parliament used to be sunshine. All mouth and trousers. When you were not showing us all your rapier like wit, Cullen, what were you actually doing to earn your salary as a 'prudent' custodian of the Nation's finances? Let me see, now. Buying a nineteenth century technology trainset at over twice it's book value. Yes, you were doing that. Turning a Government surplus measured in billions into deficits measured in similar units in the space of months. Yes, you were doing that. Telling Treasury Officials to keep quiet about ACC being on the wrong side of heaven to the tune of two and half billy so you wouldn't have to put it in the PREFU. Yes, you were doing that. Coming out of the end of a sweet spot in the world's economic history with the country a financial basket case. Yes, you were doing that. What else did you do? Nothing. All you could do was come across as an arrogant, useless little prick. That is what it used to be like in your day. Which isn't today.
The new way is that the Government does things. A new Bill (as advertised very prominently during the election campaign) is passed giving small employers (no I don't mean garden gnomes) the ability to sack useless deadweights (like Cullen) in the first three months of any job. Seems fair to me. The old mob squeal like pigs. 'Oppression of the workers' is cried from the factory gates and the Labour benches (you see they are still bringing those stupid red despatch boxes with 'Labour' written on them to Parliament- so last year). 'This Bill removes all workers rights' wails Laila Harré. We don't care what you think, Commie. By the by if Laila Harré hasn't got the most irritating voice in New Zealand I don't want to meet the woman who has; fancy being married to that? 'Have you put the dustbin out?' 'Not without first putting you in it'.
STFU you losers. Men at Work. Things getting done.
We don't agree say the Maori Party. But this wasn't a nasty destructive we don't agree. They had talks with the government and agreed to disagree. Doesn't matter because ACT make up the numbers. The converse will apply at sometime in the future - tomorrow at the rate things are moving. This is how multi-party coalitions are supposed to work, surely.
The Westy Minister of Social Bizzos tells the Families Commission to can their $200,000 talkfest as being a useless waste of my money (which it is). The head honcho says this is not fair (sorry - last week's talk) as the 'Summit' (no such bloody thing - jumped up idea of their own importance) had been planned for a long time. That makes it right? The Goof says she should have consulted with Rajan Prasad before canning it. What the hell for? RP was yesterday's useless man and does not need to be consulted about anything.
The Nats said during the campaign that Herceptin would be funded for a year and now it is. I don't think this is an idea based on any medical evidence and is probably not a good idea but they said they would do it and they have. Presumably some people voted for them on the strength of their saying they were going to do it and so they have. Good old fashioned value showing through here - a man is as good as his word. Not much of that around in the last nine years.
We were promised more tax cuts and a new top rate of tax. They will be law within the week.
Also different is the Prime Minister. For starters he has a Y chromosome. We have swapped a sneering vicious duplicitous witch for an assured bloke who looks as if he knows what he is doing. He seems more sure footed by the minute. Now it may turn out that he hasn't got a bloody clue - but the current illusion, if that is what it is, is already a whole lot better than the ghastly reality of the past nine years.
Well it is for some of them but the losers are trying to carry on as if nothing as happened. Goof even referred to the blokes on the other side of the debating chamber as 'the Opposition'. That's you, you dumb arse. You lost remember. That poisonous witch was given the flick by the great unwashed and that is why you are now 'Leader of the Opposition'. Now as you are so slow I will tell you what that means. You sit on the otherside of the room and bleat your usual pointless bleatings about how everything is so unfair whenever someone has a good idea. The person who has had that good idea a) ignores you or b) scores a point off you with a smartarse remark and then ignores you. You see the smartarse remark is an optional extra as the end result is the same - you are ignored. In days of yore (six weeks ago) the smartarse remarks were the whole point.
The acknowledged (not by me, I hasten to add) master of the smartarse remark was History Boy. He had the 'sharpest wit in the house'; bollocks. He was and is the nastiest, meanest, petty, mealy mouthed ratbag ever to be a history teaching reject. Horrible little smarmy wretch. He used his 'rapier wit and procedural nimble footedness' to trip up the new speaker yesterday. Cullen knows the procedural jiggery pokery backwards and he used his superior knowledge of such irrelevant twaddle to make Lockwood Smith look like a plonker. The Speaker granted someone a point of order but then let him sit down before he spoke which lost him his right to speak - or something. He of the mind of a steel trap was onto this in a flash. Cullen forced the Speaker to rule in his favour as he was right and then asked that original bloke be allowed to speak to make Lockwood Smith look like a complete dork. I didn't see it but you can just picture Cullen's ghastly, arrogant 'I'm better than you' look on his smug face as he gazes around his fawning colleagues looking for approbation. God it makes me sick just to think of it. It's like that annoying pratt at a party who laughs at his own weak joke and then looks around the room to make sure people are laughing with him. At him is more often than not the case.
This is how parliament used to be sunshine. All mouth and trousers. When you were not showing us all your rapier like wit, Cullen, what were you actually doing to earn your salary as a 'prudent' custodian of the Nation's finances? Let me see, now. Buying a nineteenth century technology trainset at over twice it's book value. Yes, you were doing that. Turning a Government surplus measured in billions into deficits measured in similar units in the space of months. Yes, you were doing that. Telling Treasury Officials to keep quiet about ACC being on the wrong side of heaven to the tune of two and half billy so you wouldn't have to put it in the PREFU. Yes, you were doing that. Coming out of the end of a sweet spot in the world's economic history with the country a financial basket case. Yes, you were doing that. What else did you do? Nothing. All you could do was come across as an arrogant, useless little prick. That is what it used to be like in your day. Which isn't today.
The new way is that the Government does things. A new Bill (as advertised very prominently during the election campaign) is passed giving small employers (no I don't mean garden gnomes) the ability to sack useless deadweights (like Cullen) in the first three months of any job. Seems fair to me. The old mob squeal like pigs. 'Oppression of the workers' is cried from the factory gates and the Labour benches (you see they are still bringing those stupid red despatch boxes with 'Labour' written on them to Parliament- so last year). 'This Bill removes all workers rights' wails Laila Harré. We don't care what you think, Commie. By the by if Laila Harré hasn't got the most irritating voice in New Zealand I don't want to meet the woman who has; fancy being married to that? 'Have you put the dustbin out?' 'Not without first putting you in it'.
STFU you losers. Men at Work. Things getting done.
We don't agree say the Maori Party. But this wasn't a nasty destructive we don't agree. They had talks with the government and agreed to disagree. Doesn't matter because ACT make up the numbers. The converse will apply at sometime in the future - tomorrow at the rate things are moving. This is how multi-party coalitions are supposed to work, surely.
The Westy Minister of Social Bizzos tells the Families Commission to can their $200,000 talkfest as being a useless waste of my money (which it is). The head honcho says this is not fair (sorry - last week's talk) as the 'Summit' (no such bloody thing - jumped up idea of their own importance) had been planned for a long time. That makes it right? The Goof says she should have consulted with Rajan Prasad before canning it. What the hell for? RP was yesterday's useless man and does not need to be consulted about anything.
The Nats said during the campaign that Herceptin would be funded for a year and now it is. I don't think this is an idea based on any medical evidence and is probably not a good idea but they said they would do it and they have. Presumably some people voted for them on the strength of their saying they were going to do it and so they have. Good old fashioned value showing through here - a man is as good as his word. Not much of that around in the last nine years.
We were promised more tax cuts and a new top rate of tax. They will be law within the week.
Also different is the Prime Minister. For starters he has a Y chromosome. We have swapped a sneering vicious duplicitous witch for an assured bloke who looks as if he knows what he is doing. He seems more sure footed by the minute. Now it may turn out that he hasn't got a bloody clue - but the current illusion, if that is what it is, is already a whole lot better than the ghastly reality of the past nine years.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Edison lives on
The pragmatic blokes who seem to be still doing what the said they would are at it again. The Government today announced that they will reverse the ban on incandescent light bulbs that was due to come into effect next October. This was one of the dafter of Labour's save the planet bollocks. The replacement piggy's tails jobs are just 'orrible. As I have already mentioned I had started hoarding the original tried and true Thomas Edison jobs and I suppose I could now have a garage sale of them.
As an added bonus to this welcome bit of pragmatism she in the need of Botox and tooth whitening has come out in all her hand wringing and whingeing splendour to announce that she and the Greens are unhappy with the decision. I'll tell you what, Ms Fitzsimons, no one gives a rat's arse what you think. By telling us all prior to the election that you wanted nothing to do with a National Government should one be elected you have consigned yourself to a position of total and utter irrelevance. You've made your bed now lie in it. How do you fancy a ride in my supercharged V8? A trip around my private Toshiba nuclear power plant? Sell you 40 litres of diesel, cheap like? A T-bone steak perhaps?
Stupid woman
As an added bonus to this welcome bit of pragmatism she in the need of Botox and tooth whitening has come out in all her hand wringing and whingeing splendour to announce that she and the Greens are unhappy with the decision. I'll tell you what, Ms Fitzsimons, no one gives a rat's arse what you think. By telling us all prior to the election that you wanted nothing to do with a National Government should one be elected you have consigned yourself to a position of total and utter irrelevance. You've made your bed now lie in it. How do you fancy a ride in my supercharged V8? A trip around my private Toshiba nuclear power plant? Sell you 40 litres of diesel, cheap like? A T-bone steak perhaps?
Stupid woman
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Now this is better already
I haven't found cause to put finger to keyboard for over a fortnight and, to be honest, there is no real reason so to do now. I thought that finding things to write about would be harder after the fall of Helengrad and I was right. In a way this is a little disappointing as it means that all I wanted to scribble about was the negatives of life and not the positives. I am probably not alone in this as a lot of people voted for the current administration not because it was John Key and his mob but because it was not Helen, History Boy and their mob.
However there is a palpable change in mood in the country over the last fortnight or so. And this despite the fact that we are at the door of a truly horrible economic short to medium term future. Indeed we have probably already crossed the threshold. It is an absolute delight not to have the mainstream media dominated by the droning and controlling utterances of the commie rainbow eco nuts who have blighted the landscape for nigh on a decade.
I prevailed on Mrs Obald to miss the first half of Shortland Street last night so I could watch Sainsbury interview Rodney Hide over the idiocy of the building codes and the RMA. Both were wearing those ghastly garish chalkstripe suits when jeans and a tee shirt would have been just fine but no matter. This will be good I thought. We will have a story about bureaucracy gone nuts and then the Minister will justify what we have just seen with loads of hand wringing and tosh about safety and stakeholders. Well we got the silly story - a couple in fact. One about a bloke who wanted to put an extension on his house with building costs coming to $7000 and compliance and permit costs coming to $2700. Then there was a bloke telling us all that an outside dunny on DoC land required eight building inspections before anyone could use the super soft toilet paper. Over to the Minister for Stuff Like This. Justification? Nope, none of that. Words to the effect 'This is nuts and I will get rid of it. It took decades to build up such a structure of bureaucratic nonsense but I will take a chainsaw to it in no time at all.' Now this is more like it.
Meanwhile our proper Prime Minister is overseas. Not holding high profile press conferences that are all photo opportunity and no substance but head down and poncho covered bum up doing things. New kid on the block at APEC and he told them to pull finger and do something about trade and not just bloody talk about it. I like the cut of his jib. I just hope he has the intestinal fortitude to carry on in this 'business' way of running the country and not be dragged kicking and screaming back into the 'political' way of doing things that were so precious to the disastrous mob he has replaced.
And speaking of them.... Well no one is. Yesterday's news is today's fish and chip paper. Who has heard anything of Dear Leader, History Boy, the Member for Cambodia and all the other wastrels who would have us believe that they were so bloody important to our even drawing breath but three short weeks ago? They have quite rightly been consigned to the garbage - not, I hasten to add, the recycling. The world has moved on thank God. Your old way of doing things is so yesterday. Piss off, the pragmatists have arrived.
However there is a palpable change in mood in the country over the last fortnight or so. And this despite the fact that we are at the door of a truly horrible economic short to medium term future. Indeed we have probably already crossed the threshold. It is an absolute delight not to have the mainstream media dominated by the droning and controlling utterances of the commie rainbow eco nuts who have blighted the landscape for nigh on a decade.
I prevailed on Mrs Obald to miss the first half of Shortland Street last night so I could watch Sainsbury interview Rodney Hide over the idiocy of the building codes and the RMA. Both were wearing those ghastly garish chalkstripe suits when jeans and a tee shirt would have been just fine but no matter. This will be good I thought. We will have a story about bureaucracy gone nuts and then the Minister will justify what we have just seen with loads of hand wringing and tosh about safety and stakeholders. Well we got the silly story - a couple in fact. One about a bloke who wanted to put an extension on his house with building costs coming to $7000 and compliance and permit costs coming to $2700. Then there was a bloke telling us all that an outside dunny on DoC land required eight building inspections before anyone could use the super soft toilet paper. Over to the Minister for Stuff Like This. Justification? Nope, none of that. Words to the effect 'This is nuts and I will get rid of it. It took decades to build up such a structure of bureaucratic nonsense but I will take a chainsaw to it in no time at all.' Now this is more like it.
Meanwhile our proper Prime Minister is overseas. Not holding high profile press conferences that are all photo opportunity and no substance but head down and poncho covered bum up doing things. New kid on the block at APEC and he told them to pull finger and do something about trade and not just bloody talk about it. I like the cut of his jib. I just hope he has the intestinal fortitude to carry on in this 'business' way of running the country and not be dragged kicking and screaming back into the 'political' way of doing things that were so precious to the disastrous mob he has replaced.
And speaking of them.... Well no one is. Yesterday's news is today's fish and chip paper. Who has heard anything of Dear Leader, History Boy, the Member for Cambodia and all the other wastrels who would have us believe that they were so bloody important to our even drawing breath but three short weeks ago? They have quite rightly been consigned to the garbage - not, I hasten to add, the recycling. The world has moved on thank God. Your old way of doing things is so yesterday. Piss off, the pragmatists have arrived.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Now what?
Three days now and there is nothing left to take the piss out of. I can't pretend to be anything but delighted with the results of Saturday's little contest. John Key as Prime Minister at the head of a National Government with more of an Act presence than I had hoped for to put lead in JK's pencil. Labour consigned to opposition for at least three years. My two least favourite people on the planet falling on their swords. Winston Peters and his useless party consigned to the rubbish tip of history. The Greens neutered by increasing their number of parliamentary seats. No, a very satisfactory outcome.
But what does the future hold for the above mentioned wastrels. I don't really care to be honest. Dear Ex Leader today took up the Foreign Ministry portfolio. Well that's going to last isn't it? It's like having the Bentley taken away and being very content to drive the Corolla for the next three years. She'll use the copious quantity of air miles that come with the job to find herself a nice cushy overseas number I'll be bound. History Boy. I care even less what happens to him. Labour have ushered in the bright new future with a leader and Deputy (The Goof and the Dental Nurse) with 51 years of parliamentary experience between them. Glad they didn't use the old guard for the New Look.
Winston Raymond Peters, who was harder to kill than Rasputin, seems to have finally have had the stake put through the heart. Three years till he can make another tilt at it by which time 80% of his supporters will have died. The only places I can see him cropping up are in IRD enquiries or Courts of Law.
The Greens. Old Botox face was waxing lyrical on Saturday night about how their position had been strengthened with more seats in the house. Bollocks. They may have more MPs but they are ersatz members who can do nothing. The Greens now have as much influence as to the course the country takes as a fart in a thunder storm. They are irrelevant and it couldn't happen to a nicer mob. They are paying the price for being watermelons. All credentials as a green party are gone. They are communists in drag more interested in social engineering than whale saving. Sue Bradford has as many 'green' credentials as the CEO of Exxon. Unless they get rid of the aforementioned harridan, The Member for Cambodia and Russell Norman they will vanish.
I must say that three days out my feelings are still those of relief that it is all over. I trust JK (hear that Helen, you evil woman?) and just am happy that the Electoral Finance Act will be repealed; there will be no food commisar, or whatever he was to be called, telling me what I can put in my fridge. The continuous procession of other similar controlling drivel we have been fed over the last nine years will now stop. A razor gang (and wouldn't Roger Douglas be the perfect head honcho for that) is about to walk through the Civil Service. I am delighted that the new PM has a wife (female and looks it) with whom he lives in the same house. They have two kids who look like normal teenagers; the daughter even has the appalling dress sense that only teenagers can have. I am looking forward to the country being run by a normal bloke - or as my wife puts it 'We now have a proper Prime Minister'.
However I am under no illusion that a lot of the evil done to the country over the last nine years will be undone as it should be. We won't get the Privy Council back. There will be no return of knighthoods. The antismacking bill will not be repealed. Prostitution will not be recriminalized. Same sex civil unions won't be given the flick. I doubt the drinking age will be raised - and so on and so forth. But at least the rot has been stopped in its tracks. I hope its not too late in places where it really matters - like education.
No, I just have to wait and see what happens now. Blogging has just become a lot harder. A faint glimmer on the horizon. Rodney has started talking about ditching the Emissions Trading Scam which is, of course, the only thing to be done with it. Mr Nice has said that there will be an ETS of some sort. A little soupcon of conflict in this new world viewed through rose coloured right of centre glasses perchance?
But what does the future hold for the above mentioned wastrels. I don't really care to be honest. Dear Ex Leader today took up the Foreign Ministry portfolio. Well that's going to last isn't it? It's like having the Bentley taken away and being very content to drive the Corolla for the next three years. She'll use the copious quantity of air miles that come with the job to find herself a nice cushy overseas number I'll be bound. History Boy. I care even less what happens to him. Labour have ushered in the bright new future with a leader and Deputy (The Goof and the Dental Nurse) with 51 years of parliamentary experience between them. Glad they didn't use the old guard for the New Look.
Winston Raymond Peters, who was harder to kill than Rasputin, seems to have finally have had the stake put through the heart. Three years till he can make another tilt at it by which time 80% of his supporters will have died. The only places I can see him cropping up are in IRD enquiries or Courts of Law.
The Greens. Old Botox face was waxing lyrical on Saturday night about how their position had been strengthened with more seats in the house. Bollocks. They may have more MPs but they are ersatz members who can do nothing. The Greens now have as much influence as to the course the country takes as a fart in a thunder storm. They are irrelevant and it couldn't happen to a nicer mob. They are paying the price for being watermelons. All credentials as a green party are gone. They are communists in drag more interested in social engineering than whale saving. Sue Bradford has as many 'green' credentials as the CEO of Exxon. Unless they get rid of the aforementioned harridan, The Member for Cambodia and Russell Norman they will vanish.
I must say that three days out my feelings are still those of relief that it is all over. I trust JK (hear that Helen, you evil woman?) and just am happy that the Electoral Finance Act will be repealed; there will be no food commisar, or whatever he was to be called, telling me what I can put in my fridge. The continuous procession of other similar controlling drivel we have been fed over the last nine years will now stop. A razor gang (and wouldn't Roger Douglas be the perfect head honcho for that) is about to walk through the Civil Service. I am delighted that the new PM has a wife (female and looks it) with whom he lives in the same house. They have two kids who look like normal teenagers; the daughter even has the appalling dress sense that only teenagers can have. I am looking forward to the country being run by a normal bloke - or as my wife puts it 'We now have a proper Prime Minister'.
However I am under no illusion that a lot of the evil done to the country over the last nine years will be undone as it should be. We won't get the Privy Council back. There will be no return of knighthoods. The antismacking bill will not be repealed. Prostitution will not be recriminalized. Same sex civil unions won't be given the flick. I doubt the drinking age will be raised - and so on and so forth. But at least the rot has been stopped in its tracks. I hope its not too late in places where it really matters - like education.
No, I just have to wait and see what happens now. Blogging has just become a lot harder. A faint glimmer on the horizon. Rodney has started talking about ditching the Emissions Trading Scam which is, of course, the only thing to be done with it. Mr Nice has said that there will be an ETS of some sort. A little soupcon of conflict in this new world viewed through rose coloured right of centre glasses perchance?
Saturday, November 8, 2008
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