Not funny

I normally scribble a few words early in the morning but have had no time recently (and this morning no inclination) but government silliness is reaching new heights and I thought I might try typing after dark – very risqué. I also normally try and be a bit light hearted in most of my musings but the topic that is occupying most news space at the moment is hardly the subject for levity. However that does not dissuade me from dishing out great dollops of my other stock in trade, scorn, when it is due.

That politicians have not the first idea what to do about child abuse is patently obvious to anyone with half a brain. Which is more than they have as they have not the first idea what to do about anything. But their latest master plan is stupid on an intergalactic scale. First they are asking these dumb arsed questions of those who front up to hospital just to those without a Y chromosome. This from the party of bloody fairness and equality in all things. Ms Bloggs fronts up at A & E having been in a car vs. power pole encounter and the Triage Nurse will be obliged (there is always a measure of compulsion in all these wallies do) to ask her if she has ever felt unduly criticised at home. This as her liver drips all over the floor. Who but the terminally daft (or a politician) could think this has even the remotest chance of achieving anything? Anything other amass than vast quantities of ‘data’ – which will doubtless be regarded as ‘valuable’. They will then employ armies of ‘Question Operatives’ (because the already pitifully inadequate number of nurses don’t have the time or inclination to do anything extra than they are already doing) to collate all this useless information. And to what purpose? To increase the number of referrals to the SAS of the bureaucratic firmament CYFS presumably. A more dysfunctional, inefficient, uselss bunch of do gooding pratts it would be hard to imagine. And, as usual, we pay for it.

A year down the track when the latest outrage has taken place – and be under no illusion there will be more - some Government apologist will stand up and we will have to put up with all the ‘Progress is being made’. ‘An inter-departmental working group will soon be presenting its finding in a flax basket and more funds will be made available to implement their recommendations’ And so it goes on.

It is, and will remain, a complete load of bollocks. Some one needs to have the balls to stop the hui and start the doey. Sod being nice to people and culturally sensitive. Start banging a few heads together – literally. Food vouchers instead of cash (Jim Beam ain’t food), sterilisation, impounding kids from those incapable of looking after them (a precursor to this would be telling some people that they are incapable of looking after kids on account of the fact that they spend their entire life drunk, stoned or both), take houses away from people who can’t or won’t look after them and so on. Nothing new, all very right wing and totally unacceptable to those who would try and solve the disaster with a group hug. But, you useless toads, your way is not working. One of my favourite definitions of insanity is continuing to do the same things and expecting different results. You are all insane.

Ask a seventy five year old woman attending hospital to get a boil on her bum lanced three questions and this is going to reduce the incidence of three year old kids in tumble driers. Give me a break.

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Fibre optics

have just exited the lift to enter my office and shared Otis's finest with two chaps from Fletcher's Construction. They are employed doing some internal rennovations on the Farm's HQ and were carrying a sheet of GIB. They were both wearing hard hats and wearing day-glo vests. Why? I am surprised they (and me ) were not required to wear safety harnesses as the lift was capable of going to the tenth floor. I felt so much safer getting out at the eighth.

I was actually thinking of bureacracy when I stumbled upon this example thereof. What are the essentials of life? Water? Yup. Working sanitation? Yup. Electricity? Won't go there. Broad band interent? How would we know as we can't get anything approaching it in the Peoples Republic of Aoteorao but I could not imagine a reasonable life with out the even lobotomised version that Ihug offers. Thank God, therefore, that I do not live in Blockhouse Bay. The denizens of this fine suburb not ten minutes from Auckland's CBD apparently have to make do with the cyberspace equivalent of men standing on volcanic cones waving semaphore flags. Telecom, God bless them, say they have to replace the copper wiring. We have to believe them. This will be done with a fibre optic number that will cost $2 million. We have to believe them. They cannot start this work until December because of 'consent issues. We definitely believe them. Why can consent to run a cable take over six months? I am not a cabling engineer but even I know you don't hang nice sexy fibre optic cables off power poles. You put them underground. Who are going to object? Moles? Earthworms? No, the bureacrats must have their unnecessary slice of the action.

They have their supporters in the highest of places as well. Nick Smith (a rather scruffy member of the opposition with a bit of a credibilty problem) had an antibureacrat bill shouted down in the Nut House yesterday. The main throwers of spanners were the sitting Politburo. Nick wanted all building consents that were not processed in twenty days to be issued free of charge. Shock horror you can't do that cry the men with the clipboards (or rather their paymasters) because the cost of the late consents will have to be met by the rate payers. There you have it in one. Totally the wrong answer. A deeply ingrained wrong paradigm. The real answer, of course, is that we will see to it that all consents are issued within twenty days and there will be no late consents to cost anybody anything. There is no hope.

Everybody's favorite dental nurse deigned to speak to the masses yesterday. All monies collected from road user charges and petrol tax will be diverted from the consolidated fund and be directed at 'transport issues'. Looks good (we'll ignore the tax on the fuel that goes in the Yamaha HPDI shall we). Loads of dosh for more roads to drive the supercharged V8 down. Yum yum. I think not. The devil is in the detail. She did not say that the money will go into roading, it will go into 'transport issues'. These changes come into effect in July next year. There is to be an election next year. There will be a curb on electoral spending for this election. The Labour government has increasing the use of public transport to achieve that well known crock, carbon nuetrality, as one of its main election planks. You could justify an expensive advertising campaign about this time next year promoting alternate forms of transport as 'transport issues' fundable from petrol tax.

Conspiracy theorist - Moi?

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Ex school teachers

I supposed we are obliged to give Benson Dope some airtime, but quite why we should bother with anything other than giving him the finger is beyond me.

I have no real objection to lousy school teachers as a group. I realised this about forty years ago when Hugh Glanville, who would teach me about the Wars of the Roses, insisted on calling me Tibble and beating me with a size twelve gym shoe. That he was a lousy teacher held my wrath for only a short time as I realised a wonderful truth - I could ignore him and my life would not change. As an aside he was the first person I was aware of that wore elastic sided boots (cool) and he drove an Austin Healey 3000 to school (way cool).

Having said that, why do we have to put up with Benson Dope? The whole affair is rotten to the core and exposes some worrying but not well hidden traits of the current administration. But to have B-D at the bottom of it somehow makes it worse. He is a duplicitous worm of the first magnitude. His utterences concernig all this are true to the form we first saw over the tennis ball/duct tape affair. The adjective snivelling could have been invented just for him. He tells porkies wholesale and I'm not sure he could lie straight in bed. He was interviewed on the box last night. 'Minister, are you an honest man?' 'I do my job to the best of my ability'. Well I suppose in an oblique sort of a way he has answered the question - 'No'. I see in the paper this morning he points out to us, the great unwashed, that he is not being economical with the truth because we, ignorant peasants that we are, do not understand the difference between being 'briefed' and being 'informed'. He was informed about the blatant political manipulation of an employment issue but was not briefed about it. So that makes it alright. Well no it doesn't. Your wriggling and misuse of the English language just paints you as an even more worthless a member of the human race than we already thought you were - if that were possible.

Beyond the total lack of value of the personnel of the whole sorry affair there are, of course, a couple of principals (or more likely lack thereof) that should be more worrying. The first is the fact that the Minister is prepared to take no responsibilty for the actions of his department. B-D thinks that just because he did not actually make the 'phone call and throws a few mots du weasel at us he is in the clear. Sad thing is that I reckon he really believes it. The equally (maybe more) worrying fact that all this rams home is the paranoea this administration feels when anyone without their warped political view of the world gets too close to their bastions of power.

Scary totalitarian stuff. They have to go.

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The Minister of Health is a vet

The Minister of Health is a vet. For me that just about sums up the totally random and screwed up way this country is run. The Minister of Finance has a degree in History. The Minister of State Services, Minister of Police, Minister of Transport and Minister for Food Safety is a dental nurse, and most of the rest have done nothing useful with their lives at all before going into Parliamnet and thence Government when they become even less functionless. The headmistress, to my knowledge, has never trained for anything or done a proper job for money, ever. She's led her entire life in a sheltered and theoretical thinking world, and thinking of a particularly unpleasant nature to my mind.

I've mentioned this before but why can't we have some people with a track record of expertise in their appointed roles runnig the country? An economist in the Ministry of Finance, a senior military man in the Defence Ministry (perhaps not such a good idea on reflection), a lawyer running Justice, and architect in the Ministry of Housing etc.

This constant gripe was brought to mind with the picture of the Minister of Health (the vet) 'checking out' how the new food regulations - opps, sorry, suggestions - were panning out in schools. This when they had been in situ for about ten minutes of course. He was encouraged to see that one school, substituting water for evil fizzy drinks, had saved the pupils from 400kg (the weight of a small elephant - our Minister's vetinary experience allows him to make such profound statements) of sugar. That morning? The seat of learning was 400kg lighter by lunchtime than it was last week?

Why do we have to put up with this condescending crap? 'I will use the elephant metaphor as it makes me look all cuddly and able to relate to how the peasants think. You can't grasp big numbers like 400 or do hard units like kilograms so I will count things in the small elephant unit that you poor people use all the time in your day to day life. I know you all pop into the Mad Butcher and buy 1/400th of a small elephant of mince on a regular basis. I know you are constantly saying 'I am 1/20th of a small elephant overweight and I must renew my Les Mills subscription'. I am sure you will be so pleased that this juvenile pachyderm has been removed from the school as I know you were getting really worried about him trampling on little Johnny in the crush to avoid the Coke machine. I am confident you will feel a warm glow in your heart that I am here this morning ensuring my draconian policies are having the desired effect even though they have only been in force for half an hour. And, oh is that a television crew over there?' Bollocks.

We touched upon the similarity between Auckland Council (and I can't quite remember which of the nine it was) and a drunken sailor last week. As if more were needed we have further grist to the mill this morning. Their ability to fritter away money that is nicked off us is staggering. The estimates for the upgrade of Mount Eden have gone from $6 million to $12 million plus with a possible ceiling of $28 million. We shall leave aside the rather mind warping underlying concept of updating an extinct volcano. What do you do? Restock the molten lava vaults? Stoke up the brimstone at the expense of the fire? The amounts of money involved, even at the lower end of the scale, are mindnumbing. $6million would keep me in Aston Martins till the end of my days. I could have a brand new DB9 every year. But $28 million? 28? How can you spend that sort of dosh on one bloody hill? There are a few looney tune ideas for transporting toursits to the top. All of these seem to involve Jetsons rubber tyred monorails controlled by untested computer systems. None of these seem to involve legs and sensible shoes. There are plans to upgrade the tearooms. Well there's $15 mill down the gurgler I suppose. But there's more. Once the gold plated pavillion of Earl Grey and Lamingtons is complete there has to be a budget for it to lose several million per annum. So the people who take our rates off us waste money to build a new teashop that they expect to lose money on a biblical scale. Well, of course I'll vote for people who want to do that.

There is a move afoot to streamline the mess that is Auckland's regional governance from the, I think, nine bodies into one. How can you argue against it?

It won't happen of course because the those who will have the final vote for that particular Xmas are the turkeys.

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Modern medicine

Much that bears looking at this morning but unfortunately most is same old same old. The Food Police swing into the schools this morning with sirens blaring and riot shields at the ready. The government is telling us what we will spend our money on - that is what is left of it after they've applied the tax vacuum cleaner to the wallet. Nothing new here. The minority government has been forced to climb down over the alternative medicine stuff because they don't have the numbers. This is not painted as a climb down, of course. The spin doctors fire up the afterburners and it is wrapped in some sort of excuse speak I didn't even bother to read. Nothing new here. Having not got their way, however, the Government is trying a different tack. Annette King is giving the hosptial pass (pun intended) to Hodgson with instructions that if democarcy won't fit the Bill the peasants will be forced to do as they are told by Ministerial decree. Why are we not surprised by this?

Colin James column was the piece that held my attention for longest this morning. He is normally a pretty dry sort of a stick and he interests me little but this morning I stuck with him. I usually try and avoid matters pertaining to health in these ramblings for reasons that will be obvious to some but Mr James makes some general points this morning that we would all do well to heed.

At last I have found someone who has realised something that struck me years ago. Medicine is not a precise science. Superficially that may sound bonkers but I'm afraid it is the ghastly truth. I was told too many moons ago to be comfortable to remember that medicine was a marriage between science and art. That appealed to me greatly then and was one of the many reasons I kept going. It has dismayed me to see that over the years science has been suing for divorce and has progressivley been given the house, the kids, the bach, the boat and the Volvo. Poor old art has been forced under Grafton Bridge. And it is just not fair as medicine is not and will never be a precise science.

The great myth about modern medicine (and it has come into being in my working lifetime) is that anything is curable. Diagnosis should be precise to the point of perfection and this should be available at no cost, with no mistakes yesterday. This myhth is reinforced with every new 'medical breakthrough' that bursts onto the six o'clock news between another bombing in Iraq and a cat stuck up a tree in Titirangi. Every new advance is a 'must have' item for a health service that struggles to do the tried and proven in an efficient way. Because a new technolgy exists somewhere, if anyone suffers because it wasn't availbale instantly here then the Health Service is stuffed.

This totally unrealistic expectation of the great unwashed as to what the scientific part of modern medicine can deliver has me so disillusioned with the profession that I have enjoyed for thirty years that I tear what little hair I have out in despair on a daily basis.

Oh yes, National is going to cure all this if they succeed at the next election. Yeah right.

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Platinum pavers

Busier than a one legged man in a bum kicking competition this morning so this is about seven hours later than I like but I could not let council profligate spending pass me by.

Auckland Council has just confirmed an overspending of $17.4 million on various works around the place. This is not they have spent $17.4 million on roading and street works and the like, they have overspent to this amount. 3 mil of this was on one project alone namely St Patrick's Square. I wasn't aware we even had one of these but the extra dosh here was requred to upgrade the paving to a higher standard thus reflecting the 'cultural, religious and historical significance' of the square. This well known centre of all that is good in Auckland is presumably going to be paved in ermine trimmed platinum pavers. What the hell is this all about? One. How can it be budgeted that paving for a single town square is measured in millions (plural) of dollars in the first place. Two. If you are quoted a price for a job, that is what you pay. You don't go over budget and you certainly don't go over by about 40% where that equates to over $3 million. Three. Why does the person who presided over this mess still have a job? Why do we accept that council or government officials stuffing up is so much par for the course that it is written in the job description? This latest abhorrance will just be an item on page 7 of the paper for one day and that will be it. The Budget blowout will be paid and the bloke who signs the cheque will suffer no penalty in pocket or career advancement and will just tee himself up for the next one. It is nuts.

Speaking of madness we haven't heard from Keith Locke for a while but he reminds us all this morning that he is still around and still as mad as a box of frogs. The New Zealand Trade Board or whatever they call themselves have managed to get a trade pavillion parked on the Champs Elysee for the duration of the Rugby World Cup. This is going to take the shape of a massive blow up rugby ball. Sounds pretty good. Can't miss it, rugby and New Zealand - good association of ideas, come in and get a free kiwi badge and the opportunity to bolster New Zealand's exports. This is what makes the world go round. Not for Luddite Keith though. He thinks trade is evil and has been since the days of muskets, blankets and mirrors. Loopy Keith reckons the pavillion is a mistake. He reckons it is unsightly and as the French are 'an artistic and cultured people' it would do our trade no good to upset their sensibilities with a large blow up rugby ball especially as this will be 'spoiling the vista' of the Eiffel Tower. Keith must have been snacking from Nandor's lunch box. What a load of crap. The Eiffel Tower was constructed in the 1890's for a World Fair (a trade exhibition) and was regarded by many of the artisitc and cultured people of France at the time as an eyesore.

Just get rid of him. He is a waste of space and has been ever since he nailed his political colours to the mast by being an advocate of the policies of Pol Pot. I have to pay for this nonsense. Grrrrr.

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Child labour

Ahmed Zauoieioaiei - a man with far too many vowels in his name - is a bad smell that won't go away. I have no desire or interest in dicussing the rights or wrongs of what he has, has not, is lleged to have, is alleged to have not or might have done. Starting out your trip by flushing your passport down the dunny of a 747 is not a ploy guaranteed to get you a favourable place in my mind but the facts of the case can't matter because we are never going to know them. Several things, however, do fascinate me and get up my nose a bit. Even a Mickey Mouse country like the Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa has to have a secret service and it has to be both of those things - secret and a service. The headmistress made the first and (I sincerely hope) last statement I agree with yesterday. All this stuff has to remain secret. Transparency has no place where national security is allegedly at stake - and we just have no choice but to believe the spooks that it is. That's the secret bit. Service? The service is to the country as a whole of course. The Zauoieiaoi crap is an extreme example of the nonsense that results when you pursue the rights of the individual to the nth degree at the expense of the rights of society as a whole. Apparently his legal bill, which you will recall you and are are paying for, has reached $3.5 mil and counting. What price individual 'rights and freedoms'? Well in my book this bloke long ago priced himself out of the value for money department. Especially when a great glob of that money is spent on child labour. I thought the Marxist ratbags who would run this country were against sending little boys up chimneys to sweep them. How then can they condone the employment of Deborah Manning? This twelve year old doge must surely be contravening all sorts of youth employment regulations. She must have gone to Law School straight from kindy. Well we won't have to see her on the news this evening as it is too windy. She would be blown up Queen Street if she went out today without nanny.

Inquiries. Why does every untoward event in society have to have about three inquiries set up to look into the facts? There can only be one set of facts surrounding anything, so why multiple inquiries? This bought to light by an 'Independant internal inquiry' (eh?) into the death of that poor chap in Christchurch recently. The family (complete with 'victim genre' photograph) are claiming whitewash as the findings don't fall into line with what they want. No worries; there are two more Inquiries to go - the Coroner and the Health and Disability Commisioner. The family can take their pick from one of those and fully support the one they like and condemn the other. If they dislike both they will presumably appeal to someone for a fourth and knowing this country's propensity to pursue 'fairness' to the ends of the earth (and my pocket) they'll get it. Any air crash you get two or three investigations likewise with mishaps concerning the Police or government agency. Quantity is no substitute for quality. In the case of deaths there should be a Coroner's Inquiry and that is it. The coroner's system has been around for ever because it works. We don't need (and definitely don't need to pay for) all these Johnny Come Lately Boards of Investigation that do nothing but muddy the waters in the pursuit of fairness and transparency.

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Political genoa trimmer

Political grandstanding appears to be the flavour of the week. There was another example by that damned woman on Monday which I didn't mention yesterday as it somewhat paradoxically diluted my ire over the VC business. On the same day she was shamelessly trying to muscle in on the bravery under fire she 'allowed' herself to be photographed on equally alien turf. There was extensive coverage of the country's most prominent childless married (sic) woman sitting on the floor in a Kindy reading stories to 'young New Zealanders'. What a syrupy, saccharine laden crock. I wend my way throught this morning's rag thinking my weekly dose of nausea has been taken like a man and I am home free. But no. Buried somewhere in the depths there is a picture of someone from Emirates Team New Zealand doing the wave from the boat as they go past the Kiwi supporters on the dock. Wait a minute that's not Dalton or Barker, its bloody Bovver Boy. There is Trevor damned Mallard kitted up like an up wind genoa trimmer in the skin tight racing tee shirt and official cap doing the royal wave. The 'I'm part of the Team' look is nauseating on a biblical scale. He (Mallard) has announced that he (Mallard) has decided that $10 mil will be available immediately to retain the core of ETNZ. Whilst I applaud his sentiment and I think it is a top move, the arrogance of the man to paint himself as the one who as a good Kiwi bloke makes the unilateral decision is a telling sanpshot of the attitude of this Government.

A better than average Editorial this morning which harps back to the West Auckland Labour Laove In at the weekend. Although the political grandstanding the current bunch of government ratbags have applied the afterburners to this week is bad, to be fair politicians of all flavours do it. It, rather disappointingly, is what politics seems to about these days. What really gets me about the current lot is their policy platform and even more the ideology behind it. The editor quite reasonably use the free kindy time to illustrate that Labour's welfare for all policies benefit them politically but the nation in practical terms hardly at all. Give welfare to all (to be fair) but the reality is that those who benefit most are those who don't need it.

Welfare as a concept has been irrevocably tainted by this bloody equality nonsense. We have reached a stage here where about 35% of the country are receiving some form of state handout or another. There are even families with a family income in excess of $100,000 who are entitled to something if they have a footy team of kids. Welfare should be means tested - and I'm sure that was the idea when most of the programs were invented back across the mists of time. Put totally laudable ideas in the hands of left leaning politicians and they employ zillions of bureaucrats to come up with the current versions of things like the RMA and DPB. I can only see it ending in tears.

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The VC

When I was a lad I got the Victor comic delivered every week to the typical white middle class home in the depths of London suburban sprawl in which I lived. I really wanted the Beano but Dad thought this was a bit low brow and I had to sneak surreptitious glances at Dick Cox's copy. Before you could get to read the latest exploits of Alf Tupper (the Tough of the Track) who won Olympic gold medals in the one mile every week fueled by a training diet of fish and chips you had to get past the front cover. Featured on the front of the Victor every week we had a war story and this was usually of a bloke who had won the VC. Don't forget that WW2 was only just over a decade completed and all this was still pretty topical. I used to be absolutely gobsmacked at what these blokes would do and initially could never understand why. However slowly a few ideas and ideals dawned on me. Ideas of courage, patriotism, selfessness - all that sort of very non trendy stuff. I had a fascination for these chaps and especially for the blokes who got their awards posthumously. This was especially so when I understood what posthumous meant. The thing that struck me most was the high regard I felt for these men (and the overwhelming majority were men) and the fact this regard was heightened in me and the rest of the country when they died doing what they did. The idea that, however indirectly, they were doing what they did for me was one of the very first public spirited thoughts I can remember having.

All these thoughts and emotions flooded back yesterday when all of a sudden Corporal Apiata flew into our consciousness from the East Cape. I am not a Kiwi by birth but hold a blue passport and all the feelings I last felt in South London in the late 1950's came flooding back. There are only 13 of these blokes alive in the whole world for Pete's sake. Willy is a shoe in for the front cover of the Victor anytime he likes.

I then started to feel sick. In the midst of all the proper military seriousness and the chronicalling of his deeds of unbelievable courage the screen was filled with bloody Helen Clark. I rarely swear at home and I quickly apologised to my wife for shouting 'F*** off' at the TV.

The hypocrisy of this woman has reached new depths. Here was the woman who sold the airforce, who buys car ferries, paints them grey and calls them warships reading out a VC citation. Here was the bloody peacenik from hell lauding the bravest man in the land. Here was the woman who heads up the government that runs OSH reading about acts carried out without regard to personal safety. She unashamedly sticks her odious unwanted presence into an arena where she has no place. She grabs a bloody photo opportunity on the back of an action I'm sure she personally finds deeply repugnant. She is lauding the actions of a member of a military unit she does not want and has spent the last few years trying to down play and even deny the existence of. I don't know where Cpl Apiata is going to go to get his medal proper but I sincerely hope he is flown to London to recieve it from the Queen and not be fobbed off by getting it from the GG here in NZ where Helen can grab another photo opportunity.

Any remaining grain of respect I had for our Prime Minister evaporated yesterday and I am closer to hating her than I am to hating anything on this planet.

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Lawlessness

The Herald is very hard going on a Monday morning. First we have the Green Pages crap and then their attempt at a 'Society Page' with pictures of half pissed people trying to look cool whilst sipping (read getting as much in as possible in the shortest possible time as it is free) Pink Lindauer at various 'have to be seen at' social functions around town. They shoot themselves in the foot here by taking the Instamatic to the Guns 'n' Roses concert - very classy. If I went to a G'n'R gig I'd be in the false beard and sunnies in case the Herald photographers exposed to the world that I had not popped down to the exhibition of Etruscan vases for the evening as outlined to SWMBO.

Most of the nonsense today is on page two, with its usual denizen, Rudman, providing a trivial coda later on in the rag.

There is a picture of the Headmistress and Hodgson taken at the Labour Party Love In in, I think, West Auckland somewhere. This photo really is crying out to be the subject of a caption competition. This is a website directed at a mature and discerning audience and I will, therefore, desist from throwing in my first couple of suggestions which would be better suited to an undergraduate Rag Mag. The function they were attending sounds ghastly. Loads of left leaning wallies telling each other how wonderful they are is right up there with sticking matchsticks under your fingernails as a fun way of spending a winter's Sunday arvo.

Next to this crap is a quarter page illustrating some very serious points about the antismacking nonsense in action. David Cunliffe wagged the Labour Love In so he could spend the afternoon beating his two year old in public. Remember this is how the odious haridan Bradford portrayed any physical child discipline when she was pushing for the legislaton a couple of weeks back. Cunliffe's explanation of what sounds like any standard parent/two year old interaction in a supermarket is bollocks as it has to be considering the seriousness of the situation he potentially finds himself in. 'I, after due consideration of the facts and circumstances, gently but firmly assisted my child in withdrawing his right upper extremity from an area where it might have come into contact with the face of another juvenile New Zealander. In conjunction with this action to protect both parties from potential danger I calmly explained their position to them vis a vie the Bill of Rights and their standing with respect to the United Nations Year of the Child' Or was it 'The snotty kid got the slap on the wrist he had been riding for all afternoon'? - I can't remember. Cunliffe now has to, I repeat has to, be investigated by the Police if anyone makes a formal complaint. They won't, of course and here in rides the major problem.

What this episode, and doubtless many more to come, illustrates is total disregard for the law that the current administration is promoting. If you pass a law, fail to have the infrastructure to police it, and therefore pursue said law to its proper provision only occasionaly, what do you end up with? A contempt for that law and its provisions. If you do it repeatedly with most of the daft laws you keep passing what do you end up with? Contempt for the law - the whole lot of it. Why do we have boy racers (for example) giving the fingers to the Feds? Because they know they can. I'm sure if you looked somewhere in the statute books insulting the Police is an offence. But it is never prosecuted and so people know they can get away with it. We have now got to the stage where burglary is regarded as a fact of life. Now you don't need to delve too deeply into arcane law to discover that nicking flat screen TVs from people's living rooms is against the law and I'm sure everyone knows this. The infrastructure to prosecute this is not there, the prosecution rate for this plummits and the law becomes trivialised. Smacking kids, nicking hifis, what is the next part of the law that becomes irrelevant to our society?

Passing stupid laws about things that don't matter and then not enforcing them has a much greater run off than ignorant gits like Bradford could ever imagine. And we let them run the country. Nuts.

The redevelopment ot the Tank Farm. Two things. Top idea but why the hell is it going to take twenty five years? Presumably it is slated for twenty three years of resource consent and two years construction. Second, if it is going to take so long how can they possibly give any cost projections? $344 mil now will likely be $17 squillion in 2032.

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iNo little green men n sight

The world is grinding to a halt. Even Garth George lets me down today. He spends his entire column saying absolutely nothing. There is absolutely nothing going on.

I would love to give the government a lambasting over this tightening of media laws surrounding the reporting of parliament. However it would appear to be supported by all factions of the house and so the whole lot of them deserve a good smacking. Totalitarian regimes of all flavours put in place measures to clamp down on criticism of themselves very early in the piece. Political satire has been a healthy part of a vibrant democracy since the days of the Empire being run by the Whigs (and probably long before that). Stopping it is stupid and dangerous. The obvious point that if MPs want to be shown up in a better light they should behave better is just that - obvious. If you don't want to be seen knitting, sleeping, telling people to indulge in sex and travel or giving the finger whilst working then don't do it. If you do and it is then demonstrated to your paymasters that this is the way you behave at work then fair enough. If I was seen to be knitting at work I think it would quite rightly be seen in a very dim light.

I'm still scanning the horizon for little green men.

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No clout beyond Mt Albert

Calm before the storm? The country has finally fallen off the planet? I don't know but there really is a dearth of anything going on at the moment.

The headmistress is jumping to the defence of Maori (in general) over those Frogs who have called their security company Maori. They have signalled their intent to exploit (her words and not mine) the indigenous people of Aoteoroa (which they are not of course) by coupling the name 'Maori' with what looks like a Zulu shield. Madam gets into full hadwringing mode and regrets that international law as it now stands means she can do nothing. Implications here are that she wishes the law was different so she could garner more votes from a sector of the electorate where here impact has markedly waned recently. It also infers that she thinks it is wrong that she is unable to exert her will over anything she fancies in the real world outside the 200 mile EEZ. She is used to doing as she pleases with anyone under her power. Odious, odious woman. I have started channel surfing when her face besmirches the news. This is wrong - I had to watch thirty seconds of E! last night. I say good on the Frogs. They chose the name because it reminded them of rugby and I believe them. Perhaps 'tight head' or 'second five' might have been better but no matter. I'm looking for the French grog wholesaler called Abo.

Granny's Editorial is also struggling to find current material on which to comment as it is giving an opinion on Bradfords votes for kindy kids idea - this about five days late. Nothing here that hasn't already been said but worth reading for a quote from a reader's letter. She (I think it was a she) points out that Bradford (amongst many other MPs) should have it pointed out to her that a Member of Parliament's function is take the views of her electorate to the house and fight the corner for those views. An MP's function is not to push their own political agenda. We will gloss over the fact that Bradford doesn't have an electorate as she is list MP. It would do her, and us, no harm for her to remember this basic tenet of parliamentary democracy.

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Sue Bradford and Tony Hancock?

What an apposite post yesterday giving the odious Bradford a mention. She crops up again and I must say has a knack of a) keeping her hideous face in the news and b) getting up my, and I suspect the vast majority of the country's, nose. Her latest outrage exhibits several traits. She couldn't think her way out of a paper bag and being thus intellectually challenged she cannot string two ideas (however nuts they may be) together to make a coherent policy. Last week she would not trust a sixteen year old to make the choice between a mince and cheese number and a tofu salad and this week she wants them to choose who will run the country.

She is of the opinion that sixteen year olds are as well informed about national politics as their seniors. A section of her desired new electorate interviewed on the News last night would seem to suggest otherwise. Two could not name the Deputy Prime Minister (I'll admit I can see the point of not burdening the brain with such useless information) and the third said through a simian grin 'Sweet. I'll vote Green so they will legalise weed'. The last monkey is the sort of constituency that Bradford knows she will appeal to for the reasons put forward. There are lots of them and she knows that. There won't be many sixteen year olds voting for sensible fiscal poilicy, strengthening the defence force and exploring new trade opportunities in Asia when the looney left is offering the keys to the short sighted toy cupboard.

Bradford and her ilk are a real threat to the continuation of New Zealand as a proper country. Conversely, perhaps, she should be encouraged to espouse even more of her ever more looney ideas as this will convince those who are blind by dint of not wanting to see that she has to be stopped. The only way to get rid of her and her kind is through the ballot box although even that is now harder than it should be courtesy of MMP.

Can you imagine New Zealand embarking on anything even resembling the no grog, no pornography laws being rushed through Parliament across the ditch? This would for starters appear to be proper use of Parliamentary urgency. It would also appear to be a pragamtic solution to a great problem and bugger the civil liberty side of things. Good stuff. There are many problems in this country that deserve beating with the same stick (pun intended) but it will never happen.

I'm going to start a collection of these. Victim photographs. They are a much undervalued artform. I've mentioned them before and I love'em. The subjects are classically people who have been bumped off hospital waiting lists. A cancelled 'cancer operation' is a sure fire free sitting in the photograspher's studio. Evictees from state houses get a consessionary rate as do relatives of victims of hit and run drivers. We had the aforementioned Bradford appearing in a photographic study from the early 21st century Victim Period yesterday. Another classic of the genre is featured today with a little gem of the gun collector who had all his weaponry confiscated. The connoiseur will notice the sutble introduction of a walking stick into the composition to gently emphasis the underpriviliged position this gent has in society. I'm going to ring up AUT this morning to see if I can enroll in a (state subsidised) Victim Genre Photography course.

This from the wireless and not the Herald. I was never a fan of the Goon Show - probably about five years too young - but was, and still am, much amused by the denizen of East Cheam, Tony Hancock. Fifity years ago the British Egg Marketing Board came up with a campaign that was fronted by Anthony Aloyisious Hancock with the catch phrase 'Go to Work on an Egg'. I remember it well in all it's black and white glory viewed on a 12 inch screen housed in a TV set the size of a large fridge. There were a series of ads as I recall all featuring short snappy monolgues from Mr Hancock. (Incidentally the copy for the ads was penned by Fay Weldon - I never knew that). The current egg marketing people wanted to re-run the ads as a fifty year (fifity years, remember) celebration of a landmark campaign. The ads have been turned down by the current Advertising Standards Authority because 'Go to Work on an Egg' does not promote a balanced diet. Barking.

I have never liked eggs and don't eat them. I do not blame Tony Hancock for this. Perhaps I should and I could then retire on the proceeds of my settlement with the British Egg Marketing Board.

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HIstory lesson

That I am strugglng to get the juices flowing with the curent crop of news should be obvious to all. I find it hard to get inspiration from pretty much anything that is getting into the Herald at the moment. It is all so repetitive. Anthroprogenic global warming - yawn. The Auckland City Vision council backing down on wastewater charges in council election year - what a surprise. Philip Field - he can wait until he gets a bit closer to the fire. Economic incompetence from the history graduate who has his hands on our purse strings. Whilst this is not news it does lead into two marginally more interesting topics.

History. Good stuff is history and one of its appeals to me is that in its purest from it is just bland fact and there should be nothing you can do to it. It is never that simple of course. Just ask any Japanese school kid what Nanking was famous for and you will probably be told noodles. It would appear that there is a move afoot to radically change the way history is taught in the Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. The community is to have an input into what is in the local school's history curriculum. Now pick yourself off the floor - unless my eyes were decieving me this is what it said. There are worries from some quarters that this could lead to a distortion (surely not) and that, for instance, a local area could choose not teach not teach the Treaty in its classes. My worry would be that they would choose to teach nothing but the Treaty. This aside the whole idea is just nuts. How would it be assessed? External assessment would become impossible. We would then fall back on totally internal assessment and it would not be long before Titirangi would be known only for its noodles. The education system is suffering enough under the strain of a poorly implemented NCEA system without this crap.

The history graduate of greatest prominence in the land currently (mis)manages the country's finances. To pretend that he has no influence over Bollard is surely just that, a pretence. He sits idly by and watches our Alan piss in the wind? I don't think so. Bollard is taking a knife to the gunfight of international currency dealing. The, for example, Japanese currency dealers could see off his paltry war chest in under a week and he knows this. Why does he continue farting around then? I would imagine Bollard is not stupid and you don't become Governor of the Reserve Bank without being at least moderately good at hard sums. I can only imagine that he is being strongly advised by someone who thinks the only thing ever to have happened in Nanking was noodle manufacture. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result from your actions. Cullen is insane.

As are the rest of his mates. Thursday is Garth George day and it would appear my mate is as bereft of ideas as I am. He spends his entire column cataloguing how the country has gone downhill since 1999 when Helen and her cadres installed themselves in our lives. The list of deterioration is almost endless. He quite rightly points out that their only solution to our woes is more of the policies that have got us where we are now. Insanity by the definition outlined above.

Just to really depress one there are two pieces featuring Sue Bradford - complete with a picture of her wearing her 'victim' visage for God's sake. If you want confirmation of the harm that is being done to the country by those who currently hold sway in the Beehive you need look no further than Ms Bradford.

I was in a reasonable mood ten minutes ago - I think I'll go and cast myself off the Harbour Bridge.

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Stirton's Thunder Bird

I tried, I promise you I did, but I must be thick because I got nowhere. The first page and a half of the Herald this morning are taken over by the latest in the never ending Treaty saga. A ’news’ bit and then Rudman who I foolishly read despite previous oaths on a stack of bibles that I would desist. The only bit of this I understand is why this Treaty business is a never ending saga. I’m even confused as to who is who and has jurisdiction over what. It is almost Abbot and Costelloesque in its serpiginous intricacy. ‘Who’s on first’ etc. This will never end and I suspect the people (lawyers) who are making the sort of decision that came out yesterday don’t want it to – they have families to feed. The settlement of a claim over some of Auckland’s cones with one iwi would be ‘unsafe’ (bloody OSH to blame again – is Mount Eden going to fall on a passer by?) because it does not take into account other iwis. That I sort of get my head around. Now it get’s complicated. Claims can only take into account matters pertaining to events after 1840 when the Treaty was signed. It is accepted that the iwi (Ngati Orakei I think) being turned down were the dominant players in the area concerned after that date. But the doges then say that history did not start in 1840 (you can see why lawyers get paid so much if they can think of that all by themselves) and so other claims must be taken into consideration. Too hard for me.

Then Rudman wades in. Typical of hand wringing pakeha when talking of affairs Maori he starts dropping Te Rao into his prose. This puts me off to start with. If you ring my place of employment and the phones are busy you get a thick Solihull accent whining ‘Kiaora and welcome to…..’ at you down the blower. I have lost count of the number of handsets I have deposited diced carrots over in the past ten years. Rudman bleats on about submissions to have maunga listed as World Heritage sites, mana and other things I suspect he understands about as well as I do – i.e. not at all. I give up and I suppose I shall just have to write off a few squillion dollars per annum of my tax take as fuel for the bottomless pit that is the Treaty Industry.

A couple of nutters make the rag this morning - Field Marshall/Air Commodore/Admiral Bananarama and Gordon Copeland. That the military gent is barking is beyond argument and Copeland adds to that affliction a large dose of naivety. Our Gordon wants to be half pregnant. ‘I want to be regarded as the 49^th National MP’. Fine. ‘But I will vote for the Government on matters of Supply’ Eh? If you so want to be in National’s tent go the whole hog and do your bit to bring the pack of ratbags that occupy the treasury benches down. You cannot be both fish and fowl.

Which brings us nicely to the best bit of the paper this morning. Prehistoric birds. They have found in a valley in China the fossils of bits of the largest bird ever to wander the planet - there is a valley somewhere in China that contains anything you would care to find. I give you, ladies and gents, the Gigantoraptor. He was eight meters long and weighed fourteen hundred kilos. Or, to put it in language that is easier to understand, was a Tegel’s Size 2658. The artist’s impression of him is a bit disappointing I'm afraid. He looks a bit like your standard flesh eating dinosaur to which they have attached a beak after pulling out his teeth. They have then, rather unconvincingly, stuck a few feathers on his arms. A sort of pantomime prehistoric bird if you ask me. Still, he looks fierce enough and perfectly capable of snacking on a couple of Moa without any trouble. However the real gem of the story is not the Gigantoraptor. Oh no. The real star is the bird he took over from as the World’s Largest Ever Bird. This avian heavyweight (well welterweight now, I suppose) is resplendent in the name of Stirton’s Thunder Bird. Now how good is that for a name? I want one. I will be straight down to the pet shop in Archers Road after work and will hail the Michael Palin look alike behind the counter ‘Miss. I wish to purchase a Stirton’s Thunder Bird’

I think I might be thirty five years late – it’s been done before.

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According to Prebble

I wonder how much Garth George gets paid for his column. I wonder this purely because I reckon I deserve at least 60% of his this week's fee. All he has done for his column today is couch my scribblings of yesterday in infinitley more elegant prose than I could manage. Told you I liked Garth.

Sharing a page with Mr George is a piece by Richard Prebble. Remember Mad Dog Prebble? Haven't heard from him for years and had assumed he was pruning roses somewhere. Now I was only in this country in the latter years of his career but he seems to have led a most interesting and different life. His article this morning is giving the Headmistress a serve (so why wouldn't you read it?) and he has chosen her role as head of a Government in charge of the SOEs as his ammunition. He had a wide range of ordnance to choose from, of course, starting with her being a constant affront to my sanity.

Prebble's writing style is very odd. He seems incapable of constructing a sentence with more than ten words in it. He also seems to be unable to resist blowing his own trumpet about once evey fifty words. We hear twice that he used to be Minister of SOEs (indeed the very first of that ilk) and once that he was very good at it - and there is an advert for his new book thrown in for good measure. The main thrust of his argument is though, I think, a reasonable one. The SOE companies are not answerable to their shareholders (for the simple reason that they don't have any) and therefore make corporate decisions that wold be totally unacceptable if they had an AGM to front up to. Especially if that bearded fruitcake who wears tin helemets to such gatherings was present. Prebble points out that when SOEs were first introduced to NZ (i.e. when he was in charge) they were performing better than their private counterparts. He put this down to the fact the boards were made up with people who were selected because they were good at running companies. They had track records of turning in a profit and that sort of jolly useful stuff.

Nowadays SOEs perform spectacularly worse than their private counterparts. Current SOEs have boards made up of people chosen for their race, gender or some other politically acceptable parameter. Apparently one prominent SOE has a retired Archbishop on the board - not even one who is still out Archbishoping. Why is this patently stupid thing done? I strongly suspect (and I think R. Prebble wants me to think this) it is because the Government can then brow beat the board into doing its (the Government's) bidding. This entails hooverinig as much into the consolidated fund in as short a period of time as possible and sod the social consequences. Prebble (Mad Dog Prebble) wryly ends his piece by trotting out the old adage that there are no bad dogs just bad owners.

Life is a bit dull on the news front at the moment. It is just same old, same old. Government incompetance (that ain't going to stop anytime soon - ask Damien O'Connor), native trees, Auckland's water and Bruce Hucker (I really can't be bothered with this - Hucker gets a lot more Press than his worthless life deserves as it is), the myth of man made global warming, and so it goes on. We need an invasion of little green men to liven things up a bit.

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Government nominated Pie Day

I avoided wading into the pies in the tuckshops business yesterday because I had an uneasy feeling about it. The unease was caused by the fact that in its basic tenet it has a good idea - make people healthier. What can be wrong with that? I have thought about it and the main problem soon becomes obvious. The problem is not with the pies but with the bloody compulsion and do as you are told attitude of the government - again. Then the opinion page of The Herald cements home the unease - even the logic of the measures to support the healthy ideal are wrong.

There is a piece this morning by a Food Technology Lecturer (whatever the hell that is) who does us all a great service by pointing out (rather pedantically for the slower of us) the difference between food and diet. He makes the comparison with weather and climate - and not a bad comparison either. A single pie is as fine as a pottle of chips is as fine a bottle of Coke is as fine as an organic nutburger. The problem would be if you ate just pies and chips and Coke and nothing else. Presumably you wouldn't look so flash if you just ate nutburgers either - and you'd have considerably less fun in the process. For starters you would be surrounded by the sort of people who do eat nutburgers all the time and that in itself would be cruel and unnatural punishment. So the problem is not what the Tuck Shop sells but what the kids chose to buy from it. These choices could be made healtheir if the kids' parents (or in 30% of cases parent singular) told little Johnny that a bit of moderation in all things is a good idea. A pie as part of a balanced diet is OK.

But that is not our all controlling Government's way is it? Without asking us they decree that pies are to be banned. The best we can hope for is a pie 'four times a year' on Governmnet nominated Pie Day. Paradoxically this pie ban is a good thing because it is looking like another straw on the back of the camel of the nation. The Government tells us that we cannot smack our kids, that we cannot cut down trees on our own property, have to ask them permission to make any alterations to our own houses and then have them inspected to make sure we have done them to their satisfaction (oh, and you can now pay us for the privelege) and now they tell us what our kids are allowed to buy with our money.

I sense that, at last, the great unwashed have had enough of being told what to do. And told by who? Intellectual titans? A coterie of natural successors to Bertrand Russell? No we are being told what to do by a band of failed school teachers, career political activists, sociology lecturers and Keith Locke. Except for those terminally 'lifetime Labour' wallahs who would still vote for them if sticking your head in a gas oven was actually on the Labour manifesto I feel that come next September enough of the rest of the country will have the common sense to get rid of this pack of uselss pratts. Even those long term beneficiaries (two three generation types) who wouldn't bite the hand that feeds them shouldn't be too worried. Any new administration wouldn't dare stuff up their cosy lifestyle paid for by yours and my taxes. Well they wouldn't for a week or two.

Mr Food Technology Man also does us another favour in pointing out the myth surrounding 'natural' and 'additives'. You know the drill. If you can put 'all natural ingredients' on a food ingredient list one mouthful will have you looking like a supermodel, performing like an Olympic athlete and living to 124. By contrast should you eat anything that contains 'additives' or, God forbid, GE ingredients you will be covered in boils and pustules by teatime and should give up buying boxed sets of CDs. This is of course complete bollocks. Just because a thing is natural does not mean it is good for you. Hemlock is natural but I wouldn't suggest stirring that into your smoko cuppa. Cow turds are natural - fancy some spread on your toast? China lives on MSG (and little else I sometimes think) but you don't walk into the killing fields once you go North of Hong Kong. Do you really think Unilever put preservatives in their food with genocide in mind? Do those blokes wearing white coats who walk around green houses putting bits of frog DNA in tomatoes do it so that the denizens of Foxton all grow seven fingers? Of course they don't.

Those who howl at the moon and would have us eat everything produced as it was in the fifteenth century are just plain bonkers. We can do that if we still had the population of the fifteenth century to feed and were prepared to put up with standards of living (and a life span - I would have been in my box about ten years ago) comensurate with those times. We live in the twenty first century and have to adjust our lives accordingly. Farming and horticultural practices of today are vital or the world would starve. And who would starve first? The CEOs of Mighty River Power, Fonterra and Unilever? Would they buggery. The first to turn their toes up would be the poor and the 'victims' of the world. The very people who are running around telling us that the current way of the industrialised (read pragmatic) world is evil. Funny that.

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New Green pages - yuck

Yes, RH, thank you for that information which by now (four days later) falls into the 'great command of the bleeding obvious' category. I, amongst others, accused mainstream politicians of grandstanding over this whole sorry affair but it would appear that our Brendan got in first and is showing the dog with a bone stamina at which his sort is very adept. There is a truckload about his latest tirades in the Herald this morning including the 'affront' or 'insult' or whatever to the twenty year old son at being interviewed in English. This despite his attending tertiary education which, I assume, is the Samoan Language Nuclear Physics and Business Administration course run by one of our so called Universities. Brendan even manages to remind us that he and his ilk are victims. Yawn. I and the rest of the real world stopped listening to this sort of bollocks decades ago. Brendan should go to the opinion page where he can drool over a picture of Michael Joseph Savage taken in 1938.

This image accompanies another Marxist diatribe lamenting that the current administation is too far right leaning in changing the basic tenet of 'Welfare' in the Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. This piece is very well written in asmuch as it is not quite so bad to get you giving up on it after two sentences (more of this later). It only gets really nauseating after you are commited and might as well finish it off. Even the worst Sherlock Holmes story (and they are not all bloody wonderful) is well enough written to keep you going to the end. So it is with this piece written by two academics (what a surprise) about how the change from 'true welfare' to 'welfare in sheep's clothing' is being foisted upon us in the guise of a BIll to be passed in Parliament that very few have noticed or even heard of. (And by the way, how much of that goes on? A lot more than you or I dare imagine I would venture.) The day of the serious handout is over. People will actually have to do something to get money. The bottom of A11 is worth reading if only to wake you up as to how the truly deranged think.

Reading the Herald on Mondays just got a whole lot quicker as I refuse, I flatly refuse, to read the new regular feature. This is a double page 'Green Pages' spread somewhere near the front. Now this really is something that is so bad you have to give up after two words let alone two sentences - but there are two pages of it. They have mercifully tinted the paper green to warn that an assault to the senses and sensibilty are perilously close. The only bit I dared read was a link to a Government website where you can calculate your own personal carbon footprint. This below an image of a footprint in the sand. What have I done to deserve such cruel and unnatural punishment so early in the day, so early in the week? What sin have I committed to earn such an emetic at Marmite soldier time? Whatever it is I promise I won't do it again but please don't ruin my Mondays with this cobblers.

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Work at breakfast time

Running late this morning as I had an emergency lure (an Andromeda as it happens) to make so my wife could get it into the Post first thing. I, therefore, had to enjoy my Marmite soldiers with a tube of cyanoacrylate as opposed to the Herald. I have not seen past the front page today so I did not have the opportunity to pursue something that has been worrying me for days.

Who is Brendan Sheehan? This very non Samoan Muliaga family spokesman has me worried. Who the hell is he? I hear on the wireless that he is now asking the Prime Minister to regulate the power industry and look into the SOE's profits. This is not your usual grieving family spokesman talk is it? Keep an eye on our Brendan, there is a lot more to him than a superficial glance would reveal. Who is Brendan Sheehan?

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Warship? Give me a break

In case you hadn't noticed I dislike this current administration with a passion but they are sinking to new lows.

Their reaction to this power nonsense is typical of a left wing outfit that cannot exist without rules, rules, rules and the corresponding bureaucarcy to support them. We'll come onto the hypocrisy in a moment. The knee jerk to the events of the last week is to invent a whole raft of new rules surrounding cutting off power supplies. It will now be a power company's responsibilty to identify 'vulnerable' customers. They than have a whole swag of things they must do to stop these 'vulnerables' becoming 'victims'. The mention of these two overused words makes my flesh creep - they are right up there with 'respect' and 'process'. There are four categories of circumsatance that can put you in the vulnerable basket and then you have to be referred to the Misinstry of Social Development (how apt - Socially Developed into spineless pawns of the State) who will send officers around to do an 'assessment'. The Company is then obliged to point out what 'support agencies' are available to help you out of your financial hole. And so it goes on. Note the use of words like 'obliged', 'must' etc. Bloody government compulsion at every turn. With the mandatory (the compulsion on their side now) army of wallahs with clipboards to 'enforce' it all. The language is scary but the thinking behind it all is more so.

Labour is not in the South Auckland Samoan community's best books as a result of the ongoing Philip Field excesses and so The Headmistress is in full attack mode. She will be at the memorial service today - presumably with a flower in her hair or wearing a lavalava or whatever is culturally appropriate on such an occasion. If this is not political grandstanding of the first magnitude I don't know what is. When it comes to this sort of thing she is as shameless (or probably more so) than all of them. She is also shameless in slating the SOE on renaging on it's 'social responsibilty' as outlined in its operating manual. We saw no such worries during all the years she has been happily hoovering the same SOE's profits into the consolidated fund. Concerend for the welfare of her subjects when it suits her and happy to publically wave the policy manual at the company to prove so. I am surprised she can even lift the policy manual up to wave if it is anything like the manual I am supposed to read and comply with in my corner of the field.

This tome is beyond belief. It is written by coteries of people who I am sure would wear sensible shoes and eat feta. The manual would take you five minutes to walk round. No one ever reads it (I think it is them actually) because they would have retired before they finished. But should anything in the ploughing of a furrow go awry you can instantly be whacked around the whiskers with Section 3 Paragraph (b) Subparagraph (iiia). There are twenty five pages in our policy manual on how to perform a task that on average takes 45 seconds - and I am not jokiing.

Such is the world of those who would control by micro-management.

Just when the dark storm clouds of depression were gathering on my mood for the day things got worse when I glanced upon the cutaway graphics explaining the Navy's new vessel. This will be good, something to raise the spirits. A few minutes glancing on a big grey ship bristling with inventive ways to take your head off. Silly me this is new Zealand. The Navy's new vessel is not a warship at all; it is a RoRo. The HMNZS Canterbury has 'proudly' inherited it's predecessor's number 421 but has had to have it's designation changed from F421 (Frigate) to L421 (Landing Ship). It might just as well be designated P&O421. It would appear that this bloody government's emasculation of our defence force is virtually complete. Under the 'armaments' section it is stated that the Canterbury is 'not designed to be used in dangerous situations like opposed landings'. It is therefore armed with a water balloon catapult and some very large loud speakers through which to play old Fred Dagge CDs. This terrifying warship has 'diesel and electric motors that can propel it at nineteen knots'. How impressive is that? How awestruck with performance figures like that will the matelots on the Nimitz be as P&O421 disappears in it's wake handing out blankets to refugees. This new vessel is a disgrace to a defence force and should be stripped of its battleship grey paint and be reliveried in orange and lime green with a couple of painted dolphins frolicking along the waterline. It should then be given to the Ministry of Transport.

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