I don’t want us to be number one

Well congratulations to us. New Zealand has had shameful placings in so many world tables lately, such as child poverty, the gap between rich and poor and youth suicide statistics. But now we have the chance to be winners again – and so soon after the RWC too.

So what are we winning? Well I think we are in the running for several trophies at the moment.

First of all our government should win the award for the most cynically rigged election since the last fiasco in Russia where Vlad the Imputin arranged for his mate to caretake the Presidency while he slid into the PM’s chair for a term so he can then jump back into the seat his mate has kept warm for him until next year. The National Disgrace Party started the fiasco by hand-picking the candidates of their potential coalition partners to ensure they were all on the same page. What the book was, we can only speculate, but it will have had something to do with silencing dissenting views and enriching themselves at our expense.

Because of the fact we have no written constitution to fall back on it would seem the party in power can do whatever they like. For example they are able to choose the date of the election, which obviously means they can arrange for it to be held at a time that is convenient to them.

This year they were able to play an absolute blinder in that regard by beginning the campaign straight after the RWC. This meant the whole thing was rushed through while everyone was still enjoying the ABs’ win and were probably still a little light-headed. It also meant that policy releases could be timed to perfection; that is to say they could be released at the last possible moment so nobody had enough time to check them out properly before they had to cast their vote.  

Then Jianqi decided he was too important to debate the issues with anyone other than Phil Goshisthatthetime. Phil foolishly took his cue from Jianqi and said well I won’t if he won’t. Television for some unfathomable reason also decided to get onto that particular bandwagon and gave the two twats what they wanted instead of giving the public what they wanted; namely a debate between all the major party leaders. The channels should have invited all the major party members to the debates and made a point of ridiculing anyone too pussy to turn up.

But once again – our political system allows this sort of nonsense, where candidates like STP (Simon the Pixie) and Toenail Vile can refuse to front candidates meetings in their own electorates and instead hold their own little bullshit fests with all the party faithful cuddled up close and cosy. Dissenting views are not what these people want at THEIR meetings. Heavens above if you allowed that, the entire fabric of their smug and selfish society would unravel and some of that poor underclass might turn up and stink the place out.

Then of course there was the teapot saga where Jianqi mobilised the force of the law to gag the press, sent the solicitor-general to ‘guide’ the High Court and goodness only knows what or who was sent to ‘advise’ the Ombudsman that his role has now changed overnight to that of Protector-of-things-the-government-doesn’t-want-you-to- know.

As you might have guessed our other table topping achievements also spring from this so-called election. The first of these is the neutered state of our press. In 2009 the freedom of our press was judged to be one of the best in the entire world. The annual international survey by Freedom House ranked our press freedom at a score of 14 where 1 is the top and 100 the bottom. The highest ranking in that survey was 10 shared by (not surprisingly) Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Only nine nations did better than us in that survey. We beat countries such as Ireland, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and USA. But that was before the Samovar incident. It was bad enough for Jianqi to threaten and intimidate our press over that matter, but it was far worse that they listened to him. What a bunch of nutless wonders. They just rolled over like big pussies to have their tummies rubbed instead of scratching the little shit’s face. November 2011 – the day the NZ Press committed sideways.

Finally the biggest trophy we will probably cart off will be decided this Saturday November 26. If my guess is right and so is the government we elect, then we will qualify for the dumbest nation on the planet.

Jianqi was publicly caught out in the following lies:

Standard & Poors have said they will downgrade our credit rating if there is a change of government

I didn’t lie about GST or Kiwisaver – it’s a dynamic environment

I can’t recall what was said in my meeting with John Banks followed by There’s nothing on that tape that is important and then It’s nothing to do with me what the police do (about the tape)

I have treasury advice that we can keep the asset shares in Kiwi hands

We have no plans to hold back on police recruiting

If the country returns this slimeball and his ragtag bag of greedies to the treasury benches then it rightly deserves the title of the most stupid nation in the world.

I can only hope that Kiwis wake up and the NZ press discover they only suffered severe bruising and still actually have everything intact and lift their game to ensure his ride is a very brief and bumpy one.

Chumps’ tea party

Long before this election began I expressed the view that (sadly) there was probably only one way Jianqi could lose this election; and that would be if a really bad scandal erupted at a critical stage of the game.

The teapot tape might just be that, er smoking teapot. It is amazing to think a cup of cha could have such a potentially explosive charge. In fact, given the way Jianqi and Banksia have reacted I am more interested in what might have been in that teapot than what is on the tape. After all the tape is perfectly innocent, isn’t it? I mean it must be because His Right Honourable Prime Ministership said so. (Cue Tui sign)

There are many questions arising from this affair and not all of them will be answered by us hearing the tape. One that immediately springs to mind is, what is the offence Jianqi alleges has occurred here? It is clear there is nothing in the Privacy Act that could actually relate to this and in any case, that Act is administered by the Privacy Commissioner, not the Police Commissioner. So what piece of legislation is our toady little Prime Munter using for this?

My guess is the wanker is trying to drag something out from the National Disgrace’s considerable war chest of hastily passed legislation dealing with public order or National (geddit) security. Don’t forget an awful lot of flustering went on following 9/11 when ‘anti-terrorism’ legislation was shoved through at breakneck pace and further ‘amendments’ were whipped through following the Christchurch earthquake under the guise of ‘public order’ so it could be something from here.

I also thought it was interesting, nay damned troubling that police saw fit to deliver a warning to people not to publish. I don’t believe they are in a position to do this because I don’t believe there is a legal justification for it. But what troubles me more is why are they leaping to the defence of the PM and making an unnecessary and some would say, reckless and stupid statement about the legal position. Clearly little Jianqi has pulled rank and asked (read demanded) his big bully-boy mates come and support him and let everyone else know they’ll get the bash if they step out of line.   

But whatever he is trying to do, it seems an awful lot of trouble to go to for a ‘principle’. In any case I’d have thought principles and politicians did not belong on the same page never mind the same sentence. As I told Granny Herald this week, in an effort to encourage them to publish the bloody thing; why hold back on ethical grounds? That’s hardly a quality one could associate with Jianqi or Banksia – especially if, as I suspect they were running down old Duffer Dong and planning a coup de space. (That’s where one space cadet replaces another).

Clearly summat is afoot and someone is a liar. I sincerely hope we get to find out whom – BEFORE November 26!

As for the cameraman who allegedly accidentally left his recorder on, I have to say it is entirely plausible. I say this because I have done exactly the same thing on a number of occasions. What happens sometimes is you are interviewing somebody and you have to interrupt to take a picture of someone else because they are about to leave and it is very easy in the heat of the moment to leave the thing on. Several times I have been and done an interview and left and when I got back to the office found that the last 20 minutes of my tape are the sounds of me cursing at other motorists on my way home. It is much easier to do than most people would realise, especially when you are being rushed along by deadlines.

But to get back to my original point; this just might be the turning point in this election. At this late stage I would doubt it could completely sink the Nats, but it could certainly cut into their vote enough to make things really interesting. It might just expose the ACTors for the bit part players and pantomime dames they really are and sink them without a trace.

I don’t think little prissy Jianqi has a leg to stand on as far as obtaining any sort of prosecution over this, but I have urged TV3 and Granny Herald, and I urge all of you to urge them, to publish without delay, because if they don’t Banksia and Jianqi could seek injunctions to tie their hands. Then they could well face prosecution if they publish.

So carpe diem, Herald and TV3 and anyone else who knows what’s on that tape. It might be nothing, but then I might be two metres tall and the next All Black captain! We certainly can’t believe anything our incumbent Prime Munter says because he continually lies like a bloody flatfish. Oops sorry it’s not telling lies is it? We’re in a dynamic environment. Where is that dynamite when I need it?

Owed (Ode) to Tauranga

The Bay of Plenty in general and Tauranga in particular is a great place to live. I love living here and hope to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. But sometimes I wonder if I will want to.......

You see the problem is that many factors and fuckwits are conspiring to ruin everything good about the place.

For anyone who has not had the pleasure of living here, here are some of the benefits of living in Tauranga.

1.      The weather is possibly the best in the country taking into account all of the seasons. Every year Tauranga is in the top three towns in NZ for sunshine hours. That alone is a damned good reason to live here. Frosts are as rare as hens’ teeth and our rain usually has the good grace to get itself over and done with by falling on about a third of the days in each month.

2.      The cost of living is much lower than Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, despite being New Zealand’s fourth or fifth largest metropolitan area. If you include Western Bay of Plenty District, the total population is in excess of 150,000 yet you still have a kind of’ village’ atmosphere where people who don’t even know you smile at you in the street and pass the time of day like people do in small rural towns.

3.      There are excellent white sand beaches, mountains, forests, and excellent soil for growing produce.

4.      A great range of organic and biodynamic food is available and very often grown locally.

5.      There is an amazing community of outrageously talented artists musicians and creative types, most of whom do not carry the airs and graces and general ‘up-themselvesness’ of their equivalents in places like Auckland. (Sorry Aucklanders, but after 18 years spent living there I feel well qualified on that one).

6.      Traffic is not a huge problem with the rush hours being more like rush quarter hours and often much less. The drivers are just as bad as anywhere else though, although not as bad as they were here 20 years ago when the town had a huge elderly bias.

7.      The town and country are so near to one another. You can drive ten or fifteen minutes from the CBD in any direction and be surrounded by farms and bush.

8.      If you get a hankering to go elsewhere, Rotorua, Hamilton and Whakatane are all with an hour to an hour and a half’s drive, Auckland is just two and a half hours away (but why would you go there?) and you can be on the Coromandel Peninsular in an hour and a half or in Taupo in two.

I’ve probably forgotten a whole lot more good reasons, but that is enough to be getting on with.

So who and what are all these factors and fuckwits running this paradise?

The answers to most of the world’s problems can usually be found by ‘following the money’ and I think Tauranga is a classic case of this.

We have (not me I hasten to add) elected at least two consecutive councils that have done Tauranga no favours at all. Led both times by (Getusintoa) Stu Crosby; a man with a strong business profile in Tauranga through his family business – a holiday park.

Now a man with a foot firmly planted in the tourism camp might sound like an ideal Mayor for Tauranga, but unfortunately Getusintoa is an empire builder like so many politicians. He sees himself as the key man in the area and has already made noises about a BOP ‘supercity’, no doubt with himself as Lord Mayor. He is surrounded by a council of mostly like-minded individuals they appear to want to make Tauranga like the Auckland of the BOP. You can see it in the way they have built their newer roads and in their eagerness to build toll roads (just like Big Bro up North). This type of thinking has led them to the immovable notion that Tauranga needs millions of ratepayer dollars spent on a museum of some kind, rather than cleaning up the waterways and upgrading the general infrastructure of the town. Ultimately if such plans are allowed to progress Tauranga will begin to look so much like Auckland that you will need a GPS reading to confirm your location. Of course your rates will have risen dramatically to try and keep pace with Auckland as well.

Of course along with such ambition comes the need for more business, more people more cars, more roads, more mayhem! The ten or fifteen minute drive to the countryside will become an hour due to increased traffic and also because so much of the rural land near to town will have been developed into ghastly housing subdivisions with names like The Lakes (I know it’s there already), The Ponds that all look the bloody same and a GPS will be necessary to navigate your way home from work if you want to positively identify your own house and section.

Along with bigger business comes a larger domination by the big players and this will be most obvious in the case of the food available locally. If the supermarkets continue with their current policies of stocking almost no organic or biodynamic produce, then these will become increasingly difficult to source as more and more big ‘food’ barns squeeze out the smaller operators currently supplying a good range of these foods.

Another factor working against the great food is the Kiwifruit industry which most people think of as a benefit to the region. My take on that is that it is and it isn’t. It is great that kiwifruit grow here and I love kiwifruit, but what is not great is that most of that fruit is grown with the use of nasty agri-chemicals. The sprays and other nasties used by these growers have caused heaps of health and other problems in the area and unfortunately the discovery of PSA just makes this worse. The kiwifruit industry is so hooked on chems that every time they get a wee problem (or a large one) they reach for the chemicals. Of course the whole process becomes like the old lady who swallowed a fly. So look out for many more nasty chems and antibiotics on your supermarket kiwifruit in future.

Unfortunately Tauranga doesn’t seem to be that interested in supporting local live music at the moment. Fewer and fewer live venues are providing regular opportunities to hear good ORIGINAL local bands.

So that has pretty well starts to demolish reasons 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of my eight key reasons for living here.

The Rena has given us what should be a big wake- up call over our beautiful beaches. But Jezza ‘Billy Bunter’ Browneye still wants to drill for oil out here and I would be very surprised if this council did not also support that idea. So there goes that particular neighbourhood along with reason 3 for living in Tauranga.

Hopefully reason 1 (the weather) is beyond the reach of these metropolitan and national vandals. But if the cowshit does hit the fan I will be pleased that reason 8 exists and I can scarper elsewhere (albeit a little more slowly due to the increased urbanisation).

Campaign launch a bit of a fizzer

The campaign is supposedly under way for the 2011 General Election. But so far it seems this election is going to need some agriva or garvia or whatever other anagram they are using this week because it has had a dreadfully limp start.

I see Granny Herald is referring to the debate on TV1 on Monday night in far more glowing terms than it deserves. Leaders' debate's fiery exchange was the breathless headline on the Herald website on Tuesday morning. I’ve seen more fire in a dead matchstick.

Yes there were some tetchy exchanges, but overall the show was an enormous waste of time. Almost no policy was laid out aside from the short sound-bite type stuff they have been trotting out for the last couple of days anyway. There wasn’t a shred of solid policy from either of the two wastes of space who were extraordinarily given this platform to themselves.

TVNZ needs a thrashing for putting up such a pathetic excuse for an election debate. Guyon Espiner tried his best, under what I believe were circumstances beyond his control. Whoever decided in their ‘wisdom’ we needed a debate between these two no-hopers on their own needs shooting. Where have these idiots been since 1996? We have had MMP for 15 years now and the whole idea of the system is that we recognise the existence of and the need for more than two parties. It may also have escaped their notice, but every single government since that first MMP election has needed to be formed from a coalition of the biggest polling party plus one or more other smaller ones. Given that scenario I would have thought the views of those minor parties are every bit as important as those of the two largest ones because elements of them will have to be agreed to by the Government of the day in order to secure a working majority in Parliament.

Like many Kiwis, I hadn’t thought too much about the general elimption over the last couple of months (while the really serious business was going on). As a result I had no advance warning of the mighty election campaign coverage planned by TV1. So you can imagine my surprise when after picking myself up off the floor from realising TV1’s opener was a debate between Jiangqi and Phil Goshisthatthetime, I began to find out what other treats they had in store.

Well maybe like me, you haven’t got around to checking yet. But I can save you the time, because there appears to be nothing. At least nothing further this week. So the entire TVNZ contribution to the first week of the election campaign is one pathetic debate between the two twits who think they should be Prime Minister, neither of whom will be able to govern without the support of one or more other parties?

I’ve actually found the coverage on maori TV much better, but then they are only covering the Maori electorates, so it is a little limited in that way. You will notice I am not mentioning any election type programmes that might crop up on TV7 because there is still a sizeable number of people who can’t get that and an even larger number who won’t for much longer if Jiangqi and his motley crew have their way.

So what about the thing billed as a debate? Well the only worthwhile thing to come out of it was that Phil Goshisthatthetime (quite rightly) called Jiangqi a liar. I see that as worthwhile because the incumbent PM's response was worth seeing. “I am not a liar,” he squeaked, tears welling up in his little piggy eyes. “I don’t call you a liar and that’s actually because I respect the office of the leader of the opposition,” he blubbed. From which I can conclude it is all about respecting offices rather than the truth. As PG pointed out, Little Johnny told the nation before the last election he would not raise GST and then he did. Jianqi of course tried to be semantically pedantic insisting that he had said in 2008 he would not raise GST to try and balance the books. He then argued he had not done this because with the tax cuts his GST rise had been ‘fiscally neutral’. This of course immediately raises the question of why one would do it if it was to be of no effect. Labour has raised this before with him, but I don’t ever remember hearing an answer that made any sense.

I notice the fallout from the ‘debate’ (it was more like a mass one if you ask me), is all about little Johnny blubbing about Goshisthatthetime calling him a liar. And this from the man who lied to Parliament about Standard & Poors’ plans only a couple of weeks ago and got caught out in a fabulous press conference which you can view at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DjHJb1DB42rg%26feature%3Dshare&h=-AQFveKizAQEZB0BufjtIvqO3cYiVXJ1poTBAu7oOtMAafQ

It should be shared with as many people as possible because they need to see the body language and enjoy the thrashing about of a man caught out big time in a big lie. A lie – lest we forget, that was designed to win votes from frightened voters who might have been tempted to believe him.

Meanwhile the other six or more parties who actually have a chance of being part of the next government are left to have to make programmes of their own on the Internet as the Greens did. And worthy attempt though that one was; it doesn’t really do a lot when it is simply a platform for the leaders of the party to get some policy out there via some sympathetic questioning from Finlay McDonald. They needed to be having a debate with the other party leaders to do much of a service to the NZ voter.

I think it is time we had some major reforms in our parliamentary system. Too much is left to the whims of those in power to decide. Election dates should be set in stone. Big stones that are too heavy for politicians to turn over (or crawl out from under). Likewise at least one leaders’ debate per week should be should be mandatory for the last three or four weeks of the campaign. Participation in these should be mandatory for every leader of a party that has an MP or who polled close to the threshold at the last election. Any wimps, prima donnas, or pussies who don’t want to debate with the other leaders get no other airtime at all. It’s time to make these bastards accountable. Who do they think they are to tell US who they will and won’t debate with? WE pay their over-inflated wages, even if we don’t have any control over how over-inflated they are.

Now if we were to move the election forward three weeks................we’d certainly have a good choice of ‘Guys’.