NZ Idle – the new series

In the year 2014 our television screens are going to be dominated with much fuss and bother and spin leading up to our biggest ‘reality series’ of the year. This series differs somewhat from the plethora of programmes that fall under that description.

As an aside I find it interesting that the word ‘plethora’ was once used to describe an unhealthy excess and that these days it is often used to denote abundance. I feel that in this context the word should be taken to mean an unhealthy excess especially as i learn that it had a medical connection and was used to describe a condition caused by dilation of superficial blood vessels which was characterised by a reddish face.

However, I digress....

The ‘reality’ series of which I speak differs in that it is a recurring series which takes over our media every three years. Yes; you’ve guessed it. I am speaking of that rag tag bunch of idle self-serving gits who come seeking our approval to keep sucking at the nation’s tit for another three years.

Battle has already commenced with Little Bo Tox and Anne Offhertrolley trying to blow the Greens’ co-leaders house up into a mansion the size of their own dunnies and bitching about how much better she can look in expensive clothes than they both do.

Meanwhile Jianqi is rushing about turning over one stone after another trying to find enough slimy invertebrates to potentially form a coalition with. You’d have to wonder if there are any more possibles left now. Let’s consider those possibilities.  

·         The Acting Party have been pretty much squished out of contention following the demise of their only MP in this current Parliament and it is hard to see how their latest oddball will gain any traction over the next few months. The tea has been chucked out and I suspect that even a case of Red Bull won’t put any wings on that particular slug before November. He isn’t even the party leader so he will have to be operated by remote control from Acting Party headquarters. Mind you that would be less humiliating for him than being operated via Jianqi’s arm up his bum like his predecessor was. Should The Natsis choose to ‘gift’ the Epsom seat to these wallies again, it just might turn out to be the gift that doesn’t even give once never mind the one that keeps on giving.

·         Just what Peter Dung, the man with no real party has in mind this year, I have not heard. I seem to recall he was considering retiring a few months back. Mind you that was when he was still sitting on the naughty step and now that he is being welcomed back into the bosom (can I say that in this column?) of the Natsi Party he might reconsider that. However even if he does, and if the people of Johnsonville and Newlands are still in a coma and he wins; he will be there on his Todd Malone again. Neither of the other party members is likely to get elected and his voter will not be able to vote enough times to get them in on the party vote either.

·         What’s left of the Maori Parting is Te Ururoa Flavell and a couple of spaces where the other two sat. It is more of a comb-over than a parting now. In any case there is no guarantee they would wish to coalesce with the Natsis this time as they have suffered some pretty serious damage through their association with them over the last six years They could only manage to grab three seats after their first term supporting Jianqi and this time they will be starting all over again with a whole new set of candidates to try and support their only leftover from the previous hangi.

·         There has been a lot of talk about the Conservatively Dressed Party and I think that might well be all it turns out to be. These slightly manic types managed to pick up 2.65 percent of the party vote last time, which isn’t all that surprising really when you think about it. There must be at least that percentage of the population with undiagnosed stupidity. Ironically that meagre share of the party vote was still only 0.15 percent short of the combined party vote won by the current three coalition partners. However we must remember that it is still only slightly more than half of what they would need to get a seat unless they could manage to win an electorate seat. As we don’t have any electorates that are comprised of nothing but wacko people I would suggest the chances of that are not terrific. Leader Column Craig is certainly an odd individual and not really the sort who would inspire confidence in most sane people. He has a little of the aura that surrounds that new Acting Party twit. He seems the sort of bloke that might cause babies to cry as soon as they see him and the rest of us panic if we are left alone in a room with him.

·         This then (unless some amazing new party arises and sweeps the political right wingers off their feet) leaves the question of what will Winnie do? Winnie is always a dark horse or a dirty dog depending on how you see him. He plays his cards close to his chest at times like this until he can be absolutely sure which way the wind is going to blow. This way he keeps the door open for a ministerial warrant no matter who is behind that door. If he stays true to his party’s policies he would not be able to form a government with the Natsis without making some demand that would stick in their collective craw. However with the chains of office glinting in the sunlight Winnie could be swayed enough to jump into that big blue waka.

      
      So what of the opposition? It is abundantly clear the Laboured Party will not be able to do it alone. Although many think that is exactly what they have been doing for some time.

      But I digress again. Or is that regress when you do it for a second time?

     

      The point is that Laboured will need some friends in the house if they are to warm the treasury benches again as they have again chosen a useless leader who unfortunately will probably make an even more useless Prime Minotaur should they pull this feat off. He has shown an ability of late to launch himself out of the starting gates with a policy headline before his minders have had a chance to teach him his lines.  

      So who are the friends of the Laboured Party?

      

      I guess the most obvious one is the Greens who have been growing faster than my tomatoes in this climate. They would be the next largest polling party after the Nats and the Labs and a long way ahead of any of the others. Their participation in a Labour led Government goes without saying. The only unknown around them is how many players they would bring to the game.

      

      However this is where it gets interesting. Outside of the Greens; who would Labour be able to form a coalition with? 

      

      Unless Winnie goes with them they would probably not have enough seats to be able to do it. They might of course win the support of the Maori Party this time, but how much use that would be given the current state of that party is another matter. It could conceivably add only one seat to the mix.

      

      There is of course the matter of Hone and his little one-man band. He would never be courted by National and so the possibility exists for him to be asked to be part of a Labour led coalition. However I think he would be the last one picked for the game if he was and I think they would do well to consider what problems he could cause if he became disenchanted or had another of his famous brain explosions.    

     

      To sum up, I think the Laboured lot need to devise a decent strategy now. If I was in charge of that strategy I would be building a bloody great big bridge with the Maori Party and suggesting to them that a widely advertised intention to form a coalition with Labour would give them a better chance of getting more seats in the upcoming viewers’ vote and I would be offering Winnie some very cool robes of office and advising him to follow the same course of action that I had suggested to the Maori Party.

      

      It will be interesting (in an academic sort of way). But jeez it will be sickening for the most part. Stock up on bicarb I say.

Intelligence gathering is getting harder

Is it just me or are our criminals getting thicker. Many of us have chucked scorn at the cops for years because most of us only see the slow witted, slow talking, ‘Mr Plod’ types who seem to struggle so much issuing a literate statement to media you wonder how the hell they could ever solve a mystery.

However lately it has come to my attention that an awful lot of the criminally inclined among our population are racing like hell to take the title of the thickest group of people in New Zealand from our dullards in blue.

Two examples of some of this latest batch of fumbling felons arose in the Far North this week and these two Northlanders were a long way north of sensible.

The first of those who is aptly named after the allegedly first ever man – (who by all accounts wasn’t all that smart either) is Adam Saville of Mangawhai. Adam had a really good idea about stealing a pair of Nike shoes from Rebel Sports in the Okara Shopping Centre. He was spotted by store staff trying to stuff them down his trousers (was he trying to impress the girls?). When he realised he had been tumbled, he took to his heels (presumably with the Nikes still in a position to bruise his tender parts).

Unfortunately Adam wasn’t that fleet of foot (maybe he should have put the Nikes on his feet instead of his old feller) and was soon caught by some civic-minded bystanders. They brought Adam back to the store to face the music, but Adam wasn’t yet singing from the same song sheet and decided to opt for adding a bit of percussion. He did this somewhat unwittingly as only the witless can, by attempting to flee his captors. However in his haste he forgot that it’s a better idea to look where you are going rather than where you have come from. As a result he ran headlong into a head-high horizontal bar that was holding up a street sign and took an enforced nap on the pavement where he was duly scooped up and arrested. I’ll bet he really reckons those $130 shoes were worth a smack on the head and a criminal record. Imagine if he’d got away with them; he’d never want for anything again (except perhaps a brain cell).

The second Northerner to display his cretinous credentials has not been named at this stage (presumably to spare the embarrassment of anyone who had anything to do with his birth.

Mr Anonymous or Mr Big (Plonker) as we shall call him came up with a brilliant plan to steal a packet of batteries from Pak ‘N’ Save. Unfortunately we can’t cost this one out so we don’t know if this is a three or four figure crime (including cents).

Anyway Mr Big had not quite mastered the magicians’ art of palming his booty and was spotted by store staff, and took off. He should have inserted the batteries first, because that might have made him a little brighter and more likely to avoid capture. Unfortunately he didn’t have the time or the wit to do this and instead simply ran down the street followed by store staff. A passing policeman saw the commotion and was able to easily intercept and arrest him. The policeman found it really easy to track the thief because he was wearing a bright yellow High-Vis vest, which we have to conclude, was the only bright thing about this person.

In an update form an earlier blog at this site entitled You’d better give the suckers an even chance I see former Hastings barrister Sacha Beacham has been in trouble again. Ms Beacham would appear to be in good company with Messrs Saville and Anonymous above as she hasn’t quite got the message that she needs to stop drinking or at least stop misbehaving when she does. Last year the boozing barrister was fined and disqualified from driving for her third drink driving conviction. At the time she managed to get the trial moved to Auckland to save her blushes in her hometown. Following the court’s generous indulgence Ms Beacham didn’t bother to turn up for her hearing because she heard a media had applied for permission to take pictures of her.

Well this time Ms Beacham faced the court over a charge of obstructing police and resisting arrest. I hardly need add the demon drink was involved again and it would seem she has learned very little since her last court experience as this offence took place on New Year’s Eve, some four months after her previous conviction. I notice Ms Beacham who is reported to have relocated to Auckland was this time tried in Napier (presumably for the same reasons she was tried in Auckland last time).  This time she turned up, however and unsuccessfully tried to oppose the press application to take photographs. I do hope Ms Beacham gets herself into a programme to deal with the obvious problem she has with alcohol before she kills someone. Most sane people would not go out and get bladdered and arrested when they have as much to lose as she does. You have to wonder how good she is as a barrister based on her own decisions.

Another criminal whose brains seem to be AWOL is former director of National Finance Anthony Banbrook. Mr Banbrook has just pleaded guilty in the High Court at Auckland to a charge of signing a company document which included untrue statements. His sentencing on the charge which carries potential penalties of up to five years in the slammer or fines of up to $300,000 is scheduled for August.

When asked to surrender his passport prior to his sentencing the former financial genius asked the judge if he could take his pre-booked holiday in Fiji first.

Thankfully Justice Mark Woolford was having none of it. Neither was Crown Prosecutor Steve Symon who pointed out that Banbrook had booked the holiday for the time the trial was to have been conducted. The only reason Banbrook was ‘free’ to take it was because of his guilty plea which meant the trial finished early.

So to recap; this financial genius pre-booked a holiday to Fiji for a time when it would be obvious to any but the eternally he would not be able to go if he pleaded not guilty and even less likely if he pleaded guilty. No wonder the company collapsed.

However just to demonstrate how equally dopey our legislators can be, I point to the Vehicle Confiscation & Seizure Bill. I think whoever came up with this idea must have been having a seizure at the time.

This week the first boy-racer (I prefer the term idiot-boy) car was crushed by Police Minister Anne ‘Tosser” Tolley. This one belonged to Daniel Briant who had reached the requisite three strikes for his idiotic behaviour in front of an off-duty police officer in Porirua. (there’s help in your town, Daniel). Less than three hours after being sentenced by the Court he was behind the wheel again doing exactly the same stuff, this time proving what a hopeless wannabe driver he was by crashing into a fence which wasn’t probably nowhere near as thick as him.

This bright young spark then set about trying to hide his car by a series of registration changes, but eventually the law caught up with him and the car was uplifted and made into a metallic poppadom.

But the point here is the legislation that empowers the state to wantonly vandalise an otherwise perfectly good car in order to ‘teach’ Daniel a lesson didn’t seem to stop him repeating his idiocy even after the order was made to seize his car.

For the law to work it has to appear reasonable to the ordinary man in the street and if young people in particular are to learn from it, there must be no stupid inconsistencies such as this. Simply seizing the car and selling it would deprive him of his wheels just as surely as this act of vandalism would. But then like so many laws enacted as a knee-jerk reaction, it’s all just window dressing; it looks pretty but it only creates an image and changes nothing.

That light at the end of the tunnel is sounding its horn

Now that the dust from the collapse of the Laboured Party has begun to clear and their new bright hope has been anointed, we can see a few things a little better.

One such thing is the brighter future Jianqi and his band of merry revellers offered us once they regained access to the slush fund – I mean treasury benches.

Education is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? At least it can be if you can actually get a decent one. The National Disgrace has given us a glimpse of what the brighter future they have in mind for education is.

Jianqi and I agree on one thing; our current education system is failing far too many people. However when it comes to fixing that system we clearly have a different idea about that. For example I wouldn’t have thought a positive way to fix the education system would be to appoint a disgraced school principal to a specialist advisory role with the Ministry of Education. I especially would not if that unprincipled principal had tried to cover up some naughty noodlings of her husband with an underage pupil and was still subject to disciplinary action. What sort of a lesson is that?

I also wouldn’t have thought it a great lesson for the then Education Minister Anne Folly to lie to media about it, either. But hey, the Ministry of Ed knows best and as they very cleverly explain it; Folly was asked if they had a suspended principal working in the role, but as Mrs Mutu had resigned from her role she wasn’t technically suspended at that time. I guess I just keep forgetting it’s a dynamic environment!

Charter schools are not something I would have put forward as a fix for our education system either. This is partly because until a couple of weeks ago I had not heard of charter schools. I suspect I am not alone in this and I am pretty sure that if we were to conduct a poll of every New Zealander who was eligible to vote at the last election we would find very few who had. I am equally sure almost none would have heard so much as a whisper of charter schools during the election campaign.

This raises a couple of questions: What is a charter school and why the secrecy?

In answer to the first of these, as far as I can tell a charter school (in the USA, anyway) is a school that is funded by both the state and possibly private funders. It does not have to adhere to the national curriculum, but cannot charge tuition fees as it is still a part of the state system. I don’t know how accurate that is, nor what is envisaged by Jianqi and Heck Yeah and Banquo, but I’m buggered if I can see what it would achieve. I have heard talk of it picking up the kids who fall through the cracks in the current system, but surely a re-jig of the current system and regional support services assisting the schools would be better. Why re-invent the wheel, especially if that wheel has had a habit of falling off wherever it has previously been fitted?

As for the secrecy; you can only conclude there is something about them they know we won’t like. They must have been afraid it would have made some of their voters nervous, because if it was such a whizz-bang great idea, why weren’t they boring us to death with it all through the election campaign?

It has also become blindingly clear that Jianqi and his government are hell-bent on passing legislation through OUR parliament to please other nations. A really creepy example of this is the NZ Food Bill.

I am working my way through the ramifications of this and I can tell you it is one helluva doorstop. So far I have picked up that ‘Food Safety Officers’ would be given the power of search without the need for a warrant and the Minister may adopt a joint food standard (for example aligning us with some other country’s regulations). There is a little waffle about him ‘being satisfied adequate consultation has taken place under the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991 (Australia)’. However it could just as easily be rammed through during a holiday period or rushed through under urgency with the excuse it was ‘vital to trade.’ They’ve already tied us into Australia’s medicines legislation and I really don’t think we want to surrender any more of what little sovereignty we appear to have.

I also notice the Minister will be able to designate some standards for New Zealand only while others will link in with Australia’s. Now that should make things blindingly clear – having two different Acts to keep an eye on! I have yet to find any references to seeds as has been claimed by opponents of the Bill, but as I said it is a weighty tome and I’ve barely scraped it’s slimy sides. However it is quite apparent the intention is to regulate us a lot more and there could be some tricky issues surrounding the harmless bartering of goods with neighbours. In any event; I think this Bill has enough things wrong with it for it to be a worry and I urge everyone to sign the petition that is trying to stop it in its tracks. You can find more about the Bill at   http://nzfoodsecurity.org/2011/07/19/food-a-controlled-substance-not-in-my-back-yard/

And finally the brightest future appears to have been saved as usual by the National Disgrace Government for those in our society who are most vulnerable – and no I’m not talking about those struggling CEO’s like the one at Christchurch City Council.

I am of course talking about the children of the nation – those who come under the ‘care and protection’ of that wonderful generous and efficient organisation run by Paula Bumfat. This week we saw how much Bumfat cares as she faced the nation, upper lip trembling to try and explain how it wasn’t her fault or that of the wonderful people at CYFS that a 9-year-old Auckland girl was given a taste of Abu Ghraib in the Waitakeres.

And of course it wasn’t. We all know that a monster a.k.a. the child’s mother inflicted all the injuries and has been jailed this week for those acts. But what should have happened is that various individuals from the 25 agencies that had been dealing with this family since the child was a few months old should be sharing her cell for their abject failure to come to grips with what was plain for anyone to see.

Bumfat was blubbing about how ‘manipulative’ the woman and her partner were and wants us to believe they managed to cleverly pull the wool over the eyes of all the so-called experts and even the Minister herself.

That is just ten foot deep bullshit. Granted many of the social workers involved WOULD have been taken in; but not because the woman was so smart. How smart can an uneducated dropkick with a bunch of kids who have all been taken away from her at one time or another and who probably only has a vague notion of who fathered whom amongst those kids, be? Lets’ face it; she is another scumbag (probably from some sort of local Westie scumbag dynasty) that anyone other than a brain-dead CYFS employee would have sussed out in five minutes. The CYFS personnel aren’t all so stupid, though; some would have been only too aware of what was going on, but too hidebound by ridiculous internal procedures to do anything meaningful (or timely) about it. As for Bumfat, she like most useless Ministers would simply have seen what she wanted to see. The scummy beater should get some credit for asking for help (albeit the serious abuse was already occurring), but letters like that need to go to opposition spokespeople. Sitting ministers never do anything that might uncover a slip up on their watch.

It is unfortunate the new Parliament only sat for the one day and there wasn’t time for the opposition parties to make a meal of Bumfat’s situation. Hopefully they will get together and give her a hard time when they come back next year. And as for the lame report by former ombudsman Mel Smith; stupid shit like better communication between departments and better training are just fatuous school kid comments. The best way to sort that particular department out is to de-politicise the entire health and welfare sector. Only that way will they be able to get the workers focussing on needs rather than political agendas. Professional standards of conduct would need to be raised, so strong and focussed management would be needed to change the slack ‘civil service’ culture that exists today. Finally individuals (and that includes Ministers) would have to be accountable for their actions or lack of them.

So we have already seen a glimpse of this bright new future and I have to say it looks about as dim as those who voted for this lot must have been on November 26. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact Jianqi is still standing in that Egyptian river over asset sales. Let’s hope he doesn’t notice how quickly the waters are rising – until it’s too late.

Have a great Christmas everyone and recharge your batteries for the battering we are in for in 2012. Either that or the battering we will give the government. It’s your choice.