The good guys don’t always wear white

Just exactly when our society changed from being a caring and fair one to the dog eat bitch free-for-all that it now seems to be, I don’t really know. I guess it was one of those things that ate away at us rather like the increasing sea levels around Tuvalu. The difference being that the water levels might not have originated from man’s inhumanity to man – although there is a body of opinion that might say otherwise to that as well of course.

In any event there are times when it seems that as a species we have descended to a level comparable with the bowels of Satan.

People seem hell-bent on looking after ‘number one’ even when number one by his/her behaviour would be more appropriately described as a pile of number two.

The latest scam to get my undies in a tangle is another example I have come across of a money-grubbing business taking advantage of someone who is less able to fight back.

This sad story begins with an innocent enough exercise of me paying a bill. The bill in questions was for expenses incurred by my elderly father who is currently in a rest home with dementia. The rest home in question is a very good place and like most such establishments they run a ‘care account’ for their residents. 

This is basically a kitty into which I put money to take care of any incidental little expense he might have throughout the month. They have a little shop there where he occasionally buys sweets and they also use the account to cover such things as extraordinary expenditure that he might have to meet.

One such expense that falls under this category is payment for non-subsidised medicines or other pharmaceuticals that he might be getting.

In my Dad’s case his latest reconciliation had some entries described as Non SS Meds: Fish Oil Tabs. I realised what these were of course and would not normally have taken any further notice of them were it not for the fact that there seemed to be an awful lot of them.

There was an entry on 30 November for them – cost $11.10, then another on 6 December – same cost again and then further entries on 3, 24 and 31 January. In all there were 5 lots of fish oil tabs charged out over a period of 62 days for a total cost of $54.00. My first thought was, ‘Why did he need 1000 fish oil tablets – that would be 200 per week.”

So I rang the rest home and asked them to explain. They assured me the charges were correct and had been sent to them by Pharmacy Services as they were non-subsidised and were being dispensed along with the rest of his subsidised medication and put into those cute little bubble packs. I asked why he would need 200 of these a week but they assured me he was only being given one each day and referred me on to Pharmacy Services.

I then rang Pharmacy Services and asked them why my father was being charged for 200 fish oil tabs per week and they told me he was not and that he was only being given 28 every four weeks. I challenged this because at $11.10 for 28 tablets I felt there must have been some sort of mistake as the price indicated that he was being given 200 each time.

The woman I spoke to was adamant that the charges were correct so I did a couple of quick calculations. I knew that he was being given 1000mg tablets and I also knew that a tub of 200 of these was regularly available via the supermarket for $9.99 and yet these people were charging him $11.10 for just 28 tablets.

I said to the Pharmacist that it seemed to be a pretty steep price and how could they possibly justify charging more for 28 tabs than what I would pay for 200. At that point she came over very condescending and explained to me that everybody has to make a living and she was sure that i would not want to work for nothing and that they put these tablets into the bubble packs with his medicine and so they had to charge something for the effort of doing that.

Needless to say I was neither impressed to be spoken to like a little child nor convinced about her argument. I already knew that he was paying a premium along with his prescription charges to have all of his medications put into the pack so why was there a need to charge a premium on the item as well. After all we are not talking about a small extra charge here. My sums tell me that fish oil tablets from the supermarket cost a whisker under 5 cents each and yet these ones which were exactly the same were costing a little under 40 cents each – in other words they were 800 percent dearer.

As you might expect I was unable to convince the Pharmacy that they were a bunch of low down scumsuckers taking advantage of old folks because they could, so the upshot is I told them to leave the bloody things out and we would supply his fish oil tablets in future. The rest home was quite relaxed about my new arrangement and we might all now live happily ever after. Yeah right until the next chancer (or as my spellchecker suggested here, chancre) comes along.

Anyway ladies and gentlemen the moral of this little epistle is: if you have responsibility for the care and welfare of an old person and especially if that person is near and dear to you; leave nothing to chance. If they are sent a bill for anything at all make sure you check it to see (a) if they actually were supplied with it, (b) did they really want or need it, and (c) have they been charged the correct amount for it.

You would be surprised to see how many lowlifes there are out there who think nothing of ripping old people off and many of them wear nice white smocks or flash suits and have shining white-toothed smiles. Beware and be ready for the b swines. 

Power to the people

Congratulations to the Green Party on their excellent proposal to give loans to homeowners to put solar power into their homes. This is an initiative I have personally been advocating for years. Hopefully David Cunliffe and his rather slow moving crowd will jump on board with this as well.

I am not surprised that Jianqi’s government has seen fit to ridicule the whole idea on (FFS) the grounds of expense! For a bloke who is supposed to know about money Jianqi is surprisingly dim when it suits him. Of course he is being ably aided and abetted by Simon the Pixie in his role as Energy Bunny – er I mean Minister.

Russel Norman’s policy involves the government loaning homeowners up to $15,000 to install photovoltaic panels on their houses. I gather that an average house can be set up with an adequate system for about $10,000 so this is a potentially good scheme. The loans would be repayable at the rate of around $900.00 per year via local body rates payments.

The interest rate of 4.1 percent that Russel Norman is proposing is the same as that at which the Government currently borrows money to fund all kinds of wasteful endeavours. The major difference here is that the money would actually be used for something that would bring tangible and worthwhile returns for both the voters and the Government.

Simon the Pixie has argued that the scheme would effectively be a Government subsidy because it involves a lower rate of interest. So what? At least it would be a subsidy which would save the entire country money in the long term.

The Government tells us that solar power is “more expensive than buying power off the grid”. Duhh! Maybe it might be until you have paid for your system, but how about taking a longer term view eh? I would be intrigued to see an argument that showed that over 10 years it did not work out cheaper for a homeowner and then get progressively cheaper to the point where it cost virtually nothing once the loan was paid off.

Simon The Pixie has also said that solar is “not a priority because of the abundance of cheaper renewable energy such as hydro, geothermal and wind”, which is a statement so extraordinary in its stupidity that I can’t believe even he said that.

In the first place hydro involves a lot of messing about with waterways and that can often involve unacceptable disruption to both the land and its natural inhabitants including plants and animals.

Geothermal is fine, but it is not readily available all over the country which means the construction of distribution systems which once again are likely to involve further disruptions to the environment.

Wind is good and even more renewable that the other two, but once again you are dealing with a system that requires distribution on a large scale whereas the very localised nature of solar power makes it much more practical and it poses no major disruption to the environment. Whether your house has an iron roof or a whole lot of solar panels really doesn’t make a lot of difference to the surrounding landscape.

The savings from the scheme the Greens are proposing would begin in the very first year and within a short time they would be providing most of those who took up the offer with free power for most if not all of their needs forever more. So what could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, I think I know ‘what is wrong with that”. It would mean smaller profits for the major energy companies and the industries that support them and ..... oh yes... the shareholders. But not the Mum and Dad investors that Jianqi and his merry men and women told us would buy these power shares, but the people who actually did buy them – those whose annual earnings sit in the top 1 percent of the population, along with major corporations and overseas investors. Boo- bloody hoo. In any case these people are in a position to cope with any loss of expectations they might suffer because of this and instead buy shares in solar technology companies.

There is also a prediction that this could result in 1000 new jobs although I am a bit more wary about that aspect as in my experience whenever politicians predict more jobs they tend to over-inflate the figures for effect. However it is quite clear from the comments made by those whose business it is to analyse these issues for a living that the basic figures regarding savings do stack up, and if you add in the lack of any environmental impact, then it is easy to see that we must go down this path. We should have started it decades ago, and there is certainly no sensible reason not to do it now.

I see the proposed scheme also involves setting up a system where homeowners would be able to sell their excess power to the grid for a reasonable price. But without legislation to compel the energy companies to honour that I suspect you would see very little movement there. However it would be an opportunity for enterprising folk to set up small scale power companies in various locations around the country to buy up and store that excess power to sell back to local bodies for their infrastructural needs such as street lighting and traffic lights.

I say let's power up. Power to the people and let’s see how many of us can short-circuit the power companies.

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.

I’m all white, Jack

One of the world’s great men passed away last week and he can be proud that he made a difference. I would venture to say that any of us who can go to our graves knowing we have made a difference (for the good that is), then we should be able to rest in peace.

Nelson Mandella is a man who has been celebrated in many different ways during his life and he will no doubt also be celebrated in many more ways in the future. He was a man who showed how it is possible to forgive even some of the most heinous of crimes. His humanity should be an example to all of us.

However (and didn’t you just know I’d have one of them lurking somewhere?) I have to say something about the appalling hypocrisy of the New Zealand Government in regards to Mandella’s funeral and what he stood for in general.

Madiba would probably not be impressed with me getting stuck into these guys over this, but I am a less evolved person than him and I haven’t yet learned to be as forgiving.

I cringe at the make-up of the ‘New Zealand delegation’ that has been ‘chosen’ to attend the funeral in South Africa. Let me dissect it (and them) one by one.

First of all we have little Jianqi. Well I have to grudgingly concede that this greedy little money grubber is the Prime Minister and as such he has ONE qualification for attending. I am however extremely uneasy about the fact that he has managed another of his famous brain-fades regarding where he stood in 1981.

I can tell you where he stood in 1981; in a corner somewhere counting out his money and plotting how he could get even more of the stuff for as little effort as possible. As for his views regarding the Springbok tour, I think I can safely say that he didn’t give it a moment’s though and if he had he would have backed the stance of the Muldoon Government and said that sport and politics don’t mix which was of course the right-wing platitude du jour at the time. If it were otherwise he would be proudly (or in his case, boastfully) proclaiming it from the hilltops for all to hear.

However, be that as it may; he is the leader and should go. I could add that he might want to consider not coming back, but that would be mean. To the South Africans, that is.

Next batter up to the plate is James Brendan Bolger, a former Prime Minister and eternal rider of gravy trains. This pillock was a member of that Muldoon Government in 1981 so he helped facilitate that tour by his lack of vocal opposition to it. I am also worried that his presence might lead to further embarrassment for us all when he attempts to adopt a South African accent for the tour.

Then there is Don McKinnon – he of the permanently upstanding hair and surprised look. Don was also a member of the Muldoon Government in 1981 and he has also been a leech on the public purse ever since riding every gravy train that has come to town. This genius caused something of a stir (and an embarrassment to all good Kiwis) when he proclaimed that economic development and free trade are more important than democracy. Mind you that was at a CHOGM meeting (Chaps Hanging Out on Government Money). I KNOW Nelson Mandella would not have shared that sentiment and would have shuddered at the very thought that money was more important than freedom, but then that is the manifesto of Jianqi isn’t it?

Pita Sharples is going of course and I guess he does have the cred that he opposed the tour, although I think it is fair to say he has long since traded away most of his principles to be a part of the Jianqi Government. This leaves him as a poor candidate and probably a token one since he is the only non-white member of the delegation. He really has developed into an “Uncle Tom’ or a ‘Benedict Arnold’; or perhaps a Faustian clone selling his soul to the devil for a little time holding awe corner of the reins of power. Mandella stood up for moral principles and was prepared to die for them. This wooss wouldn’t know a moral principle if it bit him on the nono.

And speaking of token members; David Cunliffe without the ‘t’ has only been chosen because even Jianqi knows that the leader of the opposition is usually expected to attend such events. He probably has the pedigree for this event and he opposed the tour.

So looking at the delegation it stands out like the proverbial ‘dog’s nuts’ that it is with one solitary exception comprised of old white guys, only one of whom actually stood for what Mandella did and one token Maori who has spent the last two parliamentary terms selling out his people so he could rub shoulders with the latest batch of power brokers.

I don’t necessarily think John Minto should have gone at the nation’s expense although he would have been a better choice than Don McKinnon or Jim Bolger, but I would have thought at least somebody with good Human Rights creds should have been included. It might not have been a bad idea to include a woman as well.

But definitely not our Racist Relations Commissioner who is another lacking any suitable qualifications for the trip or her job for that matter.

And just to make matters worse; the Huffington Post has picked up on Jianqi’s brain-fade as well. Oh the shame of it all!

The madness of pouring money into a hole in the ground

Human beings do some incredibly stupid things as we all know, and the current NZ Government is not immune to this malaise.

At present they seem obsessed with pouring money into all sorts of holes in the ground. In some instances they are doing this literally and in others figuratively. However in all cases the practice makes no sense when the longer view is taken.

Unfortunately when you have a Government that is headed up by a money trader you are going to see policies that are driven by the desire to reap short term gains and to hell with any ‘collateral damage’ that might be caused by chasing those gains.

Under this sort of management anything that doesn’t bring the cash that will enrich the drivers of those policies and their mates is expendable.

This is the philosophy that allows companies such as Anna Dark Knight to plunder the depths of our oceans in search of 20^th Century fuels for the 21^st Century.

We are told by the Government that if we allow these modern day environmental rapists to drill ginormous holes in our seabed we will all get fabulously wealthy and live happily ever after. In true Nelsonian style Jianqi has hoisted his telescope to his squinty little eyes after first sticking a large banknote over the lens which is bad enough, but he wants all of us to look through it as well without removing the distraction of the cash first so that we can see the real picture.

A conspiracy has been hatched to massage the figures so that we are not being made aware of ADK’s track record and the true number of ‘incidents’ that have occurred as a result of their drilling operations. The EPA (Environmental Prostitution Agency) has pimped us to these people based on the directives given to it by the Government. Figures with dozens of zeroes at the end of them have been bandied about in an attempt to dazzle us with their bright shiny nature and imply that we will all get a big share of the dough. This is going to happen via the trickle-down effect which is the system where the earnings all go to the rich who drink up large on their bounty and then piss on the rest of us.

Meanwhile the enormous pachyderm sits in the corner waiting for the day when he inevitably has to take a dump and we end up spending any gains we might as a nation have made trying to mop up somebody else’s shit from our ocean. However that won’t bother Jianqi and his bunch of vagabonds because they will have all made their money and buggered off somewhere else leaving us with the mess to clean up and still not a cent better off.

Some might say our Government is not putting any money into this particular hole and that it is ADK that is pouring money into it instead. But our Government has sold these resources to ADK extremely cheaply when compared with most other countries in the world and when it all goes wrong that is when they will really have to chuck a load of money down a very deep hole.

But not content with chucking millions or possibly billions down into the ocean Jianqi is also feverishly doing the same with large holes in the ground looking for another form of ‘black gold’. The only difference here is the scale f the operations and the fact that this particular product is 19^th Century fuel for the 21^st Century.

Instead of damage to the marine environment we are gearing up for damage to the land, gas explosions, collapses, and further fiascos of the Pike River variety.

Once again the usual suspects will be the only ones who will be enriched and as usual the taxpayers will pick up the tab for the damage when it inevitably occurs.

But I said earlier that money is being also chucked down what I call figurative holes and it is these holes in which you will find the key (geddit) to what is really wrong with this Government.

One of the smaller examples of this earlier this year was the $250,000 they spent on trying to get Grocer Tim a job at the WTO (World Twats Organisation). In the overall scheme of things this is a paltry sum; but try telling that to an NZ Post worker who is about to lose his $30,000 a year job because the Government is hell-bent on running the company down so it can be sold to another of their cronies.

Of much more concern is the money that is being thrown at our farcical attempts to get a spot on the UN (United Nitwits) Security Council is one such example. If ever there was a waste of public money on a grand scale, then this is it. The figure of $25M has been thrown around and although Jianqi doesn’t want to get specific (why not it’s OUR money?) it seems this is probably a bare minimum that will be spent on this programme.

So we don’t have enough money to run our health sector properly but we still have a lazy $25M to waste on trying to get a seat on the world’s most toothless organisation where any one of the permanent members can use their power of veto to stop anything we might want to bring up there. Was there ever anything more pointless upon which to spend $25M?

But this is chicken feed when compared to the costs involved in selling off our assets. $100M was apparently spent on selling 48 percent of Mighty River Power, which the Bill Nospeakada English is claiming as a victory netting 1.6B for the Government. But that is not taking account of the loss of profits from a very large company such as Mighty River. In 2012 the net profits were over $83B and 48 percent of that is nearly $40B. Of course there are other costs to come out of that, but I am sure you get my drift. More money down a very large hole that was spewing money in our direction but instead is now feeding the overfed.

Despite claims that money is tight and ‘we are not out of the woods yet’ our Government is spending truckloads of money on every magic bean it can get it’s grubby little paws on despite the fact that none of them are going to germinate and produce a plant that will nourish the nation.

Meanwhile the greater majority of us are being told to save our money (what money?) and tighten our belts – but we all had to change to braces years ago to hold our increasingly roomy trou up. But the porkers at the public trough cruise along on the largesse of the Remuneration Authority who has kindly given them another pay rise backdated to the middle of the year.

I know what I’d like to throw into a big hole.

The young and the gutless (nuts vs sledgehammers)

There are times when you just have to say wtf is going on in the world. It seems that some really atrocious things can occur without any sort of official reaction, while some other innocuous activities are reacted to as if someone was eating their babies.

One of the most obvious atrocities right now in my country is the case of the self-styled ‘Roastbusters’. Ha ha, very funny name little boys and hopefully some roasting of your nether parts is about to occur anytime soon.

For those not familiar with the news in New Z at the moment, these little lowlifes are a group of toxic teenagers who think it is (a) clever and (b) funny to get underage girls drunk and/or stoned and then gang-bang them. As if that wasn’t enough they like to increase the humiliation of the young and admittedly stupid/gullible girls by boasting about their exploits on Facebook.

This group have apparently been operating for a couple of years and FB would appear to condone the practice as their postings have kept appearing which begs the question about what sort of monitoring the social disease, I mean network actually does. But more of that later.......

Complaints were made to police when the media finally became aware of this group of limp dicks who must only be able to function with their mates encouraging them on. (Begs a few questions, doesn’t it?). However the response from police has been about as flaccid as I imagine these young scumbags are without their mates to encourage some kind of performance out of them, despite the fact these little needle dicks have made no effort to hide their identities. Police also reckon they have been monitoring this page for two years, but despite this they have managed to do absolutely zero about it.

Of course the lack of any meaningful police response would have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that one of these tiny slugs is the son of a police officer and another is the son of Hollywood actor Anthony Ray Parker.

Thankfully not everyone in New Zealand is brain dead and I learn this morning that one of the pieces of excrement in this group has had his employment terminated now that his employer has become aware of it and a vigilante group has begun to form with the intent of delivering the justice the police seem incapable of setting in motion. I should imagine some suitably limp-wristed tut-tuts will be eventually delivered by an overpaid and out of touch judge after a few hundred thousand dollars of the taxpayers money has been spent on bringing these rock dwellers who will no doubt be supported by legal aid to trial.

Significantly Facebunk will of course not be dragged into any of this despite the fact they have allowed this page to continue for two years without interference.

And speaking of the gutless; the Jianqi Government has just bowed ever so gently to public pressure in regards to drink driving. For the last three years Labour(ed)’s Ian Lees-Galloway has been trying to push through a private members’ bill to lower the allowable blood alcohol levels for drivers to 50mls per litre of blood.

The Nats, most of whom sport ruddy cheeks and large bulbous noses with little veins all over their faces were dead against it. Of course their opposition to the idea had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact they are strongly supported by Federated Farmers whose complexions and hooters are even worse than those of the Cabinet.

As recently as only a few weeks ago Just Is Minister Little Bo Tox was ruling any change out for the very sound (in road safety terms) reason that it would clog up the courts. Funny how idiots can say things with a straight face that merely serve to illustrate how far off-beam their thinking is. Clearly we have a problem with the numbers of munters going out and slinging back the piss and then driving, for if we did not the courts would not potentially be clogged up, now would they?

Furthermore what sort of a message is the woman with the frozen face sending when she rates the spectre of an overworked court system ahead of road deaths and injuries? Once again Government was showing they don’t actually take drunk driving seriously at all. The many millions they have spent on (largely ineffective and pointless) adverts that are supposed to deter such practices are simply a box ticking exercise.

However a very good couple of Campbell Live programmes including one where several of his staff got pie-eyed under controlled circumstances showed the world how pissed you can actually be without reaching the 80 mils currently in force. Considerable public reaction to those programmes convinced the Government that with an election less than twelve months away it might be a good idea to go along with this one.

Having said that; their innate gutlessness and lack of commitment to the real issue has arisen once more. While the change in the levels will come through now its effect has been gelded by the fact that those found with between 50mls and 80mls will only get fined and a few points on their licence.

So despite the fact that we know t6he medical definition of intoxication kicks in at 50mls we will still continue to view those between 50mls and 80mls as slightly naughty school kids who will simply have to write a few lines. “I must not get caught drinking and driving.”

So while we live in a world that allows drunks to drive with little or no consequences and male sluts to spread their STDs among underage girls with no comeback from either police or Facebunk, I would like to share a local story that tends to fly in the face of all of that.

Finally some of you who read my blogs might have noticed that you did not get a personal message from me via Facebook to announce my last blog As above so below the link for which is here: http://philossifer.hubpages.com/hub/asabove . The reason for this is that Facebonk has decided in its infinite wisdom that I am a dangerous creature who should be blocked and thus everyone that I sent one to via a Faceberk email address was bounced back to me. Clearly expressing a (I think) soundly argued opinion about local or world affairs is much worse than boasting about one’s sleazy exploits at the bottom of the sewer. 

If you were one of those to whom I used to send these epistles via a Faceblock email and you still wish to receive these (apparently) dangerous communications, please email me at ken@writerman.co.nz with a suitable non-Faceblank email address and I will add that to my now somewhat damaged mailing list. Of course Facelessbook won’t reply to any emails I have sent them asking for an explanation for this situation. I expect their next move will be to ban me from publishing a link to this on my own timeline. Come the revolution, you bastards!!

Nothing like getting one’s priorities right, eh?

The last chance cafe or the last straw?

The Laboured Party has elected their fourth leader since they were last in power. As that was only five years ago, this is not a good look. But have they got it right this time? Somehow I doubt it. Helen Clark was the last good leader they had. Of course she lost her head because she lost the election and that is a pretty common outcome for leaders who lose an election.

She was then replaced by Phil Goffisthatthetime who, nice guy though he is, was not made of sufficiently stern stuff and who surprised nobody (probably including himself) when he lost the next election.

Next up was an equally inappropriate contender in the form of The Shearer; a diplomat cut from a similarly limp bolt of cloth as his predecessor. I have always believed he was the compromise candidate when the party was at loggerheads over whether to elect Cunliffe (without the “t”) or (Nosy) Parker. As with many compromises in life he ended up pleasing nobody except perhaps those warming the treasury benches.

So now we have the recycled version of Cunliffe which to my eye looks very little different to the rather smug and abrasive version that surfaced at the last leadership stoush.

For those who watch NZ politics fairly closely it is no secret that we have a dearth of good leaders among the parties in our parliament. In fact dearth doesn’t really do justice to the situation. An almost complete absence of good leaders would seem to sum it up better.

This might not matter so much were it not for the fact that the party in power at the moment is laying waste to almost everything Kiwis have held dear and a change of government is urgently needed. In order to bring that about one would expect some good leadership would be a pre-requisite for any of the pretenders.

Of course we could all just bumble along and hope that Jianqi accidentally shoots himself in the foot and the Natsis self-destruct. You might think this could happen with their coalition partners are doing their darndest to emulate the leadership cock-ups of the Laboured Party. 

The Maori Party weren’t able to make up their minds how many leaders they needed until someone kicked Sharples in the goolies and he got the point and stepped aside. The Actors went through two leaders until their cunning election plan in 2011 misfired and their leader didn’t get elected and they had to elect a very short man with a very small brain because he was the only one they managed to get into parliament. And of course the No Future Party managed to retain the same leader but lost the entire party for a while.

However through all of this and despite the squinty-eyed little money-man dropping more than his share of passes the Natsis have stayed true to the one leader since 2006. Prior to that they had three leaders within the space of five years and they paid for that by remaining on the opposition benches.

Significantly the current ‘opposition’ parties have managed pretty much to remain stable. Winston First is still all about Winston, Mana is always going to be Hone’s party – he would leave and start another were it to be otherwise – and the Greens have been stable, only changing their leadership due to a death and a retirement.

But these three parties cannot muster enough support to govern without a coalition partner such as the Laboured Party and that is where the plan all turns to shit.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Laboured Party are a necessary part of any alternative to the NWO/Money worshipping/CIA lapdogs that run this show for now. This presents a big problem for New Zealand. I hate to think what this country will look like if they get a third term.

Unfortunately I can’t see Cunliffe being the one to galvanise the opposition and convince the electorate. He certainly doesn’t convince me. But then I am a picky bugger.

In my opinion Grant Robertson was the obvious choice. He is smart, charismatic and funny. He reminds me of David Lange before he got Rogered by Douglas. Maybe that was what the wider party was worried about. By all accounts the parliamentary party wanted him to lead them and it is that which worries me most about the chances of Cunliffe being able to get them onto the government side of the house.

Of course the unspoken notion is that the wider party was afraid NZ wasn’t ready for their first openly gay PM. I hope that wasn’t their reasoning because I personally believe they were grossly underestimating the electorate if it was. After all this is the country that was among the first to legalise homosexual practices nearly thirty years ago and has recently been one of the first countries in the world to legalise same sex marriage and who was one of the first countries in the world to elect a trans-sexual MP. I think that track record would indicate that the although the average Kiwi bloke or blokes might make jokes about people with different sexual orientation to themselves, they really couldn’t care less what people do in the privacy of their own homes.

It remains to be seen whether Cunliffe remains to be seen still at the helm in October next year. I hope that he does, despite my reservations about him, because a fifth leader in six years would almost certainly be the kiss of death for the Laboured Party and unfortunately for any hope of a coalition to replace the current unholy alliance that is in power now.

Still hope springs eternal, eh and spring is here now so who knows?