Saint Luke

This week we were burgled. A laptop and an iPod were stolen. But a lot more would have gone had it not been for the advent and the intervention of our dog Luke. Luke who is a light sleeper, unlike the rest of the family, and is something of a sentinel heard something. Enough, apparently, to waken both himself and his protective senses. In Luke’s world something was wrong and that was annoying. Luke, who is otherwise quite a placid dog, doesn’t like to get annoyed and does like to take it out on someone when his is. In this case, fortunately for us, that meant burglars. Big brave burglars, who fled at the sound of a dog clearly on the warpath and with an appetite for a Burglar King. What they didn’t know in the darkness was that this loud and aggressive dog is still a puppy and barely taller than their shins, though, it has to be said, is clearly capable of extracting said shins. So, we were saved further loss by a very small dog with a big heart and a propensity for protection. The burglars have been caught by the police (thank you) and our goods recovered. However, we are told that there is no guarantee we won’t be burgled again. So, here’s the message and the warning for anybody thinking of burgling our place: next time, Luke will be bigger but just as annoyed.

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Banks for nothing

If you don’t know that John Banks is running for the mayoralty of Auckland you are either not living in New Zealand or you are very lucky. The rest of us, I hazard to say, are fed up with his pronouncements and proclamations. Never in all my years in local and national politics have I come across a more opportunistic politician. But that is not the worst. The worst is his blatant, superficial and patronising pandering to the populist vote. You may not think it, outside of Auckland, but Aucklanders are generally fairly sophisticated and are not anti-Wellington. Yet Mr Banks, in his frequent assertions that we won’t be told by Wellington what to do, suggests we are and that the populist vote is that superficial. It would hardly surprise me if he next turns his xenophobic attention to the Australians and evokes the underarm incident. It will not surprise you then that if he does I will likely commit New Zealand’s first act of political assassination. We have nine more months of him and it will get worse in the lead-up to the elections. My view is that Mr Banks has little to offer us, has not kept to any of his previous promises and is little more than a pandering, obnoxious son-of-a-bitch whose only merit is giving Fryday something to write about in these post-Bush years.

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Now playing: Jimi Hendrix - Hey Joe
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