It's so wong

Down the road from the home I share with my wife, two dogs and a cockroach is a combined café and bookstore. It is a pleasant place to eat, read and meditate. It was also the gathering place of the Helensville literati, until he left. After a morning writing I took myself there for lunch yesterday. I hoped to recharge the brain with some good reading. Instead I purchased a Joe Bennett book. Just kidding. Joe is a good writer and very very humorous. He has a syndicated column in several newspapers and about 10 collections of those columns. He’s a Pom, now resident in Lyttleton. His commentaries on New Zealand life are dispassionate and, unusually for a Pom, perceptive and respectful. I don’t know how many columns Joe Bennett produces, but I am assuming he commits to at least one a week, and the subject matter ranges from his dog (frequently) to Paul Holmes (less so). HE MAKES MUCH OF THE MUNDANE. Which leads me to Bill English. I have nothing against our deputy prime minister, but I watched him on television yesterday and his performance in the House was insipid at best. His defence of Pansy Wong was toothless in the face of a sustained attack by Pete Hodgson. Incidentally, it was Pete Hodgson who gave us the parliamentary quote of the year the day before. After a not particularly funny and certainly laborious speech in rhyming couplets by National list MP Aaron Gilmore Mr Hodgson commented: “Mr Gilmore delivered his speech in verse, Not particularly well-written; certainly not terse.” Ms Wong was not well served by her deputy leader and if her command of English is not good her command by English is decidedly lacklustre. As indeed is he these days. I met him once and found him distant. I can live with that; more than I can live with the hypocritical joviality of Rodney Hyde, anyway. But what John Key and the government and New Zealand need these days is strength. The country is going through appalling drama at the moment and politically there is more to come with the Foreshore fiasco. To watch Bill English sit there so lacklustre and seemingly still smarting and sulking at being overthrown in favour of John Key is not a good look. He should retire and be replaced with someone—anyone—with more drive and direction. Joe Bennett fills the bill. So, sadly, does my cockroach Bill.

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