In The Last Shower

So the ill-considered proposal to restrict shower pressure to six litres per minute has been put to bed. Somewhat apt and familiar ground for this government, considering that our beds--and the activities therein--have been somewhere this government has had a propensity to gambol before. But the full flush of public ridicule has forced our present--read omnipresent--leaders to retract what was I understand a Greens-enforced policy. They are embarrassed by it I am sure but saved I think by the all-too-common foot and mouth disease of John Key. The Labour Party is astute at this: the ability to ferret out minutiae such as Peter Sharples said that, John Key said this. Key, on the other hand, seems powerless to prevent it and presents an evidential demeanour that gives credence to Clark's claims that Key is inexperienced and not up to the task. As is often said, this is not Clark's election to win; it is Key's to lose. No pressure John.

Dear Michelle VII

Dear Michelle,

Well I have done it! I have called the election (or as Trevor calls it the erection) date for November 8. That’s typical of Trevor of course. He’s symptomatic of my one regret from my time in office, macho males. How much better and more effective I could have been if I had only women in my cabinet. Or better still, no cabinet at all. Heather and I have often discussed how easy it would be for her and me to run this country just on our own.

But that’s the democratic system for you: never the best.

Of course even in an idyllic situation of an all woman cabinet I would retain Michael. The good doctor comes as close as you can get vicarious masturbation: he massages the ego while deflecting the slings and arrows. In the early days Jim used to do that but of late he has got so boring and intense. I hope I lose him in the election.

Just so with Winston. What a liability he has proven to be as predicted by Heather. She never liked him of course, but who does? However, that is not my issue with him, if I couldn’t cope with not being liked I wouldn’t have a cabinet and in fact I wouldn’t have a job! No, my issue with Winston is his hair. It is always so neat and tidy and always looks so good on television whereas I, as you know, have no end of difficulty with mine. Of course that doesn’t matter. And I don’t give a shit how I look (nor does Heather), but, you know, in the lead up to the erection (Ha Ha) and all that… Thank God for Photoshop!

Anyway, I have to get into trim for the election. JK is not going to be an issue, but all this smiling and being nice (talk about sustainable) will be. Build me up Michelle. Give me the spunk to get through it all. You do do spunk, don’t you? Silly question.

Put me on the couch and have your way with me.

H.

The Naked Politician

Yesterday I read of an Australian state minister who was forced to resign because he was caught dancing naked in a bar. Quite right too. It should be a capital offence for any Australian whose names are not Nicole and Kidman to be caught naked in public. Nevertheless, the message here is that the resignation occurred with some promptitude and over what most of us would think a relatively minor matter. Contrast that with the Winston affair and our handling of such matters in New Zealand. This is not the first time a New Zealand parliamentarian had been allowed to hang on with an adhesion akin to Britney kissing Madonna. True, some of them get stripped of their ministerial portfolios but they soon regain them. None that I can remember has actually been forced to resign and I doubt very much that Winston will be the first. In any case, time is running out for that. So I think Winston will survive the current term of government. Whether he returns for the next one I very much doubt. Personally though I have no issue with that. Winston does his job, still has a constituency that adores him, dresses better than Rodney Hide and he might get down and dirty but at least he doesn’t get…naked.

Everybody Hurts

Yet again we have the settlement (sic) of a Maori land claim. This one involves $25 MILLION (how many more police would that put on the beat?), the inevitable apology and some of the most valuable land in Wellington, for which, we are assured, iwi will be excellent custodians. This Treaty Tribunal that considers such matters and by resolution makes recommendations to the Government; what do we know of them? We know they are political appointees; we assume they have a predisposition to such matters (which is to suggest a bias) and they are based in Wellington (so they are bored). But what is their mandate? What is their brief? What is their protocol? Am I too cynical in suggesting that their brief--indeed predisposition--is not so much to determine the validity of a claim as it is to determine how much? I get back to the point of an earlier Fryday: we are a small country with big issues. We cannot afford these treaty payouts. The money spent on them would be better spent on trying to rectify a broader breadth of social problems such as health, crime and education--in all of which Maoridom itself seems to be disproportionately represented. Maori are not being well served by these vacuous settlements, nor are the rest of us. Everybody hurts. Let's have that money spent where it will do most good. Maori can have the apology: coming from this politically correct, fashion-challenged prime minister it doesn't mean much anyway.

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No Apology

The Pope has touched me down under.
I felt uplifted, upright and up for it.
I hope he felt the same.
Then again, I don't know whether this particular priest has those feelings. I doubt very much that he has. But many in the church over which he has secondary domain have a propensity for such excursions and this particular Pope has a particular propensity for apologising for it.
I wonder if all those who were abused will be thankful for that. I wonder whether they will feel, if they now have the capacity for feelings at all, that all the sins visited upon them, all the depravity, all the residual trauma, all have been washed away in one stroke.
Somehow I doubt it.
Have you noticed that today everybody seems to be apologising for something?
We have the Pope doing it for the prolific sexual abuse by priests, the Australian Prime Minister to the Lost Generation and, most frequent of all, our own Prime Minister who seemingly will apologise to most everybody for most anything. Most often Tangata Whenua.
And does it achieve anything?
I doubt it.
For politicians and popes apologies are the 21st Century sound bite: easy, cheap, and once delivered done.
Apologies, as they have grown in frequency, have diminished in sincerity.
But I don't know that.
I just have a feeling.

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All the news that's shit to print.

Xtra’s home page this morning lead with the “news” that there still had been no charge laid against the four English rugby players who had allegedly raped a woman in Auckland. It seems to me a strange lead. With all that has happened in the world, why would you lead with something that has not happened? The fact that those players will be subjected to an internal enquiry by the English Rugby Union may have some news purpose and that could well have been the lead. But it wasn’t. And nor, in my view, should it have been. The whole story seems fatuous from the start. It smacks of xenophobic prurient interest by our media who seems to have time as well as something else on their hands. Yes, I guess there is a place for that type of thing in our media, and readers and viewers for it, but I can’t help thinking that the investigative expertise of the reporters involved could be placed better elsewhere. For example they could investigate how a country of 4 million, akin to a small city elsewhere, can afford to shell-out almost $500 million to a small sector of society while many in our community suffer and the welfare system disintegrates around us. The “Treelords” deal, the latest but not the last in a long line of multi-million dollar so-called Treaty settlements may or may not be morally justified. But, looked at realistically and altruistically (neither of which seems to have much to do with Treaty settlements), could not have Maoridom who negotiated this deal with a compliant government have said, “look you have $500 million in assets and back-rental, we’ll drop the claim if you ring-fence those funds for an injection into our heath system, in putting more police on the beat and resourcing our schools—in helping the total community”? But no. Instead we have something like “open up your coffers, we’ll see how much you have to spare, add 10%, take it and later come back for more. And wile we are at it we have a couple of cousins lining up behind us.” I don’t think that lady was raped, no matter what inference the media take from what happened, but I think the country is.ow many more police the $400 million spent on the “Treelords” settlement would put on the beat or doctors in our wards.

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Fitting the Bill

I can’t say I am sorry to see the back of Hilary Clinton; I find it much preferable to her front. Bill probably does to, given that he spend much of his time these days tagging along behind. But in the final numbers before the national convention it is Hilary who is behind though it is, gratifyingly for her and no doubt Bill, quite a small behind. She may well be still in a position to pull it off with and for Barack Obama. The size of Obama’s constituency is of concern to him and Hilary’s ability to pull off many thousands of blue-collar workers will no doubt appeal to him, as it no doubt does to them. If Hilary can spread what many see as her best asset and sweetly pull in a huge constituency seeking instant relief she will be giving Obama the hand he desperately needs, while blowing off McCain at the same time. She has already demonstrated she can get down deep and dirty, though not perhaps as visibly as husband Bill. Obama is yet to do so, or even to give any indication that he likes to do so. Which is probably why, when I think about it, he hasn’t gone down, and Hillary has.

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How Now Brown Brow

I know someone who devotes her life to improving that life. She devours every course and book on self-improvement, self-assessment and self-recovery she can find. The problem is she has been so busy planning her voyage of self-discovery, she has never actually embarked on it.

Nevertheless, earlier this week, with a little time on my hands, I decided to try something similar, though with less conviction and with more modest goals. I began with addressing the big questions of the Universe—questions of Life and purpose; questions that in many cases had led to wars and, less often, had halted them; questions that had taxed, indeed plagued, greater minds than mine, questions such as: why do we have eye-brows?

Well, let me say at the outset that nothing else in our lives, short of the existence of my wife or if you live in Canterbury Robbie Deans, epitomises a Higher Being at work than eye-brows. They are a miracle of nature, an extraordinary evolutionary retainment after much else has been expelled. And for good reason; those tufts of hair, it has been ordained, serve great purpose and have therefore been retained. Eyebrows, it seems, are there to help keep moisture out of our eyes when we sweat or walk around in the rain. The arch shape diverts the rain or sweat to the sides of our face, keeping our eyes relatively dry. The most obvious advantage of this is that it lets us see clearly when we're sweating a lot or out in the rain. Without eyebrows, getting around in these conditions is a little more difficult. The shape of your brow itself diverts a certain amount of moisture, but eyebrows make a significant difference in your ability to see. Diverting the sweat away is also good because the salt in sweat irritates the eyes, making them sting a little. That at least is what sweaty-scientists tell us.

Of course the arching of eyebrows is also a very significant sign of disapproval or questioning. And this is used to frightening effect by our present prime minister and more recently by John Key, though the latter has not yet mastered the technique. Of some interest also is that the World’s most famous Italian widow, Mona Lisa, had no eye-brows; Lisa Presley, conversely, has them to excess.

There you go: in a short few words I have succeeded in enriching your life and without a book or course in sight. Say thank you Fryday.

Monkey see, monkey do

“Using only its brainpower, a monkey can direct a robotic arm to pluck a marshmallow from a skewer and stuff it into its mouth, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.”

This Reuters story from Chicago put me in mind of Dr Cullen’s budget presentation last week. The analogy of the good doctor being the monkey and the Prime Minister being the robotic arm is inescapable. Increasingly, we are finding that the Prime Minister and much of her party are on auto-pilot as their third term in office winds down. Only Dr Cullen, that master Machiavellian manipulator, shows any of the fire that in the past so consistently trounced a permanently frustrated and insular National Party. And it has to be said, in Fryday’s view, the National Party has not changed with the advent of John Key. If anything, it seems to be more confused and conflicted than ever. So, The National Party can take no credit and no complacency from the state of the Labour Party. National could still win the election in October, but that may be because Labour lost it, literally and figuratively. And here is an interesting point—does Labour want to win? Of course they do. And for the most superficial reasons: the perks of power. But with a recession coming on, inherent tiredness (even exhaustion) there already and the prospects of highly-paid jobs in the private sector or international stage already lined-up it could it be suggested that Cullen and Clark want to go and to leave it to Goff, et al. There is no doubt that even at this late stage Cullen in particular can pull something out of (and of) the old fire. The question is whether, with what he sees in prospect, he will do it?

This week we honour the Queen. R.I.P. Freddie.


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The Kahui Code

So Chris Kahui has been found not guilty with, what some will see as, unseemly haste in terms of jury deliberations? That is unsettling. Fifteen minutes? Deliberations deliberately delayed until after the free lunch? Did this jury have something better to do? Did they all decide after the lunch that a quick decision was necessary so that they could all rush away and, instead, deliberate on Dr Cullen’s budget? Or replays of State of Origin?

It is not for me to comment on the jury’s finding. I wasn’t there and didn’t hear what they heard. Nor do I know enough about the case. But the haste in which they arrived at their not guilty question begs some further questions:

• Should the Police/Prosecution have brought it to court in the first place?
• Was there a single point/evidence in the trial that swayed the jury and after that all else was academic?
• And costly?

And mostly…

• If not Chris, who?

The last is what I find most disturbing. That and the fact that the Police have already announced they are not seeking anybody else or intending to lay any further charges in relation to these murders. Let’s recap: two babies died. Chris and Cru Kahui, twins, were fatally injured on June 12, 2006, and were admitted to Middlemore Hospital the next day, dying five days later at Auckland's Starship Children's Hospital.

They had severe brain injuries, broken ribs and Chris had a broken leg.

And nobody is to now be blamed? Yeah, I am pissed. This is SO wrong! Do you remember when Arthur Allan Thomas was “pardoned” for the murders of the Crewes? Police effectively closed that case, also without further investigation.

Therefore…

§ If we don’t get our own way, first up, we give up?

And two children die, and nobody, nobody, is held to account.

It stinks.

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It's Fun Being Green

Yesterday for reasons that chose not to reveal themselves to me but, sadly, seem to be intrinsic to my current character I chose to look up the official definition of the word malcontent. Webster defines it as “someone who bears a grudge through grievance or thwarted ambition,’ Dictionary.com describes such as a person as “someone who is chronically dissatisfied.” Some of you perhaps thought after reading last Fryday that I too was a malcontent. Believe me, I am not. I know many malcontents—well, three actually—and I am not one. Far from it. I am a realist and, paradoxically, yet understandably for those who know Maggie, a romantic. Still, my ease of mind and equilibrium has been tested of late when I go the website of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance http://www.royalcommission.govt.nz/, look up the public submissions and put my name into the search field. Nowhere I think will you find a more comprehensive or indeed better example of the term malcontent or a life orphaned.

Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat.—Horace.

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