Oh my blog!

Voting by numbers – a guide for the terminally stupid

2014-08-19T14:10:00.000+12:00

For a very long time it has been apparent that a concerted effort has been made to dumb down the population. This is a practice that is not limited to New Zealand; it is alive and thriving pretty much worldwide.

Not mentioning any names, but some countries need less of an effort in this regard to achieve the necessary level of stupidity for their people to become fully compliant with their ruling regime (be it political or religious).

But my point is that for at least the last 30 years there has been a conscious movement to for example, replace commonsense with simplified instructions that appear to have been designed for mentally challenged people.

The more obvious examples would be warnings on electrical appliances to not use them underwater or to try and snip through their power cords while you are using them. Knives often carry the warning that they are sharp and we are also warned that if we allow our children to shove plastic bags over their heads they will face the danger of suffocation.

I am sure there are people out there for whom these warnings would not have been self-evident. However few of them would or should be walking around ‘at large’ rather than securely held in captivity.

But the safety police are not the only ones pandering to our shrivelling grey matter. The catalogue advertisers are coming out with loads of new and useful devices to make our lives easier such as handle tie bags for your kitchen bin. These are in reality simply supermarket bags that some sharp operator has conned people into forking out money for. Another I saw was a memory foam leg pillow, but I am sure you will be able to recall many more of these pointless items that have been designed to solve a problem that doesn’t exist other than in the mind of telemarketers.

Governments in collusion with the media have done their bit by providing us with sound bites and slogans. These have gradually eroded our brain cells so that few can see that they are like pixie dust and contain absolutely nothing of any substance or have any relationship to reality. We have now reached the point where people are completely ignorant of how our laws have been framed or how our justice system works (or doesn’t as is often the case).

Political parties have replaced properly conducted public meetings where they laid out policies and voters were able to ask questions about the implications of those. Admittedly not all people did this and many simply voted what the husband told them to for fear of getting the bash, or what their parents had always voted for fear of being disinherited. But beyond that group there were a reasonable number of people who made their own minds up based upon their assessment of the policies laid out before them.

Today we seem to have reached the point where policies have been shunted aside and replaced by slogans and for the most part, pretty meaningless ones at that.

A sample I saw while trawling the party sites were:

National - Working for New Zealand. I had to wonder exactly what and who in that party is working for New Zealand as it seems they are pretty keen to work for both China and the USA and don’t give a monkey’s for Kiwis.

Labour - Vote Positive. This isn’t even grammatically correct unless they are telling us to vote for a party I didn’t even realise was standing.

New Zealand First - It’s common sense. What is common sense these days and where do we find any? Certainly not in our Parliament.

The Maori Party -Tu Maori mai (That’s us). Yes; I get that is you, but so what?

The Mana Party - Movement of the people. What movement would that be, then? A bowel movement perhaps?

All these sorts of dumb slogans do is reduce politics to the level of the sound bite and people not knowing what these parties stand for.

So just when you thought it was safe to go back into the polling booth, along comes Vote Compass. This has been heavily promoted by the nice young folks at TV One as the answer to all our problems; apart from confusing a few people by having them think Compass is a new party seeking their vote, that is.

Vote Compass is an app that has been set up on TVNZ’s website to help people reach a decision on who to vote for! It is a sort of vote by numbers set up where you answer a few rather non-specific survey type multiple choice questions and at the end it tells you whose policies align best with your answers.

Now you can call me paranoid – and many will; but if you take the subjective analysis by the individual out of this particular equation how do you know you aren’t being manipulated to vote the way the designers of the app want you to? Nobody knows what agenda these people might be trying to push.

I see that 176,000 odd (some very odd) people have used this app and I can only hope that most of them did it for a laugh rather than out of any real desire to make a decision on who to vote for. However the cynic in me says that most of them probably did take the survey to help them reach a decision on who to vote for.

Is it any wonder the country is going to the dogs? I expect the next election will bring a board game which is a variation on snakes and ladders (called snakes and snakes) where you throw the dice and vote for the party whose square you land on.

Charlie Segar revisited

2014-08-15T14:53:00.000+12:00

Who the hell is/was Charlie Segar I hear many of you ask? Actually, I don’t, but I’m guessing many of you will when you see this title. I know I would have if I hadn’t done a bit of research.

First of all, I should point out that he is no relation to Bob Seger as far as I know, but there is a vague connection. He was a musician; a blues pianist and occasional singer and he wrote a song that many of you will know. It is called Key To The Highway. My own collection of music includes several versions of this song, which to those who love the blues is regarded as a standard.

So what has got me talking about Charlie Segar?

Well, the answer is contained in the title of that song. I feel it is apt as several people have recently found ways to send a certain Key to the highway – possibly permanently.

I haven’t yet read Nicky Hager’s book,but it would appear to be a can that is spilling worms that are all diving for cover and claiming deafness as well as blindness for their reluctance to come out into the spotlight.

I think most of us had a suspicion that behaviour of the sort exposed in the extracts we have seen was going on, but prior to this week we had no real evidence of it and so it remained a suspicion. Those of us who suggested out loud that it was going on were often regarded as ‘conspiracy theorists’. This of course is usually used as a pejorative term; but what happens when the conspiracy is revealed and it becomes clear that we have been ruled by a conspiracy after all?

There will still be a lot of people around who will try to avoid the ugly truth and counter that ‘everybody does it’.

Well, do they?

If so; then they all need to be outed and following this book, I imagine there could be a lot more revelations if that is the case. Nobody is saying that one side has a monopoly on dirty tricks, but even if everyone is at it, that would still not make it right (small “r”).

In one respect we should not be too surprised about what Hager has revealed because it is an inevitable consequence of personality politics. For far too long we have focussed on individuals. This is largely because they have presented themselves to us rather than their policies. Often it has been hard to determine what their policies are and even when you could identify what a politician stood for you would find out after they were elected to office that they didn’t really stand for that after all.

In short; our political landscape has taken on the appearance of a post nuclear holocaust, strewn with the detritus of broken promises, failed economic theories and secret agenda. The whole thing has been ramped up even more this year with jackbooted responses by the incumbents to any free expressions of opinion, satirical or otherwise. The over-reaction to the likes of Darren Watson’s extremely accurate and funny Planet Key single, which it appears the electoral commission are trying to ban from all airplay (and possibly more) is not counter-balanced by any similarly robust attempts to shut up the likes of Mike Hosking.

I don’t want either of them silenced. They each have a right to broadcast their views and how it can be considered that Darren might influence the voters and that condescending prick Hosking won’t is bizarre. Surely everyone who expresses a political opinion in public could potentially influence voters. As long as we all know what their motivation is, then why shouldn’t they?

And if the politicians are wondering why we are seeing rallies chanting, “Fuck John Key” and burning him in effigy, then they need look no further than the contents of Hager’s book. The Government of our country (whichever hue they might be) are supposed to be LEADERS! What they are seen to do rather sets the standard for all those people too weak-willed to know how to behave. Unfortunately that group is probably in the majority. Just as people idolise the flawed egotists that grace our TV screens and the pages of women’s magazines, so too do they follow the lead set by the leaders of industry and politics. This gets even uglier when the leaders in politics start idolising the leaders of industry. Many of those industrialists are even more amoral than the politicians, and when they begin calling the tune and the pollies dance to it, the ordinary voter gets even more of a shafting.

Personally I don’t see any need to burn John Key in effigy; I’m surprised they used an effigy when a fireplace would have done the job better. And as for fucking John Key, I reckon I’ll leave that to others, thank you all the same.

I think the release of Dirty Politics will be a turning point in this election campaign. I will be very surprised if the Nats can paddle their way out of this particular pongy creek. It has now got rapids and I can’t see how their canoe can hope to negotiate all of those without the crew getting a serious dunking and many sinking without a trace.

Even if Simon the Pixie was to pour a whole tanker load of that oil he is so fond of on the waters and they actually managed to avoid most of the rocks and reach the dry land of the treasury benches, there will still be a whole flotilla of investigations to encounter after that. We could find ourselves having to go back at the polls again in 12 months’ time.

So thank you Nicky Hagar you have probably sent John Key to the highway and as the song says, (in an opening verse custom made for Key):

I got the key to the highway,
Billed out and bound to go.
I'm gonna leave here running;
Walking is most too slow”

Let’s hope he doesn’t dawdle.

I’m free. (actually I’m much older and wiser than that).

2014-04-04T10:34:00.000+13:00

Do I look that stupid? Don’t answer that on the grounds I might have to clip you around the ear for being cheeky.

Apparently a Washington based think tank (has there ever been a better oxymoron?) seems to think so.

The curiously named Social Progress Imperative has just ‘published’ or rather a compliant and gullible New Zealand media has just published for them, a survey that proudly announces I and my fellow Kiwis are the freest people in the known world.

Now if that was actually true it might be something to be grateful for given the appalling conditions that exist in some countries. But much as I don’t want rain on anyone’s parade – oh alright I do sometimes enjoy damping down some of the more ridiculous shows of misplaced enthusiasm – I feel it is important to take issue with this survey/report/PR exercise.

The first thing that strikes me about such a report is that I wonder what criteria went into assessing whatever ‘data’ they might have collected. Closer inspection reveals that basically 12 ‘categories’ were assessed and given scores, which obviously would have to be subjective guesses (educated or otherwise) by those compiling the report. As that much is really a no-brainer it becomes obvious that placing much reliance upon such a document would be foolish in the extreme. After all one man’s freedom is another man’s bondage and any assessment of this type can only be arrived at in the context of one’s own experiences.

So now that I have rubbished the credence of this report, I find myself turning my thoughts to the purpose of it.

Why would somebody want to produce a report like this, apart from the fact that they managed to get paid squillions of dollars to do so? Somebody commissioned/ordered this report to be done otherwise it would not have happened.

My first reaction is to notice that the report has its origins in the USA. This is a country that churns out many millions of reports each year that they then feed to a keen or compliant press most of whom are owned lock stock and gun barrel by large multi-nationals and who have the resources and the infrastructure to disseminate these pearls of wisdom all over the ‘free world’ in less time than it took me to type the last sentence.

My guess is that this was commissioned (openly or otherwise) by a group of multi-national bodies corporate. Anyone even vaguely familiar with human psychology will know that one of the best ways to get people on your side or sympathetic to you is to flatter them and make them feel good about themselves. Success is almost guaranteed if they are aware that your flattery is based upon some sort of ‘scientific data’ that ‘proves’ to them that they are as fabulous as you have been telling them.

The US Government has been a world leader in propaganda for an extremely long time and their influence stretches far and wide. Countries like New Zealand have regarded them as major allies all along and this is even more apparent when the treasury benches are occupied by those from the right of the political spectrum. It is a rare thing indeed for New Zealand to ever oppose anything the USA does and we so often fall over backwards trying to accommodate them with their intelligence gathering activities and by supporting them either physically or morally in their military endeavours. We also ‘enjoy’ a favourable trade relationship with them – although it doesn’t take a genius to work out who actually gets the most favours from that.

Now don’t get me wrong, any of my American readers; it’s not the American people I am talking about here it is the pond-life that occupy their corridors of power. The fact is that much of our own pond-life thinks the sun shines out of their algae encrusted bums.

So what really is the deal here with this report? Why has it come out now?

I think there are two obvious reasons for this report being released now and my diseased and conspiracy addled brain says the timing of this is no coincidence. This is election year and who stands to benefit from a report that screams in headlines that we have never been so free?

Why that must be our benevolent Government of course; the very same one that has expended so much time and energy stoutly defending our right to privacy, freedom of speech and democracy. Now what exactly have they done to move our freedom forward?

Oh yes, that’s right when more than two thirds of those who voted against asset sales in a referendum last year opposed asset sales they publicly announced even before the results that they would ignore our views if they clashed with their own. The there have been the breaches of the rights of the Tuhoe people and Kim Dotcom, the protection of coalition partners who cross the line on matters of trust and then keeping a Minster in power who has created an apparent conflict of interest during a Ministerial overseas junket. And that is just the tip of an iceberg far larger than any encountered by the Titanic.

Of course this is a potentially good election year present for the current Government who coincidentally (thank heavens for co-incidence) sycophantically adores of the US administration.

But it is also a great distraction. It distracts the attention of the masses from more important matters such as that horrendously disempowering document the TPPA which our (same) Government is so keen to sign up to and which the US administration wants us to sign up to as well (more coincidence).

So while we are busy celebrating our new found status as the bastions of freedom our Government is busy trying to sell those freedoms off to multi-nationals via this cheerily entitled Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement which will have us reduced to minor partners in our own resources. This agreement will allow these corporates to dictate what we do in what used to be our country, although even that particular ownership must be under a cloud now. That is because the toothless OIC seems keen to sell up endless tracts of land to off-shore investors while the Government assists morally unsuitable migrants to gain citizenship and buy up properties at ridiculous prices thus making property unaffordable for the locals and the Government keeps selling NZ assets by the pound. The latter is the biggest lie of all when they say they will only sell the majority of shares to Kiwis but then later have to revise that because not enough Kiwis have the dough to buy them.

Oh yes. That sounds like freedom, doesn’t it?

And before I close I should mention that closer examination of the SPI (or spy?) report reveals that all is not quite as good as the screaming headlines might suggest. Our health system is going down the toilet along with our general health and our high suicide statistics and our eco system sustainability is shot to pieces. But we are ‘free’ to experience all that, so it must be alright.

It’s time more people in Godzone woke up and smelled the rat in mi kitchen Come September let’s fix dat rat.

Sometimes the little things they don’t tell you can be a big deal

2014-03-25T11:00:00.000+13:00

I like to think I am a fairly clued-up consumer. I certainly know my rights, as many a bruised and battered retailer can tell you. I have to confess to not being the most savvy person when it comes to technology, but I do have the ability to work stuff out using what knowledge I do have and applying a good deal of linear logic.

However I have to say that the retail market today is not as user-friendly as it was ‘when I were a lad’. And I think this is down to more than the fact that I am a grumpy old bastard these days rather than the wide eyed innocent I once was. Yes, I was a sweet little kid once; I know it’s hard to believe today.

My main complaint with the retail sector today is the almost complete absence of ‘service’, never mind service with a smile. When this is added to an abysmal lack of product knowledge (probably due to a total lack of training) the end result can be frustrating and time consuming for those of us who would rather consume their time doing things they enjoy rather than battling idiots.

The reason for my current outburst is threefold; or rather my reasons are threefold.

The first in this fold involves buying a new Television set. Not a big deal, I would have thought, but I was about to learn otherwise.

I considered sparing the blushes of the retailers concerned in this saga, but then I thought," What the hell for?” The whole purpose of a cautionary tale is to caution others and I believe that should extend to the noo-noos who need a slap up the side of their head to adjust their thinking.

So we headed off to No Lemmings and chose a 32” model. Of course these days all the new models come with Freeview decoders already loaded, so we figured it would be a chance to ditch our old decoder. The salesman said the model would suit us well and the sale was made.

We took it home and after lunch I lugged our outrageously heavy old CRT model out to the garage and began to set the new lightweight version up. I should point out here that I differ from many male consumers in that I actually read the manual of any new appliance before attempting to set it up. So by the time I began plugging everything in I had read that little book from cover to cover, which made it all the more puzzling to me when it would not receive any television signals at all.

After a bit of energetic swearing I picked up the phone and rang the tech feller at Low Nemmings and spent the next half hour or so following all of his instructions, but still without success. After I had tried everything he told me there must be a fault with the set and I should bring it back in. By this stage it was too late to get back to the store before closing time, so I lugged my heavy CRT back and hooked it up to the old decoder and boxed up the brand new set ready to return the next day. I was annoyed because my whole Saturday afternoon had been wasted buggering around with this and now I was going to have to go and waste more time down at Snow Leopards getting it changed over.

On the Sunday when I returned the set to the store they plugged it in and ....it worked perfectly well. I was flabbergasted. At first they tried to tell me there must be something wrong with my aerial. I explained there was nothing wrong with my aerial because my old CRT TV worked perfectly well with it.

It was only then that they asked me what sort of aerial I had. ‘Why I have a satellite dish”, I answered. “Do you have a Freeview decoder?” she asked. “Well yes I do, but surely I don’t need it as this set already has one”, I replied.

I then learned that the Freeview decoders that are loaded into these new TVs are only suitable for use with a UHF aerial. I gave the salesperson a piece of my mind over how much trouble I had been put to due to the original dimwit who sold me the set not asking me what sort of aerial I had when I bought the bloody thing. It was just lucky that I had not got rid of my old decoder otherwise I would have been up for a new one of those as well or a UHF aerial and all the costs associated with having that installed. And all because a dopey twat who calls himself a salesman had failed to ask me one little, but vitally important question.

A few weeks later we had to replace a broken shower head. Luckily Might of Ten was running a bathroom special and had all sorts of shower heads on special. We headed down to the store and over to the prominently signposted bathroom section and began looking through the shower heads. A young assistant came over to help and asked us what we were looking for. We told her what we wanted and picked up one that appeared to be the correct size based on the old one I had brought along for comparison.

When we got home I noticed the installation instructions were pretty short on information, but I figured out what went where and set the whole deal up. When I turned it on the water came out beautifully......for about 30 seconds. Then it started squirting out all around the perimeter of the shower head and spraying all over me, the walls and the floor. I turned the water off, dried myself and the walls, disconnected the new shower head and headed back to Mighty Tent with the intention of converting said shower head into a weapon of mass destruction. However I had calmed down by the time I reached the store and realised that one does occasionally strike faulty products, so no need to get unduly wild about it.

This more reasonable approach soon changed, though when I got to Metal Tin and the girl at the returns desk asked me if I was on mains pressure water or not . When I told her I was she said, “Oh you can’t use those ones on mains pressure. If you do it will just blow them apart and the water will spray out everywhere.” We were aware that some showerheads could not be used with mains pressure because we had already rejected a couple of models because their packaging stated that they weren’t suitable for mains pressure. But the one we had chosen bore no such warning.

So once again a cretin masquerading as a salesperson who was fully aware of the choice we had made had failed to ask me one small but vital question and my entire Saturday afternoon was wasted because of it. On the upside the replacement showerhead we picked out turned out to be about $10 cheaper than the one we had originally chosen.

The final in this trilogy of tragedy happened less than a fortnight ago when our Freeview decoder – yes the one that we nearly sold but couldn’t because...well you know the rest; died. We were watching a programme and the picture just started pixilating and finally broke up altogether. At first I didn’t know whether it was atmospherics, the satellite dish, the new TV or the decoder. Eventually I came to the conclusion it had to be the decoder or the dish as the TV worked fine with other media.

We figured we were long overdue for an upgrade in that department anyway and made the decision to get one that recorded as well as received. I saw Narvey Hormone had one that we liked the look of but No Lemons had the same one for a hundred bucks less.

I didn’t want to go back to the useless buggers down there so determined to get the deal of the century I headed off to Hardly Normal with an internet printout of the deal from Know Nothings in my pocket. After getting the salesman to show me all the whistles and bells on the machine I wanted I dug into my pocket and said, “That looks good, but here’s the thing; your competitors half a k down the road have got this same machine at $100 less than you. Can you do better than that?”

The salesman took my piece of evidence with him and consulted with (presumably his manager or possibly himself) and came back and offered me the machine for $1 less than his competitor. I took it and the discounted extended warranty as well.

When I got home I was impressed with how easy installation was and within 10 minutes it was working and I was impressed at how it enhanced the already very good picture. I was looking forward to watching the rugby on Prime later that night (I am too tight to pay for Sky).

However when the time to tune into the footy came around I found that Prime had disappeared from my list of channels along with Trackside and C4 (not that I watch either of those). I tried retuning, but no luck. I rang the 0800 number for the manufacturers because the retail store was long since tucked up in bed, but found they only operate between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday! Imagine that. I would expect most people buying a new decoder would do so in the weekend and then if they have any problems be absolutely delighted to learn they could not get any help until Monday during the hours they are trying to earn a living....NOT!

So I missed the game and took the machine back to Hardy Nomads the next morning. I then spent an unbelievable amount of time arguing with the (alleged) manager of the TV department over what the cause was. He had tried it on their set up and found he got the same results as I had.

He first told me the reason I couldn’t get Prime was because it wasn’t available on these machines and offered to give me my money back. I said I didn’t want to return it; I wanted it fixed and asked him why they would have Prime was on the EPG if it was not available. He said that was because they load that at the factory. I countered that by asking why they would load on a channel you couldn’t get since they didn’t list any others you couldn’t receive and anyway how come it was there when I first set the thing up? He then tried to tell me it was it was my satellite dish that was faulty – but was stumped to explain how I was able to get all the other channels. I said there must be a simple fix and told him he should ring the manufacturers for me on Monday and in the meantime I would take the set home and await results.

I am happy to say that on Monday I got a call telling me to go to the manufacturer’s website, download a fix onto a data stick, insert it into my decoder and follow the instructions and all should be well. I did that and everything worked out fine, but it could have saved me an awful amount of grief if the store had known enough about its own stock to know that a fix was necessary for these machines.

I just hope nothing else breaks down because the next time my whizz-bang new whatever fails due to some lame-brain failing to advise me properly they will find themselves in A&E having said appliance removed from a place where no such appliance should ever go.

The good guys don’t always wear white

2014-03-11T20:57:00.000+13:00

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

2014-02-17T14:17:00.000+13:00

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

2014-02-04T14:48:00.000+13:00

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

2013-12-10T20:14:00.004+13:00

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

2013-11-28T13:43:00.001+13:00

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^stCentury.

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)

2013-11-05T09:21:00.004+13:00

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?

2013-09-24T17:11:00.000+12:00

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?

A wigwam for a goose’s bridle

2013-08-28T14:30:00.000+12:00

It never fails to amaze me how gullible people can sometimes be. It is a shame I don’t have more cheek than I do, because it seems that the snake oil salesmen are having a great time these days.

For every wacko idea you can think of there seems to be somebody marketing it and selling it and for some reason they never seem to run out of suckers to buy it. Some of the schemes are downright evil and some very trusting albeit naive people get sucked in and spat out and they are often pretty knocked about by the experience. For the peddlers of such goods and services horsewhipping is too good.

However every once in a while somebody comes along with a really wacky idea that is taken up by people who should know better and I for one can’t help but chuckle at both the audacity of the vendor and the stupidity of the buyer.

One such scheme was dreamed up by a bloke called Gary Bolton. Now before I go any further I should make it clear that I think horsewhipping is also too good for Bolton because his little scheme had some catastrophic downstream effects. However he is far from the only culpable party here. Bolton’s outrageous plan could have been scuppered long before any harm was done if certain bodies including the U.K. Government and various police and military forces had done their jobs properly.

Bolton is the bloke who came up with the idea of selling bomb detectors and made over three million quid selling them to police and military clients in Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, China, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Egypt and Tunisia. Good idea, you might think until you learn that these devices were completely bogus.

Based upon a golf ball finder the device consisted of a box with a handle and antennae attached and some pieces of plastic inside it. It was first launched in 1999 and tested by the Royal Engineers whose opinion was that was only accurate about 30 percent of the time, which of course means that the other 70 percent of the time you were likely to get blown up. In other words probably no better than guesswork at detecting bombs.

It would seem Mr Bolt-On took this assessment with a pinch of salt and a lot more twink and as a result his publicity material for his marvellous machine explained that the device worked by locking onto the atomic structure of the suspicious parcel or substance and then giving its exact location. He claimed it worked on static electricity, which would seem to me to be a rather dangerous thing to have around explosive devices (think cellphone and petrol station). Under the circumstances Bolt-On seems an appropriate name for this modern day mad inventor.

Our backyard amateur engineer also claimed his device had a range of 766 yards at ground level and 2.5 miles in the air and could penetrate lead lined and metal walls, water and earth, but not apparently the brains of certain armies, police and trade missions. Okay, I made those last couple up.

The British judiciary has just jailed Bolt-On for seven years for his fraud and it was claimed at his trial that people had lost their lives as a result of relying upon his machines, which if true is definitely not funny.

But what I can’t get over is why it took the law enforcement agencies over a decade to catch up with this bloke considering he was marketing these machines to law enforcement agencies and the military. I am also gobsmacked that the U.K. Government offered support to his enterprise and Whitehall’s sales and export division even introduced clients to him and allowed him to use their premises for demonstrations. One can only assume that he used a genuine bomb detector for these demos otherwise it is hard to see how anyone – even the police or military could be fooled. And they wonder why military intelligence is one of the best examples of an oxymoron you can find.

Let us not forget that this bloke’s clients were people who were ‘in the business’ so to speak. So how come they were so comprehensively hoodwinked and shouldn’t they all be appearing before the beak charged with criminal negligence for buying the bloody things and putting them into service? At the very least heads should roll (or be blown off) in every agency that bought them.

Mr Bolt-On was not working alone; he had a partner-in-crime called Jim McCormick who was obviously a better salesman than him and who was jailed in May this year for selling 50 million quid’s worth of the contraptions, mainly to Iraq. Expect a fatwa on that dude when he emerges from jail.

But the real punch line comes at the end as it does with every good story. Our enterprising duo was nothing if not cheeky; they were selling their devices for £15,000 each yet they only cost £1.82 each to make.

Is this the ultimate in cynical disregard for human life or what?

Finding a final resting place

2013-08-19T11:29:00.000+12:00

There comes a time in our life when old age suddenly dawns upon us. There are exceptions of course. Those who die young never experience old age and those whose health deteriorates comparatively early, no doubt have more warning of the approach of old age.

For me it is still on the horizon and not actually here yet (silence you rude buggers!). However for my parents it has definitely arrived. Now old age doesn’t need to be a bad thing, but one thing is for certain; it definitely changes a lot of things.

Sadly none of the Governments of the last fifty years seem to have paid much attention to the changing demographic make-up of our country. They have all told us plenty of times along the way that we were heading towards a time when the oldies would outnumber the young ‘uns, but they seem to have taken very little account of it in their planning.

What this has led to is a very messy situation in regards to the needs of those older people. Health services for the elderly are notoriously complicated and difficult to access and unless as an older person you have a tenacious advocate working for you it is likely you will miss out on many things you could be entitled to and get ignored by many agencies that would have us believe they are there to help older people.

Rules have been devised to ensure assistance is not wasted on those who have amassed fortunes along the way, but those rules have been developed without a broader overview of the developing situation. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the area of housing for the elderly.

I will share some of what I have found out over the course of the last couple of years in the hopes that some of my readers might be saved some of the grief I have encountered while trying to negotiate this slippery path.

The options when an older person can’t live in their own home any longer are as follows:

· Move in with kids

· Council housing

· Retirement village

· Rest home care

· Renter units in a retirement village or rest home

The first of these is often not possible for any number of reasons. The house might not be suitable for example it might have stairs; it might not be large enough to accommodate two extra people; the kids might not live anywhere suitable; or they might not be able to afford to stop working and look after their parents. In many cases more than one of these factors will prevent this option from being a goer.

Council housing

The option of council housing is only available to those with absolutely no means, so unless your folks are absolutely boracic this one is out of the picture. The asset limits might differ slightly around the country, but in Tauranga for example the limit is $30,000. This means if your parents have just sold their house they will be well outside those limits.

Retirement villages

Retirement villages have a lot of obvious benefits and several hidden fish-hooks. Here your parents will have a chance to ‘buy’ a small villa, apartment or cottage within a secure environment with a lot of useful age-related services available on-site. But don’t ever let them sign up for one of these without very carefully examining the licence to occupy yourself or getting your solicitor to do so if legal documents are not your thing.

The fish-hooks you will need to look out for are pretty damned sharp and you need to know what their implications will be. For example they are not actually ‘buying’ the property in the normal sense we Kiwis understand. They are entering into a licence to occupy which means the property can only ever be sold back to the company that owns the village. It therefore follows that at the very most they will only get back the amount that company has specified in the agreement at the outset.

In other words they will not see any capital gain from their investment and in some cases they could actually lose on the deal. I have seen one such agreement where, if the unit cannot fetch the same amount from the next occupant then the outgoing one takes the loss rather than the company.

Now that might sound fair enough, but when you realise that at the end of tenure, the company also charges a further 30% of the ‘purchase price’ back to the outgoing occupants you begin to get the picture of a greedy corporate ripping off vulnerable elderly people. Some agreements even require the outgoing occupant (actually this is usually their heirs as there is normally only one way you leave these places), to redecorate before the new occupant comes in and often they are forced to use contractors chosen by the village owners, so no chance to make any savings there either.

There is also a weekly fee of about $100pw to see that the windows are washed rubbish is collected, and as a part contribution to general village maintenance and access to various village facilities.

Rest home care

Rest homes involve a good deal of preparatory work and can also be a trap for the unwary. Of course a rest home environment means they will only have one small room to live out of and will have to get rid of nearly all of their personal stuff due to the space constraints involved with that.

If you are considering such an option you will first require an assessment carried out on behalf of the DHB to establish what level of care is required. An assessment level indicates whether or not they are entitled to subsidised care. This is very important because if they are not entitled to subsidised care the full costs will have to be borne privately.

The assessment involves three basic criteria; care needs; asset levels; and income. Assets cannot exceed approximately $230,000 for a couple, which if they have just sold a house means they will probably not qualify. Income will not be a problem if their only source is NZ Superannuation, or a benefit for a widow, invalid or service veteran.

The care needs category is the where the assessors have the most scope to disqualify. Problems arise when one half of a couple qualifies for care and the other does not and trying to find out exactly what qualifies is damned near impossible as the actual criteria are shrouded in DHB jargon and mystery. I can only conclude the DHB is suffering from a variety of paranoia which causes them to keep this stuff secret in case anyone learns how to qualify and constructs an elaborate opera to act out to achieve their ends. Good luck to anyone trying to do that with an old person who has forgotten what you told them ten minutes ago!

However what I have been able to learn is that unless your parent has dementia – and good luck getting a diagnosis of that despite tons of visible evidence – or an inability to feed or dress themselves, they will almost certainly be classified as fit to look after themselves and ineligible for subsidised rest home care.

Fair enough; you might think. Why not just pay for their care? For the uninitiated I will now reveal the cost of care in such establishments when the subsidy is not available. Are you sitting down? For just one person to be cared for in a rest home you are likely to be paying between $800 and $1200 per week (between $41,600 and $62,400 per year).

That sum probably isn’t unreasonable when you consider all their needs are theoretically being met, but on an affordability level it can be another matter altogether.

Hospital level care in a rest home falls into the same price range.

Renter units in a retirement village

Renter units sound like a good option when contrasted against the costs of rest home care if a subsidy is not available. But at around $500pw ($26,000 per year) they can be costly if your relative stands a good chance of living for some while yet.

It’s a minefield dear readers and one which some of us have already almost had our legs blown off on and which many more of you will have to negotiate sometime in the future.

After seeing all the options, the retirement village option doesn’t seem so bad. Just make sure you check that agreement first.

Good luck, guys and gals. You will need it.

Spy vs Spy and other funnies

2013-08-06T14:57:00.000+12:00

If it wasn’t for the fact that this is ‘real life’ the antics of Jianqi’s spies would be almost as funny as the Spy vs Spy comic strips in Mad Magazine used to be.

There is certainly an equivalent amount of bungling going on anyway, all of which goes to show that our Minister of Spies couldn’t organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery.

Call me naive, but I always thought that the point about spying is that nobody knows you are doing it. Stealth and subterfuge are the cornerstones of spying, surely? Spies are often referred to (at least in British TV shows) as ‘the funny people’, except I don’t think that was supposed to mean they act like the Keystone Cops. In this case I think the word funny had the meaning of funny peculiar rather than funny ha-ha.

However it seems that Jianqi’s funny people really are hilarious. Their idea of subterfuge would appear to be closing their eyes and saying, “You can’t see me”.

Of course we now live in the digital age and most of us are aware that we leave a large digital footprint almost everywhere we go, both in the real and cyberworlds. All sorts of people have been spying on us for ages. It’s just that most of them up to now have been comparatively harmless.

Advertisers and marketers have been dredging the cybercanals for a couple of decades trying to find the right fit for each of us so they can deluge us with special offers and products they think we can be convinced to buy. Annoying though this is, it is for the most part, pretty harmless for all of us apart from the truly gullible. But at the end of the day it is impossible to protect the truly stupid from the consequences of their own actions. We shouldn’t even try anyway, because as long as they exist it gives us all a chance to feel a little more secure about ourselves.

So what is likely to come out of this current furore about Jianqi and his funny people snorting up every tiny grain of information they can on everyone they think might pose a problem for them?

Probably not a lot, I am sorry to say, at least not from Parliament. Yes there will be a series of tiresome and expensive inquiries and a few more departmental heads will be dropping into the basket, but unless we are really fortunate it is unlikely that the power behind the drones will be brought to account. We can only hope and pray that the voters make up for that in 2014 – always providing Jianqi is not at this very moment attending the Robert Mugabe School of electoral practices.

If the opposition was sufficiently organised and ACTUALLY WANTED TO they could really make things tough and work on Peter Dung and get him to vote down the GCSB bill which seeks to legalise the illegal acts the Government has been caught out doing.

Sadly when it comes to matters of national security many people are easily captured by scare tactics and seem to think there are shadowy figures out there who might steal away our freedoms if we don’t implement all sorts of regulations and surrender our right to privacy in order to stop them.

Well, hello! There are such people but they ain’t so shadowy. They currently occupy the Government benches of this land and they have already travelled a long way down that path towards Big Brother. Doublespeak has been a feature of their speeches for a very long time.

But whenever a government is questioned about introducing these types of measures their first reaction is to try and justify their lunacy rather than deny the activity is taking place. No better example of that can be found in Jianqi’s rambling nonsense on his favourite (read most compliant and National Party friendly) radio station More FM. He tore a large leaf out of the George Dubbyah book of crowd control by claiming he had to give the GCSB more powers because there were people undergoing terrorist training in Yemen with the implication they were going to return to Godzone, blow us all to pieces and take over the country.

Duhhh! Let’s face it; with the devious lot we have running this country (into the ground) anyone who wanted to take it over would only need to chuck them 30 pieces of silver and it would be theirs. If you don’t believe me just look at how many large multi-national corporations have already picked up the deeds to much of our industry and land with full co-operation from the Government. Several have even had laws changed to suit them.

The other argument that has been put forward to try and justify these intrusions into our freedom is that if we don’t have anything to hide, then we don’t have anything to worry about. The trouble with that one is that not so long ago I can recall a couple of politicians who were apoplectic when they thought their little tete-a-tete had been overheard by a journalist. But surely you had nothing to hide, boys, so where was the harm?

I won’t be holding my breath for the combined opposition to do the damage to Jianqi, although I will be delighted if I am proven wrong about that. But what does give me some hope in all of this is that Jianqi has made one of the most fundamental blunders a polly can make. He has threatened the freedom of the press.

Now I have been very critical of the job the NZ press has been doing in terms of bringing this government to account, and I have suggested in the past that it is because they are poorly trained and lack the mongrel journos once had. I still think that is the case, but I have always known that they hold the principle of freedom of the press very close to their hearts even if they are rather slack about going after the rabbit.

Jianqi has foolishly assumed that because they have let him get away with murder before they won’t have the balls to stand up for themselves when he impinges on this final bastion of their pride. Wrong! Most journos see this sort of intrusion as the equivalent of doing something unspeakable to their mother. They will (and already are) going after him with implements designed to nip off the bits that offended them and they will not stop until something much bigger comes along. Already the papers are full of stories with unflattering pictures and little editorialising comments throughout them. Words like bungling and blunder are being liberally used and it is quite apparent that they are going after him.

There is an unspoken rule in politics which any politician should know. It is that you don’t upset the press because if they take a dislike to you they can and will make you look stupid. You can get away with being rude to them and failing to front for interviews but if you touch the sacred cow of press freedom, then you had better find another career because this one is over.

Watch your papers and television news programmes over the next few months. The new game in town will be Pin the Tail on the Jianqi and when they’ve finished he won’t want to sit in parliament again.

Here we go with Judith & John or the ABC of NZ politics part 2

2013-07-22T15:53:00.000+12:00

Last week I brought you the first half of a leaked document that is being used to train our new MPs. Of course since then there have been denials from the Government that this document is genuine and even suggestions (heaven forbid) that I made the whole thing up.

Clearly this is another case of brain fade from the ruling party and to prove that I publish for you this week part two of the MP’s primer.

Last week we learned the letters from A for amnesia (or had you forgotten that already – John certainly has), to M for mess which is what Judith and John will have to clean up this week after Smaug lashed out over the weekend. Trying to turn Wellywood in Middle Earth wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it Johnny?

N is for noes which is what you pick when you want to vote against a particular bill (in accordance with the party line of course). Lately it has also come to mean Novopay; a pay system developed to ensure teachers don’t get too powerful (or paid). It was teed up by the last Labour Government and its failings are therefore not the fault of the present Government despite being signed off by them in the face of advice from almost every quarter not to do so.

O is for obfuscation, which is an art you will be trained in for important occasions such as answering direct and confrontational questions from the press. (Does anyone in the Press Gallery still do this?). Simply put, it is a technique that involves using at least five words where one would have done. Your speech is delivered in a circular pattern that leads one inevitably back to the start without divulging anything that even vaguely resembles a direct answer. It has been unkindly suggested that “O” also stands for old-boys’ network, a club where your membership entitles you to preferential career advancement and wealth beyond your wildest dreams, but this is merely an ugly rumour perpetuated by the opposition. There is no such thing as an old boys’ network anymore. The name was first changed to old persons’ network and subsequently to ‘senior citizens’ network’, which as everybody knows is another name for Grey Power and nothing sinister at all.

P is for posturing and populist. These two are a package deal. Posturing is the art of appearing to take a stand on the issue du jour. But the stand you take when posturing is the one in which the most votes lie so this makes it populist. There is no point in taking a stand on an issue that is likely to cost you votes and by implication, your place on the party list. It is important to remember when playing the posturing card to do so via an obfuscating speech (see under “O” above) to ensure you don’t say anything you might later be held accountable for.

Q is for quisling. A quisling is not a small goose although the parallels with a bird brain are obvious. It is somebody who displays treachery and fails to recite the party mantra and sides with anything that emanates from the opposition benches. It also applies to coalition parties that join up with the opposition to form a government instead of helping the true party rule as they are born to.

R is for redacted. This is the process whereby dangerous information is removed from official documents to protect the press, the public and others from harm From time to time opposition members and media sources will unreasonably demand official documents and sometimes these will contain information that could compromise National’s security. Usually these are in the form of errors where it is incorrectly stated that a Government Minister knew about a certain person or series of events which that Minister has already repeatedly told Parliament they have no recollection of. To avoid humiliation for the compilers of these documents owing to their lack of accuracy the Government removes these damning pieces of evidence before releasing the documents and this is called redacting.

S is for SkyCity. SkyCity is a philanthropic organisation that has the best interests of the ordinary New Zealander at heart. They are here to help the Government out by building a world class convention centre that will drag our economy out of the red that the Labour Party took it into and into the black of prosperity. The generosity of this great benefactor is so huge that it has agreed to fork out $402M of its own hard earned money to boost our economy by over $90M per year until the end of time. Furthermore they agreed to do this with no strings attached other than asking the Government to (quite reasonably) extend their gambling licence for a mere 35 years and allow a trifling 230 extra pokie machines and 40 extra gambling tables.

T is for taxation. This is the way Government funds all those free lunches free air travel for you and your family and expenses claims that you will have during your term in Parliament. It is collected by a fair process in which everyone except big business, which is the lifeblood of the country, pays their fair share. It is important to remember that big business has big expenses so it must be given big tax breaks to enable it to employ big numbers of people who can in turn pay big slices of their income in taxation to support us all (in Parliament that is).

U is for unions a.k.a. the Anti-Christ. Unions are devious cults hell-bent on destroying the country. They are doing this in cahoots with the Labour Party and various other Pinkos. They seem to think that everyone is entitled to have a say in their workplace, the right to a fair wage and various other namby pamby rights such as holidays and sick leave.

V is for vertical integration. This is not only a flash term you can wave about like a big willy and confuse the public, but it is also the secret to business efficiency. Big companies get the opportunity to grow even bigger and to move into more diverse business fields through the medium of vertical integration. To understand it better you could think of it as ‘keeping it all in the family’ which after all makes sense since the family that plays together stays together. For example if you were to start a business where you developed seeds for farmers to plant, then it makes sense that you would also develop chemicals to fight off the diseases and pests they might encounter. Then you would start developing drugs to fight off the diseases people will get when they eat the food grown from those seeds and using those chemicals. It’s only logical to have all those businesses under one banner so you can help everyone at the same time as helping yourself.

W is for whitewash. This is another name for an enquiry into scurrilous allegations from the other side of the house. It gained the name because it is a nice clean way of airing your washing and showing that it is all Persil white and not mucky as alleged by the stone throwing hypocrites on the opposition benches.

X is for Xmas. This is the time of the year when Parliament closes down and you get to mumble some meaningless platitudes before taking off for your holiday home in Hawaii while the voters fight over the last tin of baked beans at the City Mission’s Festive spread.

Y is for Young Turks. This term does not refer to youths from the Dardanelles, although Turkey was at one time ruled by a party of that name. In this context it used to mean a young movement within the National Party that was named after a similar group in the American Republican Party during the 1960s. This term has now fallen out of use as the modern party is just that; i.e. modern. It doesn’t need stroppy little upstarts trying to change party policy which has been very carefully developed with maximum input from the voters – or at least the ones who make the biggest donations to the election fund.

Z is for Zilland as in New Zilland. This is the correct way to pronounce the name of our fine country as demonstrated by our fine leader who has been setting the bar extremely high in the development of New Zilland Inglush.

So there you have it; the unabridged version of the new MP’s training manual. No expense has been expended on this invaluable resource and as you will have noticed, it is bringing obvious returns with the standard of representation we now have.

But maybe with returns like that we should bolt the gates and not let the buggers back in.

Let your conscience be your guide; or the ABC of NZ politics part 1

2013-07-15T11:04:00.000+12:00

Politics can be a confusing arena for an impressionable and idealistic young person to be thrown into. It is all the more so as our educational standards begin to take a dive and the dumbing down of the general population becomes more universal.

This poses a problem for parliamentary parties in terms of the induction of new members into the house. It has recently come to my attention (through a leak in the parliamentary plumbing) that a new easy to follow guide in the form of a glossary of terms has been commissioned at considerable taxpayer expense to assist with this process.

At great personal risk of having my GCSB file expand to the point where they need to build a new annex to the ‘persons of interest repository’ I am going to share some extracts from that manual with you. To keep it simple (in keeping with this whole dumbing down policy), I have chosen to disclose only the first half of this glossary at this point in time.

For all intents and purposes it is the ABC of NZ politics.

A is for amnesia. This is the correct default position to adopt when asked about something you did or said that could have the potential to uncover your true motives or actions. It is useful for deflecting uncomfortable questions from annoying opposition members and avoiding public gaffes when being interviewed by the press. An example would be receiving a large donation from an influential person and then forgetting who they are to avoid being linked with anything in their life that might harm your career.

B is for brighter future or bullshit. The two are interchangeable as far as their meaning goes, but always take care to use the ‘bf’ version to avoid letting any furry felines out of any bags. For example you paint a dazzling picture of how the future might be and then flood the market with press releases designed to give the impression it is actually happening. Print enough press rereleases and eventually the silent (as in brain-dead) majority will believe you.

C is for corruption and cronyism. The two go together like a horse and carriage in politics. You will seldom find one without the other. They are an important side to politics (as in knowing what side your bread is buttered on). Neophyte members need to remember they are both pronounced the same; that is silently. A good example is letting a coalition partner off some misdemeanour in order to secure his vote for a key policy item.

D is for deception. This is not to be confused with the desk that sits out front in many offices. Rather it is a skill you will have to learn as a new MP if you haven’t already mastered it on the campaign trail. Put simply it usually means putting forward something that appears to give the people what they want but surreptitiously inserting caveats to ensure you won’t have to deliver. A good example would be holding a referendum at great expense to the voters but failing to remind them that you are not required to take any notice of their opinions.

E is for expenses. Expenses are your God-given entitlement now that you are an MP. They are not a trivial matter and should be padded out as creatively as possible throughout your term. You should always be on the lookout for new ways to include as many of your day to day expenses as possible under this category and obtain the greatest possible benefit to yourself from this free source of finance. Tip: seek out loyalty schemes such as Flybuys and Airpoints in order to maximise your benefits.

F is for fraud. This is something of a moving feast and its precise definition is sometimes hard to pin down. Suffice to say it is something that is carried out by beneficiaries, company directors that don’t vote for your party and members of the opposition.

G is for gravy train. This is what you are now on and if you want to stay on it you must learn not to rock the (gravy) boat. Strict adherence to the party line will stand you in good stead here. Remember to let your conscience be your guide. For clarification, your conscience is also known as the party whip.

H is for hypocrisy. No this has nothing to do with medicine. It is another of those traits you will see in the opposition. It has no relation whatsoever to Ministers in your own Government who milked the state benefits to educate themselves while raising a child and then took those benefits away from those who followed in their wake. That situation is called adapting to a changing environment.

I is for interest (as in conflict of). Again this is something members of the opposition regularly have. Shoulder-tapping old friends for top Civil Service jobs is not conflict of interest as opponents might suggest. It is known as networking to fill important vacancies by saving the taxpayer the cost of interviewing unsuitable people who don’t possess the correct political ‘understanding’.

J is for just is (as opposed to justice). This is an important one. You are not in parliament to bring justice and fair play to the nation; that is the function of the free market. Hence you are here to see that it ‘just is’ with as little blatant interference from government as possible. All interference is to be strictly covert and covered up by refusals of Official Information requests on the grounds of national security or personal privacy.

K is for kiss my arse. This is another of the unspoken terms you will have to learn the meaning of. It simply means, “I have been elected to Parliament and now I will do what I want and all you voters can get stuffed because it will be at least three years before you can chuck me out. In the meantime I will ride my gravy train all the way to the end of the line.

L is for lobbyists. These are also known as political advisors. They are those nice well educated people who spend most of their time hanging around the offices of Ministers of the Crown. You will have little to do with them until you are made a member of the Cabinet. Then you will get to know what obliging, intelligent and helpful people these are. They can help you develop your policy while maintaining a continuous stream of extra benefits for yourself.

M is for mess. This is what the opposition made of the economy during their last term of office. It is also a description of every piece of legislation they passed that is not in keeping with your party’s policy. It is also a useful descriptor for any new policy initiatives the opposition might care to present that oppose your own.

I intend to present the last half of this revealing document next week by which time I hope to have completely covered the meta-data trail that leads from my ‘mole’ to me.

In the meantime, be careful out there. I know I’ll have to be.

Year of the living dead

2013-07-02T09:35:00.000+12:00

There have been a few deaths this year. I know this happens every year, but in 2013 we have experienced some rather unusual deaths.

The first of these was North Shore MP Madly Barry. She apparently died last week – or at least I have to conclude that she and some of her colleagues did because last week her beloved leader announced Government ‘support’ for the Auckland City rail loop.

Auckland head boy Lenda Hand Brown is thrilled to bits with this apparent u-turn although I believe it is more of a u-bend; i.e. it is full of shit. Closer examination of the announcement reveals that little is likely to happen before about 2020, which the more quick witted among the population, (that’s a small group including thee and me and bugger all else), have realised is outside their current term of office. Thus they are making promises somebody else will be expected to keep which is always a dodgy proposition.

Of course amid all this excitement nobody has noticed the demise of Ms Barry and her un-named colleagues. I have to assume that Madly has gone to that great compost bin in the sky because as soon as she was elected to Parliament she told everybody who would listen, and a lot of people who were trying desperately to block out her droning rhetoric, that there would be a CBD rail link before a second harbour crossing "over our dead bodies".

Just whose dead bodies apart from her own was unclear at the time, but obviously the North Shore MP herself is no more because she told us back in 2011 what would happen if that was the case. We believe her because in the Reader’s Digest poll to find the most trusted New Zealanders of 2013 we voted Madly in at number 51, which might not sound very good, but it was high enough to make her our most trusted politician. How about that for an oxymoron? Although perhaps the real morons here are the voters (again).

However I tuned in to Parliament after the announcement and I swear I saw the deceased MP for North Shore smirking away in the background and she looked alive enough to me. Either she has come back to haunt Jianqi for killing her off with his announcement or she has looked more closely at the announcement than the pussies of the press who have all breathlessly reported the whole thing as if it is really going to happen. You see we have three types of dead in New Zealand; the dead, the undead and the brain dead. Madly Barry is one of the former two, but so far I cannot confirm which.

But Ms Barry is not the only death we have had in public orifice this year. Maori Party co-leader Pita (Principle) Sharples has also apparently died just this very week. You won’t find this reported in the paper yet because the Maori Party are trying to keep it quiet until they figure out how to blame Hone for it.

In the meantime the news has been leaked in a careless press release about a leadership vote to be held in a fortnight’s time. This can only mean one thing; Mr Sharples is dead. He must be because he told us only a few months ago he would lead the party until he died. Therefore the fact that he is now being replaced can only mean he has shuffled of his mortal coil.

And here’s the scary part. I swear I’ve seen Sharples this week as well. So has he also joined the ranks of the living dead? This is becoming more unsettling by the day. There are already rumours that the corpse of United Featureless is roaming the corridors of the Beehive and I have also heard about an attempt to reACTivate another dead party.

These creatures were all scary enough in life, without malevolent forces re-animating them for eternity. Forget the economy; we need to deal with this imminent threat without delay.

To that end I have been doing some research on zombies and it seems that most ‘experts’ believe the best way to deal with a zombie is with a swift shot to the head. Their theory is that the brain is the only living thing they have. And here is where we have a BIG problem dear readers. We are dealing with politicians FFS. Where on earth are we going to find a brain among them?

Another ‘expert’ suggests removing their heads. Once again I have never seen a politician yet who can’t operate without using their head, so I guess that is not going to work either.

The most ridiculous method I came across was to nail them back into their grave beds with a steak. I ask you how the hell can you nail someone to anything with a slab of meat? (Hush your dirty mouths) I would have thought you would want something sharp like a spear or a dagger for that.

Unfortunately folks it would seem that for the present we are unable to rid the country of these hideous cannibalistic apparitions – at least not until around October next year. I have heard that a tick in the right place on a ballot paper can sometimes work and if that doesn’t work then I am reminded of an old rhyme; Remember, remember the fifth of November.

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for everything

2013-06-19T16:12:00.000+12:00

I was born a fair while ago – oh alright a long while ago. But in the context of human civilisation it was less than a nanosecond ago. The point is; that I was born into what was at the time an optimistic little country. It was then, and is still now, sometimes referred to as God’s Own Country or Godzone for short. Kiwis still had a bit of that pioneer spirit and a fair measure of pluck.

It was all a little primitive and we had to endure a bit of a razzing from visitors who thought they had taken a step back in time. Comments like, “I went to New Zealand but it was closed” reflected the popular view of those abroad that had even heard of us. Compared to people from Europe and the USA we lacked sophistication and a wider world view. It was understandable with our geographic isolation at the time.

In those days most of our population had little experience of other cultures (although even then they were probably less inward looking than the Americans), but I digress. Our geographic isolation and the sort of communications systems available at the time meant news took longer to get to us and new technology took even longer. The latter was also hindered by import restrictions, costs of freight and economies of scale.

However aside from all of that, life was pretty damned good for the average Kiwi. Unemployment was almost unknown; only 15 people were unemployed in New Zealand around the time I was born. As a result poverty was extremely rare. Most Kiwi families operated on the old model of Dad going out to work to support the family while Mum’s role was to stay at home and raise the kids. Admittedly in those days there were social mores that dictated that situation, but just the same, the majority of families were able to manage on that one income with few worries. If Mum went out to work it was usually only to get some extra spending money for luxuries. Few if any families needed two incomes to cover their ordinary living costs.

So where did it all go wrong? How did we get from 15 unemployed people to today where it is actually very hard to get a straight answer on how many people are out of work?

The closest I could get to working this out was the figure for the number of people receiving unemployment benefit. There are currently around 50,000 of those, but that does not account for the many unemployed people today who are on other benefits or receiving no benefits at all. It is probably fair to say the real figure is nearer to 100,000 than it is to 50,000. In other words we probably have the equivalent of the entire population of one of our larger cities out of work at present. When you look at it on that scale it is truly scary. The Government should be mindful of this, because if that many people became organised they could cause some major headaches for them.

Admittedly today you have to take into account all those women who would not have been in the workforce back when I was born, but even if you calculated them at one for every male, then the figure would double and we would still only have around 30 such people. Instead we have a figure that has increased by between 500,000 and 700,000%!

At that time weekly wages for most people ranged between £8 and £12 per week which on a straight conversion basis would be between $16 and $24 per week or between $832 and $1,248 per annum. Today we are TOLD they are around $41,000 although we know these are artificially inflated by a large number of people earning in excess of $100,000. The true ‘average’ (really the mean – and it is in more ways than one) would be nearer $30,000. In other words it has increased over the last 60 years by between 3000 and 3500%.

Today there are very few families that can afford the basics of life unless both adults are working – and even then many still can’t make ends meet. So despite the fact that our wages have increased by more than 3000% most families need two incomes to stay afloat. Either our money is now worth considerably less or the cost of living has risen by tens of thousands of percent.

With this thought in mind I checked up on house prices and I found the average house purchase 60 years ago would have set you back about £2000 or $4000. This was equivalent to about four times your annual salary. Today you can multiply that cost by 10,000% which is at least three times what our wages have increased by. I think we have found at least one of the culprits.

Of course cumulative inflation over the decades is another culprit, because every time prices rise more than incomes your money is effectively devalued. The same is true whenever a government decides to print more money because money that is not backed by something of value such as a tangible good or service is of no value and merely devalues the rest of the currency. This is what G Edward Griffin describes as a hidden tax on all consumers. This method is probably the most sinister way in which our cost of living has been increasing because it is being influenced by powers beyond our shores. Griffin’s book, The Creature From Jekyll Island explains this far more eloquently than I ever could.

So far I have blamed inflated prices which are more often than not caused by greed, and tinkering with the money supply as reasons why New Zealand (formerly known as Godzone) appears to be heading at breakneck speed to hell in a handcart. But I am reminded of the words of those great sages of my era (Mick & Keef) when they sang “I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, When after all it was you and me”.

We let them do this to us, folks and the sad fact is we continue to bend over for them. Our niceness (in some cases) and our fear (in many more) have stifled our ability to kick butt when we need to. You can’t change the world overnight, but you can make some change if you start saying NO when confronted with something that is not right.

Make an old man happy and start standing up for your rights, Kiwis. You just might be surprised how much you can achieve.

The food feud

2013-05-30T16:38:00.000+12:00

There are some things that all of us in the world today still have in common. One of the most important of those is the need for food that will nourish us sufficiently to keep our bodies and minds operating at maximum efficiency. This can only be achieved when we are able to access sufficient quantities of good food.

Herein lies one of the biggest contradictions faced by modern society. Most first world countries and a number of aspiring ones have spiralling obesity rates and increases in diseases which more often than not have their origins in what might loosely be described as ‘lifestyle’.

Now I am not talking about simply eating habits here; lifestyle in this context includes the way we live our lives and the physical environment in which we live them. It seems ironic that many Western cultures are boasting of increased longevity, but poorer health. It seems we have done some kind of pact with the Devil or the Universe or God or whatever wherein we have agreed to trade quality for quantity.

A hundred years ago we had far less money being spent on medical research and finding cures for diseases, yet we seem to have simply swapped the old diseases for a whole bunch of new ones. Westerners are living longer but we are spending more of their lives unwell which begs the question about whether this is progress or not.

That contradiction on its own is pause for thought, but running alongside it is the fact that developing countries are still filled with starving and malnourished people.

Famines are still a part of life in the African continent due to crop failures, wars and weather conditions.

However far and away the largest reason people starve is the same one that has existed since the beginning of time; their inability to either afford or access enough food of sufficient quality to keep them nourished and able to function at optimum levels.

A hundred years ago we didn’t have all these ‘think tanks’ and NGOs and assorted aid organisations and yet now that we do we seem to have made next to no progress towards feeding those who cannot feed themselves.

So what is the answer? You might think that if I knew that I could make myself a fortune, but you would be dead wrong. I think I do know the answer and furthermore I think we all know the answer if we think about it. The problem is that it is an answer that the power brokers don’t wish to acknowledge. They don’t wasn’t to acknowledge it because it would mean they would have to change the way they go about their business and it would affect their bottom line. It wouldn’t send them broke, but it would reduce the outrageous fortunes the biggest players in the food cartels are currently able to make.

You might think that these people should be allowed to make handsome profits from peddling food and I would not argue with that except to add the caveat that it rather depends on what the cost of that is in human and planetary terms.

For some considerable time big corporations involved in food production have been acquiring competing businesses and growing larger and more powerful in terms of both their market share and the amount of income they are generating. This has led to a position rather like that in the oil industry where a small number of humungous corporations are controlling the production and distribution of most of the world’s food. Some such as chemical giant Monsanto have taken it to a whole new level by getting control of seeds and patenting them along with their attempts to take out patents on actual vegetables!

Many farmers in the USA have been threatened with or found themselves actually facing law suits for what Monsanto has described as violation of their patents. Usually this has been where a farmer has had the misfortune to be the benefactor of some windblown seed from a neighbouring farm. This is bullying of the worst possible kind. The small farmer (it is always a small one because the big ones are all being taken into the fold of the big corporations) has to expend money he can ill afford to defend a spurious legal case brought against him by a large corporation for whom legal fees are a convenient tax write-off.

However the implications of this policy are far worse. Companies like Monsanto are neither scared of losing a couple of market shares to a small scale farmer. The amount he would take even if they allowed it would be less than a month’s salary for one of their top executives. The real reason these actions are being brought is to financially ruin the small farmers so Monsanto can get a firmer hold on the global food chain. Left unchecked these people will literally have the power of life and death over the world. If you control the majority of the food in the world you can then control who gets it and who does not as well as how much you charge for it.

However Monsanto are not on their own in this and there are other players here who are also doing their bit to ensure that food resources are controlled by a small cartel of big players. Furthermore there is another side to all of this and that becomes evident when we consider the quality of the food that is being produced by the major players. In short it is crap and crap that in many cases is doing us harm and very often responsible for those so-called lifestyle diseases that many of us now suffer from.

Companies like KFC, Dominoes Pizza, Unilever and the like are sourcing their ingredients from a select few massive growing operations that have gobbled up most of the tiny food producers and then shipping their wares all over the world. Surely not the most efficient way to do things considering the costs of freight and packaging, not to mention all the additives that must be used to preserve the food for these journeys?

In case anyone in New Zealand thinks this doesn’t affect them, I would draw your attention to the TPPA an agreement which our Government is hell-bent on signing and which would bring obligations upon us to fall into line with various other signatories to hand over control over our own food to external forces. There are various petitions about at present that voice concern over this. While it is a good idea to sign those (if you agree of course), I think we have to recognise the fact that this Government is going to implement this, much as they did with the Therapeutic Medicines body where we gave up our sovereignty to Australia and allowed them to make our decisions for us. That particular agreement could enable outsiders to stop some therapeutic medicines being used in this country so that we are forced to use only those approved by an outside body – a body which is most likely influenced by those manufacturers who want to control the industry.

What’s worse is that there are and ownership arrangements and unholy alliances already between the big players in the food, chemical and drug industries.

So what can we do about it?

Not a huge amount on the macro level, but plenty on the micro level. Support your local farmers, especially those who farm using natural methods. Buy locally produced and grown food and grow as much as you can of your own. Home produce gardening is one of the most revolutionary and rebellious acts you can do today without getting locked up (yet). But take it further and save your seeds and share them with your friends. If enough of us do it we could bring about a change.Even if we don’t we will still be better off not putting more money into the pockets of those who don’t need it and your health will be better too.

I also recommend a book by Frederick Kaufman called Bet the Farm. It is an entertaining yet scary look at what the global food giants are really up to.

Studies in stupidity

2013-05-23T07:18:00.000+12:00

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Studies in stupidity

An awful lot of money is expended by governments and public bodies engaging so-called academics to carry out studies. Now that might sound like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. After all we need to know certain information in order to plan for many different private and public organisations and with studies that actually move forward our understanding I have no problem whatsoever.

However I am seeing an increasing number of really stupid studies that seem to be telling us things that nobody with an IQ in even double digits should need a study to find out. It is annoying enough to see public money wasted in such a reckless way, but even more frustrating that I can’t become recognised as an academic and manage to grab some of this bounty for myself.

The latest of these forays into the frivolous is the study carried out by Otago University that trumpeted its astonishing findings to the nation via the pages of the NZ Herald this week. 'Right to success' belief can cause students to struggle screamed the headline to a story that informed us how students who had an exaggerated belief they had a right to success are more likely to struggle come exam time.

But the stupidity doesn’t end there; it goes on to ‘reveal’ that these same students whose own opinion of themselves was much higher than their academic prowess, performed worse than their peers in the final exam – but only when they found the paper more difficult than expected.

Well I never. Fancy that. And it took a huge slab of money from vote education that instead of being been used to educate our students tells us that little twerps who have lost touch with reality vis-a-vis their own capabilities are more likely to fail. Duhh!

And this study was not only funded by Otago University, but also published in the International Journal of Higher Education. Higher than what, I wonder. Higher than kindy education? No wonder the world is going to hell in a handcart.

If journals bearing such a prestigious sounding names as that are according studies of the bleeding obvious such importance, I have to wonder if there just might be a chance for me to grab some of the coin that is being freely tossed about.

Why don’t we commission a study into why we spend so much money on studies into such ridiculous ideas as the one above? I’m sure the answer to that is just as obvious, but for anyone who doesn’t see it; the answer is that governments, councils and bodies administered by them love to spend money on everything but their core functions. They also like to appoint wankers to carry out these idiotic activities so they can turn out press releases to divert our attention from the real issues and enable our shamefully unimaginative newspapers to fill a few more column inches without having to leave their desks and write anything intelligent.

Rather than print slop like this the Herald should have been out there grilling this twat about how his study had improved the lot of students at Otago Uni or slam Heckyeah Parata up against the blackboard and get her to explain why there is insufficient money to fund our schools properly but always enough to fund stupid studies like this one.

I have a few ideas of my own for some ground breaking (or is that wind breaking) studies that should improve the world just as much as the example above.

How about a study into why when I fill my car with petrol I am about $120.00 poorer? Why should this be? I am wondering if it could somehow be related to the fact that I actually have to pay for the stuff. It’s just a theory, mind you, but I’m sure if someone was to chuck me a hundred thousand or so I could investigate that fully and come up with a conclusion that would benefit the whole of New Zealand.

Alternatively I could carry out a study into the meaning of life. This I suggest could be a life- long study and I could drip feed my startling revelations via a series of annual reports which I know would be eagerly anticipated by a grateful nation. I could probably knock out between 700 and 1000 words of absolute bollox, much as I do on a regular basis these days except that the taxpayer would be paying me a handsome retainer to do it.

Yes, I think I could get used to that. They can expect my submission very soon.

Where’s the Wally?

2013-05-06T09:47:00.000+12:00

In the last couple of weeks we have gained a new catchphrase into our lingo and we have been ‘privileged’ (?) to become familiar with somebody few of us had ever heard of before. Having said that, most of us would have been no poorer for never ever hearing of this prick, but life is like that sometimes. We can’t go back. The prat is now well and truly out of the bag.

I am referring of course to the one and only (thank God) Arrant Grabmore, that lowly National list pillock with delusions of adequacy.

Grabmore is likely to have one of the briefest careers of any of the overfed, over privileged tossers with whom he soils the benches of this Parliament. He has in the course of a couple of weeks gone from zero to zero and back again, managing to completely miss out the hero part of that particular cycle. He has offended a waiter, some diners, some tenants, possibly also his partner and his idol/idle/leader along with every right thinking person in New Zealand.

Boorish little twats like this should have been given a good kicking in the schoolyard and had this sort of arrogance knocked out of them before they got out of short pants.

For the benefit of anyone who has been in intensive care for the last week or a medically (or otherwise) induced coma, I will give you a little history of this twerp.

He was born in Christchurch in 1973 and spent most of his working life either working for Government Departments or sucking up to National Party shakers and movers like the reptilian Ill Health Minister and State Sold Enterprises Minister Tony Vile. He spent some time working with a couple of accountancy firms as well where he apparently advised utility companies. That probably explains why so many of them are so arrogant, although I shouldn’t give too much credit to whippersnapper Grabmore as he is still pretty wet behind the ears in this regard. A really smart arsehole, unlike Grabmore, knows how to insult and throw his weight around without bringing the roof down on his own pointed little head.

Grabmore suffers from an over-inflated sense of self importance derived from his overwhelming inferiority complex. And who can blame him? He is after all clearly a twit and he looks like a Jianqi clone, which is enough of itself to make anyone feel inadequate.

His political career if you can call it that has been pretty much a disaster from day one. He began by putting out his own PR in which he managed to boast about so much he has been referred to satirically as the go-to man for everything. He claimed a qualification for himself that he did not actually hold and seems to have sung his own praises pretty comprehensively – but it must be remembered this has been a totally solo performance for young Grabmore, much as I suspect, like his sex life.

He stood for the Christchurch East electorate in the 2011 election and lost, but almost got in on the Natsis' list. However his election night celebrations were somewhat premature (and I am tempted to make another reference to his sex life here, but won’t) and following the final counts the Green’s became entitled to one more seat at the expense of the Nats. As a result Grabmore as their lowliest lister lost his spot to Mojo Mathers. I’ve no doubt that this loss must have rankled with him particularly. First of all he lost to a party he probably perceives as the anti-Christ; then he lost to a woman; and finally he lost to a woman with a disability. To Mr Perfect In Every Way, this must have really impinged upon his own mojo.

However the universe often moves in mysterious ways and because young ‘Grabbers’ was such a proficient arse licker he remained on the Natsi list and thus when Blockwood Smith resigned from Parliament last year he was ushered in to the back benches.

This appears to have inflated his already bursting sense of entitlement and so it was that he got sloshed at a Natsi conference and behaved like a buffoon in a Christchurch restaurant. Here he uttered that now famous line, “Do you know how I am?” when refused more wine due to the fact he was pissed as a chook. He then got stroppier and threatened to tell his ‘Dad’ (Jianqi) on the waiter and have him bash him up (fire him).

His behaviour was so bad that one of the people he was dining with was so embarrassed he wrote a note to the waiter apologising for the little shit.

Then when the faeces hit the fan, little Arrant wrote a note of his own (in crayon) in which he apologised for the behaviour of his group. This of course pissed off his fellow diners who had all been apparently behaving perfectly appropriately. His esteemed leader was then contacted as they always are in these cases and as is always the case with Jianqi’s particular style of ‘laissez-faire’ management nothing has been done. Jianqi has made some grumbly noises and delivered his usual po-faced response about the miscreant letting himself down and his behaviour falling below the standard expected etc etc etc... yawn; but sod all else.

In a case like this there is always more and you can rely upon the media to start finding it soon. They have already found another instance where Grabmore has chucked some tenants out of their accommodation in circumstances that seem less than fair and certainly less than polite. It looks as though he might have upset his partner at the same time, so he looks destined to become an even bigger little Johnny no mates than his steamed leader.

Of course more will unravel from all of this and eventually Jianqi will have to drop this Wally because he will become too much of a distraction. He certainly won’t be the first MP Jianqi has supported to start with, held on grimly for several weeks and then eventually had to chuck out. Pansy Wong-Number immediately springs to mind and I know there have been one or two others as well, especially if one includes coalition partners.

In any event even if Grabmore manages to stifle any further revelations you can be sure his list place at the next election will be expressed in three digits. Of course none of us should be remotely surprised by all of this as it is exactly the sort of arrogant attitude that most of this Government carries around with it all the time. The only difference between young Arrant and his fellow party members is that the others have learned how to tone theirs down when other people are watching or listening.

But I feel sorry for the waiter, who after all was only doing his job. It is illegal to sell alcohol to pissed pricks, so he was merely doing what he oughta.

But most of all I am sorry that he didn’t have the presence of mind to call for silence in the restaurant and announce that the person next to him didn’t know who he was and ask if anyone could come forward and help him in regaining his memory. It would have been an absolute scream if nobody had come forward.

Only the cronies (dum dum dum dum dee doo wah)

2013-04-17T10:13:00.000+12:00

Want a great job, a sinecure, a safe un-sackable position for as long as you feel inclined to bother with it? Then try sucking up to Jianqi and his merry band of brigands.

There will always be a welcome in the hillside for those who toe the party line and suck the party whatsit.

The National Disgrace under Jianqi is hurtling out of control through their current term. The indecent haste with which they are making changes that are un-mandated by the wider electorate, despite the fact they were able to coalesce into a government (?) after the last election is truly mind-boggling.

But it is not just the damaging policy changes such as the asset sales and the ‘clarification’ of the laws governing the actions of our secret squirrels that are the worry. Although God knows they are wreaking enough damage to the economy and to our basic freedoms.

What is even more disturbing is the flurry of political appointments that are likely to continue long after this government has left office. These are people who are appointed to jobs that have traditionally been seen as being apolitical and although it has always been the way that successive governments have appointed people they like to these positions there has been a change in the way Jianqi’s lot have tackled it.

Ian Fletcher was appointed to the role of director of the Government Communications Security Bureau in January 2012. This happened after the State Services Commissioner Ian Rennie had told Jianqi he had a list of possible candidates but didn’t like any of them. Helpful Jianqi instantly had an answer for him and suggested an old friend of his for the position. But he went further; he actually contacted that old friend directly and told him to apply for the job (wink, wink).

Thus it was that Ian Fletcher was the only applicant seen by the SSC and was duly appointed to the position. It would seem that his lack of relevant experience did not count him out of being considered the most suitable candidate for the job. But then I suppose with nobody else on the short list then he must have at the very least been the best candidate on offer.

Of course Jianqi later denied knowing Jesus. er Ian (at least three times by my count) and then when he suddenly had a moment of recall he tried to say he knew of him, but didn’t really know him. Of course as we all now know that was also uncovered as an outright lie in due course and then came the real killer punch; Jianqi forgot he had actually contacted Fletcher directly and advised him to apply (wink, wink). This fact becomes even more disturbing when we learn that Jianqi had also forgotten to advise the SCC that he had done this, leaving Mr Rennie with a big eggy stain all over his dial when the story got out.

The timing of Fletcher’s appointment was also interesting; immediately after the GCSB had waded in illegally to Kim Dotcom’s home and trampled all over his civil rights so that Jianqi could cuddle up to the FBI.

This demonstrates that Jianqi, who claimed more brain-fades than an Alzheimer’s patient over this fiasco, knew very well that his bully-boys had overstepped the mark and that he was going to need ‘some friends in high places’ to ensure the whole sorry saga didn’t come back to bite him on the bum.

The next example of National Disgrace’s cronyism occurred when Judith ‘Little Bo-Tox’ Collins appointed Dame Susan Devoy as race relations conciliator. Another hopelessly under-qualified candidate for an important role.

But was she under-qualified if you look at it from the Natsi’s point of view? Well, no, not really. In fact she was ideal. She was a sporting icon, a dame of the realm, and a really good supporter of the Jianqi government and all the principles it stands for. She had the ideal background of having been involved with a campaign to raise awareness of mental illness, which would enable her to understand politicians better. Then she was involved with a campaign to raise awareness of muscular dystrophy (I’m still not hearing anything about race relations yet). She is a good role model for women – she even wrote a support letter for Tony Veitch after he kicked his partner in the guts and then of course she made some stunningly tactful pronouncements on how Waitangi Day should not be a public holiday and then had a swipe at women in burquas.

No I’d say she was well qualified to sit on a fence as she did the minute that rude cow from Denmark slagged of the welcome she got when she visited here recently.

With a dame like that in the position, we need never worry about any ethnic minorities getting above themselves or (gasp) having the damned cheek to seek some human rights.

But with her latest appointment Little Bo Tox has really bested herself and steals the cronyism title well and truly away from Jianqi. Given her latest enraptured adoration of Margaret Thatcher, Jianqi should be very afraid. Yon Bo Tox has the lean and hungry look (or in her case, the over made up and greedy look).

This time the hard faced one has appointed someone from within the ranks of her own (sorry Jianqi’s own – getting ahead of myself there) government to a plum role. Ooh hoo Jackie Blue has been appointed as Equal Opportunities Commissioner. This is another role that is supposed to be apolitical which is appropriate because Little Bo Tox’s phone is ringing but she doesn’t want to talk to anyone now, be it John Wayne or Chairman Mao.

Admittedly Jackie Blue has been a spokesperson on women’s issues so there is some sort of qualification there, but for her to be actually taken out of parliament to take on the role is dodgy to say the least. Blue hoo has been in parliament for three terms and never made it to a cabinet spot. One can’t help but feel that the job is some kind of compensation for that with the pay-off that the Jianqi Government has another friendly face in another high place and they can be sure their policy objectives will not be undermined by some disruptive soul who wants people to enjoy human rights.

With all this cronyism going on, I can’t wait to hear who the next ‘ideal’ candidate will be and what plumb job they will take. What’s your best guess? Mine is John Banks for Human Rights commissioner.

Listen... Do you want to know a secret?

2013-03-26T08:55:00.000+13:00

Well if you promise not to tell then it is a fair bet you are not working for a department of the New Zealand Government right now. In a time when an increasing amount of data is stored about us all by the state and many other organisations, we are finding examples of how this data is not being looked after appropriately.

It is hard to imagine that this can be rocket science. The whole thing is simple really; you collect personal data you store it securely and you release it only to those who have a right to access it. All it takes for that to happen is to hire someone who can (a) read and write and (b) at least finished primary school.

Regular readers will know that I love sticking the boot into the Jianqi Government and to be fair for a nano-second they have not been the only ones on whose watch such blatantly negligent acts of disclosure have occurred. However it is also fair to say that this particular shambolic arrangement of village idiots masquerading as our leadership has presided over more leaks than a long serving public toilet attendant.

Since the little money market twerp with the slightly effeminate speech patterns and the permanent look of a possum caught in the headlights took the reins of office just lets recap what we have seen.

1. In March 2012 we discovered that ACC (Accident Compensation Catastrophe) had inadvertently divulged all sorts of stuff about 6700 vulnerable sick and injured people including 250 sexual abuse victims to Bronwyn Pullar. In January of this year we learned that since then they have been involved in over 500 further privacy breaches and they are still breaching the privacy of Kiwi citizens at the rate of 1 per day.

2. On September 11, 2012 we learn that WINZ (What Idiots New Zealand) sent out some great reading matter to one of their clients – only it was about another client. And just to make things even more interesting, when the recipient rang up and told them of their error and offered to bring the material back to them some cretin told them to just destroy it themselves.

3. On 15 October 2012 we learned that the MSD (Ministry of Social Dysfunction) leave their information kiosks so unprotected that some 12 year-old kid with basic computer knowledge would be able to hack into them and of course someone did, laying bare all the secrets of many thousands more vulnerable people.

4. On October 28, 2012 we heard that another punter had received from the IRD (Inland Robbery Department) a bunch of unsealed letters containing private tax details. Further investigations revealed that IRD had in the previous 12 months breached the privacy of 6400 Kiwis in 32 separate incidents.

5. Now the latest breach du jour comes from the EQC (the Earthquake Cock-ups). They like to do things on a big scale, rather like the Christchurch earthquake. No little breaches by this mob, despite them originally claiming a mere 9000 people had been compromised. No; we find these geniuses have actually liberated 83,000 records which is reckoned to be every single one of the ChCh claimants. Well done them!

But I doubt we are finished with these stupid and inexcusable cock-ups yet.

Over the last six months the Government has kept persevering with the doomed NoNo Pay scheme for not paying teachers. Given that many teachers on leave have been paid and many more who have been working have not and another was sent on maternity leave well after she had passed beyond her fertile years, you would have to wonder how many breaches we have not yet heard about in this system.

But lest we think that is the end of the saga, let’s not forget several million of us have just completed a census form. Some will even have (rather foolishly) put their correct earnings information and religious persuasion an various other theoretically uncheckable bits of information into those sheets along with of course their name and current address. Imagine the fun Statistics NZ will have leaking those all over the country?

But, dear readers, there is a sublime irony in all of this. Have any of you ever tried to get a public report out of a government department or even some sensitive information about yourself? If you have you will know you are made to jump through more hoops than an Olympic gymnast and made to wait until you can no longer remember why you requested the information in the first place.

Yet every so often they have a kind of mufti day for information when they scatter it to the four winds like so many prayer lanterns to drift wherever they may and enlighten the lives of persons in places unknown.

It certainly makes the case for living in a cave in the back of beyond seem increasingly attractive.

Elephant’s trunk calls

2013-03-06T16:00:00.000+13:00

It’s okay to drink and drive. It must be because I just read it in the Herald today. And not only is it alright to drink and drive; it is also okay to do both at the same time.

It’s times like these when you think you’ve either had too much to drink yourself or you have simply crossed over into a parallel universe. I don’t drink alcohol anymore, so I know it’s not that. As for the parallel universe; well I’ll let you make the call on that one. But bear with me for a moment before you leap to the conclusion that this old codger has finally and irrevocably exceeded his sell-by date.

It is apparently okay to drink and drive because when a couple in Nelson recently reported seeing a dimwit driving his car while swigging from a bottle of beer they discovered from the plods that he was not committing an offence. Yes; that’s right. Apparently the geniuses that drafted our drink driving legislation only took account of people behind the wheel being a menace if they had over a certain level of alcohol in their blood which might seem fair enough to some. It seems that as long as you haven’t hit the magic figure you are perfectly entitled to drive and swig because it is not an offence on the statute books to do so unless you are under 20 years of age when your allowable level is zero.

The cops will stop you if they see you doing this, but due to a combination of the hopeless legislation and the brain dead plods, you will not be prosecuted unless you are over the aforementioned limit. I say brain dead plods, because (a) I like saying it; (b) it is an accurate assessment of most of the boys and girls in blue (sad, but true, but more of that later) and (c) because it just goes to show how little imagination they have. Honestly I doubt that a roomful of them would have enough sparks of intelligence to burn the toast.

If I had been that copper I would have charged the prick with driving without due care and attention. You can’t tell me that he could concentrate on the road ahead and behind him and to the side of him while his melon is tipped back so he can slug down a draft of Lion Piss. In fact I would go further and suggest that if these bozos who draft our laws ever wake up enough to do something about this, they might as well make it an offence to be swigging ANYTHING while driving, whether it is beer, coffee, alka seltzer, or drain cleaner. The mere fact that you are removing your attention from the road momentarily and tipping your head back and driving with one hand means you are not in full control of your vehicle. The fact that you might get away with it nine times out of ten doesn’t mean it is safe. If you shoot somebody with a gun, on many occasions they will live to kick your arse later, but that still doesn’t make it safe.

We have already banned the use of hand-held cellphones in cars because they are a distraction. Although with the number of plonkers still using them in cars you wouldn’t think we had. So why not extend that commonsense ban to include anything that takes your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road? Any answers? I’m buggered if I can think of any that would indicate the Government is actually serious about reducing the number of road crashes.

Of course this is another restriction upon our freedoms, but one that I think needs to be made, because most of the people on our roads are irresponsible idiots. Far too many of them are unable to safely drive their cars anyway.... or even walk and chew at the same time.

And while we are on the subject of drinking and driving I had a good laugh reading about the cousin-shagging moron from Masterton who came up with a cunning plan to avoid being done for drink driving. This seventeen year old retard had a couple of beers and then decided to drive his car. But because he realised he could get done for drink driving because the level for under 20s is zero (which already makes him smarter than the bozo at the Wairarapa Times who wrote the story and solemnly informed us it was 150mcgs), he decided that getting rid of the smell might throw the brain dead plods off the trail.

It might have worked if they had only wanted to get a whiff of his lovely fresh breath, but unfortunately our young Einstein decided the best thing to get rid of the smell would be his Lynx deodorant. After all it had kept him shagless for all of his natural life up to now so it probably should work fine in this case. Sadly for him it didn’t work, because the cops were proceeding down the road, as they do and following Police procedure when they stopped Mr Sweetbreath. As this neither involved wanting to shag him or reject his advances for that matter and instead meant breath testing him; the game was up. Furthermore as anyone with even a fraction of a brain knows, most deodorants contain alcohol, so our young Rhodes Scholar had just gulped down probably twice as much alcohol as his couple of cheap beers would ever have contained. Not that it mattered too much anyway as even the most minute reading would have meant that he was in the crap, given his age which was about the same as his IQ it would seem.

Oh, and further to the brain dead plods; some of you might have read the story in the Herald about the couple from earthquake city who had to go out and catch their own burglar because the cops were too stupid to do it for them.

They came home one day recently to discover their house had been burgled and it was apparent they had only just missed the burglars. It also appeared the burglars might be planning to return as their quad bike was sitting in the driveway. They rang the cops and told them what had happened and the fact that the crime scene was still red hot, but the plods responded by saying they wouldn’t be able to come out for 48 hours!

So here was an extremely fresh crime scene and the strong possibility the offenders were still in the area, and yet the plods wanted the couple to carry on as normal and no doubt mess up the crime scene for two bloody days before even coming and checking it out.

Fortunately this young couple were made of sterner stuff and decided to lay in wait for the offenders to return. Sure enough, a short while later some young yob turned up and tried to get away with their quad bike. They pounced and the bloke knocked the little prick to the ground but then he got up and ran away. However the woman shot after him in her car and blocked the little shit in until her partner arrived and dropped him again. They rang the cops again and managed to hold onto him until they arrived. They have since had to do their own inquires with the offender and have basically done everything the plods should have done. Needless to say they are far from impressed.

I suppose now they will be charged with assaulting the little twerp and driving without due care and attention, and some wimp in a wig will let the little scumbag go free.

It’s enough to drive a bloke to drink while it’s still legal to do so.

Stuff that would amaze even Mr Ripley

2013-02-25T13:11:00.000+13:00

Fact or fiction? Statistics or lies? Those are the questions on the lips of many Kiwis today; or at least they should be.

We awoke this morning to read a breathless account of how the ruling National Party – the one under whose stewardship we have seen a massive rise in unemployment, a huge drop in living standards and for the average worker, no increase in income - has scored a 51 percent approval rating in the latest 3News political poll. This is the same party that has presided over the school closures/non-closures debacle in Christchurch and signed off on and continued to persevere with the Nonopay method of not paying those teachers who still have a job. It is also the same party that bailed out finance companies and offered tasty deals to SkyCity Casinos in return for them building a massive convention centre while ignoring those at the bottom of the economic slag heap.

And let’s not forget the Stormtrooper tactics they employed against Kim Dotcom, a naturalised New Zealander whose privacy is supposed to be guaranteed, while trying to cuddle up to the FBI over charges they have yet to prove. These are also the same people who have covered up one cock-up after another, developed a condition I shall call amnesia convenientus whenever they were nailed with some particularly damning evidence. They also tried, Stasi like, to muzzle a photographer who accidentally overheard a conversation that was held in public between two public figures, while flagrantly compromising the privacy of beneficiaries and ACC claimants.

And 51 percent of us approve of all this? I feel a fucking great Tui billboard coming on.

Of course what this simply proves is that you can’t trust these sorts of polls. They are completely unscientific although the pollsters would tell you otherwise. The pollsters live in the world of statistics and probabilities where everything can be answered by a mathematical equation. The trouble is, when you are dealing with people, that mathematical equation has so many more variables than anyone can sensibly ever take account of. If you were to factor in every possible variable that could affect a poll’s results you would soon realise that you cannot ever accurately project such results.

For example how do we know that 51 percent of respondents weren’t died in the wool National Party members or supporters? Or that the respondents weren’t simply taking the piss? The fact is we don’t and neither do the pollsters, because even if they were to ask the respondents such questions, there is no way they could ever verify the answers. They reckon they can extrapolate the results and even give us a ‘margin for error’. That too is a fiction because it is only a mathematical probability based upon previous observations which could have been equally inaccurate. It has often been said that the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day, and that is hard to argue with. It is the only one you can trust, (always providing there is no jiggery pokery going on at the polling booth).

I wouldn’t even bother commenting on this were it not for the fact that I think polls like this are influential. The sheeple out there in Godforsakenzone actually think these things are correct, and of course because they ARE sheeple they like to stay with the flock. Of course the fact this poll was conducted by 3News, a company owned by Mediaworks, a company that was given a $43M loan guarantee, by... let me see who was it now? Oh, yes; the National Government might explain a few things. I’m just sayin’.

However the slippery poll is not the only unbelievable thing to catch my eye in the last week. The one day cricket series between the Black Caps and England was another. To be fair this one was pointed out to me by my very observant wife who is not slow to see connections others often miss.

The series began as those of us sad individuals who want to cheer on the Black Caps had hoped but not expected, with a three wicket win by the Kiwis. We watched it free to air on Prime and enjoyed the tense finish. Then came the second match where the Black caps suffered a severe drubbing by the visitors and lost by eight wickets. The two performances by the Kiwis were so different that it was actually very frustrating to watch that game which was also shown on free to air on Prime, but as the commentators reminded us; this now set up the final game to be a thriller with the series standing at one apiece.

It was only when we checked the TV Times to see what time we could sit down and watch that decider that little doubts began to creep into our minds. The third one dayer was not scheduled to be shown free to air on Prime at all; it had always been planned to be shown only on SkySport for those who had a Sky subscription. Now there’s a coincidence. Of course England went on to win that match as well (this time by five wickets) which was totally in keeping with their form, and that of the Black Caps.

Now call me a suspicious old bugger, but I can’t help feeling that it was extremely convenient for SkySport that the Black Caps should shock everyone by winning the first match that was free to air and lose the second which was also free to air leaving the ‘exciting’ decider to be shown only to paying viewers. All the more so, given the current fuss about match fixing in regards to cricket matches and given also that we were constantly shown a little graphic in the top left hand corner of the screen during the second match that showed the odds one particular agency was giving for England to win the game. I’m just sayin’.

And finally another item to deserve mention in Mr Ripley’s ripping tales is the ongoing saga of the Act(ing) Party and little Johnny Banksia. The short-arsed one is under the spotlight yet again for allegedly being less than honest. No! Surely not! This time it seems the diminutive career politician (I don’t care where as long as I am elected there) is under scrutiny in relation to statements made in the prospectus of finance company Huljich Wealth Management of which he had been described as an executive director. It seems the prospectus contained a number of things that misled investors. No! Surely not! Another of the company’s directors, Peter Huljich has already 'fessed up to the fact that the prospectus contained misleading information and he has been fined $112,500, which would be a pathetic slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket for someone in his position.

However the petite politician who was described as an executive director up until 2008, then later had his job description amended to simply director has now been asked to answer the allegations that he as an executive director was also liable for the veracity or otherwise of the statements in the prospectus. Interestingly his former partner in (political) crime, Dong Brash is facing the same allegations over the same prospectus. This all coincided with the Act(ing) Party’s national conference held at Allan Gibbs’ modest we two up two down, north of Auckland. There the miniature member managed to suck in the TV cameras to film him pretending to run up a hill, presumably to show that he was moving the party upwards. He enthusiastically told the reporter that Act could have six MPs if they get five percent at the next election (still clinging to the coat-tails rule). However he blithely ignored the fact that at the last election they Act(ually) got ONE percent and in the aforementioned 3News poll they got 0.1 percent.

But given how inaccurate the latter might be that could just as easily be 0.0001 percent. I’m just sayin’.