Ridiculous Hits or Myths or Brain Damaged?

Conservative anarchist Rodney Hide is outraged at New Zild being held to ransom by Maori!!! According to Rodders the accursed politically correct Waitangi Tribunal is holding back the whole country and whatnot. And in true conservative fashion Rotten says that it is all about property. And all this mumbo jumbo about religious beliefs should not be allowed.

It's not quite enough to just sing a song. You should also know the river's taniwha and use the river to wash away spells and curses. But the clincher is to recognise the river's life force. Then it's yours.

A taniwha is a mythical monster that Maori say live in some rivers, usually in areas of the river where people got drowned and such, sort of a PSA, if you like. Rocket also notes, somewhat grumpily

These are the indicators that the tribunal says prove customary ownership of the country's rivers and lakes.

Indicators, see, as in things that indicate, not your actual proof as Rolling says, but no matter. What has got Kidney riled is THE LAW!!

I am all for property rights. They should be recognised and upheld. Property rights are essential to a peaceful, prosperous society.
But property rights must be certain and stable. There are no property rights where they are endlessly litigated. 

We all know how those brown people are when they get granted the ownership of their own property, litigate, litigate they go. IT WILL NEVER END!!!! And the reason why we can't decide who owns stuff is HISTORY!!!

It's not possible to trace legitimate possession in an unbroken chain of legitimate transactions back to the original owners for any piece of land or enduring property. Human history has been too violent and untidy to do so.

See people are too violent for owning stuff and the losers should just STFU!!

Back then, it was "might makes right".
A Maori could own only what he could grab - and hang on to. And that never included a river.

Yes  Redknees is  goin' with the "we won it fair and square so sux to them" school of history. It's just that there was this treaty that the whole fucking country is based on which the various governments of the days broke and broke and broke again which led us to think that maybe we should do something about that and so we set up the Waitangi Tribunal. Uh-huh.
Now, of course, Rocknuts is trying to piss liberals off but have a look at the comments and see the smelly, fucking racists he has attracted to his banner. Note, also, brave commenter AK who says "Fuck you all" as nicely as he can. 

As cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes.

New Zild is a harsh and unforgiving place. Once someone slips up and loses a contest for their leadership of, say, a political party, that is it for them, usually. Now I can hear what you're all saying: "that would be for persons of integrity and therefore would not apply to those on the right". Well, shame on you, of course you are right but would it kill you  to be wrong on purpose, for once!?!?!
Latest old hack back into the sewer is Rodney Hide, a person of interest to this blog and not an obsession. He is going to have a column in the New Zealand Herald of which this first is linked to there (them technical writing classes were worth every cent). However there are laughs a-plenty in the article.
Rodders reveals that he is an ANARCHIST!!

I have concluded we would do better with no government at all. New Zealand before 1840 had some downsides. But the downsides were small beer compared to the social and economic devastation wrought by big, bloated and out-of-control bureaucracy.

No gubblement at all, because that worked so well before 1840. When everything was exactly the same as it is now except no pesky rules and regulations and such. O Anarchist thy name is Glibertarian!
 What about this startling observation

Besides, every other writer and commentator in New Zealand is a socialist. I am not. 

Every single one folks! What a vast left-wing conspiracy it is.
But Rodders has turned his back on the misguided  small bunch of people...with... enormous power over the rest of us and is happy being a workin' man helping to renovate his house.

I loved the work. Just the sheer physicality of it. And being with guys who simply get on with the job without the talk and the preciousness of politics. I enjoyed the earthy humour. No need to be PC.

Youse can whistle at the babes as they sashay past, the sluts.
Oh it's a sorry tale and really quite depressing. However a common tater called AK does get 25 "likes" and draws a response from Rodney which boils down to "but, but, Socialinism!"
O'course in the olden days before gummenment got in the way we could go and duke it out in a manly fashion.
I think this may a rich sauce of cheap laffs.
 

 

Say What???

"I'm not ruling out anything at this point ... I intend to remain Act Party leader, and whether I remain for the full three-year term depends on the wishes of the caucus."

So speaketh Dr. Don Brash who is an unhealthy obsession a person of interest to this blog. He is talking about his commitment to staying in bed with the government if his ACT party gets enough votes. Apparently ACT party officials carry a rabid badger with them at all times ready to convert people. It is a novel election campaign to say the least.
But what are we to make of this half-arsed attitude to the electorate who have already once rejected his undertaker embrace? Does this mean that, if he gets a better offer he will be off? And is this a threat or a promise? As Don puts it:

"Clearly, if we have no leverage at all, the appeal of staying diminishes."

Translation: Iffen we don't get some influence I'm off, and you buggers will have to look out for yourselves.
This all relates to the tea shop incident when the Prime Minister talked to John Banks who etc etc. Did they talk about the possibility of John Banks taking over from Brash?
The Prime Minister has thrown his usual tantrum and now refuses to talk about the whole tea-shop fiasco, as he says;

Asked if he remembered ... Mr Key said: "I genuinely can't recall.

It is the biggest event of the election so far and was all nice and stage managed until the secret taping took place and he can't remember what he said. It fills one with confidence that this bloke will probably be PM for another 3 years.
"I honestly can't remember what was on the paper I signed with the Saudi Arabians."
Incidentally, would any other country in the world have a "tea-shop incident" as part of an election campaign?

Smutdate: VS in comments asks for pictures and we cannot refuse her because otherwise she drinks gin and turns maudlin she has a cute babby.

Unreal

New Zild’s ruling National party has a special friend in the ACT party, who have been mentioned on this blog from time to time. The Nats have been askeart that the DLF will not get into Parliament what with them having policies that are marginally more popular than tooth decay so, under our parliamentary rules, they are willing to have an agreement to not seriously run a candidate in the only electorate where ACT has a chance of getting a seat which will mean that, under parliamentary rules, other ACT party animals might be able to go to Wellington. This was all supposed to go smoothly and quietly in a photo op moment which is covered, dutifully, here.

But some poltroon, some miscreant has “accidentally” taped the conversation and the “cup of tea” episode is swirling around the plonkerocity that is a New Zild election year.

However, in the tradition of Riddled investigative journalism and by using pixie technology known as Morphic Vibrational Transferance we do not have the transcript which we publish here.

The participants are not the Prime Minister, John Key and the ACT party candidate, ex politician and ex Auckland mayor, John Banks. Especially not them.

JK: Bansky!

JB: Keysy!

JK: hah hah

JB: Yah hah hah

JK: Time for a cuppa?

JB: Hah hah

JK: Tea?

JB: Yeah hah hah

JK: I’ll have English Breakfast tea. Geddit?

JB: Yeah hah hah

JK: It’s because my deputy is Bill English! English breakfast! Hah hah

JB: I don’t like tea

JK: What, don’t like tea?

JB: Tea, no. Coffee for me. Coffee is what Banksy likes. Coffee, hot and strong. Like a ….hot, strong thing.

JK: Tea and coffee grow on bushes.

JB: Do they? Bushes,eh? I’ve heard of Bushells tea.

JK: Yeah, that’s it, on the Bushell bush.

JB: Crikey, how do you know this stuff?

JK: Good people Banksy, on the desk, finding stuff out.

JB: So, we going to do this election thing?

JK: What?

JB: The election thing.

JK: I’m doing it Banksy, goin’ around shaking hands NOT BABIES, eh, not babies, makin’ speeches and such. It’s a stress and a strain but I do it for the hard working tax payers whom I represent

JB: Me too ! hah ha ha ha.

JK: hah hah haha, I like that one

JB: But you know, you’re not going to run against me and then I get into Parliament and help you out, maybe two or three of us?

JK: Not that old guy, smells like cabbage?

JB: That’s Don Brash, the leader, the Man; he has to come with me.

JK: Creepy old bugger. Always going on about something BLAH BLAH BALH.

JB: BLAH BLAH BLAH, always

JK: (silly voice) I say, Mr Key, can I tell you about blah blah blah!

JB: (silly voice) It’s very important blahhdy blah

(Both giggling for several minutes)

JK: Yeah we’ll do it Bansky, happy to do it.

JB: You won’t regret it, Sir.

JK: You don’t worry that it is a rort of the system, that we are really constricting people’s choice in the pursuit of our ideological agenda?

JB: Um, does tea really grow on bushes?

JK: I’ll get people to look into it.

Way TMI

Poppers as ACT gets its show underway

I for one am not convinced that the national political discourse will be any the better for the addition of fisting and slings. Nor am I convinced that a venue called The Piston is a suitable place for launching a campaign. Call me old-fashioned.

UPDATE: Disappointingly, there is nothing in the news article about the 'adult baby' nappies worn by the majority of the ACT members in attendance.

Low hanging fruit? Sure but whattameye, a monkey?

Just beating the undergrowth in teh intertronic jungle, and whut is this hear? Why it is more paid drivel from that classic no-good Deborah Cone Hill.
So sit back in the old comfy chair ( first check behind the curtains for the Spanish Inquisition)  and enjoy the comedic (as in would be funny if you had just had the Zombie MacDonald's around) stylings of  one of kiwiland's finest....er um well, you know, special thing that there is no evidence for so shut up, that's why.
Oh dear, 3rd sentence in and  it's jagged rocks of perilous seas time:

Then again, I don't have much of an inkling of what the Occupy This and That movement is really wanting.

Pretty good recovery though:

It has a good point about bailed-out bankers' ginormous bonuses: even the unoccupied Wall Street Journal admits that. 

But then, all hands on deck!

So why is it that I find myself thinking the protesters seem not inspirational but a bit brattish? It's not just that the ubiquitous Susan Sarandon turns up for a photo opportunity or that there seem to be more college-educated Pilates instructors on the front line than unemployed auto workers.

It sort of circles the plughole for a bit and lets DCH make a few cheap shots (which I think you'll find is in MY contract, actually) about the 99% etc. etc. But then we get to the pay-off and I believe that a cymbal shot would be obligatory with this

The truth is, the world cannot be made perfect: the protesters are like toddlers having a tanty. "It's not fair!" Why should some people be born into money while others are born into poverty? Why should some people be healthier or prettier or more charismatic than others?

Because after you admitted that you don't know what is going on, you can't really pass a judgement about what is going on. An unpublished comment by some person whose name may or may not be AK says:

Profound apologies to The One Bob but:
Something is happening here
and you don't know what it is
Do you, Deborah Hill Cone?

I think The Almighty One could make it rhyme.
So the ship of glibertarian fools and corporate jesters Formally Known as New Zild sails into the sunset unaware that  it is just painted scenery.

The tongue seems to have separated from the brain, Sir.

Well, it has been a fascinating time in New Zild politics lately. The Don Brash/ John Banks formerly ACT party have continued on their road to self immolation  as the rodents end their cruise on the ship of Fules.
Firstly, most of their MP's had decided that they don't wanna do that parliament thing no more, what with the rules and THE MAN always puttin' them down. However Mr John Boscawen was going to fight on and stand in the general election later this year but NOW HE DOESN'T!!
This is due to the non-MP leader of ACT Don Brash whom the regular leader will be familiar with due to his hi-jacking a political party, kicking out the leader and snubbing the sitting MP's he doesn't like (some of them were pesky women, sheer conincidence) and then looking up with the blood dripping off his hands to say "Whaaaat!"
One of Don's best friends in politics was the person he deposed as ACT leader, Rodney Hyde, and since he has been shoe horned out, Donny got his old mate, his old pal, John Banks to try to win Rodney's seat of Epsom, in Auckland. 
But then Devilish Don came up with the master stroke: He is in favour of decriminalising Marijuana which is Banksy's sore point

The stance puts him directly against the views of Dr Brash, who at the weekend said his personal view was decriminalisation.
"So what?" said Mr Banks, a former police minister.
"So many of our vulnerable young people are at sea with alcohol and drugs and often both. They need life-rafts, not concrete boots."

Now, of course your ordinary person can see what Brasho is on about, but notice his emphasis

"The police and the courts spend some $100 million of taxpayer money a year enforcing this prohibition of a drug, believed by many people to be less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. Is there really any point to this?"

It's the money innit.
I have to say that, given the current state of New Zild politics, this is about as good as it gets. It may keep the ACT party out of the wheelhouse after the election. Dunno, Banks will still probably take Epsom, his natural constituency. But it may keep the ACT vote so low that he is the only boxhead in there for them.

Lonely teardrops, we've been crying

Tuesday lunchtime, from a recently bought-out political party now operating from the boardroom of a firm of corporate lawyers who regularly act as conduit for press releases from the Business Roundtable:

[Don] Brash also confirmed that Hide would retire from Parliament at the next election, rather than seek a place on ACT's list or seek to remain in Parliament.

[...]

Brash announced the changes in a boardroom at Chapman Tripp in Wellington today saying he was unable to make the announcement at Parliament because he was "not legally allowed" to hold a press conference there, because he was not a Member of Parliament.

Hide was rolled as leader last week after Brash described him as toxic and a liability to ACT.

Brash had also made it clear that he did not want Hide to retain his ministerial portfolios. He said yesterday that he changed his mind because Hide had important legislation to get through Parliament.

[...]

But Brash could not name one of the pieces of legislation.

And here at the palatial Riddled offices it was all sad faces and red eyes and tears before bedtime because a political future without Rodney Hide's special brand of hilarity would be a sadly impoverished one. For Don Brash had declared that his old friend Hide's "brand was toxic" so he must go. It all seems to be about branding more than ideology from his perspective, though it never became clear whether Don's preferred symbol was a Lazy 8 or a Double Cross.

The only consolation is the entertainment value in watching how the electorate reacts in the coming election to the present clown-car pile-up. Will they see the Brash buy-out as an admirable show of strength, as the journalists seem to think, rather than as a display of disloyalty, untrustworthiness, back-stabbing and naked opportunism? (clowns with road-rage should not be trusted with knives and should definitely not be allowed to strip naked). Though as a friend pointed out to me at the pub last night -- he was buying a pint, so I had to listen to his opinions -- it doesn't really matter what 95% of the voting population think of the ACT party, since their sole objective is to win support from all 5% of the crazy raving sociopath demographic as opposed to the mere 2% they are currently receiving in polls.

But wait, a few hours later, Hide's promise to stand down at the election is no longer operative!

Rodney Hide hopes to be around as an MP after the election even though he told ACT's new leader Don Brash that he'd quit at the election.

Dr Brash agreed to keep him in Cabinet until then. Today, Mr Hide's ever hopeful of staying on as an MP.

"Well what I said to Don Brash was clearly I didn't have his support and that I wouldn't stand if I didn't have the leader's support but it's my intention to persuade him that I've got a lot to contribute," he says.

An outside observer might well think that Hide had been promised a well-paid job made specially for him if he would quietly go away and cease to stink the place up, but belatedly he has realised what a strong bargaining position he has -- not to mention how much money there is behind the new owners of ACT -- so he is holding out for a better offer.

So our tears are dried and it is back to the Old Entomologist with high spirits for a night of "Origins of Eusociality among the Hymenoptera" Trivia!

Welease Wodney

NOW WITH AK UPDATE!!:
Evangeline van Holsteren (head barmaid at the Old Entomologist) called our attention to the missives and epistles amassing in the Riddled mailbox / drinks-tab / dud-cheque-depository behind the bar. She also called our attention to the absence of "Riddled Secretary" written anywhere in her job description. Strong language was used, contents may offend, adult themes and human anatomy references.

So once our ears had stopped ringing, AK and I ran our eyes over the letters -- some penned in scented violet ink upon tinted deckle paper and some reeking of marker pen and Lynx weaponised body spray -- and wouldn't you know it, everyone was asking "What's Don Brash been up to lately?" Except one letter that called him 'Dunny Brush' for which the finger of suspicion points at Mentis Fugit.

A swift recap is in order. Once upon a time the Don parachuted into the job of Leader of the Opposition. During his tenure, taking strategery advice from the US Republicans, he returned the National Party to its roots as a force for resentment and exclusivity, and went into the 2005 election campaigning for the votes of "Mainstream New Zealanders" whose identity was defined by not being unionist, gay, brown-skinned, female, poor or any other form of Other. Yet despite campaigning on an overtly-racist platform of "Kiwi vs. Iwi" -- in New Zealand! -- he still contrived to lose the election, and if you say "Whadda loooser" then no-one's going to argue.

Since then (as documented by AK) Brash has been administering the occasional speech about the failure of democracy and the incapacity of voters to recognise the policies that would be good for them, i.e. the electorate has failed to properly represent the government and should be dissolved and replaced with a more representative one. He has also been serving as Head of the Independent Commission for Giving Government the Independent Advice it Wants, a sinecure created in 2008 in recognition of his sacrifices.

Tradition demands a Hans Bellmer
image with every mention of ACT.

But now, Cincinnatus-like, the Don is called back into public service! Circumstances oblige him to claim the leadership of the right-wing ACT party.* Chief circumstance being ACT's triumphant climb from its previous low of 3.7% popularity to the dizzy heights of 2%. Don ascribes this to the personal unpopularity of current leader Rodney Hidden, rather than to a party manifesto that appears to have been written by rabid ADD badgers towards the end of a week-long datura bender.

Don is not deterred by (1) his current non-membership of the party he is proposing to lead, nor by (2) concerns about offending ACT's other five non-Rodney members of Parliament with the admission that none of them are fit to organise a dollies' tea-party let alone a political force, nor by (3) the unfortunate optics of a canoe-jumping carpet-bagger parachuting in from nowhere with only a sense of entitlement to compensate for his track record of failure. All that matters, as he correctly points out, is his corporate backing:

His pitch is likely to include a promise that funders will turn the tap back on if he is leader.

This presents a challenge for the busy little elves who constitute the right bloggosphere in New Zild and whose job it is to write copy for the newspapers explaining how whatever happens is good for a John Key-led government. They will have to present Brush's buy-out as unification rather than internal turmoil and a sign of abject desperation, corporate ownership as a form of broad public support, and a septagenarian leader as party rejuvenation. And having convinced politicians and journalists, they will still have to convince the electorate at large that Brash is their Man. But they know what side of the toilet paper is be-shat and already they are beavering away to spin strawmen into gold and mixed metaphors into ummm something else.

Already we can read that Brash's leadership of the National Party was "brief but successful" if you overlook the picayune business of a lost election.

We can expect further explanations of how Brash's lack of any involvement in the Hard Work aspect of creating the ACT party, like his lack of involvement in the National Party before his 2005 leadership,** is evidence that he is 'above politics'.

Riddled is agin the whole thing because what would we do then with the 'Rodney's Hidden' label?

--------------------------------------

* UNCONNECTED: Rodney has spoken of abolishing the ICGGIAW, as part of general governmental belt-tightening activities, as a fair trade for the dissolution of social-welfare programs, i.e. rich and poor, Left and Right alike are carrying their share of the Recession. But TOTALLY NOT A FACTOR.

** Prior to that, Brash was Governor of the Reserve Bank from 1988 to 2002. To borrow J. K. Galbraith's description of Hjalmar Schacht (head of the Reichsbank in the 1920s and 1930s):
"a man whose reputation for financial wizardry was supported by an exceptionally austere appearance and a notably frozen mind".
AK NEWS UPDATE!!! Rodney Walks The Plank!!!

Every sow's ear has a silver lining

Everyone agrees on the need to share the cost of rebuilding Christchurch fairly across all New Zealanders. According to the Finance Minnyster, the way to ensure this is to privatise public assets while cutting government assistance for the poor and the "Working for Families" tax-break for non-wealthy families.

Over at at Dim-Post, Danylmc hazards a generalisation:

Most of the suggestions I’ve seen from various politicians and pundits on how to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake are things that those individuals desperately wanted to see happen before the quake. I think Fran O’Sullivan was the first out of the gate, suggesting that Len Brown cancel all of his proposed infrastructure projects for Auckland. The Greens want to increase taxes for the rich, English wants to bring back interest on students loans, and so on.

Perhaps John Boscawen of the ACT Party is just more honest than the rest about the whole shock-doctrine business of seizing the chance to push one's message inherent in any tragedy:

The fact is that this is an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.

Boscawen is the kind of guy who would react to the news that you have cancer with a slap on the back and congratulations that you've received this great opportunity to adopt a quack diet he's being urging you to try.

His speech is also noteworthy for some weird ranting about billions of dollars-worth of high-grade coal that the voices have told him about, buried somewhere in the South Island: His vision of prosperity for New Zealand involves turning productive farmland into strip-mines in order to send coals to Newcastle lignite to China.

Ladies and gentlemen, this man is the current deputy-leader-until-the-next-one-comes-along of the ACT party, which attracts something like 3.7% of support from voters. He can afford to be that stonkingly insulting to everyone in Christchurch because none of that 3.7% comes from there (it mainly comes from socially-inadequate nimrods who pride themselves on being arseholes and have come to terms with the inevitable by telling themselves that if everyone hates them it's because of their habit of bravely stating unpopular truths). He can afford to be that stupid because ACT has 5 seats in parliament and an influential position as support party for the minority National government -- also as a convenient excuse for National politicians to bring in unpopular hard-right policies while blaming each one on an unavoidable concession to ACT.

UPDATE: The ACT party collectively serves as a case-study in crank magnetism... like whiskies and breasts, it's hard to stop after just one lunatic belief. Muriel Newman, for instance, who was deputy-leader-last-but-one, is firmly invested in space-case counter-factual archaeology. The upshot is that ACT politicians can stand up and spout anything that they've heard from the leprechauns in their trousers without fear of ridicule from the media, because "ACT speaker disconnects from real world" is not exactly news.

Recycling, "hard" choices.

One of the least favourite, in this reporters view,  denizens of the New Zild political landscape is the lurching patchwork creature known as the ACT party. E'en now they stumble about searching for brains or at least one of those spin-the-arrow decision makers beloved by children's game makers. BUT these people are not Zombies and I wish to draw no comparisons with the Undead Community. That would have meant that ACT persons were alive at some stage.
Recent evidence, in the form of column by a former ACT party MP, yes, in parliament for a time, Deborah Coddington.
Codders or Cod or La Coddington has taken a couple of weeks annual leave (made up bit, there) to consider the state of her party and hit upon the bestest answer.
Ditch the current leader and get the guy back that we kicked out because he was no good.  And why, you, as a relatively sane person, might ask?

Act needs a hard taskmaster, a leader who when he barks "jump" has his MPs squeal "how high?" as they work like navvies, punching above their weight.

It's some sort B+D thing, obviously.
La Coddington rejects the former, former leader Sir Roger Douglas (who this reporter thinks should be in the International court for crimes against humanity due to his "handling" of the NZ economy in the '80's) because he is too clever for mere mortals.

And obviously Roger Douglas is not the man either, because nobody listens to him. Of course, his dire warnings are correct,...

She pretends that Douglas is like ones mother who one never listened to but who was always right.
 I think that this  is a perfect illustration of a single interest party (no taxee, no spendee) that had a brief period when more than the usual rabid badgers listened to them and now cannot understand why they are losing popularity faster than Bernie Madoff did.
Game over chaps, might be better to achieve some dignity in ones passing, rather than amusing us with your  thrashing around.

Time machine needed, must be able to go through time

The ACT party has been in the wars a bit lately. Heather Roy got offside with Das Capitalist Rodney Hide and had to go. Then one of their "String 'em up" law quackers got sprung as a fan of Frederick Forsythe novels and passports for dead babies.
So now that they have someone in to replace David "1001 uses for a dead infant" Garret. They have a new star in their firmament, Hilary Calvert. In her first speech to Parliament, which many wish to rename as her Midden speech, she pounced upon the fact, sorry FACT!!, that greedy Maori type people could charge people for access to beaches that the government had said belonged to Maori what with them having used them for 600 years or so. Immediately the Gubblememnt backpedaled and bowed to the Randian laser beams that ACTors shoot out of their eyes.

She got the agreement of Attorney-General Chris Finlayson in Parliament to consider an amendment to the repeal bill to specifically state that charging for public access to beaches would not be allowed.
Finlayson has argued it is not necessary to spell out that charging for public access under the proposed regime is banned because there is no enabling power to do so in the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. 

 But his answer yesterday indicated a change of heart and Hide made instant capital out of it.

But, of course, with the inevitability of a "Pancake wrapped around a sausage onna stick" not being at the top of the Good Food Pyramid, some one has leaked an email saying that the whole thing was actually set up on September 20.
Oh Dear

It is evident from the emails Hide and Finlayson discussed the issue on the night of September 20. Hide's office was told that if there was a question asking about a specific clause prohibiting charging for access to the beach Finlayson would say something like such a clause was not required but to avoid doubt in response to concerns raised by Act, it would include such a provision.

Some days you  couldn't win a chicken raffle with only one ticket in it.

God's gift to lazy bloggers

The best way to display your confidence in your party members -- and your belief that they in turn have full confidence in you -- is to brandish a grenade and threaten to take everyone with you if anyone tries to take a shot. Here's Rodney again:

You should appreciate the entire caucus and senior party members knew about David. We're all in it together.

As we noted on the weekend, Rodney Hide has proved himself to be a politician of integrity by offering to resign as leader of the ACT party. If he thought that "it was in the interests of the party". Also he is the best person to judge where the party's interests lie, and he sees no reason to ask for their opinion since after all, they have him to tell them what it is. That's what leaders are for.

"Rodney Hide put his political credibility on the line last night...

...by backing MP David Garrett after he admitted stealing a dead baby's identity to obtain a false passport."

Or so said a journalist in a NZ newspaper a couple of days ago.
Does this mean that Hyde has forfeited that on-the-line credibility (in the light of his more recent decision to withdraw his backing and throw Garrett to the wolves),* becoming politically irrelevant so journalists in NZ newspapers will no longer bother publishing his statements to the press?**

HA HA HA.

* In my day we didn't have busses to throw people under.

** "Political credibility" here does not have the obvious meaning of "respect from the New Zealand electorate", what with 95% of voters at the last election deciding against voting for Hide's ACT party. Not to mention his unfathomable decision to opt out of politics for a season in order to feature in Dancing with the Stars. Or the whole regrettable business of "populist opponent of perks for politicians caught taking advantage of travel perks". Or the more recent headlines when he purloined a classified document about NZ defense forces from the desk of the Associate Minister for Defense, with the explanation that he was entitled to it because she was a member of his party.

As for David Garrett himself, it is difficult to know where to start. There is something self-destructive about devoting his parliamentary career to decrying the leniency of judges and the iniquities of name suppression, and to pushing through a "six balls in an over" "Three Strikes and You're Out" law that is founded on the principle that offenders do not reform after an initial offense; when the only reason he was in Parliament in the first place was that he had persuaded a judge to grant him leniency and suppress his name on the basis that he had reformed. It is as if he was daring the world to catch him out.

When he was caught in 2005 for acquiring a fraudulent passport by assuming a dead baby's identity, his plea to the judge that his mental condition was fragile (so publication of his name would cause him undue hardship) does at least suggest a degree of insight into his condition.

You get used to the idea that when foxes enter Parliament, they will gravitate to the position of Minister for Henhouses. It seems strange, though, for one to build his entire career around reminding voters about vulpine propensities and to put so much effort into passing stronger anti-fox legislation.¹

UPDATE:
In further evidence of Hide's post-credibility status, the NZ Herald is still publishing his bullshit this morning:

"If I came to the conclusion that it was in the best interests of the Act Party I would step aside."

We are used to politicians making non-apologies ("I am sorry if anyone was offended by my words") but this is the first time I've heard a non-resignation offer.

In comments, S McG stoops to the level of attacking Rodney Hide's personal appearance:

"The slow-motion crime spree of
The Turtle cannot be stopped!"

Riddled is above such attacks and I could not possibly comment on the resemblance between David Garrett himself and a rained-on bantam rooster.

¹ See also the recent admission from Steven Joyce (Minister for Clamping Down on Traffic Offenses) that he knows whereof he speaks.

Like marble statues all with gold inlaid

For your delectation I bring you a sculpture in bullshit by Sam Mahon. Sam is one of the good guys and cow manure is not his usual medium.

Here is a sculpture that should have been carved in cowshit. Instead the artist opted for bronze-painted plaster-of-paris, a slightly less evanescent medium, but still suggestive of a hope on the artist's part that the result would not linger around to stink up his reputation. It was commissioned for the 1940 Centennial Exhibition, a time when Best International Practice for public art leaned towards the style known as Totalitarian Kitsch, and the NZ arts establishment was determined not to fall behind the German,¹ Italian or Soviet² states by allowing a Kitsch Heroic Nude gap to open.

The dude with one blade broken off his propellor beanie doing his celebrated Statue of Liberty impression -- always a hit at parties -- is Kupe the Navigator, a culture hero known to about half the iwi of pre-European New Zealand.³ In most of the tribal accounts, Kupe killed a friend and eloped with his wife, but 1940 was a puritanical time so the sculptor has opted for a more morally-edifying version where Kupe's lady friend pointing in three directions was the virtuous Ms. Te Apārangi. The pyramidal composition called for a third figure so the sculptor has invented the figure of Pekahourangi, at the bottom right, who is old and wise but too feeble to stand up erect like Kupe.

We know now that the mid-century version of national mythology (featuring a settlement of NZ by a Great Fleet in about 1350) is unmitigated ahistorical shite, fabricated by an ethnologist who distorted the available oral traditions to fit his preconceived picture, with the help of a Māori informant who had converted to Mormonism and who was committed to the idea that the Māori were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.ª Kupe has been relegated from the role of a master navigator who preceded and instigated the Great Fleet by bearing news of NZ's existence back to the homeland, down to a minor part as an amalgam of several figures who led migrations of people from one part of NZ to another.

Evidently these amendments to the previously-fixed mainstays of cultural certainty were too much for the old farts of the Wellington establishment, and in 2000 they came up with the idea of dragging that painted-plaster sculptural group out from the basement where it had been moldering in decent obscurity and CASTING IT IN BRONZE like proper totalitarian art. Being all wealthy people, they convinced someone else to pay for this, and there it is now, on the waterfront, affirming their right to keep romantic lies within the national consciousness. Also a SYMBOL of our shared commitment to fabricated traditions, philistine tastes, and dishonesty in materials.

1 & 2

Is anyone surprised that this style of art has the approval of Ayn Rand and her followers?

³ New Zealand by 1940 was going through a process that will be familiar to Native Americans: once all their land had been grabbed so the Māori were no threat to European settlers, and the only thing they had left of value was their culture, the Europeans set about cherry-picking bits of that as well, to build into their own collective identity.

ª Hanson's essay on the process of fabrication is interesting for the first two thirds, before it name-drops Derrida and promptly spirals into gibberish about sign-substitutions.

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There is a whole nother kettle of worms attached to this story, involving the Celtic New Zealand crowd. These are the nimrods who cling to the old mid-century story in which Kupe was the first Polynesian to visit New Zealand (rather than a later wanderer from one part to another), so when the traditions have him encountering people in the course of his explorations, this becomes proof that New Zealand already contained pre-Polynesian inhabitants. Who must be CELTIC.

It is a sordid story, marred by politicians battening onto the whole prior-occupancy notion (the argument is that it relieves New Zealanders who are wealthy because their immediate ancestors seized land here from any debt to the New Zealanders of Polynesian descent whose immediate ancestors had owned that land). On the other hand, it is also enlivened by characters such as Martin Doutré, who adheres to a kind of New-age Archaeology where you discover the Celtic past of a landscape by choosing random landmarks and measuring the distance between them -- much easier than actually excavating sites.

You can't fool me young man, it's arseholes all the way down

In an update to our earlier "apologising for democracy story", posted quickly before AK steals it, Rodney Hide has weighed in, allowing us to use the Rodney's Hidden tag.

Now young Rodders speaks for the ACT party, who believe in minimising democratic freedoms like choosing governments while maximising economic freedoms such as (1) the right to starve if the only job available does not pay a subsistence wage; or (2) the right of corporations to privatise fresh water and sell it to the highest bidder (assuming there is any left after the farmers have taken what they want for irrigation & hosing out the cow-shed) without unfair competition from government suppliers. It's understandable that he should sympathise with the current Chinese government, who follow the same policies.*

Also understandable that after the Pry Minister's apology to China about a Member of Parliament trespassing on Parliament and inconveniencing their security guards, Rodney would demand that the MP in question should also apologise for aggressively placing his body in the way of the guards. No more of these unacceptable, disrespectful protests, please!**

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In other news, a group of farmers marched on parliament demanding that farmers be exempt from carbon-emissions legislation. The present Emissions Trading law gives them an exemption until 2015, but being subsidised for 4-½ years by the rest of New Zealand is apparently not enough.

One might expect the ACT party to support the Emissions Trading Scheme since it's all about market solutions and creating a market in pollution quota, but apparently global climate change is disproved by Rodney's ideology so he's agin it.

An earlier demonstration in 2003, with farmers marching on parliament for the right to pollute, culminated with the Honourable Member for Cow-Cockiedom (then in opposition, now in government as Minister of Tucking Shirt Into Underpants) driving his tractor up parliament steps. According to the ACT party at the time, this was an example of protesting in a legitimate, acceptable way.

* Hide's "Charging-Families-for-the-Bullet-Used-in-Executions Bill", inspired by the Chinese justice system, remains at the stage of Select Committee hearings.

** "Members of Parliament [...] are in a privileged position and they shouldn’t exploit it."

An alternative explanation

Some authorities still cling to this now-discredited explanation.
The guy with raisins on his tie bears an uncanny resemblance to Rodney Hyde.

UPDATE: A dry-cleaner used the wrong solvent and for some reason these angry customers hold civilisation and democracy to blame. The picture is framed like that because they're all naked from the waist down.

In the words of Molly Ivins

You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You.
The National Party, in NZ, is the gubbermint because it has two coalition parties that back have promised to back it up. These two parties are the Maori party which was founded to promote Maori interests and the ACT party which was founded to promote arsehole Libertarian interests.
Now the Maori and Act parties do not get on, generally. Arseholery is no respecter of race though, and they have a few areas they can agree on. BUT now the National party has sent the co-leader of the Maori party to the UN to affirm the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Yikes! we'll all be murdered in our beds and our land stolen of us which is so unfair since we stole it first and that was ages ago and it wasn't me anyway.
This has outraged the other government supporter and their Leader Rodney Hide slashed at the government about "two laws etc" blah blah blah. This has been countered by the National Party leader and Pita Sharples (who went to the UN, and used to have a unique station in NZ politics of not provoking a gag reflex when seen on TV)) saying such things as it is aspirational not legally binding i.e. "We had our fingers crossed behind our backs so it doesn't count"
Frankly this excuse seemed to me to be hornswoggling of the highest order UNTIL I read the speech that Sharples gave in The Vancouver Sun and who could argue with a newspaper from that neck o' the woods, indeed.

But in offering the support, he said, his country reaffirmed its legal and constitutional frameworks. These, he said, "define the bounds of New Zealand's engagement with the aspirational elements of the declaration."

So that much appears to be true. There are some interesting aspects to the affair
1) Why was no one told that Sharples was going to the UN except for Maori TV channel?
2) Why are Hide and the media overlooking what Sharples actually said.
3) How's this for reporting only the facts, ma'am
NZ Herald.:Nats give in to Maori over rights declaration
4) What does National want in return?
5) Rodney Hide is a dork

Trickster Wordpress iz a trickster 
Vanocouver fixed for grated justice

An excuse to break out another Bellmer portrait

Custodial policy in New Zealand has become a political football. No, wait, wrong game... the two main parties have been vying to see who can promise the longer sentences,* both playing in the same direction, so it's more like a political pelota-ball. If only we could switch to political curling stones. But I digress.

The factors driving our culture of incarceration include the usual factors, like newspapers pumping up the moral panic whenever an ex-convict re-offends, but we also have the Sensible Sentencing Trust. This is essentially one guy who churns out regular press releases about the Rights of Victims and Getting Tough on Crime... the "Sensible Sentencing" he demands turns out to translate as longer sentences whenever the victim of crime was European-ancestry, but shorter sentences if the white-skinned party was the perpetrator and the guy he killed was the dark-skinned one. McVicar's press releases receive the kind of coverage from the news media that you'd expect for a organisation of thousands, because repeating press releases is what NZ news media are good at.
So last week the Gubblement promised a new wave of recruitment for the prison population, in the form of a "Three Strikes and You're Out" law that will strip judges and juries of the flexibility to choose an appropriate sentence for certain charges. Excuse me, people, but surely this should be a "Six Balls and it's an Over" law, because NZ is not a baseball nation.

Sadly, new prisoners must be housed somewhere, and when it comes to constructing new prisons in time for a surge of incarceration, NZ has prior form. When they decided to build Ngawha Prison in the middle of a geothermal area, who could possibly have expected that the geology would prove to be unstable, requiring vast cost overruns to strengthen the building's foundations?

The current Corrections Minister had one bright idea of assembling new prefab prisons by stacking up rusty old shipping containers. Prison hulks, as it were, without the expense of actual ships. Her next insight was the cunning plan of putting two prisoners into each cell designed to be large enough for one. The latter scheme has the advantage that once the precedent has been established, the same cells can accommodate three prisoners, or four, or eighteen; "Two is not a number", as the Pythagoreans were wont to say. Then there is the cost-cutting concept of privately-run prisons (because linking custodial policy to the profit motive has worked so well in the US).

The instigator of this three-strikes policy turns out to be Rodney Hide -- the National government would like to be nice liberal men of principle but once again their 58 seats in Parliament were outvoted by the five seats of the Opportunism & Corporate Interests party.

* A couple of years ago, Phil Goff -- then Minister of Corrections, now Leader of the Labour opposition -- was boasting that New Zealand is the Western world nation with the second-highest proportion of its population behind bars, second only to the US -- boasting, mind you, as a reason why Labour should be re-elected, rather than admitting the shameful fact as a cause for national recrimination.

58-seat Dog seeks 5-seat Tail for purposes of mutual wagging

No-one could possibly have anticipated that a 'fairer, more broadly-based' tax system would turn out to involve reductions in company tax and the top tax bracket,* with an increase in the regressive GST to compensate.

Apparently NZ's current tax system is "broken", according to the Working Group called to consider it, and urgently needs revamping. One symptom of this breakage, it seems, is that the country's highest earners are already evading much of their nominal tax burden. Newspaper companies agree -- as do the corporate lobbyists whose opinions they invite -- that reducing company taxation will revive the entire economy; also that the tax system is in crisis, unapparent though this was prior to the report.

There is a pattern emerging here. A month or two back, another Commission determined that the Legal Aid system was also in crisis and rife with corruption (according to unsourced evidence-free rumours that became credible because they had been repeated by a highly-paid Commissioner). The Government was shocked, shocked! to hear this (though by fortunate coincidence they already had plans ready to replace Legal Aid with a cheaper system of lower-paid court-appointed attorneys).

The moral is, don't appoint Commissions, because anything they examine can safely be predicted to be dysfunctional.

In fairness I should point out that the current NZ government is formed of Conservative but Compassionate centre-rightists who deeply regret having to continually advance items from a hard-right agenda. They are forced into it every time -- either by unforeseeable crises like these, or to maintain the support of the Corporate Interests party (AKA Rodney Hide), who constitute 5 seats of a 63-seat coalition. Hide is a meanie and he steals the government's lunch money at playtime. See artist's impression to the right.

A lot of the people currently promoting Taxation Reform as the panacea for all NZ's economic woes were also around in the 1980s, for an earlier round of reductions in progressive taxations and the introduction of the GST as a supplement. The same newspapers promised us back then that the combination of flatter taxes,** user-pays charges, privatisation and deregulation would usher in a new dawn of international competitiveness. As I recall the editorials, the only thing that would hold us back would be the moribund state of the economy in our trading partner Australia, which had turned its back on similar reforms and was retaining Keynsian / welfare-state policies that would destine it to the economic also-rans.

The median NZ household income at the time was roughly equal to that in Australia but has since fallen to about 75%.

* Median household income in 2007 = $62,556. The proposed reduction of the top tax bracket from 38% to %30 will benefit individuals over $70000.
** No, SMcG, a 'flatter tax' is NOT a sycophancy fee.