(SI-I-I-IGH!!)

The sh*t never stops, does it!

Syria's still a horrible mess;  Egypt's looking a bit dodgy, maybe Libya too;  Greece is hanging on by the skin of its teeth;  the Iranians & North Koreans are still doing their 'nuclear thing' tho what that might actually be is unclear as yet; the EU still has the 'wobbles'; & some really weird sh*t is coming out of the US in this presidential election year..

Back home, the Christchurch earthquake fallout isn't going away;  the West coast's Pike River mine disaster keeps on revealing new horrors; fallout from a ballooning catastrophe that cost 11 lives;  PM John Key's insistence on hocking off our resources to the highest bidder - only 'the Maoris' are getting in the way, & more power to them for doing so!  & for some reason unknown to ordinary mortals like me, the government is set to change our (not entirely unique) right-turning-traffic-right-of-way rule later this month - why?  What's wrong with it in a country that isn't paved all over with multi-lane roads?

& as if the hidden cost of (my home town) Dunedin's new stadium wasn't enough, the 126-year-old Otago Rugby Football Union is broke, in debt, & looking at liquidation - how the f**k did that happen?!!

I s'pose i should spare a cheer for us wining the Rugby World Cup; but also for Valerie Adams' on-going world record-breaking shot-put performances; the Breakers'  high standing in the Aussie basketball league (they won it last season); we have skiers, snow-boarders, promising track & field performers; water sports stars; even some not-too badly performing soccer players & (maybe) cricketers, etc.. 

We also have National Debt, student debt, endless emigration to the West Island (Australia), welfare 'crackdowns' (they really believe all this drivel about 'welfare dependency' as if more jobs weren't the obvious answer), the underlying agenda behind much of this stuff being concealing from the public the desire of certain sections of the economy to see this country remain a low-wage area - they never say so, of course, they just say 'we' are not working hard enough, police cutbacks (room for private law-enforcement agencies?) along with a huge new prison at Wiri (south of Auckland)..

Si-i-igh!!

All over bar the wheedling etc

Well the General election's come & gone..

We've voted to keep MMP (tho what the pollies will do to it is up for grabs)..

Key's Nats (60 seats) have only just got a House majority when combined with Act (1 - pseudo-Nat John Banks) & United Future (Peter Dunne).  So when do we see 'asset sales', to whom, & how much, & who's first on the block?

However, John Key won't have a soft ride!  Winston's back in the House, with six other mates (who, hopefully, can learn to make themselves useful) & a mandate to harass the government.  That's why i voted NZ1st & i make no apology for it either.  

I knew the Government would be National-led - the polls were all borne out - so i voted for an Opposition, an effective opposition!  And that means Winston, whether you like him or hate him!  Because he's the one person who won't hesitate to charge the government head-on, & we're going to need plenty of that in the next few years.

As for the bogus charge that 'they're all unelected MPs who got 'in' via the list' - who do they think put that list in the House?  Scotch mist?  E.T?  They got there because ~7% of the voting public voted for them, that's how!  It's a block vote with the whole country as its electorate - & because it's proportional, it's a fair representation of the views of a significant fraction of the voting public.

WTF is so hard about that?  The trouble with the 'anti-minority' brigade is that they want to go back to the old, unrepresentative, 'rubber-stamp' Parliaments of old, when people really were voting for the government (of someone's choice, nearly always a minority).  The sight of a properly functioning, fairly elected Parliament is both unfamiliar & unwelcome to these throw-backs.  The idea that the Government can't just do as it pleases, but must do (or not do) as Parliament wishes, is something many of my generation & almost all of my parents' generation never ever saw from one election to the next.

Things have changed for the better with the advent of MMP.

Polly-wolly Doodle All the Day..

Now that the All Blacks have won the Webb Ellis Cup @ at Rugby World Cup held in our little Stadium-of-4-million, the politicking (i originally wrote this as "poliyicking" - seriously, i really did!)  has started with a bang.

Debate between John Key & Phil Goff has been more than animated!

However, i'm concerned that, reportedly, 1 in 4 young people aren't even on the Electoral Roll.  Apparently, they believe their vote won't make any difference - WTF?!  I could understand that if we were still stuck in the bad old days of FPP, but that's why we voted for MMP - to punish the pollies by taking away their artificially-inflated 'majorities' in Parliament.

And that's what some of them are so desperately hoping to get back!

Never mind the smoke-screen of "too much power wielded by minority parties" - that's just 'old-polly-speak' for "we hate having to fight for every bill we want to pass in the House - we want back our old unlimited power to tell Parliament to Naff-Off-We're-Going-To-Do-This-&-There's-No-Way-You-Can-Stop-Us."

That's what the MMP Referendum's all about - "anything but MMP"  i.e. anything but having to run minority governments effectively answerable to Parliament (its original function!), or having to form coalitions with parties who may not agree with all of their stated program - running a hidden agenda is difficult, if not impossible (as it damn well should be!) without an absolute majority.

The worm in the rotten apple is SM (Supplementary Member) - a fig-leaf proportional system that delivers what the old hacks really want: a greatly increased chance of an absolute majority in Parliament, & a return to the unbridled power of government under an old, crooked, & easily corrupted voting system - FPP - with Parliament reduced to a noisy hot-air-filled rubber stamp.

No-one expects a return to FPP, & STV & PV are just there as window-dressing.

The Germans (where we got MMP from) know all about the horrors of the one-party state (in their case, Nazi-ism) & they routinely elect coalition governments to 'keep the bastards honest'.

Chris Doig OBE CNZM - Operatic singer, sports administrator, arts administrator

Only this year Christopher Doig was made Companion to the New Zealand Oder of Merit for services to the arts & sport.  I didn't really know a lot about him, except as an international opera singer who won the 1972 Mobil Song Quest (as it was then), graduated with top honours from the Vienna Music Academy, & performed for years at, among other international venues, the Vienna State Opera. 
So I was somewhat surprised when he was made CEO at New Zealand Cricket in 1995; he was also involved with the NZRU, NZ Rowing & Sparc.  

I already knew he was involved in Arts administration.
" He was director of the International Festival of the Arts from 1992 to 1995, a chairman of Creative New Zealand in 2006, and on the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Foundation board.
As Southern Opera Trust chairman, he was responsible for bringing international opera star Placido Domingo to Christchurch last week " (3News - more).


Today we lost a great New Zealander (NZ Herald).  He died at Nurse Maude Hospice in Christchurch after a two-year battle with bowel cancer.
RIP.

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I can't feel even vaguely sympathetic to another of this year's CNZMs - Roger Kerr.  His diatribe in the Otago Daily Times recently about the "insupportable burden of student loans" reeked of the kind of hypocrisy that gets baby boomers like me a bad name - he got his MA(Hons 1st class) back in the days when tertiary education was largely free-to-user, & I'll bet he wasn't complaining then!  The taxpayer got a return via the higher taxes paid by most graduates, in a society where the well-off more nearly paid their fair share.  Not like today.  

Yes, I understand Kerr is also fighting cancer, & yes, I hate the disease for taking my friends & relatives,  but I can't feel for him in the least.

The late, great Steve Jobs!!

How could i not say something about the late, great Steve Jobs!

He died of pancreatic cancer, & that alone makes me feel for him - various members of my family have died of cancer, & pancreatic cancer took one of my closest friends - Petrina Jane Glover (1946-2003) - in a particularly horrible way (she was so stoic throughout the whole ordeal) & her partner Amanda died of a stress-related illness in the same month (December); i was a basket case for weeks afterwards..

i sincerely hope he didn't suffer too much.

Cancer doesn't kill you - it just rips you apart & then you die!

Steely Dan!!

A little while back my friend Stephanie sent me a link to a You-Tube clip which had some nostalgic significance for her - what a luvly track!!

Having gotten turned on to Steely Dan in a big way, i thought i'd show you some more
(big ups to xRainxWhenxIxDiex):
'Haitian Divorce', 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo' & a real rocker 'Bodhisattva'

There's other great stuff too, like 'Deacon Blues',
& 'Kid Charlemagne',
but that's enuf to be going on with :)

ps: here's a Wiki ref to 'Deacon Blues'
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Top Gear - Captain Slow's brilliant idea..

Whenever TV's 'Top Gear' features electric cars, you may be sure of two things:
 1) They will run out of battery power in the most inconvenient place;
 2) Jezza Clarkson will be chortling with glee.

But when they (finally) reached the seaside, Jezza & Captain Slow (James May) went on some dodgem rides - thereby giving Captain Slow a brilliant idea:
   Overhead power transmission for electric cars on motorways.

It's not as silly as it sounds, i reckon.  Better still, magnetic charging via underground cable..

Possible?  Don't know, but tougher technical problems have been successfully tackled, so why not!
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