Not bloody likely right now. Far too many in too short a space of time have fallen out of the sky for my liking.

The lat­est crash of an Air­bus was into rough seas off the Comoros Islands.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Fore­shore law fail­ing Maori, should be scrapped: Report – A review of the con­tro­ver­sial Fore­shore and Seabed Act says it should be repealed. The 150-page report said the law failed to recog­nise Maori prop­erty rights as recog­nised by the courts and advanced the gen­eral inter­ests of the… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Finally we get the rec­om­men­da­tions from the review com­mit­tee. There are four options;

They rec­om­mend the Act be repealed, and offer four options for consideration:

1. Do noth­ing fur­ther – leave the Court of Appeal deci­sion intact and allow claims to be made to the Maori Land Court.  This option is not favoured.
2. Have a staged set­tle­ment with nego­ti­a­tions between Hapu/Iwi and the Crown – basi­cally add this to the his­toric griev­ances to be set­tled. They say if this hap­pens, there needs to be pro­vi­sion for pub­lic input to safe­guard rights of access etc.
3. A national set­tle­ment along the lines of the fish­eries and aqua­cul­ture settlements.
4. A mixed model that com­bines a num­ber of dis­crete com­po­nents: a national set­tle­ment, allo­ca­tion of rights and inter­ests, local co-management, and an abil­ity to gain more spe­cific access and use rights. This is preferred.

My pre­ferred Option is Option 1. This was the posi­tion before Labour egre­giously changed the law with just 4 days notice. It should be the posi­tion that remains after the law is repealed.

This law was never about the beaches and always about the removal of a group of cit­i­zens to seek redress in the courts. There was no guar­an­tee that any court would have awarded title and Labour panicked.

There is almost no case for a “set­tle­ment” and could be seen as just another treaty gravy train process to be milked.

The Maori Party has done well to gar­ner enough sup­port to over­turn this leg­is­la­tion and good on them. Their sup­port­ers have been rewarded for their loy­alty in the face of some pretty treach­er­ous actions from Labour the party that pre­vi­ously claimed to be the only one to rep­re­sent Maori interests.

Labour with their high and mighty atti­tude will no doubt scare­mon­ger against the rec­om­men­da­tions. I hope they do, so we can see once and for their con­de­scen­sion toward Maori.

Restore the sta­tus quo and let Maori take their chances in the courts like every other citizen.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

That cun­ning lit­tle do-gooder Bob McCoskrie has found the funds nec­es­sary to pay for the ref­er­en­dum. Actu­ally it is pretty clever think­ing. Here is his presser about it.

$9 Mil­lion Found To Cover Referendum

Fam­ily First NZ says that Trea­sury fig­ures reveal that $52 mil­lion has been bud­geted for social pol­icy advice for the finan­cial year and that only a por­tion of this is needed to cover the cost of the Referendum.

“The upcom­ing Ref­er­en­dum is sim­ply an out­come of polit­i­cal deaf­ness but its cost is cov­ered under pro­jected gov­ern­ment spend­ing,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Direc­tor of Fam­ily First NZ.

“$52 mil­lion has been bud­geted for Social Pol­icy Advice under the Social Devel­op­ment Vote, and includes ‘the pro­vi­sion of infor­ma­tion to, and dis­cus­sion for, the pub­lic and other agen­cies on social pol­icy issues’.”

“The anti-smacking law is a mas­sive social issue which has affected the role of par­ents and the func­tion­ing of fam­i­lies. The Ref­er­en­dum will allow the pub­lic to finally have a say on this issue after being com­pletely ignored by the politicians.”

“Get­ting the anti-smacking law right will also have eco­nomic ben­e­fits. Lat­est fig­ures on child abuse reported in the Christchurch Press show an incred­i­ble 2/3’rds of noti­fi­ca­tions to CYF requir­ing no fur­ther action.”

“By cor­rect­ing the anti-smacking law to avoid unnec­es­sary inves­ti­ga­tion and inter­ven­tion, and with $433 mil­lion being bud­geted for CYF accord­ing to Trea­sury papers, the $9 mil­lion on the Ref­er­en­dum is not just about a flawed law but cor­rect­ing an expen­sive exer­cise in mis-defining real abuse.”

“We can now refer to the Ref­er­en­dum as Social Pol­icy Advice,” says Mr McCoskrie. “Its cost is covered.”

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Vet­eran media whore Cameron Brewer is in demand…he is described as a cross between Clark Kent and Austin Power.

How­ever I don’t think even Cameron Brewer with his mes­siah like qual­i­ties could man­age to talk up Lower Hutt. Per­haps this is a role for Trevor Mal­lard who I know is just beside him­self rec­on­cil­ing his place on the oppo­si­tion benches.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Richard Long goes on a turkey hunt against the gob­blers of the left moaing about Crush­ers Con­tainer Pris­ons or Crim Tins as I like to call them. He has no short­age of tar­gets with them all gob­bling away beg­ging to be shot at.

Why only two to a cell? When that sug­ges­tion replaced the black­board menu out­side a cafe in Ngaio, Welling­ton, a few months ago, it was clear the Gov­ern­ment had won the “lock them up and throw away the key” argument.

Ngaio is one of those Labour– vot­ing leafy sub­urbs, adjoin­ing Wadestown, home of the chardon­nay social­ists. If the lib­er­als can­not win the penal debate in these areas, then they have lost it completely.

Accord­ingly, when for­mer Labour Party pres­i­dent Mike Williams was com­plain­ing on tele­vi­sion at the week­end about the dan­gers of prison dou­ble– bunk­ing, and described the new mod­u­lar con­tainer prison cells as “Dick­en­sian”, he was bay­ing, so to speak, into the wind.

What on earth was Mike Williams asked for any­way? More impor­tantly where is the cur­rent Labour President…hasn’t he just disappeared?

So was penal reformer Peter Williams when he fronted up on prime-time tele­vi­sion against Cor­rec­tions Min­is­ter Judith Collins. She has always been regarded as a bit of a shrieker, but she sat calmly, with a wan smile, while Peter Williams went com­pletely over the top on the evil, degrad­ing con­tainer cells pro­posal, pre­dict­ing it would all end in fail­ure and tears.

Out of touch, and out to lunch while we enjoy the turkey club sandwiches.

The crit­ics lose touch with the elec­torate on this. They leave the impres­sion that, even if Cor­rec­tions offered to house their clients in the Hol­i­day Inn and the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal, Messrs Williams and Williams would still find fault with the wine list.

The over­all elec­torate view is that pris­on­ers have it sweet. While many finan­cially stretched house­holds are turn­ing off the heaters and curb­ing food bills, they view pris­on­ers as hav­ing an easy life, in cen­trally heated accom­mo­da­tion, with three good meals a day.

Many will no doubt rea­son that, if more pris­on­ers have to double-bunk, it might be a rather big dis­in­cen­tive to going to jail in the first place. The prospect of shar­ing your cell with a nasty piece of low life might help slow the esca­la­tion in the prison pop­u­la­tion – esti­mated to climb from the present 8300 to 12,500 by 2018.

Exactly, noth­ing would encour­age me more to obey the law than the thoughts of shar­ing a 6m square cell with a 200kg pris­oner named Bubba.

As for the con­tainer cells, tax­pay­ers will wel­come the cost reduc­tions. At $248 a day, it costs as much to accom­mo­date pris­on­ers in our Cor­rec­tions sys­tem as it would to put them up in a good hotel. The cost of the Spring Hill facil­ity was a stag­ger­ing $643,000 a bed. Plug­ging in the con­tainer cells to exist­ing prison facil­i­ties with the infra­struc­ture to sup­port addi­tional inmates will cost only $53,000 to $63,000 a bed.

AN ADVANTAGE of mov­ing in this direc­tion at the moment, with the world eco­nomic down­turn, is that ports are lit­tered with excess con­tain­ers. And it was a bril­liant touch to sug­gest that pris­on­ers could learn reha­bil­i­ta­tion skills by help­ing to adapt the con­tain­ers for their own use.

Cor­rec­tions chief Barry Matthews won fur­ther points when he was asked what pris­on­ers thought of the con­tainer pro­posal. “I’m not inter­ested in what the pris­on­ers think,” he said.

Finally some­one in the media gets the num­bers right, rather than sim­ply repeat­ing the num­bers that Clay­ton Cos­grove reefed out of is arse. On Barry Mtthews, he cer­tainly needed some points as he was cer­tainly plumb­ing the depths of low scores until he saw the light and endorsed Crusher’s thoughts. I think he must have felt the cold steely stare of the Min­is­ter for longer than he cared to and has now had a sub­se­quent atti­tude adjustment.

By harp­ing on about “Dick­en­sian” prison con­di­tions, Labour is man­ag­ing to leave the impres­sion that it wants to indulge pris­on­ers with spa pools and feather pil­lows. It would be a bet­ter polit­i­cal tac­tic to con­cen­trate on more effec­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes in a bid to reduce our awful recidi­vism rate of about 70 per cent.

Oh they do, they do, heated floors, Plasma TV’s….that is pris­ons under Labour. I and the elec­torate by the looks of it pre­fer Crush­ers vision for our prisons.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pay gap protested at Par­lia­ment – About 200 peo­ple braved freez­ing tem­per­a­tures out­side Par­lia­ment today to protest the lack of pay equity. [Stuff Pol­i­tics]

Oh just shut up already. Labour and their flunkies are bemoan­ing the can­cel­la­tion of another do noth­ing com­mit­tee that in nine years of the social­ists achieved pre­cisely zero.

If Labour were really seri­ous about pay equity they would ahve fixed it already when in gov­ern­ment. Now they can just STFU.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

PM flies first class, says it’s Labour’s fault – Prime Min­is­ter John Key’s first trip as Prime Min­is­ter to the Apec meet­ing in Peru and then to Lon­don to meet the Queen cost $96,841 – but he’s blam­ing part of the cost on first-class flights booked by the Labour Gov­ern­ment. Infor­ma­tion… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Chris Hip­kins has been a busy lit­tle lick­spit­tle fil­ing end­less silly Ques­tions to min­is­ters in an attempt to beat up almost any­thing. The sad lit­tle ginga even joined in the witch-hunt on flight expenses and there he came undone expos­ing the extra­ven­gance of his for­mer boss, who we have now found out liked to fly First Class.

Infor­ma­tion pro­vided in response to ques­tions from Labour’s Chris Hip­kins show Mr Key’s inter­na­tional travel from elec­tion day to May 7 totalled $148,595 for four trips.

The total bill for all min­is­ters’ inter­na­tional travel over that period was $707,581. It included air­fares, accom­mo­da­tion, other expenses and the costs of any accom­pa­ny­ing staff, MPs or spouses.

Days after form­ing the new gov­ern­ment, Mr Key flew first class last Novem­ber for his first trip as Prime Min­is­ter, to the Apec meet­ing and then to Lon­don – a one week trip which cost $96,841.

The paper says book­ings for the Prime Min­is­te­r­ial first class travel were made under the pre­vi­ous Labour admin­is­tra­tion when Helen Clark was Prime Min­is­ter “and in accor­dance with the stan­dard prac­tice of that administration.”

Bwa­ha­ha­haha, own goal spec­tac­u­lar. Nice to know too that it was stan­dard prac­tice of the social­ists to trough it up hugely in First Class all the while look­ing through the bot­toms of their chardon­nay glasses at the peas­ants who suf­fered high taxes to pay for it. Pigs in a Trough.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Edi­to­r­ial: Govt mustn’t give way on league tables – State edu­ca­tion­ists go to extra­or­di­nary lengths to resist the rank­ing of schools in what they dis­parag­ingly call “league tables”. The Pri­mary Prin­ci­pals Fed­er­a­tion says its mem­bers might refuse to file results of new national stan­dards… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Labour are sure pick­ing some strange fights.

Trevor Mal­lard has decided that he and Labour must pro­tect at all costs the rep­u­ta­tions and hon­our of loyal union­ists and fight the release of infor­ma­tion school per­for­mance in National Stan­dards Tests.

Edu­ca­tion­ists, in other words, are not look­ing at tests in the same way that par­ents do. The pro­fes­sion­als, in so far as they accept com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ments, want to know the school is per­form­ing well enough for one in its social sit­u­a­tion. Car­ing par­ents want to know their child is in a good school.

League tables are a per­fectly legit­i­mate tool from the par­ents’ point of view. A good school for their child is one where high stan­dards are main­tained and if the pupils come with advan­tages, so much the bet­ter. If some schools have to work harder than oth­ers to bring most of their pupils to the desired stan­dards, so be it. Par­ents want results.

Exactly. DPF points out though how we might use­fully imple­ment Trevor’s sug­ges­tion across all of the State Sec­tor. Trevor must really, really hate being in oppo­si­tion, never mind though he will have at least three terms to come to grips with his feel­ings of loathing for the oppo­si­tion benches.

Labour and their union bud­dies just keep on choos­ing bat­tles they can­not pos­si­bly win, and long may that continue.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

A cool video on the pro­gres­sion of technology.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

The race is on for a new National Party Pres­i­dent, kind of. The National Party has called for nom­i­na­tions for the Board of the Party. The Pres­i­dent is then selected from the suc­cess­ful Board mem­bers by the suc­cess­ful Board mem­bers. Gone are the days of the Slater vs Boag true pres­i­den­tial style race (and mar­ket­ing and lob­by­ing that goes with it). Or have they?

I under­stand that there are mur­mur­ings about the hal­lowed halls and amongst the party flock that Wira Gar­diner is the anointed one (by Key) – at least that’s what his back­ers will tell you. Wira Gar­diner is furi­ously try­ing to make friends with lots of party appa­ratchiks on Face­book and invit­ing them to lunchs and din­ners in a des­per­ate bid to get him­self elected to the board.

I am just a lit­tle con­cerned that Wira is even seen to be a viable can­di­date to be a Board mem­ber, let alone the next National Party President.

1. Wira is the clas­sic fair-weather friend. Wira is the man who has quit the Party numer­ous times. Off the top of my head I can think of 2002 (when he realised that Eng­lish wasn’t after all the friend to Maori he’d set him up to be (the posi­tion­ing that arguably con­tributed to the 2002 crush­ing defeat)), then he quit again when Brash con­tin­ued the pro­mo­tion of “One stan­dard of cit­i­zen­ship for all”
2. Wira is seri­ously con­flicted. His wife Hekia Parata is an MP. If he is Pres­i­dent his role is first to the Party, to the mem­ber­ship and the orga­ni­za­tion – not to the Par­lia­men­tary arm. Also, any time Wira flies with his wife then how are we to know if he is fly­ing as a spouse or if he is fly­ing as Pres­i­dent of the Party. I can see the poten­tial wran­gles with Par­lia­men­tary Ser­vices abound already.

Throw­ing your toys and hav­ing con­flicts of inter­est aren’t a good look for any prospec­tive board mem­ber let alone the Pres­i­dent. The National Party has tra­di­tion­ally eschewed Pres­i­dents con­sid­ered to have close links with cau­cus pre­fer­ring instead to have an arms length rela­tion­ship between the aprty and caucus.

My Welling­ton spies tell me that Wira’s team is sug­gest­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter would back him to be Pres­i­dent if he makes it to the Board table, and that the PM him­self will nom­i­nate Wira.

Well, in some ways I can see why John Key might do this. It’s cer­tainly a great way to ensure that the Par­lia­men­tary wing of the party is stronger than the mem­ber­ship and orga­ni­za­tional arm. The con­flict of hav­ing a wife as an MP ensures that Wira will put the inter­ests of the MPs ahead of the mem­ber­ship, or at least that will be the per­cep­tion. And, as we all know per­cep­tion plays a cru­cial role in politics.

I still think the great­est risk of National Party mem­bers even elect­ing Wira for the Board is that he’ll quit when the going gets tough, or if he dis­agrees with a pol­icy direc­tion. How many National Party grass­roots mem­bers and activists have seen the Party through the good times and the bad? Well, guess what? Wira hasn’t and doesn’t do that. He’s your fair weather friend.

When you vote for your board mem­bers list Wira Gard­nier dead last, just like he has rated the party when things got tough.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Smack­ing poll in hands of mother – The dark-haired, bespec­ta­cled woman talk­ing force­fully across an out­door table laden with scones, cake and drinks on Fam­ily First’s pro-smacking web­site does not have a bionic arm and can­not run faster than a speed­ing car. But Sheryl Sav­ill is New Zealand’s $6 mil­lion woman. [Stuff Pol­i­tics]

Enough already about moan­ing about the $9 mil­lion cost of the ref­er­en­dum. The ref­er­en­dum is man­dated by law. Enough sig­na­tures were col­lected in the time pre­scribed by the law. The sig­na­tures were checked and ver­i­fied as pre­scribed by the law and now the ref­er­en­dum must be held as pre­scribed by the law.

The cost can fairly and squarely be sheeted home to the men­dac­ity of Helen Clark who was far too scared to hold a ref­er­en­dum at the time of the elec­tion. But since we are talk­ing about cost and the sup­posed waste asso­ci­ated with it let’s look at some pre­vi­ous waste that the left-wing jus­ti­fied as entirely appropriate.

• More than $4 mil­lion of gov­ern­ment money has been allo­cated to fund “mind-boggling” doc­tor­ate research top­ics such as the value of children’s drawings.
• $15.8 mil­lion per annum spent over 5 years aimed to increase energy effi­ciency by 20 per cent by 2012, and to increase the use of renew­able energy by between 19% and 42%. But a review of the Government’s energy-efficiency strat­egy, released yes­ter­day, found that the per­cent­age of energy use com­ing from renew­able resources was actu­ally falling and so was cancelled.

• In a breath­tak­ing dis­play of wan­ton spend­ing on some­thing just not wanted or needed by a pop­u­la­tion the gov­ern­ment has announced it will spend $450 mil­lion on Auck­lands rail net­work.

  As David Far­rar points out that only 9000 per day use the trains and the and that amounts to $67000 per passenger.

• Gov­ern­ment house gets a $50 mil­lion makeover – Offi­cials are describ­ing the 50 mil­lion dol­lar ren­o­va­tion of gov­ern­ment house in Welling­ton as money well spent.

I am sure there are more exam­ples. If you know of any, let me know.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

About the only thing worse than losers who com­mit sui­cide are the losers whose lives are so screwed up they can’t even kill them­selves prop­erly. They are real losers.

A case in point is the loser cheese eat­ing sur­ren­der mon­key rugby player who got attacked from behind in what was prob­a­bly a gay gang bang got wrong, got a facial, lied about it and then fessed up. Appar­ently he has tried to kill himself.

Ok, this is in bad taste, but did he try to ram his head into a table repeatedly?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pri­vate hos­pi­tals get greater pub­lic role – Pri­vate hos­pi­tals are to be given a greater role in car­ry­ing out taxpayer-funded elec­tive surgery under a Gov­ern­ment plan to treat more patients. The aim is to get bet­ter prices by smooth­ing the flow of patients and increase the… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Great news in Health. Tony Ryall is prov­ing to be a very effec­tive Health Min­is­ter who is look­ing for solu­tions rather than being doc­tri­naire and ideological.

If pri­vate hos­pi­tals have capac­ity then it makes sense to use their capac­ity to fur­ther reduce wait­ing lists for elec­tive services.

Labour’s health spokes­woman, Ruth Dyson, said the party had never been opposed to taxpayer-funded elec­tive surgery being done in the pri­vate sec­tor, but “it must not under­mine the pub­lic sector”.

Labour as usual are being disin­gen­uos and eco­nom­i­cal with the truth. The specif­i­cally removed con­tracts for ser­vices from pri­vate hos­pi­tals under their watch purely for ide­o­log­i­cal grounds. They had nine years to sort this out, why they are even asked for com­ment is beyond me.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

I came across a Green party newslet­ter in the mail­box the other day, always good for a laugh I thought to myself as I flicked through it, but to my hor­ror, I saw on the 3rd page this picture!!

Now as a nor­mal kiwi par­ent who has been indoc­tri­nated in the ways of the med­dling after nine years of social­ist gov­ern­ments cer­tain things jumped out at me.

Straight away where the hell is the fire guard around that fire? My God, there is a child under the age of 4 play­ing right next to it!!! The Dad (if he is in fact the father) has his (is it really his) baby (held securely) perched on his knee less than an arms reach away from the top of the fire, one moments inat­ten­tion, and this is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to happen!!

Also, the wood­bas­ket is way to close to the fire, looks like wicker to me, highly flammable!!

Not to men­tion the fact that there are two chil­dren ALONE with two males. Don’t you know all men are rapists, child beat­ers and kiddy fiddlers.

And about the fire. Please explain to me how this is car­bon neu­tral, sus­tain­able or Earth friendly in any way.

All this com­ing from the same peo­ple who are try­ing to tell us how to raise our kids, and oh no, dont give them a smack if they are naughty, but hey let them burn them­selves and hor­ri­bly dis­fig­ure them­selves for life, thats ok accord­ing to this Green Party leaflet!!

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Stuff has an arti­cle about the worlds ugli­est dogs.

A promi­nent under-bite, scrunched face and floppy ears are the hall­marks of a win­ner – the win­ner of the World’s Ugli­est Dog con­test, that is.

Pabst, a boxer-mix res­cued from a shel­ter by Miles Egstad of Cit­rus Heights, Cal­i­for­nia, won the annual con­test at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in North­ern California.

I reckon they missed some out of the line up

This one from New York

This one from Auckland

This one from the Waikato

This one from Wellington

and this one also from Wellington

They all have faces you can break bot­tles on and you cer­tainly wouldn’t wish breed­ing traits that that on any­one let alone your dog.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]