One law for all, unless...

... addressed the issue of sovereignty and cited case law

Any New Zealand citizen who resides in the country is subject to the laws of the country

The Crown Prosecutor reminds a would be separatist caught ripping off overstayers that the laws of this country apply equally to all citizens.

As for the 140,000 overstayer non-citizens resident here in this country, a reminder that there are laws for them too. A few dawn raids by the Immigration Department would deal with that issue.

The man accused of running a passport scam for overstayers says he was asked by the King of Samoa to stamp passports and provide protection

Maybe the Samoan King should also be sternly reminded of New Zealand's normal diplomatic channels and that our laws apply equally to all. (although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise of late with the way the Nats have been horsetrading with certain parties)

Best one of the day...

So we, the bourgoisie, are quite happy to make smoking prohibitively expensive for those who do it. We will also take measures against the use of some forms of alcohol, such as RTDs - which are only consumed by teenage sluts who are bound to get pregnant and then live on the DPB for the next 18 years. But Mr Revenueman, you can keep your hands off our Gewürztraminer.

from the Fundy Post

Key cannot stop the ETS

Yes, that's right - John Boy is totally committed to his new found BFF, the Maori Party, not those who elected him to take control of the reins.

Those BFF that would be up for yet another 'full and final settlement' as the value of the previously taxpayer owned assets in the Central North Island handed over recently suddenly lose their perceived value.

Unintended consequence launch

A huge increase in the price of cigarettes and tobacco was bulldozed through Parliament last night

Now that smoking is the new black for Nanny, I did wonder if last night there was any increase in the border protection vote to stem the inevitable increase in black market trade of such goods.

I thought not. Another unintended consequence on its way.

Ten easy ways for Phil-In Filk Off to get noticed

When a political party leader can’t be found, even in the opinion polls it is time for drastic action. Any of these ultimate makeovers are guaranteed to get Phil Goff more noticed than he is now.

1. ‘Helen’ Phil - Stick on a Helen Clark rubber head, lower your voice and leap out in front of the press gallery talking with authority and confidence and scaring the crap out of the Nat’s.

2. ‘Duelling’ Phil - Call out John Key for a duel. Obviously pistols and swords are potentially career ending so better make it something like scrabble or paper, scissors, rock. The mechanism is irrelevant it has to be made a point of honour that Phil can call John a chicken about if he doesn’t front.

3. ‘Ambush’ Phil - Get in front of the cameras more. Since the news camera crews follow John Key wherever he goes, Phil could be the guy that leaps around in the background. Instead of saying something like “Hi Mum” he could say something incisive like “Hi Voters”.

4. ‘Rambo’ Phil - Go to Afghanistan, put on some army gear and a fake beard. Get yourself photographed running around Kabul with a $2 Shop gun. We can see the front page headlines now – ‘Kiwi SAS hero Phillie ‘Apiata’ Goff seen in Kabul’.

5. ‘Reality’ Phil – Commission a reality TV show called something like ‘The Apprentice - Beehive’ where the mercurial Labour leader makes an assortment of Government Ministers perform tasks that make them get all bitchy and fight among themselves while Phil fires them one by one.

6. ‘Chick Magnet’ Phil – Give Phil the Austin Powers makeover that turns an unlikely, short, geeky dude into an irresistible object of female affection. Being a Labour man, wearing the red suit should be easy, but getting Liz Hurley to fall in love with Phil might be a bit trickier.

7. ‘Gangsta’ Phil – Put on the bling, pimp up the Government issue car and ride with ya posse all over the hood as Philly G. “Well my name is Philly with a capital G, I’m the leader of the oppo so look at me. Got my boys and my bitches and my library card, I’m a mean mother whaka and I look real hard. Gonna find John Key gonna show him my gun then it’s off to the playground to have some fun”.

8. ‘All Black’ Phil – Get yourself put on the Henry rotation. You don’t have to play, just get picked then get injured, then do undie ad’s that get plastered on billboards everywhere and show the nation the man beneath the suit. There will be traffic jams everywhere at the sight of the Labour Party’s ‘big banana’ wearing only a grin and tight Jockey’s.

9. ‘Dexter’ Phil – This is really subtle. Government Ministers start disappearing; sometimes odd pieces of them are discovered but not very often. Everyone suspects Peter Dunne and nobody guesses that Phil could be responsible until it is too late and there is no one left on the National, ACT and Maori Party Lists.

10. ‘Leader’ Phil – Stop moaning about what the Government is doing and have some original thoughts of your own. Articulate a positive vision for this nation that everyone can buy into and show us the smart guy you really are and not the grimacing nobody the PR minders have turned you into.

from Voxy

On the taxpayer tit and striking???

Unionised staff at the ACC have today started industrial action over pay and conditions.

Unionised scum concentrating on something other than their core jobs of being a servant of the public.

The PSA is seeking wage rises and enhanced redundancy provisions that ACC simply cannot afford and which are beyond the expectations set by Ministers for restraint in the public sector

Now, here is one law I'd like to see. If paid by the taxpayer, you forfeit any perceived right to strike. The Armed Forces work this way, why not other public servants?

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"

For the men below, it was discomfort, danger and desperate physical illness: for the bare handful of men above, the officers and ratings on the bridge, it was pure undiluted hell. But a hell not of our latter-day imagining, a strictly Eastern and Biblical conception, but the hell of our ancient North-European ancestors, of the Vikings, the Danes, the Jutes, of Beowulf and the monster-haunted meres-the hell of eternal cold. True, the temperature registered a mere 10° below zero, 42° of frost. Men have been known to live, even to work in the open, at far lower temperatures. What is not so well known, what is barely realised at all, is that when freezing point has been passed, every extra mile per hour of wind is equivalent, in terms of pure cold as it reacts on a human being, to a 1° drop in temperature. Not once, but several times that night, before it had finally raced itself to destruction, the anemometer had recorded gusts of over 125 m.p.h., wave-flattening gusts that sundered stays and all but tore the funnels off. For minutes on end, the shrieking, screaming wind held steady at 100 m.p.h. and above, the total equivalent, for these numbed, paralysed creatures on the bridge, of something well below a 100° below zero. Five minutes at a time was enough for any man on the bridge, then he had to retire to the Captain's shelter. Not that manning the bridge was more than a gesture anyway, it was impossible to look into that terrible wind: the cold would have seared the eyeballs blind, the ice would have gouged them out. And it was impossible even to see through the Kent Clear-view windscreens. They still spun at high speed, but uselessly: the ice-laden storm, a gigantic sand-blaster, had starred and abraded the plate glass until it was completely opaque. It was not a dark night. It was possible to see above, abeam and astern. Above, patches of night-blue sky and handfuls of stars could be seen at fleeting intervals, obscured as soon as seen by the scudding, shredded cloud-wrack. Abeam and astern, the sea was an inky black, laced with boiling white. Gone now were the serried ranks of yesterday, gone, too, the decorative white-caps: here now were only massive mountains of water, broken and confused, breaking this way and that, but always tending south. Some of these moving ranges of water-by no stretch of the imagination, only by proxy, could they be called waves-were small, insignificant-in size of a suburban house: others held a million tons of water, towered seventy to eighty feet, looming terrifyingly against the horizon, big enough to drown a cathedral...

From Alistair MacLean's HMS Ulysses about the North Atlantic convoys.

My late father was on more than one of those Murmansk convoys as a Merchant Seaman and witnessed the sinking of his brother's anti-submarine trawler not one half mile away in such Arctic weather. Lost with all hands whilst the all-important convoy steamed on. Never did talk much about his war, but if asked, would talk quietly about the vile weather and iced up ships.

ANZAC DAY 2010 Lest We Forget

We lose hundreds of veterans every day.
There's not too many of them left.

Find one and thank him or her...
...while time remains.

Thought of the Day by Touchstone

"confident that the players were not involved or did not have knowledge of the deception"

What a load of bollocks.

With what Melbourne as a club, the administration, has done you could imagine a player with a principled outlook saying 'I don't want to be a part of this club'

Where were their principles when in receipt of the extras? As is normal, extremely contrite and principled ... when caught.

North Korea's murderous handiwork on display?

An elite North Korean suicide squad of human torpedoes may have been involved in the sinking of a South Korean ship in mysterious circumstances

The stern section of the Cheonan is raised. Next up, the bow section.

The war continues.

Signing up to aspirational nonsense

Have a listen to what Radio Australia ABC listeners got to hear about the aspirational nonsense we have just signed up to.

Bruce Hill of Radio Australia interviews Mai Chen followed by Rodney Hide.

Aspirationally priceless! John Boy, you have really stuffed up this time.

HT Murray of HMWAH

The truth emerges

United Nations declarations are often a first step towards binding conventions

The real story emerges. John Boy Key couches the signing of the UN Declaration as 'aspirational'. Caretaker 'Phil-In' Goff has sat on the fence for so long he is only capable of comatose aspirations.

Dr Sharples told the UN there were no caveats to New Zealand support

Prime Minister John Key played down the significance of the declaration, saying it would have no practical effect

Eh? Whose telling porkies here? Two differing versions of the same story - must be the time zone difference. The only real aspiration going here on is the the hot air being exuded in spades from the orifices of lying politicians.

Rodney Hide said it set up separate rights for Maori

Ms Chen told the broadcaster that the declaration did have meaning or the UN would not have spent 20 years pursuing it.

"Declarations are often a precursor to conventions... We're on the first step. I understand what everyone said about aspiration etc but I do worry the legal advice seems to have changed."

ACT and Mai Chen spells it out. Signing that declaration will force obligations of racist separatism on New Zealand.

A black day indeed as the truth is outed.

'They are all the same'

After the Blair phenomenon, you can never again kid the British people. Because of him there is now a permanent layer of cynicism.”

When voters hear a prepacked phrase, they brace for a lie; when they hear a slogan, they assume insincerity. The branding is not working because the entire product is contaminated. In this election, whenever the politicians have tried to chivvy voters with manufactured maxims, they have been met with mockery.

Maybe opinion from the current British election to-ing and fro-ing of offers and counter-offers, but applies equally here in new Zealand. Especially over yesterday's secretive National Party mission to NY. Funny how the UN knew all about it, packing the place to the rafters with indigenous cheerleaders, but little old New Zealand was last to be told.

Mr Key defended the secrecy yesterday, saying he hadn't wanted to steal Dr Sharples' thunder. He said the support of the declaration would not impact at all on New Zealand law, that it was symbolic and non-binding.

...this declaration has no practical effect

Key is lying, the electorate knows it and awaits the ugly truth of racist separatism to cleave this country. Soon you will need a passport to go to the beach.

The only slogan to have caught on during this election comes not from the advertising gurus, the spin-doctors or the politicians. It comes not from the manifestos, the speeches or the debates. It comes instead from the electorate, and I have heard it repeatedly over the last fortnight as I travelled around the country with the Tory campaign.

It is the anti-slogan slogan, uttered whenever a politician is at hand, and repeated like a mantra: “They are all the same.”

How true. Lying bastard politicians. Only after the reins, ever willing to sell their souls (and grandmothers) for control.

National sells out New Zealand

The article appears to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous

In the ultimate desperate back-stabbing move to retain power at any cost, National's has sold out New Zealand out by agreeing to ratify a UN indigenous peoples edict. In 18 short months, National has gone from Iwi/Kiwi to Iwi only, through secretive behind-the-scenes horse-trading with the racist separatists that constitute the Maori Party.

The declaration recognises the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination, being able to maintain their own languages, being able to protect their natural and cultural heritage and manage their own affairs.

There is that self-determination word again. Separate laws, justice and welfare systems coming right up. The Treaty of Waitangi has been nullified.

Furthermore, this article implies
indigenous peoples have rights
that others do not

Today will be when non-Maori New Zealander's wake up to find that if you are not of the right gene pool, you are a definitely second class citizen in your birth-country. Never mind how many generations your forbears have been here, you will always be second class trash.

the entire country was potentially caught within the scope of that article

God help New Zealand. National has just cut its throat. Hello Winston.

Sour grapes out West

For the last five years we have been breaking our backs to get world class infrastructure in place for the Rugby World Cup

Breaking the ratepayers back that is. Continuing the never ending anti-Super City spirit, eco-dinosaur Bob Harvey pines for ever more ratepayer taxes to be spent on the collective.

That is the opportunity we have just said no to collectively. I respect fully that as a country we are strapped for cash and have to make strictly financial decisions. But we are already running a severe risk that next year's huge party will leave us with a hangover, and not the common wealth we deserve.

A least I can be thankful as a multiple ratepayer in Orklund he and his ilk will be out of a job late this year. The super city and country will be finally rid of five years of sour grapes negative harping from the unsupportive mayors and councils.

Harpooning lefties

Was bored during the V8 racing racing at the Tron, so wandered over to the Stranded yesterday putting a different point of view to that being espoused.

Didn't take long, the rabid ferals have come out to play in droves.

Easier than harpooning whales for "scientific research".

"Harpoon waiting to prick Key's bubble"

With a headline like that, I think what has Whale been up to?

Alas, nothing. Obviously Mr Armstrong reads the right blogs.

A bright side to everything

While the European aviation industry is losing around US$200M a day during the Icelandic eruption, there is a bright side.

the 344,109 tons of CO2 emitted every day by aircraft in the European aviation industry has been cut down by 60%

Everything has a silver lining.

Meanwhile, that most useless remnant of the British monarchy in New Zealand, our Governor General, is doing his best to replace the lost carbon usage by flying half-way round the world looking for a way to Poland. Along with her indoors and his batman.

Just wondering...

As Mother Nature reminds mankind just how puny his technological efforts are, one does wonder if the European airspace closure goes on for a while, like months or years, how will long term food supplies fare?

These days all consumers rely on just-in-time supermarket stocking, utterly reliant on air transport at many points. The days ahead will most likely affect this season's crop yields in Europe, making all affected countries ever more reliant on remote external sources of supply. Food that might be be normally moved by air transport.

Food for thought...

Council having last ditch spendathon with ratepayers money

PLANS to build a marae at Bethells Beach are one step closer.

The Waitakere City Council has bought 2.5 hectares of land at the west coast settlement for $935,000.

Part of the site is expected to be developed by the Te Kawerau a Maki tribe as a marae.

Only months to go and the Westie Council that has done everything possible against the SuperCity is having a last ditch spendathon. As is normal with Liarbour infested councils, on your ratepayer taxes.

Mayor Bob Harvey is a long-time supporter of the marae project and defends the council's move to buy the site.

"It was the right and proper decision to make and it was unanimous," he says. "I don't want to get into a fight over this.

"We're not paying to build it, we're giving Te Kawerau a Maki the option on the land," Mr Harvey says.

The council has brought a near $1M property so that the local tribe can build a marae on your newly acquired property. The same tribe that is about to get a whole heap of handout from the central government gravy train.

A proposed treaty settlement with the Crown will see the tribe assume ownership of Riverhead Forest, parts of the Goldie Bush Scenic Reserve, Henderson Valley Scenic Reserve, Swanson Conservation Area and Te Henga Recreation Reserve.

The planned settlement includes $6 million in compensation, as well as the chance to buy the land Auckland Prison at Paremoremo is built on and lease it back to the Crown

Half of West Auckland reserves. And will probably claim continuous settlement to the foreshore and seabed in the near future. Paremoremo was prime private farmland prior to being taken for the prison. Nothing to do with the Crown. Surely the original owners should be the ones being offered lease rights?

a consultation process will be carried out before plans are finalised.

residents are unhappy with the council's plans.

There is no point asking for submissions, or opening community discussions after the land has been purchased with our money

A process in name only. The consultation period is lost. Harvey's council has already decided you will pay for the supposed sins of our forefathers. With the assistance of your taxes, the tribe will be waiting with open hands.

Monkeying around with politics

"I'm not sure why they paid kerry to fly to america (sic), if they wanted an interview with a monkey surely a ferry to Taronga would have sufficed,"

A young lad monkeying around over a comment on TPOTUS. A definite way to instantly kill off any political aspirations.

BTW, where is Jimmy Sleep these days?

Global warming dramatically affects UK overnight

In the first extended closure of British air space in living memory, millions of airline passengers face travel chaos as National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said no civilian planes would fly until at least 7am on Friday morning because of the eruption in Iceland.

The cloud of volcanic ash is now spread across the UK and continuing to travel south. In line with international civil aviation policy, no flights other than agreed emergencies are currently permitted in UK controlled airspace

With greater effect than the outcomes of a failed Nohopenhagen conference or a BA communists strike, UK (and soon to be most of Europe) airspace came to a grinding halt overnight.

One volcano, just one and air travel comes to a halt over most of Europe. And nobody knows for how long. The 7 am start up time is laughable. They won't be right since they are simply guessing.

It really does make me realise how fragile our system of civilisation is. All this money and effort put into advancement and improvement and one of the smallest countries in the world brings it to a screaming halt with one volcano.

Bet ya all that crap in the atmosphere from one eruption has more warming effect than all of mankind's effort to date.

It would seem Mother Nature has an unlimited supply of Carbon Tax Credits; much to the annoyance of the, very quiet at the moment, Global Warming brigade.

we should vote green party! they will put an end to this, it ishat they are all about!

Dingoes being precious

As is the normal manner of those in Oztralia across the ditch, they are being overly precious over a couple of matters.

A ship ran up on one of their many navigation harming reefs:

left a scar 3km long and up to 250m wide.

"There is more damage to this reef than I have ever seen..."

Come on guys, it is only 0.75 sq kilometres that was damaged. You have got another 345,000 sq kilometres reef hazard that is still OK.

The WTO ruled in our favour:

another disease that we don't want - so why take on more diseases if you can avoid it?

It has been 90 years years of protectionism on your part. We eat them here without ill effect. Time to get over yourselves.

Precocious brats as is usual. Get a grip.

Cyclone Giselle: 42 years on

Cyclone: Cyclone Giselle

10 April, 1968, New Zealand-wide

What happened?

• The storm began to build in the Coral Sea near the Solomon Islands on 5 April, 1968. The cyclone was given the name Giselle by French meteorologists when it struck Noumea, capital of French Caledonia.
• The next day storm warnings were issued throughout New Zealand, even though the cyclone was 3,000 kilometres away.
• Early in the morning of 9 April, Cyclone Giselle hit Cape Reinga. Wind gusts of up to 160 kilometres an hour caused massive damage to houses and other buildings.
• With the wind came torrential rain, flooding the farmlands of Northland, and drowning hundreds of farm animals.
• A farmer was killed near Kaitaia when he was blown off a haystack.
• The cyclone moved south, repeating the pattern of damage as it travelled across the North Island and down the East Coast.
• Ships were driven ashore, and landslips closed roads. The torrents of rain caused massive flooding, and the wind left a wake of torn-off roofs and broken windows.
• By the time Cyclone Giselle hit Wellington on the morning of 10 April, another storm had driven up the West Coast of the South Island from Antarctica. The two storms met over the capital city, causing huge amounts of damage and wrecking the inter-island ferry, the Wahine, with the loss of 51 lives.
• The winds in Wellington were the strongest ever recorded by the New Zealand Meteorological Service. At one point they reached a speed of 275 kilometres an hour.
• A young girl was killed and her sister injured when a piece of roofing iron crashed through their bedroom window.
• An elderly man was blown over by the wind and died on the way to hospital. Other people were seriously injured in falls or by flying debris.
• In the Wellington suburb of Kingston the roofs of 98 houses were ripped off by the wind, and three ambulances and a truck were blown onto their sides when they tried to go into the area to bring out injured people.
• As the storm moved onto the South Island, in Christchurch hundreds of houses lost their roofs and both the Avon and the Heathcote rivers flooded.
• Throughout Canterbury over 500 hectares of forest were destroyed.
• In Southland the flooding was the worst since 1913. Some people were stranded on the roofs of their houses and had to be rescued by jet boat.
• Cyclone Giselle finally blew out somewhere in the Southern Ocean.
• It was the worst storm recorded in New Zealand's history, as well as being the storm that sunk the Wahine.

How many died?

3 (in addition to the 51 dead in the Wahine disaster)

Forever etched in our nation's memories.

I personally remember as an almost 13 year old being told by my now long-departed mother that she travelled from Auckland on the overnight rattler for her stepfather's funeral arriving in Wellington early on that fateful morning. A typical Wellington grey and windy stormy morning that she was well used to having lived in Petone and Island Bay in younger days. And as she got off the overnight train after a very rough ride down the country, being an ex-nurse, she immediately noticed the temporary morgue one platform over and wondered what was happening.

Unbekown to her and other passengers, Cyclone Giselle had already wreaked its vengeance that morning and tragic events were unfolding into The Wahine Disaster as Wellington woke up 42 years ago today.

ps. I had only travelled southward on that same ship barely three months earlier on a South Island school trip.

Why does Paul Henry always have to win?

Hitler Finds out TV3 Cancelled Sunrise - A funny movie is a click away

flogged from Stuff

One law for them...

three charges of taking seven trout using a net, fishing without a licence and exceeding the maximum daily allowable limit of three trout

had been convicted of illegally netting trout 15 years ago

A prominent Maori leader caught netting trout at Lake Taupo says local iwi should be able take fish as a right

was confronted by a conflict between two cultures – Maori and Pakeha

Nice world view to have if you have the right genes.

He broke Pakeha law to uphold his own law

It is possible to have a sustainable fishery if we are allowed customary rights to gather food for whanau

It has been long known that when it is good for them, their twisted separatist world of customary rights and separate justice beckons.

Young people are 'stuck in a rut' and unable 'to do something productive with their lives'

A 'radical' crackdown is needed to reduce the numbers of so- called Neets, similar to a clampdown in Holland that has seen benefits taken away from those aged under 27 who 'get money and sit at home'

As the New Zealand Government is upping the handouts for those with the right genes, others are looking to take effective action to stop the troughing.

Young people not in employment, education or training should be stripped
of benefits to force them into the workplace, a report from MPs
demands.

'Such placements would allow these young people to demonstrate their readiness to work, to acquire skills and to access valuable personal development opportunities - while also giving them the satisfaction of undertaking meaningful work of benefit to their local community,'

'The Government has to ask itself why the proportion of 16 to 18 year olds not in education, employment or training has remained at around 10 per cent, despite one policy strategy after another.

'It is time to take a more radical approach and to look at the example of the Netherlands.

'There, rates of unemployment are consistently low and young people up to the age of 27 have a more unified support structure.

'We talk too much about just 16 to 18 year olds. I rather like the system the Dutch have, right through to 27.'

He added: 'If you haven't got something to encourage you to get up in the morning and do something constructive you get into bad habits in terms of behaviour.'

Implementing some of these ideas would be a definite step in the right direction, away from the endless handouts so readily available in this country.

And about to get a whole lot worse as the supposed providers multiply like breeding flies at a rotting carcass whilst doing nothing about the real issues.

[Update] The trough overflows

money currently spent by health, education, justice and social development agencies be pooled into a Whanau Ora trust

This trust would in turn set up regional panels that would fund a single agency or person to work with families facing problems

Bloody unbelievable. The drought has broken as the trough overflows for those deemed to be of the right gene pool. And we continually have proof where this will all end.

Soon to be ex-National supporters will be ruing the day they ever voted for John Boy Key. Only one ultimate betrayal remains to be implemented. That of handing back the foreshore and seabed.

[Update]

Views from around the traps

The Stranded

None of this bodes well for Whanau Ora. We’ve seen that corruption is too frequent when public money is dished over to unaccountable, unprofessional organisations.

A commenter

Sanctuary

8 April 2010 at 9:45 am

The opportunity for corruption in Whanau Ora is simply breathtaking, and given the frankly poor track record of accountability of Maori NGOs cronyism and corruption must surely follow as night follows day.

It is difficult not to see Whanau Ora as simply brown crony capitalism for the Maori parties support base, a transfer of taxpayer dollars to superfluous middle men who will clip the ticket and pass on inferior services – access to which will become highly dependent on a corrupt web of patronage. Expect lots of Iwi proto-Bainimaramas swaggering about boasting you need to be onside with them to access Whanau Ora cash.

No Right Turn

On the negative side, there are real privacy and human rights concerns here. One of the reasons for the silo mentality among delivery agencies is because (to pick a random example) how well a family's kids are doing at school is none of Housing New Zealand's damn business. Ditto your sexual history and the police. Whanau Ora would either share this information, or concentrate it in the hands of the single contact point. There are also concerns about the privacy and rights of individuals against members of their own families (the report recognises this in cases of pregnancy). This could easily turn into an Orwellian nightmare, in which every family has its own paternalistic dictator, acting with state power to make decisions based on their own moral views rather than the wishes and needs of the family.

Secondly, the scheme's "Whanau goals" are very prescriptive, to the point of social engineering. For example, it seeks to promote not just self-management, health, and participation in society, but also participation in te ao Maori and "Whanau cohesion". To point out the obvious, whether I speak to my mother is no business at all of the government. Neither is what culture you participate in. These things are great for people who want them, but they should not be dictated by the state.

The biggest problem, however, is governance. Using an independent trust will mean that policy advice and the management of the programme is deliberately and consciously divorced from public service norms of professionalism, transparency and accountability.

Lindsay Mitchell

increasing the well-being of the whanau still rests on the individual and his or her efforts

.

Never ask a male for advice

“Well, you could always wear a burqa.”

“No, I am serious. I can’t go to a fucking interview with that on my lip.”

“It’s not that that I would worry about – it’s the rest of your face.”

Just do not ask.

The bottom line

The truth is Maori own it and if the Crown want to use it, on behalf of non-Maori in this country, they need to come and talk to us. If they claim ownership, they need to prove their ownership to us.

Over my dead body. And I suspect more than a few others think exactly the same about your ludicrous ownership ideas, customary or otherwise.

New Zealand was colonised 170 years ago and that was the price of becoming a British subject.

be careful what you wish for

In continuing to unleash this taniwha, John Boy Key would indeed do well to watch the bottom line.