You Can't Make This Shit Up.

Here are a few behind the scenes observations from last Friday's meeting of the Pacific Forum in Vanuatu.

The RNZAF flight crew are boody fantastic, and so is their 757 plane. A commercial version sits over 220 but the Airforce ripped 60 seats out meaning those on board have leg room!! Bliss

Internet access in Vanuatu is marginal at the best of times, and horrendously expensive. Perhaps the Forum Secretariat could have shared their connection. Or at least set up some facilities for the media so they could cover the event in a vaguely proficient way. There was no media centre whatsoever.

Flight timing was bizarre. Those who arrived with the NZ delegation were told they had to be enroute to the airport by 3.30 pm at the latest. That just happened to be half an hour before the scheduled press conference. The reason for this? Well there is only one set of steps at Port Vila big enough to reach the 757's doors and they just happened to be owned by Air Caledonia who had a flight coming in around 5pm. Come hell or high water they were having their steps back so the Kiwis had to be on their plane and out of the way ASAP.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is a bit of a media whore. Put a microphone in front of him and he just won't shut up.

NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters is the exact opposite. He was not inclined to talk at all. And even less so after TV crews defied orders and got off the plane first to get shots of the dignitaries getting off the plane (they were banned from his first stand up). Mind you Winston's mood probably was helped by his dicky knee. It does look to be seriously painful and he's not the kind of guy to deal well with something that affects his personal dignity.

A brickbat to the official who decreed that alcohol would be reserved for the politicians on the trip back leaving the rest of the plane dry.

A huge bouquet to Cabinet Minister Winnie Laban who decreed the drinks cart was open to all.

Oh and for those of you who are curious as to the outcome of the meeting I suggest you read this. In a nutshell (if you'll excuse the anti-smacking Bill analogy) Fiji's been given a timeout on a naughty mat and been told to think about what it did.

I'm sure Frank Bainimarama is shitting himself - Not.

Tidy Up

To my few and infrequent readers:

I've winnowed through the links over there on the right. Some have been shitcanned and some newbies have been added.

If you do get the chance check out the folks at Intelligentsiya.

CYFSwatch (now defunct on blogger) may have evoked the ire of a Government Department here in NZ but having the Fijian armed forces out for your blood is far more impressive.

Another one worth a check is Inside Iraq.

These are US and Iraqi journalists giving a pretty brutal account of the shit they're putting up with on a daily basis. Be warned some of the writing is graphic and harrowing.

For light relief (and you'll need it after the previous two blogs) I heartily recommend Scaryduck. He 's a comic marvel.

On The Edge

I have no idea where this is, nor who these people are. However I'm not ashamed to say their balls are far bigger than mine.




I mean seriously ......



... they are ...



... fucking nuts!

Do As We Say But Not As We Do?

Much has been made of our Government's sudden love affair with carbon neutrality and its desire to save us all from the perils of global warming. I'm not going to re-canvas that debate as there are others far more qualified than I who have been there and done that already.

However what I would like to point out is that while the Government is keen on its Ministries to become carbon neutral, I don't actually recall them saying anything about the Parliament Buildings in which they themselves are located.


That rather indistinct haze highlighted by the arrow is what is pumped out every day by Parliament's gas-fired boilers.

Sustainability - it's a grand wee buzz word isn't it?

(Oh and I'm sorry about the picture quality, that's what you get for using a cellphone camera)

Updating the Legal Lexicon

Recent events suggest it's time to introduce some new phrases into the way we describe criminal cases and those that feature therein. Here are a few suggestions;

"As guilty as Clint"

"A very Brad man"

"She was forcibly Schollumed"

"Having a Haigh old time"

Apologies

For some reason Microsoft Word and Blogger don't mix too well. The cut and paste job on the parole post didn't work out too well. Never mind I'm sure you're all smart enough to figure it out.

Anyway I can't be bothered typing it all out again.

Parole

Given all the hoopla and kerfuffle over the Graham Burton parole reports I though it might be timely to post some figure a reporter I know picked up from the Corrections Department last year.

It might help informed debate on the matter.

1. By year, over the past three years ending June 30, how many parolees have breached required reporting conditions?

A “breach” of parole is a charge laid with the Court under s71 of the Parole Act when an offender has breached the conditions of the parole order imposed by the New Zealand Parole Board. These may include failing to attend rehabilitation programmes, failing to follow a lawful direction from a Probation Officer, or changing address without permission. The Department does not collate information on the nature of specific conditions leading to the breach action being commenced.

NUMBER OF PAROLE BREACHES BY YEAR SINCE JULY 2003.

YEAR BREACHES TOTAL PAROLE ORDERS %AGE BREACHED

03-04 384 2856 13%

04-05 313 2524 12%

05-06 315 2598 12%

1. By year, over the past three years ending June 30, how many parolees have been returned to prison for posing risk to community safety, breach of parole conditions, or committing a jailable offence?

Recall, as defined by s61 of the Parole Act 2002, is the sanction used for serious instances of non-compliance with the conditions of a parole order. This involves an application being made to the New Zealand Parole Board for an order that an offender be recalled to continue serving a sentence of imprisonment in a penal institution. Recall action is commenced when a Probation Officer assesses an offender as posing an undue risk to the safety of the community, the parolee has breached their parole conditions, or the offender has committed an offence punishable by imprisonment


NUMBER OF PAROLEES RECALLED TO PRISON SINCE JULY 2003.

YEAR RECALLS PAROLEES MANAGED RECALL %AGE

03-04 222 2856 8%

04-05 194 2524 8%

05-06 176 2598 7%

Mystical Anti-Streetlight Powers

I think I actually may have them.

You see there's this streetlight that I've been walking past every night on the way home from the gym that winks out exactly as I pass it.

Every night without fail this week - spooky.

Unfortunately my new found special power appears to be restricted to the one streetlight. All others appear immune.

Now where's my character on Heroes?

There's Always One

This just goes to show you can build up your cause all you like, but at the end of the day there's one person who will always prick your balloon.



Or shit on your bubble.

Irony

Among all of God's manifest powers let us not forget he apparently has a finely tuned sense of humour.

Seriously. I mean a Japanese whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru, catches fire in the Antarctic. The fire is made worse as it is fuelled by blubber from whale carcases and results in the ship being totally immobilised.

I actually have visions of a pod of whales gleefully swimming around the stricken vessel getting down to the Bloodhound Gang.

"The ship, the ship,
The ship is on fire,
We don't need no water,
Let the motherfucker burn,
Burn motherfucker burn."

And as priceless as this is it actually gets better. The only vessel capable of safely towing the Nisshin Maru to safety is former Russian icebreaking tug, the Esperanza. She just happens to be owned by Greenpeace whom the Japanese have previously described as eco-terrorists.

I'll have the whaleburger thanks ... oh and a slice of humble pie to follow.

Flying or Dying

Today I had my first experience of what is universally recognised as a classic NZ mountainbike ride - The Karapoti.

Made famous by the crazy Kennett Brothers it's 50 km of single trail and four wheel drive tracks through regenerating native bush. It's scenic as hell, but a right brutal bastard on the legs. There's a shit load of up (several sections of which cannot be ridden by mortal men), and heap of down (some of it vitually vertical). Hence the line flying or dying. You're either stuggling up a greasy slope a mere heartbeat from cardiac failure, or plummeting down a trail that seems like it was designed by Satan.

Here's exhibit number one; the rock garden.



Biking down here requires full suspension, nerves of steel, supreme skill, and not quite a full grasp on reality. It's not so much a track as it is a dry waterfall (though I hear in winter it actually is a watercourse).

So once you've bumped, bounced, and flagellated down that little gem you come across exhibit number two; the Devil's Staircase.

.

This picture doesn't do it justice. I couldn't get a decent shot on the really gnarly section as I was balancing my bike on my back while trying to climb what, to all intents and purposes, appeared to be a greasy clay cliff face.

However it's not all masochism in the wilderness. A lot of the track is really superb to ride. However you do need to watch out for the rocks.



Punctures and the Karapoti go together like crime and punishment. It's a fact of life that at some stage you're going to feel a little flat. I managed to get through with just the one today. But I did happen to snap my chain halfway up the third (and last) climb of the day. While I managed to jury rig a repair (thank God for chain breakers and spare links) having a shorter chain complete shagged the settings on my gears. Granny gear was not an option for what had to be the longest and steepest climb I've ever sweated through in my life. I think Hell wil be something like the experience I suffered.

Still this view and the corresponding downhill blast made it all worthwhile.



All in all this little adventure saw me go through 3 protein bars, 3 bottles of Powerade, 1 bike chain, 1 innertube in the space of just under five and a half hours.

Oh and I sweated off about 4kgs in fluid as well.

It was a blast.

Not Bad for a Godless Heathen

You know the Bible 77%!

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

You have to admit that's a pretty impressive result for an atheist who has had no connection with religion, other than a brief dabble, of no more than a few weeks, with Bible Class when I was about 7 years old.

(BTW I went for the cake and cordial)

Political Nuts

One of the things that continually bugs me about political partisanship is that blind loyalty walks hand in hand with blind stupidity.

The easiest example to give is from the situation I see here on many NZ blogs. The Labour Party is constantly derided by the conservatives for its trade union backing while the National Party is hounded by it's liberal opponents for its ties to big business. Somehow these geniuses fail to see that these groups are the respective constituents (to a certain extent) of both political parties.

Deriding Labour for its union connections, or National for its relationship with the Business Round Table, makes about as much sense as making dubious allegations about the Maori Party's connection to Maoridom.

"Y'know you can't trust those Maori Party MP's. Those fellahs are in the pocket of a bunch of brown people"

Thin Wobbly Tires

While mountainbiking is my first love (apologies to any girlfriends past and present who may be reading this) I also have a lot of time for flirting with road riding.

Call it the other woman if you will.

Anyway while you take you life into your own hands riding through urban Wellington (note to motorists - kindly learn to indicate, give way, and NOT cut corners) it's nice to find a safe, and relatively scenic little ride within minutes of the city centre.

There's a lovely little road that runs from the Ohariu Valley up to Makara and the top end of Karori. I especially like this little gorge area.



Flying through here is a lot of fun. Though it can get a little tense if you run into 4WDs coming the other way (that whole corner cutting driving on the wrong side of the road thing - again!)

Unfortunately it seems some friend(s) of society also consider it a good place to trash stolen cars. If you live in Wellington and have had your 1980's Toyota Corolla sedan pinched then I've got some bad news for you.



Don't you just love the way they ripped everything out of it. Even so far as taking out all the seats (bar the drivers, and taking the wheels just before torching it.

All that energy misdirected on stealing a worthless piece of shit car. Obviously they're not what you'd call criminal geniuses.

Aroha

The thing is when a politician makes a move like this there is always the chance it may come back in the distant future and bite him on the arse. Still he's managed to get away with it and I can say with all honesty had Helen Clark, Winston Peters, or Peter Dunne tried such a move they would have been hammered mercilessly by the fourth estate. Key, by reason of his political inexperience, and possibly his much promoted working class roots, has been cut some slack.

To be fair I think it's entirely likely that John Key made the offer of the Waitangi trip without any consideration of manipulative politics. From what I have observed of him he is the type to make such an offer spontaneously. He is that sort of guy - perhaps a side effect of having a life before politics rather than having been involved in it continuously as a career choice.

The problem is that the media remembers these sort of happenings and now this young girl may become a benchmark for John Key's future political career. Any policy announcement on dealing with the economic underclass will no doubt see a hack or three descending on McGehan Close to vist Aroha and her family to find out "what they think of it".

Also the media will very likely keep tabs on young Aroha's progress through life and measure her success, or failure, against John Key and the vision he is espousing.

One wonders what might happen if Aroha one day ends up at, say, Arohata.

Only in Ireland

I got this little gem of a press release direct from Ireland. While it's not quite as good as this one it's still a bit of a hoot.

(I've cut all the political waffle out of it and left the important stuff)

Ten years of Govt neglect of Gardaí coming home to roost.

Fine Gael Laois/Offaly candidate Charles Flanagan has said he was dismayed to hear of an incident in which a suspect was brought to a Garda Station in a hired farm trailer because he was too tall for a normal Garda car, and there is no Public Order Vehicle (Paddy Wagon) in the whole of Co. Laois.

“The suspect, a heavy-set man, was too tall for a conventional Garda car. And because there is no Public Order Vehicle in the whole of Co. Laois, the suspect was finally tied in to a farm trailer and removed from the scene."

Ends

A Funny Thing Happened

The last time I experienced the whole drama of body changes was during puberty about 20 years ago. That's something I don't want to go into right now and it had been an event, once over, that I thought meant life would be all plain sailing from then on.

Oh how wrong I was.

You see the powers that be are more than happy to warn us about puberty and sexual maturation. Hell there are even books published about it for God's sake! However there seems to be a distinct reticence to be quite as informative about all the weird shit that happens to you after you turn 30. I want to know where the book is about the way a man's hair leaves his head and heads for his back after he turns 29. Is it next to the one that tells of the advent of grey pubic hair? (who knew that happened?!)

I only raise this because the other day I thought I'd come across one of these terrible aging symptoms afflicting me. Just after jumping out of the shower I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and it went something like this.

"What the fuck! ... man breasts. Uuurgh. Where the hell did they come from?"

But fear not dear readers, it turns out I was grossly mistaken.

Over the past two months I've been exercising more often than I ever have before and this includes daily visits to the gym. Now I've managed to avoid gyms for all of my life thanks to a solid aversion to lycra, muscle bunnies, personal trainers, and exercise Nazis. So is it any wonder I have no idea of what some of the consequences of regular exercise are?

It turns out I have pectoral muscles.

Who would have thunk it?

Political Irony

A rich white man, leader of a predominantly white and middle class political party, extols the dangers of a growing economic underclass in NZ.

Interesting sentiments.

A pity he made it to a room full of white wealthy people who would rather not have anything to do with the poor.

Maybe it would have been better to talk to the economic underclass rather than about them?

Happy Trails

With the return to work beckoning I decided to have a crack at a local mountainbike trail that I previously hadn't tried before. Makara is a lot of fun but I felt it was time for a change.



This little gem is called the Fenceline and runs around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. It's a tough wee ride because, if you follow the fence, you follow the line of the hills meaning there are some tough climbs to do. Granny gear is your friend. Though you wouldn't know it from the picture above.



This one however may give you some idea. That climb to the top left is the sort you swallow your pride and walk up. Unless you are truly and extremely fit all you'll achieve from biking up there is a heart attack.



Mind you the view from the top makes it all worthwhile!

More from the ER

In line with what I put up a few weeks ago here's another little medical gem for you.

Yes, you can have sex with your 28 week pregnant girlfriend who is hospitalized for pregnancy induced hypertension, but don't be surprised if her blood pressure goes through the roof and she needs a stat C-section.

Sometimes you have to wonder.