Southerly by David Haywood

Our 88-year-old stenographer, Miss Spong, has requested a bonus for spelling “weltanschauung” correctly, and hopes that Russell Brown’s house doesn’t burn down in the event that there’s not an extra fifty in her brown envelope this week.

Unfortunately Russell has a policy of not paying at all when threatened with arson, so you’re bound to be a bit disappointed, Miss Spong. Nevertheless, we’re sure that you’ll still be doing the transcripts next week—if you want to maintain your normal cigarette habit!

What a trouper you are, Miss Spong. It would be a good few extra years in prison if anything really does happen to Russell’s house. And, of course, a few extra years is tantamount to a death sentence at your age!

I hope Ms Spong, in the odd break between bursts of her vital parliamentary stenography, takes the time to write her own life story. Blood needs to be curdled; hackles, raised; spines tingled. It's her patriotic duty!

If you have a small dark creature whispering in one ear isn't it traditional for there to be a white one whispering in the other, you know for balance, testing ones moral courage ....

Is this what's wrong with our government? our leader has lost his balanced out look on the world, he has turned, to, well, the dark side ..... it would explain a lot, the fetish he has with black flags, both ours and ISIS's, the weird idea that selling houses makes more of them, the apology to (spit) Slater

Is Sooty maybe one of the ravens Huginn or Muninn? That would be problematic for the PM – the ravens fly all over the world every day and see everything that goes on. Every night they then tell him what they’ve seen. So – no more plausable deniability.

Wednesday's child...

Is Sooty maybe one of the ravens Huginn or Muninn?

but, but, that would make Key - Odin!
...giving truth to the old saw that in the land of the blind a one eyed man is king!
and he does have a serious 'Ass Guard' in Wayne Ravenson...

Glove's Labours lost...
But if Sooty is 'that bear' he has pedigree - the Daily Mail has a tale of his killing someone!
and he was always getting into jams...

Why once he even briefly ran the country (Britain):

The moral of the story: where there's 'soot' there's 'smut'
keep your black powder dry!

Wow -- 7.00am and already four comments of genius that have significantly extended the analysis of our parliamentary reporting.

Rob: what an excellent suggestion. I shall have a word with Ms Spong when she is in a better mood. It's my understanding that she has family in the church and is therefore rather reluctant to publicize her various 'scrapes', but she must also weigh this against the public's need to know (in my opinion).

Paul, Martin, and Ian: you are obviously persons of great brain (perhaps you eat a lot of fish?) and I only wish that the Public Address budget would stretch to hiring you as additional parliamentary reporters. What a formidable team we would make. I thank you!

Incidentally, for those of you who have been wondering how Zippy and Bungle (and George) were employed in between Rainbow and CERA, then this will explain:

perhaps you eat a lot of fish?

Alpha and Omega...

(be the 1,225,581st person to watch this annually linked 'masterpisce'...)

and I do love this pair of fish from New Brighton...

David, can you please tell Miss Spong that neither I nor any member of my family will open the door to her, and that she must surrender any thought of an affectionate relationship between her and myself. Also, that the cats she has disembowelled and affixed to lamp-posts in our street in fact belong to various of our neighbours, who are understandably upset.

takes the time to write her own life story

Is she perhaps related to the Miss Spong who was reported to be Churchill's bodyguard during the WWII? I think those documents may have become public domain now.

David, can you please tell Miss Spong that neither I nor any member of my family will open the door to her…

Look, I told the prison administrators that trying Miss Spong on day release was a bad idea – and now look what’s happened!

Russell, I will certainly convey your message to Miss Spong, and I offer my condolences to you and your neighbours for what must have been a very trying experience.

It goes without saying that, of course, the judiciary of this country had a very good reason to put Miss Spong behind bars (not to mention her black-listing by the SPCA), but – if it’s any consolation – I don’t think the thing with the cats was necessarily directed at you or your household.

If you recall the job interview when we hired Miss Spong: how she raged on and on about cats; how she said that cats were against democracy; how she maintained that if you observed a cat when it was watching Robert Mugabe on television, then you would see the cat smiling to itself, and thinking “There’s our Robert”. It all adds up to a pretty good prediction of the subsequent events in your street.

In other words, I don’t think that Miss Spong had any plan to “put the frighteners” on you via the cats, but rather it was a case of: the cats were there, the lamp-posts were there; she had a knife. In other words, she had the motive, the means, and the opportunity – so naturally she just put the three things together.

Oh that Zippy, I was thinking more of the pinhead variety

It seems seems to me that pairing Ms Spong with a certain Kiwisaver Mogul might be an environmentally successful strategy ….

Jason Ede couldn't have wished for a more suitable successor. Who but the strong and almost silent Sooty could suggest such a perfect Party slogan, "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!".
It encompasses all that is National and reminds us that all JK has to do is wave a magic wand and all things are possible, however unconventional that may seem it has been the hallmark of JK's career to date and may become the central convention for some years to come, a convention centre if you will.

All this, however may yet backfire on the PM if he were to withdraw his hand, bowing to internal and very public, pressure over the Sky City deal, his other proposed Black Flag operations and his support for IS a division of Rentokill (who, incidentally, provided school meals in the UK) and may help him rid us of those pesky people with headscarves that might upset the New World Order
Perhaps in light of these revelations we may yet hear the puppet of muppets wail the mournful cry of...
"Bye bye everybody, bye bye"

Cray fishing…
Just wondering if Miss Spong may have been part of the notorious Giles gang or is perhaps related to the Crays and is now in some antipodean ‘witless’ protection scheme…

the cats she has disembowelled and affixed to lamp-posts in our street in fact belong to various of our neighbours…

But it did give ‘paws for thought’…

Bad news for satire...
Jon Stewart to leave The Daily Show this year

Fake news host Jon Stewart has announced plans to step away from The Daily Show later this year.

Fake news show?
I thought The Daily Show did a far better job at highlighting current affairs than many other 'Real News' shows...
(ditto for John Oliver's show)

We're so pretty, oh so pretty, legal...
Eminem taking National Party to court next week
Here's hoping they aren't just 'rapped' over the knuckles...

it doesn't matter what JK does, he gets on swimmingly. Treacle or water.

As for the likes of sooty on the shoulder....

It is rather sad that this is the only, albeit clever and amusing, thread pertaining to politics on Public Address at this time. A time when so much is happening, appearing in even the MSM, that we would, in the past, have been so vociferous in discussing.
The Sabin affair, the Sky City rort, State House sell-off, the rise of Andrew Little and the rebirth of the Labour movement. So much to discuss, so little said.

On the Sabin affair I came across this.

On 30 January NBR reported in Sabin resigns from Parliament:

NBR ONLINE first began researching the National MP in September.

In December, Fairfax media revealed Waitemata police were investigating an assault complaint against Mr Sabin.

It is understood the National Party was first made aware of an assault complaint against National MP Mike Sabin weeks before the 2011 election but chose not to ask Mr Sabin to withdraw his candidacy.

Paywalled for you convenience.

Is that a simple typo or does it really go back that far?
The question should be asked in Parliament... "When did the police initiate their investigation into Mike Sabin?"
If the 2011 date is, in fact, correct, then surely the PM would have known years ago.

We are now reliably informed by that most reliable of jokers, Steven Joyce, that the Government will not be coughing up Corporate Welfare for those poor undernourished folks at Sky City, they will just have to spend that $402,000,000 they said they will and we will just have to put up with an eyesore, to mach the existing eyesore that is their Casino and "entertainment" centre. Either that or we must put up with the three perfectly adequate convention centres we already have.

State Houses are not, apparently, assets, go figure. There is no reason for central, or even local Government to duck their responsibility to the Nations underprivileged, those same underprivileged that are growing in number under this ideologically crippled cohort of corrupt criminals, other than to line the pockets of those that already hold the bulk of the Nations wealth.

Are we going to sit back and stay quiet? are we going to go quietly into this dark self satisfied morass of middle class slumber? or are we going to get back on that once proud horse that was Public Address?

Like Steve, I've been expecting a pithy PAS post on the SkyCity fiasco. I enjoyed Dave Armstrong's summary in today's Dom Post.

The odds seem to be stacked against those, like SkyCity, at the bottom of the corporate heap.

I've heard that children of SkyCity executives are turning up at their Auckland private schools without having had a decent cafe breakfast. At playtime the kids have to fill their bottles with tap water.

Even worse, Auckland's rising housing market has forced out some executives from Remuera and Herne Bay into nearby ghetto suburbs such as Meadowbank and Westmere, forcing their children to attend decile 9 schools.

Key is already re-writing history by claiming (RNZ this morning) that taxpayer funding for the casino was never an option. Hold on... didn't he say a few days ago that taxpayer funding for such a needy cause was likely? The man's hypocrisy is shocking.

Like Steve, I've been expecting a pithy PAS post on the SkyCity fiasco.

And as if by magic.... !!KAPOW!!

eta Love the Armstrong piece.
;-)

Key is already re-writing history by claiming (RNZ this morning) that taxpayer funding for the casino was never an option. Hold on... didn't he say a few days ago that taxpayer funding for such a needy cause was likely? The man's hypocrisy is shocking.

In the Herald this morning, he tried the "they did it too" option:

Mr Key said there was nothing unusual in the controversial original deal in which the Government agreed to let SkyCity install more pokies and gambling tables in return for the company building the convention centre.

"Helen Clark did the same thing actually, Labour forget that. That's how we got the first convention centre," he said. SkyCity opened its first convention centre in Federal St in 2004, eight years after the casino opened in 1996.

Um, that's not how I remember it, but I'm not in a position to fact check.

Um, that’s not how I remember it, but I’m not in a position to fact check.

Ah, I see Russell has picked up on that in the latest post.