PS: I'm sure One News didn't mean to be mean, but its video of yesterday's announcement, showing Maurice Williamson looking like he had in fact swallowed a dead rat, and Key struggling through his speech (send the man to Toastmasters, for goodness sake) wasn't terribly complimentary.

I can't open the video file on my Mac with Firefox. Any suggestions. I'd love to see Williamson as described.

"Ralston is famous for his pompous rants.

He was late for a flight I think on Ansett and missed it.

He came back with "Do you know who I am!"

Ballsie checkin used the PA to ask "Does anyone know who this man is he can't remember?"

Yeah I wasn't there but it's a good story and it seems to fit."

Lovely story - but I think it might be an urban myth that started in Oz.

And his phone number! Please!

I have my mail filtered through Spamcop - which means I don't get the spam in my inbox - only the mail on my whitelist (very nice) but lately have had at least 20 messages - and often more - in my held mail - many of which appear on a regular basis. Penis enlargement is usually on offer along with Viagra - they don't seem to have twigged to my gender. Does anyone know how effective Spamcop is as a spam cop? From my experience, it would seem, not very.

I am at a complete loss to understand what all the fuss is about. $120,000 is quite a lot of money - in my humble opinion - and if I had it I certainly wouldn't waste it on political advertising. But if I wanted to waste it I think that, with a whole $120,000, I could say quite a lot about who I think we should all vote for. And then with my other couple of million I could just get on with talking about policies - which I thought was the whole point of democracy anyway.

Sorry sorry sorry you're going, but you're still alive! Thank (redacted) for that! You'll pop up somewhere else where we can all love you again - you have to - not even (redacted) can keep a good thing down.
Lots of good wishes.

However I'm struggling to reconcile my position on the artist's royalty with my stance on intellectual property rights, of which I think the likes of copyright & patents provide too much protection.

It seems to me that you could really only have your cake and eat it if the government paid artists a living wage.

Yeah Tom. Let's starve those big posh artists - we don't need paintings and novels and poems and things - kulcha and kapitalism? What do they share except the letter K? Let it all burn, I say.

No surprise corner: No Right Turn is better informed than the Herald editorial writers on the status of climate change policy.

No Right Turn, defending the Labour Government’s progress on climate change against the Herald’s editorial says ‘But we live in a democracy, not a dictatorship, and so these things take time.’

This highlights the fascinating contradiction amongst conservatives who protest about Nanny State, but demand a dictatorship.

Are they all a little thick or did their mother's smack them too much?