Island Life by David Slack

How's your internet connection? Happy with its speed? Satisfied with its reliability? Has that old tyrant, distance, been vanquished by your computer?

If your answer to any of these questions is "no" then you may be a New Zealand internet user. The Internet, according to thousands of news stories and speeches, will do for 21st century New Zealand business what a ship with freezers managed to do for us a hundred years earlier. So why does it feel as though we're all still standing at the wharf, waiting?

Enter the clear thinking and highly accomplished internet businessman Rod Drury, with a plan. You can click here to read it. In four succinct pages he sets out a case for the people of New Zealand to set up a state-owned broadband fiber network, connecting all New Zealand cities, as well as a new high capacity undersea fiber cable to connect us to the world.

By his own admission, his politics lean to the more-market right, but in this case he judges that this vital infrastructure need is best met by the State. If you're one of the thousands of internet users whose Go Large experience has been just the latest in a string of disappointments, then you may well find yourself agreeing with him.

I can't blame Tariana Turia for getting antsy about the government's immigration policy. The browning of New Zealand is so tantalising a prospect, one can forgive her for fretting at any threat to the vision, real or imagined.

And imagined it probably is, because, as is so often the case, the facts rudely intrude, as you'll see if you click over here to Blogging It Real where we see the makeup of new permanent residents for 2005/6

UK 14,674
China 6,773
South Africa 4,033
India 3,334
Fiji 2,366
South Korea 2,260
Samoa 2,188
USA 1,838
Philippines 1,252
Tonga 968

Facts, schmacts. You know what's missing in all of this? What's missing is a sense of vision and possibility. People just get all negative as soon as Tariana starts talking. Let's sketch it out a little and see if we can't allay some of the fears.

Because I move in the right circles and work to a biased agenda, I am privy to (and, yes, captured by) the relevant papers. The browning of New Zealand, in Tariana's view, will deliver us a perfectly-formed rainbow nation.

Its dimensions have been carefully conceived. New Zealand, according to her plan, would be composed of the right Brown types, and her people have even gone to the trouble of calculating percentages:

53% Russell
28% Wayne
15% Clint
4% Peter

Social engineering, let alone eugenics, is a perilous business, but Tariana is nothing if not fearless. I for one applaud her boldness.

Consider a New Zealand composed along those lines. 53% insightful, prodigious, down-with-the- kids, IT literate and well informed on geopolitical matters, 28% business-savvy, at ease with the tangata whenua and not at all constrained by any ideological tether, 15% good-natured and sports mad, but a bit stroppy with a few drinks on board, and 4% nostalgic old curmudgeon.

Sounds like us.

Entertaining as last year's "Yo, Blair!" exchange proved to be - if only for its banality and the dismal confirmation, if any were needed, that Dubya is not up to much as a global statesman - it seems there may have been a little shading left out of that portrait.

According to this review of an Ariel Sharon biography by Uri Dan, the leader of the free world is contemplating an extraordinary rendition of a somewhat extra-constitutional character if they ever bring in Osama for a hangin'.

Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon's delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"

I wonder if he would consider donning his flying costume and performing the ceremony under a banner on an aircraft carrier. Dude, I would totally flick over from a Britney Spears special to watch that.

The book itself sounds worth a look. Everything in the Middle East is dismal, and a pessimist such as Dan is never proven wrong. Assume the worst, and you will probably be on the money:

Dan reveals a little and conceals much when he hints that Arafat's death was not caused by any illness. He himself suggested to Sharon that Arafat be captured and brought to trial in Jerusalem, like Eichmann, but Sharon reassured him that he was dealing with the problem in his own way. Then Arafat fell ill, was flown to Paris for treatment and died. Was Sharon involved? This is what Dan wrote then in Maariv that in the history books prime minister Ariel Sharon will be remembered as the man who eliminated Yasser Arafat without killing him. Let every reader figure it out for himself.

Say what you want about Helen, the most she's likely to do to you is feed you to the press. If you're lucky, you'll even get tiling leave.

I first noticed them at the meat section. I was leaning in to pick up a tray of skinned boneless chicken thighs when a heavy-set man pushed in front of me to seize the biggest T-bone steak I have ever seen. Vast, it was, and yet still not wide enough to span his enormous girth. A green and yellow polo shirt struggled to contain the kilos of flesh. He spoke in a boom. “This is more like it Trevor. In Capetown, we put two of these in a sandwich and scarf them raw.”

There were three of them: the man with the cantilevered belly; another in an England supporters’ shirt fiddling with his Blackberry; and a smaller man, eyes darting self-consciously about the supermarket. Blackberry man looked up from his screen. “What about the Foie Gras? Where is it Mallard, you soft prick? Is there any bloody decent food here? Why don’t we just go back to the hotel and see if the power’s back on?

They were loud, and really quite intimidating. Shoppers retreated into the aisles as the trio made their way through the store, the Englishman and the South African arguing noisily as they grabbed armfuls of food, pausing from time to time to mock their companion. I reached the checkout just behind them.

The young woman behind the till bowed her head shyly and scooted the items across the scanner as the man with the gut leaned his great hams of forearms on the counter and leered at her cleavage. “That comes to $2011.69” she said softly.

The foreigners both turned to Mallard. His hand went hesitatingly to his wallet. A red cardboard card bearing a photo of the Prime Minister and a short list of declarations fell upon the counter, followed by a platinum American Express card. “I’ve got $11.69 left on this one,” he said, and spun around on his heel towards me. He fixed me with a level gaze as I pulled a six-pack of Stark from the trolley. "It’s your party," he said. Turning back to the checkout, he declared to the operator “he’ll get the rest,” and with that he was gone, hurrying to catch up to the foreigners who were now at the exit door and singing loudly and off-key about a bicycle built for two.

The humble photo opportunity is the meat and drink of modern journalism.

Just like the food you eat, it can be modelled as a pyramid. At its vast base would be the pictures of the businessmen in suits grinning stupidly as they shake hands with the awkwardly self-conscious recipient of an unfeasibly large cardboard cheque.

Up the top, at the sharp point, you will find the booty call. Criminal booty. One or more law enforcement officers face the camera, each one of them solemn and lantern-jawed, chest just bursting with pride, surrounded by the spoils of a criminal enterprise come undone.

This picture comes from the archives of the Sylva Herald in North Carolina. You can click here to see a clearer image of the 'shine being decanted onto the road. What a great little newspaper it is. Had a group of kids not exploded a pipe bomb at their high school, and had one of them not been due to give the salutatorian speech at their class graduation, I might never have passed their way. Now I drop in every few months. It is presently so cold there, the waterfalls are frozen.

The rivers freeze solid and the brightest kids in the school blow up buildings. Who wouldn't feel like a bracing slug or two of something neat on a cold winter evening? The Sylva Herald is a little coy about the circumstances of the moonshine bust. Readers are merely given the reference details should they feel sufficiently inquisitive to visit the library and pull out a dusty copy of the original story.

Illicit distilling has a history both glorious and ignoble. Our own Hokonui tale sits more on the side of the angels than sinners unless you believe that alcohol itself is the devil's cup. At least they made something worth paying for. In the 1870s, NZ Geographic reports, whisky in New Zealand was imported mostly from Scotland and Australia and was frequently so watered down it was said "A dram was often offered a chair as it didn't have the strength to stand up."

When it comes to alcohol and drugs and prohibition, read the history books. It looks like a fool's game. As generally law-abiding as I am, I can't disagree with the news release the Mild Greens issued at the beginning of the year. They tore into the head of the Northland police organised-crime squad, who had declared to the Northern Advocate that his team expected to find and seize a record number of cannabis plants this growing season. Over the past five years, cannabis-plant seizures had been steadily increasing, he said, and then he got to the bit that lit the fuse for the Mild Greens.

Cannabis is still the base funding for other drug and criminal offending.

"Bollocks", exploded the Mild Greens.

It is the prohibition of cannabis that is the base funding and every one knows it. You don't need to be Einstein to see the connection between cannabis and crime is its 'legal status' and police are being simplistic and deceitful about 'drugs causing crime'.

I'm on the side of the argument that doubts the efficacy of prohibition. Don't like the harm done by drugs, including the most widely used - alcohol - but don't have any faith that prohibition will fix it. I sometimes wonder if the Police truly believe it in their hearts either.

But a burning pile of weed makes a hell of a photo call.