Island Life by David Slack

Here's how they will spin it:

"You voted for us because we told you we're the Tax Cut party, and gosh-darn it, we still really want to be. But Standard and Poors were going to push our cost of borrowing up half a billion if we didn't drop the Tax Cuts and the super fund contributions, so we had to ditch them. Sorry about that."

My question remains: weren't Tax Cuts supposed to be a growth engine? And isn't a growth engine what we need as the jobs dry up and the banks take back the houses?

Perhaps now we can start talking about growth engines that actually work.

We have a blog post ready to go, but we can't post it here yet, sorry. The new protocol requires that we first show it to either Standard and Poors or David Farrar.

We are confident of a positive outcome going forward.

You may have seen images on your TV last night of mild-mannered types such as myself storming the Auckland Harbour bridge and causing chaos. I blame Rod Oram. Whenever he turns up, things just go feral.

Optimist that I am, I had little expectation we'd get onto the bridge. When it happened, I had the sinking feeling that we were being set up for blow-back. Get two lanes of the bridge, and you'll merely slow it down. Get all four, and you will piss people off. If I were marooned on the motorway for an hour and a half, I'd be pissed off too.

And so it came to pass. The Herald says there were 2,000 of us; my own guess would be 5,000. Happy people. What we asked for was the chance to ride and walk across the bridge and remind everyone that there are other ways of moving Aucklanders around their city. We say our way is healthier, cheaper, and kinder to the planet. We say that it's time to do some fresh thinking. Time and time again, the only mode of transport that gets the lion's share of public funding is the almighty car. Even though it costs a fortune. And even though the oil is running out.

Cycle lanes could do us so much good, and make so much economic sense in the long run, it's remarkable, really, that we're having to argue over the soundness of them.

We fielded several very good speakers - because the affair began with a rally - and the best of them all was Christine Rose. She is on the ARC, and she is without question someone you want to vote for when Rodney Hide finally decides how you're going to do it.

What's the motto, Christine? Burn fat, not oil.

I was hoping for big things from last week's entrepreneur huddle, but if Give it a go bro is the best they've got, really: come on, guys. You're branding yourselves as something you're not.

How about you give this one a go: If there were a cycle lane on the harbour bridge (in the next three years, not in the thirty years time, thanks very much, Wayne Macdonald) - what do you think that might do to give Auckland tourism a shot in the arm?

Imagine a cycle lane that ran along the bays from St Heliers, across the bridge, around a ring road of the Devonport peninsula and up the East Coast Bays.

Wouldn't that help to persuade those thousands of tourists who arrive at Auckland international airport to stay here in the Auckland region more than one night? Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? Well, you can have it for vastly less than the billions being spent elsewhere in Auckland. It's practically spare change when you put it up against the car money.

And I now conclude by offering the magic incantation:

in time for the Rugby World Cup.

Since Deborah Hill-Cone moved into the neighbourhood, our local pharmacy has had to take an occasional media spanking. I wouldn't be surprised if there is now a note taped behind the counter alerting staff: if a woman with Harry Potter specs comes in, give her whatever she wants. Especially Pseudoephedrine.

I myself am the diffident respectful type who does whatever the chemist tells me. But I am beginning to feel stirrings of dissent. I turn to well-informed readers of this blog for their formidable medical, chemical and biological savoir-faire.

The pharmacist, upon filling your prescription for antibiotics, draws your attention to the information leaflet accompanying the pills. She explains its message: while on antibiotics, you will need to replenish various vitamins. She uses the words "your immune system support". She then draws your attention to the refrigerated cabinet that now sits on the counter and holds little plastic bottles. The bottles contain 14 capsules and are labelled: antibiotic support. Probiotic and vitamin combination to support the gut while on medication.

My antibiotics cost $3. The pills cost 14. I am no scientist, but I know a little about business and marketing. Scientists, can you please tell me if after nearly five decades of taking my antibiotics neat, I might now benefit from these pills and their promise to "help restore beneficial flora"?

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I am bemused by the inability of our fearless media to draw the obvious dots between recent international news stories.

This man is in jail in California.

A couple of years ago he took home an actress. Within minutes there was a great wall of sound, then silence. The actress was no more, and the man was tried, not once, not twice, but thrice for her slaying.

Meanwhile, this man has spent three decades perturbing New Zealand rural folk.

He started out by snarling at Her Majesty, Brenda, Queen of New Zealand. More recently he has been responsible for the greatest indignity offered to our butter since Marlon Brando rented an apartment in Paris.

This man claims to have grown up in New Zealand.

He would have his fellow countrymen believe that he cherishes the traditional cuisine: meat pies, sausage rolls, lamingtons, roll-your-owns. But the veneer is gossamer thin. He also knows that we were unable to detect French spies even as they seduced our women, wearing berets, blue striped T-shirts and garlic necklaces. He therefore makes scant effort to conceal his true identity: Teutonic roots, with sinister Somes Island connections; a fascination with English footballers. He is not one of us.

Compare the photos: the three men are one and the same. Given that one is incarcerated and yet appears to move about at will, the frightening truth is all too clear: the man is a shape-shifter, albeit a lazy one. Not to be approached.

*****

I will be spending this Sunday morning rabble-rousing.

Click here for details. Please join us if you believe, as we do, that bikes are a gift from God himself.

Poet Laureate
The Mad Butcher


Race Relations Conciliator
Tony Veitch


Governor General
Matthew Ridge


Commissioner for Children
Graham Capill


Chief Executive, New Zealand On Air
The guy who makes the TV commercials louder than the programmes


Reserve Bank Governor
Goldstein