David Farrar's monthly statistics are, as ever, a telling reflection of contemporary New Zealand life. I see that once again Public Address has kindly delivered large numbers of visitors to his site, and I daresay he will be pleased to stand us a drink in appreciation next time he's in the Auckland Koru Lounge.
Favours make the world go around. You know it, I know it, and there can't be a voter alive in New Zealand who doesn't believe that Philip Field knows it.
So I invite you to click over to Kiwiblog once more and enjoy this nice change of pace in the comments thread from the more usual sour invective. Toby 1845, it seems to me, is right on the money.
I have a theory that the Police investigation will reveal that the Thai never intended to come to NZ after all. What actually happened was that he was hired by a Samoan who need him to get access for himself (ie, the Samoan).
The whole thing was a misunderstanding. The Samoan in question went to the NZ Immigration Office in Apia wearing a lava lava, singlet and jandals, and was told: "You won't get into New Zealand without a Thai."
Or, at least, that's what he thought he heard.
In the event he got the Thai to do some work on his cousin's house while they were waiting for two seats on a flight to NZ.
I'll bet there's more. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon hear from Islam-type people who made refuge in South Auckland and discovered that their local MP was Philip Field. They will no doubt have made inquiries and learned of the local custom of offering lafo when making representations to a politician.
Language difficulties being what they are, I can imagine the awkward pause in the still of the electorate office when they conclude their imprecation to the elected representative of the poor and huddled masses of Mangere by pulling this out of their scrappy little bag.
(Ferrit.co.nz readers, if either of you fancy one for yourself, but can't find it on your favourite shopping site, just click here.)
Oh, that man is fast becoming the last, loneliest and unloveliest, isn't he? I do have a little fragment of sympathy for him all the same. Taito is a title, not a name. Jeffrey Archer's servants called him Lord Archer, his friends called him Jeffrey, Private Eye called him Archole. I don't know what Kim Hill called him, although I can hazard a reasonable guess; but no-one called him "Lord" as though it were an alternative Christian name.
So is it too much to ask that we stop calling Philip "Taito" as though it's interchangeable with "Ken"? That simply paints us to be the kind of simple folk who might get to our feet as Jim Bolger did years ago at a Goethe-Institut affair in Wellington and banged on about the prodigious talent of "Go-eth".