Related but a bit late - hearing Sandy Meier comment on the poor, recent loans and having previously heard about related party transactions, I looked at the Companies Office website to see if it was possible to find who owned what connected with SCF. Gee. Mr Hubbard has an extensive portfolio of shareholding and directorships, but they are dwarfed in number by those of Lachie McLeod, the previous CE of SCF, and in turn his are dwarfed by several of his co-directors in the many other finance companies he's involved in. The best I found was 324 directorships by a single human entity. I hope the receivers have got big whiteboards for the wiring diagrams. Anyone interested in following trails through the companies should have a go - www.companies.govt.nz - its an open access site free to all to have a trawl....

Well the Times' digital help person said their payment screen needed a passphrase, but it sure didn't offer the opportunity to either enter one or by-pass it. As soon as I hit 'submit' it all went bad. My bank was sufficiently interested to check with their security people see if the Times had tried to charge my Visa, but they hadn't lodged anything against it. However, the Times did retain my card number, which hasn't impressed my one little bit.

There is another major problem with the Times' paywall - it doesn't work. It is set up for UK credit cards, which have a 'passphrase' attached as additional online security. My bank said there are no plans to attach passphrases to NZ cards. So NZ and presumably at least some other countries' credit cards don't work, thus removing large numbers of international readers from the list of those willing to pay. The payment screen just hangs, then freezes, then times (ha) out.

I admit to finding this out the hard way - by trying to subscribe to the one pound for the first month offer. I won't go on about the Times' 'digital help' except to say that after several fruitless email exchanges they sent me an auto mailer offering the same deal I had originally tried and failed to purchase.

A further point - Key Il Jong has been rabbiting on about how NZ needs the 90 day probation policy because all our major comparator countries have one - Aussie, UK, Bolivia, whatever. Last week he was arguing that we shouldn't stop Chinese citizens owning land in NZ just because NZ citizens can't own land in China and even said that we shouldn't make domestic policy on the basis of other countries' internal policies. So which is it then - we follow, or we dont?
Further yet, his witless example of the migrant pizza delivery worker shows a scarey level of ignorance of his own and the two previous governments' immigration policies, which have been selecting skilled migrants for skilled jobs for years. Doh!

There might be a good news story to come - maybe Sir Roger will stage a leadership coup while Rodney is grandstanding overseas. That should be enough to scare even the Epsom voters.

Thanks to the TAB's current generosity, All Black supporters can hedge their risk of further heartbreak with consolation bets on the Wallabies at $2.50 to win.

Re earlier posts on possible replacement coaches- Wayne Bennett. The Dragons loss yesterday may have dulled the gloss a little, but if the NZRFU wants a coach who can get the best of out players and get them to (mostly) stick to a winning game plan, he's proven to be the man. The code change and nationality shouldn't be a problem, especially now that they've got 'Aussie Bob' Deans.

Somehow having thousands of drunken rugby fans on a wharf didn't seem sensible for a start - man or woman overboard all too likely to happen frequently. Then it occurred to me that it could work as way of ensuring that any unsuccessful All Blacks coach doesn't get a second (or third even) attempt at winning the wretched Cup. A few thousand angry fans, a sack with a couple of concrete blocks in it - and splash, problem solved...

As for bars on the route from the city to the stadium in Wellington - beer drinkers will leave the Backbencher much poorer but not much drunker as they serve the most expensive beer around. Try the Occidental on Lambton Quay instead. Tends to be a bit busy around game time tho.

Saying that you are GST auditors from IRD on a fraud training course has always been a favourite.

I'm sure the last targets of a media attack are very grateful to HNZC. The budget took the heat for a day or two, but the Taupo lodge will be good for at least another few days. In fact as I work in a part of the public service that is subject to all too frequent attacks(hence need for pseudonym), I can reveal that a standard ploy is to repeatedly scan the news wires hoping for the next victim to step forward quickly. Every dog has its day etc..but really, the HNZC thing was just dumb, it failed very perception test. No point in plonking on about value for money after being caught - it just looked bad. But, as I said, many other people in Wgton are very grateful to HNZC for taking centrestage.