Labour dives in latest poll

Just a couple of links to things that caught my eye this morning.

Labour takes big dive in the latest Roy Morgan Poll. They must be becoming resigned to sitting out another term.

And expect more of these stories in the near future as the welfare 'industry' gears up to fight the WWG recommendations.

There is no reason why provision can't be made for unusual cases. But they should not be used to prevent changing the welfare system for the majority.

Tedious nagging from the UN and repetitious waffle from Labour

News this morning seems to be dominated by the UN damning NZ again about its shameful record on children's rights. Too many children are living in poverty apparently. There isn't a Ministry for Children. Labour's response is nothing more than repetitious waffle. They would create a Minister for Social Policy; they would take a "whole of government approach"; they would "break the cycle of economic deprivation". It is just so tedious.

So many children live in relative poverty because we have so many families living on welfare. There is no imperative to work when on welfare so dysfunction flourishes. But wait for a raft of responses today calling for MORE welfare.

Update; MacDoctor has an excellent post on the subject

Media educates MP

Isn't this where the blogoshere comes into its element?

Labour MP Ashraf Choudary creates a Red Alert blogpost using a press statement urging the government to make folic acid in bread compulsory based on new research. He criticises the media coverage of his statement as "light on facts".

Here is the response from NewstalkZB's political correspondent, Felix Marwick, in the comments section;

felix marwick says:
January 19, 2011 at 6:44 pm

Ashraf,
the reason the story was short is because it was written for radio. Basically I have 30 seconds, or 120 words, to get a point/angle across.

Additionally I had also covered the story on Tuesday so some of the extra detail you allude to had already been included in that copy.

DPB stats - I was wrong

I predicted that in December 2010 the DPB stats might reach an all-time high in absolute numbers. The December quarter benefit statistics are just out and I was wrong. The DPB only rose to 113,000. (In December 1997 the total reached 114,799.)


Over the year to December 2010, the number of recipients of a main benefit increased by 7,000, or 2 percent.

Over the year to December 2010, the number of Domestic Purposes Benefit recipients increased by 4,000, or 3 percent.

Over the year to December 2010, the number of Sickness Benefit recipients increased by 1,000, or 1 percent.

Over the year to December 2010, the number of recipients of an Unemployment Benefit increased by 1,000, or 1 percent

Unintended consequences of US health reforms

Interesting piece from the NCPA today which reports that McDonalds has warned the US government they may stop providing health insurance for 30,000 employees. The increased cost of health insurance under the Obama reforms means that the cost of labour increases and companies will either shed jobs or wages will stagnate. Just what the US needs.

Labour wants to dig us deeper

I begin this post with an acknowledgement that it is framed around generalisations as policy should be.

Labour says it will extend Paid Parental Leave and make changes to the DPB. Specifically they do not like the work requirement when the youngest child turns six (which is only being applied to a small percentage of that group currently anyway.)

Annette King says;

"Nobody is saying it should be a benefit for life, but it is to assist people at a time when they are caring for children. Surely the aim here is to bring up responsible, well cared for kids. And those of us who have tried it know that that is hard work."

There are screeds of statistics available that show the children who do best are raised in two parent families. Good outcomes increase further when the two parents are their biological parents. And further improve when the two biological parents are married.

Now I am not a conservative. That means I do not think the state has to enforce such arrangements, or even actively incentivise them. But neither should it be constantly making laws that undermine the family as the best social and economic unit there is.

That is what leftist liberal policy - economic and social - has done for many decades. And in this country the supposed conservative party National is in that basket too.

People are born to form relationships; to form mutual dependencies on each other. A constructive mutual dependency is healthy and it is certainly the best environment within which to nurture children. But start ascribing monetary deficit to either existing partnerships or their breakdown, and then demanding the state ameliorate or correct the deficit, and it is easy to predict what the response will be. Single parents go from forming a very small percentage of society to forming a quarter to a third of all families raising children.

Then we have to take more from working families to support non-working, mostly single parent families, which means working parents, if their relationship can stand it, have to work more to keep ahead of the game. Next the same people who demanded that women should be recompensed for not being in a mutual dependency set-up start demanding that two parent families should also get more financial help and work less.

Where will it end?

When will a politician, preferably a leader, stand up and say, "Sorry folks but you are just going to have to start relying on each other again because we are not up to the job and are broke anyway"?

It ain't going be Mr Smiley.

The Prohibition and prohibition

Reason.com reviews a new book about the Prohibition and its implications for ending the war on drugs. It sounds like a fascinating read and reveals to me how little I knew about that period.

The real puzzle, as the journalist Daniel Okrent argues in his masterful new history of the period, is how a nation that never had a teetotaling majority, let alone one committed to forcibly imposing its lifestyle on others, embarked upon such a doomed experiment to begin with. How did a country consisting mostly of drinkers agree to forbid drinking?

The short answer is that it didn’t. As a reveler accurately protests during a Treasury Department raid on a private banquet in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, neither the 18th Amendment nor the Volstead Act, which implemented it, prohibited mere possession or consumption of alcohol. The amendment took effect a full year after ratification, and those who could afford it were free in the meantime to stock up on wine and liquor, which they were permitted to consume until the supplies ran out. The law also included exceptions that were important for those without well-stocked wine cellars or the means to buy the entire inventory of a liquor store (as the actress Mary Pickford did). Home production of cider, beer, and wine was permitted, as was commercial production of alcohol for religious, medicinal, and industrial use (three loopholes that were widely abused). In these respects Prohibition was much less onerous than our current drug laws. Indeed, the legal situation was akin to what today would be called “decriminalization” or even a form of “legalization.”

...As Prohibition wore on, its unintended consequences provided the fire that wets had lacked before it was enacted. They were appalled by rampant corruption, black market violence, newly empowered criminals, invasions of privacy, and deaths linked to alcohol poisoned under government order to discourage diversion (a policy that Sen. Edward Edwards of New Jersey denounced as “legalized murder”). These burdens seemed all the more intolerable because Prohibition was so conspicuously ineffective. As a common saying of the time put it, the drys had their law and the wets had their liquor, thanks to myriad quasi-legal and illicit businesses that Okrent colorfully describes.

Entrepreneurs taking advantage of legal loopholes included operators of “booze cruises” to international waters, travel agents selling trips to Cuba (which became a popular tourist destination on the strength of its proximity and wetness), “medicinal” alcohol distributors whose brochures (“for physician permittees only”) resembled bar menus, priests and rabbis who obtained allegedly sacramental wine for their congregations (which grew dramatically after Prohibition was enacted), breweries that turned to selling “malt syrup” for home beer production, vintners who delivered fermentable juice directly into San Francisco cellars through chutes connected to grape-crushing trucks, and the marketers of the Vino-Sano Grape Brick, which “came in a printed wrapper instructing the purchaser to add water to make grape juice, but to be sure not to add yeast or sugar, or leave it in a dark place, or let it sit too long before drinking it because ‘it might ferment and become wine.’ ” The outright lawbreakers included speakeasy proprietors such as the Stork Club’s Sherman Billings-ley, gangsters such as Al Capone, rum runners such as Bill McCoy, and big-time bootleggers such as Sam Bronfman, the Canadian distiller who made a fortune shipping illicit liquor to thirsty Americans under the cover of false paperwork. Their stories, as related by Okrent, are illuminating as well as engaging, vividly showing how prohibition warps everything it touches, transforming ordinary business transactions into tales of intrigue.

The reviewer then considers whether the actions of the anti-prohibitionists - at practical and political levels - could today be emulated to end today's prohibition of drugs;

Another barrier to emulating the antiprohibitionists of the 1920s is that none of the currently banned drugs is (or ever was) as widely consumed in this country as alcohol. That fact is crucial in understanding the contrast between the outrage that led to the repeal of alcohol prohibition and Americans’ general indifference to the damage done by the war on drugs today. The illegal drug that comes closest to alcohol in popularity is marijuana, which survey data indicate most Americans born after World War II have at least tried. That experience is reflected in rising public support for legalizing marijuana, which hit a record 46 percent in a nationwide Gallup poll conducted the week before Proposition 19 was defeated.

A third problem for today’s antiprohibitionists is the deep roots of the status quo. Alcohol prohibition came and went in 14 years, which made it easy to distinguish between the bad effects of drinking and the bad effects of trying to stop it. By contrast, the government has been waging war on cocaine and opiates since 1914 and on marijuana since 1937 (initially under the guise of enforcing revenue measures). Few people living today have clear memories of a different legal regime. That is one reason why histories like Okrent’s, which bring to life a period when booze was banned but pot was not, are so valuable.

Reflecting on the long-term impact of the vain attempt to get between Americans and their liquor, Okrent writes: “In 1920 could anyone have believed that the Eighteenth Amendment, ostensibly addressing the single subject of intoxicating beverages, would set off an avalanche of change in areas as diverse as international trade, speedboat design, tourism practices, soft-drink marketing, and the English language itself? Or that it would provoke the establishment of the first nationwide criminal syndicate, the idea of home dinner parties, the deep engagement of women in political issues other than suffrage, and the creation of Las Vegas?” Nearly a century after the war on other drugs was launched, Americans are only beginning to recognize its far-reaching consequences, most of which are considerably less fun than a dinner party or a trip to Vegas.

Time to get over it

Reading Rosemary McLeod's column today which uses The Blanket Man to represent all that is wrong with Maori I initially had this response, The Bucket Man;



McLeod writes;

Blanket Man is Maori, and wears his blanket much how Maori did when Europeans first arrived here to settle.....The outcome of our arrival and colonisation has not been a happy one for Maori overall, and I hate to be starting another year with Blanket Man in his usual place. He symbolises much that's wrong with how we live together, his wilful, slow suicide an indictment of our lack of understanding.

That is rather sweeping.

Should the "overall" situation of Maori be compared to their pre-colonisation one or to that of present NZ European? On the first count there is no comparison. Life expectancy, health, housing, access to technology, etc is vastly improved. On the second count, today probably a majority of Maori have the same standard of living as a larger majority of NZ European.

And then we can go down the other avenue of conjecturing over what the outcomes might have been for Maori if a different race had colonised NZ. But really this whole colonisation thing, which is factual and undeniable, has, at some stage, to be put to bed.

I'm not prepared to call those people feral, or condemn them, without having a realistic solution for the problems that lie behind their destructive choices. Where are the jobs for them? Where are the schools designed to cater to their learning needs? Why do we continue to fail them in an education system which half of all Maori boys leave without any achievement recorded? Why don't we consider that as outrageous as serious crime? And why are Maori still so unhealthy?

Now we are firmly in the realms of paternalism and determinism. What is it? We stuffed-up for Maori and we have to un-stuff-up? The labour market and education system are to blame, not personal choices and actions or lack thereof? I am certain that in the early part of the 1900s the prescribed problem was Maori lack of access to Pakeha health and education services. Now it is the services themselves?

It's not as if we haven't been down a 'corrective' pathway with Maori immersion schools and umpteen funding initiatives aimed at improving Maori health. Fully restoring Maori property rights is yet to occur. I hope it does.

But it is a dangerous thing to describe the situation of Maori in NZ today as "overall" worse than previously. It plays to the culture of victimhood and resentment that has been perpetuating social problems for too long already.

Quote of the day

"Government, in its final analysis, is organized force."

— Woodrow Wilson

Jobs and good news

Good news for anyone thinking about heading off to Australia to work - their unemployment rate has dipped just below 5 percent for the first time in two years. It stands at 4.98% - officially 5 - compared to our most recent rate of 6.4 percent. Ours however is September, not December. The NZ December figure will almost certainly be higher.

Australia is probably a better bet than the UK where their latest unemployment rate (October) was 7.9 percent.

And for those staying put, Trade Me reports a big increase in job listings.

....32,000 jobs were listed in the last three months of 2010, a 28 per cent increase in the same quarter a year ago.

Of course it could be simply that more employers are using Trade Me to advertise.

I am hanging in there with my new job - running a working portrait studio. Just had a call from a lady who is going to make a $1000+ purchase from me today. And the rent is paid to February. And the sun has just come over the hill.

Links from non-English blogs

It is interesting where links sometimes come from.

Here's one from an Asian blogger linking to some comparative stats I produced between various female occupations and the DPB.

I wish I could comprehend the accompanying commentary. Can anyone else? It's quite amusing to speculate. But there may be useful insight into how other cultures view our welfare system.

Stop Press;

Here is an on-line translation provided by cutting and pasting text at this site;

In Taiwan mentioned the European and American advanced countries, the first choice is naturally US, next is Western Europe, Northern Europe or the Australian various countries.Missed as for the New Zealand this far away tiny small country strength.Recently saw talks about New Zealand's social welfare to an article.The welfare good in a big way frightened me one to jump.Therefore my Chen Kyle immediately regarding this barren land, tiny small country change ones attitude toward.

Because is most early saw in mainland " day Uygur network " pastes the article to speak New Zealand's social welfare, but also thought is Chinese Communist Party's united front plot, takes advantage of this reveals difference of the Taiwan social welfare to press up to the third world suddenly, splits up the Taiwan popular sentiment.I spent some time to find the original text source.We also let the numeral speak, you then understood how New Zealand to does nurture has two child's single-parent families is looks after.Below is New Zealand's profession don't with the weekly salary.

Simple saying, you so long as is the divorce also alone takes care of two children, also lives in Auckland, a week may only receive 580 Niu coins.22.48 calculated by yesterday China business silver closing exchange rate that, is equal to the dollar 13038 Yuan.Compares the New Zealand local other professions, the income is not inferior.In other words, the light leads two child's single mothers in the home, what fart class doesn't use, crossed comfortably.But also because the welfare too is just good, New Zealand common people some people eat the taste, some human of vacations divorce, therefore at present planned repairs the law, if the single parents of son or daughter-in-law's child already six years old, the single mother or the daddy had a week to work for 15 hours.


Lives you does not dare in such country to give birth to the child?


The Taiwan government is not does not have the money, but is not uses in a " government enterprise, the enterprise laborer " incomprehensible nonsense subsidy; Or buys the munitions greatly; Or is the government self-enriches, including self-enriches the armed forces Catholicism treatment, the national travels card, remuneration for life and so on skills.Does what as for 1,000,000 bonuses to like giving birth to child's slogan, basic with gives birth to the child to have nothing to do with, is purely deceives the child, shouts makes child's acrobatics.

Asks the Taiwan government to use the dessert, is not does stimulates moves, does the slogan to be possible to promote the common people to live.Entire social need more fair and unjustness.

Not sure I am any the wiser.

Is Maggie Barry to old for politics?

Whale Oil has a post about Maggie Barry seeking the Botany nomination. In my opinion she is mad. But then people said that to me when I stood for ACT and it's just something you have to find out for yourself. Someone suggested to me being an MP would be like taking a shower in shit. Having watched politics for a number of years, and particularly last year, I can see the motivation for that statement. Individuals might think they can rise above it but to me that smacks of the naivety of a female hooking up with a known boozer and batterer thinking she can tame the man.

But what interests me about Whale Oil's post is his focus on her age. He refers to her more than once as being like a Grandma or great aunt. She is only 51, and physically, a youthful 51 at that. Of course it is entirely possible to be both at that age but something more normally associated with being 60 or so, especially among NZ Europeans who tend to have their children older.

Whale Oil specifically states her age will be against her because she won't have time to achieve much. Yet plenty of people work well into their 60s and 70s, especially men. Perhaps a 51 year-old male prospect would be viewed differently.

So I am utterly at odds with Cameron over this point. But an otherwise interesting read from someone close to the party and process.

Response to 'stargazer' at The Hand Mirror

I need to respond to a blogpost/comment at The Hand Mirror so, having limited time, will make it my post today. Stargazer, another anonymous blogger, linked to Donna Wynd's Herald article describing it as "a reasonable response " to something I wrote which she had not had "the stomach to read". I queried how she could know that it was a reasonable response to something she hadn't read. Her reply:

apologies lindsay, i should have said it's a very reasonable piece (actually a damn good one), written in response to something you wrote. it stands alone as a good piece of writing regardless of anything you've had to say.

given what i've read of your views on this issue, in comments here & on other blogs and the couple of posts on your blog i mistakenly read a couple of years ago, i can't imagine you said anything too different from what you normally said. but go on, surprise me. tell me that you've discovered some empathy for women who leave abusive unhappy relationships, or whose husbands leave them for someone else, or who had a contraceptive failure, or who were never given enough accurate sex education to keep themselves from getting pregnant, or who were raped. tell me you think these women and their children, and male sole-parents who may be in that situation for any number of reasons, deserve our collective support so that they can get back on their feet and so their children can also have the opportunity to succeed. tell me that you mentioned that most sole-parents are on the DPB for 4 years or less, and that an economic recession & high unemployment make it harder to find part-time work that is compatible with parenting duties. tell me you supported child-care subsideies and training allowances that would make it possible for these parents to improve their situation and get off the benefit. tell that you think parenting is so valuable that we should support parents to be able to do it when circumstances are difficult for them, and that you think financial investment in parenting and families (regardless of structure) will pay back to the society that so invests, many times over - at the very least because good parenting should produce a generation of taxpayers rather than a generation of "bludgers".

go on, lindsay, surprise me.

I have always maintained that the state should support people in the situations described above, but in general, for a limited period. There are exceptions - as there are exceptions in the US under time-limiting whereby 20 percent of cases can be exempted - for, example, caregivers of children who are severely physically or mentally disabled.

The statement that most sole parents are on the DPB for 4 years or less is inadequate, which is why I do not use it. To grasp the degree of dependence on the DPB one needs to understand the difference between point in time statistics and over time statistics. The DPB population turns over constantly and many people use it temporarily with which I have no problem. The short-termers bring down average times. Also the statement made by stargazer ignores that almost half of the people who leave the DPB will return beginning a new period. She can check that the period she refers to is 'continuous' - not 'cumulative'.

Latest research from MSD actually covers these distinctions;

On average, sole parents receiving main benefits had more disadvantaged backgrounds than might have been expected:

• just over half had spent at least 80% of the history period observed (the previous 10 years in most cases) supported by main benefits
• a third appeared to have become parents in their teenage years.

This reflects the over-representation of sole parents with long stays on benefit among those in receipt at any point in time, and the longer than average stays on benefit for those who become parents as teenagers.

Had the research considered all people granted benefit as a sole parent, or all people who received benefit as a sole parent over a window of time rather than at a point in time, the overall profile of the group would have appeared less disadvantaged.

I do support child-care subsidies if that is what it takes to enable women to work but as I have mentioned previously, there is ample child-caring capacity within the existing DPB population with around half of caregivers being paid to care for just one child.

Treasury has shown that the Training Incentive Allowance leads to people being on benefits longer. Student loans are interest free so why should a parent get advantage over a non-parent when it comes to education?

Of course parenting is valuable but it essentially comes from motivated individuals. It isn't the prerogative of the state to pay for and regulate. Unfortunately the adults that end up costing society the most are also the most likely to have had subsidised upbringings.

And there isn't much I can say to prove that I do have sympathy for individuals whose lives fall apart through no fault of their own that doesn't sound self-serving so I'll leave that.

Overlap between CYF and WINZ clients

The re-ignition of the debate about child abuse and association with welfare has reminded me about the lack of recent statistical evidence assessing the overlap between between beneficiaries and CYF clients. The only reference source is now 15 years old. And MSD has no plans to repeat the research. I know this because I asked them last year when submitting a number of questions (4,5,6 and 7 below) attempting to establish what the degree of overlap is. According to their responses they have no idea.

How bad is that?

More facts about the abuse of children

Extracted from the US National Incidence of Child Abuse 2010;

* children whose parents are unemployed have about two times the rate of child abuse and two to three times the rate of neglect than children with employed parents

* children in low socioeconomic families have more than three times the rate of child abuse and seven times the rate of neglect than other children

* living with their married biological parents places kids at the lowest risk for child abuse and neglect, while living with a single parent and a live-in partner increased the risk of abuse and neglect to more than eight times that of other children

Taking just the last one, there is another reason why Maori children experience more abuse than others.

The Maori marriage rate is much lower than that of the general population - according to the Census 2006, 29 percent compared with 49 percent of over-15 year olds, while the Maori cohabitation rate is only slightly higher than the general population’s (31 percent compared with 27 percent.) Yet Maori still have a higher fertility rate. In 2004, however, 76 percent of all Maori births were ex-nuptial or unmarried.

All of these life decisions about tenuous partnering and having children are enabled by welfare.

Progress

Donna Wynd, from the Child Poverty Action Group, responded to my column in the NZ Herald.

There are some statistical mistakes or misunderstandings I could comment on but the point I want to highlight is this.

For ten years I have been actively, purposefully and methodically attacking the DPB. When I began the detractors were outnumbering the supporters easily.

I would diligently, obsessively, deal with any arguments using fact. But in the early days I also invested emotion and took counter-attacks very personally. That is a no-no now.

The comments in the NZ Herald responding to my column ran roughly 50/50 pro and agin. Progress. Great.

The first three comments to Donna Wynd are negative. I read these because they came out on the printed version. Haven't perused the others as yet.

My personal battle with the DPB protagonists isn't important. We could spar endlessly and never persuade each other.

The vital aspect of the debate is to allow people who agree (with either viewpoint) to say so, or even if they don't voice their thoughts aloud, to know they are not alone.

The process of advancing ideas is slow but requires persistence. It doesn't feel as though this particular cause is lost.

My brief response to Wynd by way of a letter to the editor;

Donna Wynd, in Make villains of sole mothers at children's peril (NZ Herald, Jan 7) rebutted my suggestion that children are abused because they are meal tickets, by unnecessarily defending the entire sole parent population. Clearly all sole parents do not abuse or neglect their children. Nor do all beneficiaries.

However NZ research shows that a notification to CYF is almost 4 times more likely to occur in a benefit dependent household. She can access this study, The Benefit Status of Caregivers of Children and Young People Who Come to the Notice of CYPFS, on-line.

Yet Wynd writes, "Abuse and neglect of children cuts across income, class and ethnicity." Yes, instances can be found to support this assertion but the fact remains that the predominance of both occurs in lower socio economic, Maori, welfare-dependent settings. It is this blinkered denial of reality that actually perpetuates abuse.

The Ministry of Health, for instance, does not target Pakeha, middle-class females for smoking reduction despite the fact that some smoke. They focus their efforts and resources where the problem is greatest; among Maori, particularly women and girls. This is more likely to effect an overall reduction in smoking.

Shortage of news

A rather breathless headline says,

Youth jobless rate soars to 19.4%

We all know that unemployment is currently relatively high. Unfortunately youth and minority groups always bear the brunt.

Here is the OECD paper the reporter has been looking at. NZ's rate of 15-24 year-old unemployment is 0.9 percent above the OECD average. Not desperately alarming by international standards.

And checking the HLFS rate over the year to September 2010 reveals that the percentage for 15-19 year-olds has dropped slightly from 25.1 to 23.3. The rate for 20-24 year-olds increased slightly from 10.9 to 11.8 percent. So the use of the word "soars" needs some context.

The story is, in line with rising unemployment due to recession, New Zealand's youth unemployment rate climbed after 2007. It has steadied over the past year and is just above the OECD average but below the EU average.

Half-arsed reporting

Here is a stupid headline from the NZ Herald;

More US kids report abuse

Nearly half of United States children who've been victims of crime or abuse are stepping up to tell school officials, doctors and police, according to a 2008 telephone survey of more than 4500 US children and teens. That compares with 25 per cent in a similar study done in 1992.

That's it. Two sentences.

This leaves more questions than answers the central being, how many of the 4,500 were victims?

According to the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, overall abuse is down on the 1990s. The data reported on is gathered from various state Child Protection Services (CPS). NIS 4 was published this year. Excerpt:

The number of children who experienced Harm Standard abuse declined significantly, by 26%, from an estimated 743,200 in the NIS–3 to 553,300 in the NIS–4. This reflects a 32% decrease in the rate of Harm Standard abuse per 1,000 children in the nation. Moreover, the incidence of all specific categories of abuse decreased: The incidence of sexual abuse decreased significantly, while the declines in physical abuse and emotional abuse were both close-to-significant.

What the survey reported in the Herald shows is that of the children experiencing a crime or abuse, more are reporting it.

To illustrate my point, let's say 100 children were abused in 1992 and 25 (quarter) of them reported it. In 2008 only 68 children were abused but 34 (half) of them reported it.

More children reported abuse but fewer children were abused.

Yet the headline, without greater context, leaves the distinct impression that child abuse in the US is getting worse. The alternative headline may very well have been that

Fewer US children abused

(Although the half-arsed type would probably say, Less US children abused, if bothering).

And yes I could go hunting for the survey myself but that is irrelevant to the point I am making about half-arsed reporting.

Don't frigging tell me how to have fun

One thing that really raises my hackles is being told how to have fun.

"Ideally, parents will be in the water with the child. They'll also have more fun that way. And, if they are in the water with the child, there is less opportunity to be distracted."

A child will swim, especially if the pool (corrected typo 'pot' - must have been subliminal) is well-heated, all day, every day, of a holiday. It is not my idea of fun being in the water remorselessly badgered with "Mum, watch me do this", and "Mum, watch me do this, " and "Mum, watch me do this" which come at the rate of about 60 per minute.

Once big enough for water-wings my kids were off. Kicking around the motel pool happily while I could enjoy a rare read with one eye and ear on them. They were happier with more swimming time, and I was happier with more intellectual stimulation.

Have you noticed how busy the fun police have been this break? And people have started wishing each other a safe and healthy holiday?? I went to Tauherenikau races. They issued bottled water at the gate and kept making public announcements about keeping your fluid level up. I was trying but someone knocked over my glass of Lindauer. Then the cops were breath-testing every punter leaving. I don't object to the last. We make provision for it. But I can do without the constant hectoring about staying out of the sun because the "current UV reading is ---".

Now some utter killjoy has come up with the idea of alcohol-free February. Not happy with a day, these greedy bastards want to impose an entire month on recalcitrant pleasure seekers. Not in my house.

And who is sick of Paula poster-girl-for-the-police Rose? Nanny supremo banging on about road safety every time you turn the telly on. She leads me to having utterly paranoid thoughts like, what if David and I are killed on the road going to the races? The road is the most dangerous place a human being can venture to? What will happen to the kids? Now that they are too busy reading to want to come and have fun with me??

And spare a thought for the poor smokers. Whammo. There's another three bucks penalty for doing something that gives some relief from all the stress of worrying about getting fat, dying in an earthquake or on the roads or from skin cancer or dehydration or just the interminable nagging.

Let the smokers smoke themselves to death if they want. Because that's one less ageing baby-boomer, the new cause célèbre for the anxiety addicts.

Then somebody came into my shop and told me that pastels are highly carcinogenic. I should be wearing a mask and gloves. Oh fuck. No.

I may as well curl up in a little ball and die right now.

Who is John Key's "untrustworthy and obnoxious" suggestion?

Have your guess here as to who the "untrustworthy and obnoxious" character is that John Key has apparently suggested for the next Governor General.

I didn't have to think very hard at all who this description fits.

Winston Peters.