In accord with that instinct, Alf would have lauded councillor Rob Vinsen for recommending councillors’ salaries be linked to meeting attendance.

And he would have excoriated anyone who rejected the proposal as a trough-swiller. Or an oinker.

The self-serving antics of the city’s councillors are apparent in the NZ Herald’s account of what happened:

At yesterday’s full council meeting, councillors voted to keep their pay by salary only, rather than a split between a salary and a meeting allowance.

According to the Herald, Wanganui councillors with no extra responsibilities receive $25,581 a year.

Councillors were given the option of considering whether to retain a smaller salary along with an allowance for every meeting attended.

Ha!

This Vinsen feller obviously believes in ratepayers getting value for money.

Councillor Rob Vinsen moved a recommendation that the council switch to a split salary-allowance model.

“Being a councillor comes with responsibilities, and the first one is that you should attend as many meetings as possible.

“It’s a basic responsibility to the ratepayer,” Mr Vinsen said.

You don’t do much in Wanganui local body politics without bumping into Michael Laws, of course.

And sure enough, Laws comes into this story.

Councillor Hamish McDouall disagreed with Vinsen

..saying he was concerned the issue had become personal, referring to Councillor Michael Laws’ poor attendance at meetings.

A poor attendance from Laws?

Surely not.

Uh, oh.

Maybe Laws has been a tad lax in the attendance department.

In the first year of this electoral term, Mr Laws attended 10 of a total 36 meetings. He did not attend yesterday’s meeting.

But what other reasons could there be for voting against Vinsen’s proposal?

Hmm. Here’s another chunk of McDouall”s rationale –

“There are many reasons why people have difficulty attending all meetings. I was late today because I had child care issues. Councillor [Clive] Solomon has a busy job as a surgeon. Councillor [Allan] Anderson was away for some time because he was ill. Are we going to penalise these people?” Mr McDouall said.

But wait. There’s more.

Councillor Nicki Higgie said council needed to ensure it was as easy as possible for employed people to stand for council, and an attendance-based pay structure might dissuade them from doing so. She also noted that more than half her council work took place away from the council table.

In the upshot, Vinsen’s recommendation was put to the vote and only Vinsen and Councillor Ray Stevens voted for it.

Shame on the others.

Or so Alf was going to argue until Mrs Grumble brought the small matter of his own pay to his attention.

If it’s good enough for city councillors to be paid according to their meeting attendance, she wondered, isn’t it good enough for members of Parliament to be similarly recompensed?

Damn. Maybe she’s got a point.

And maybe someone will seize on it real fast.

Hence your long-serving member has decided not to write about what happened in Wanganui.

He is looking for something else to rail against this morning and if he can’t find an issue to kick around he will wander down to the Eketahuna Club to learn what his mates are talking about today.

The Boss and his advisers remain relatively chirpy but are a bit bothered about what might happen in Europe.

As he said in his State of the Nation speech the other day, the Government is still on track to get back into surplus in 2014/15 but it would push out the date if the global economy went into meltdown.

The upcoming Budget Policy Statement in February will forecast a surplus in the range of $300 to $500 million, he said.

But referring to the possibility that the Europe debt crisis could push the world back into recession, he said: “If the absolute worst happened and there was a major shock to the global economy, the Government would look at whether retaining that surplus target would actually harm the economy by forcing a sharp reduction in demand…”

And –

Mr Key said the most likely outcome was that European countries would manage through the crisis with the Euro intact because it was in their collective interest to do so.

“But that is by no means guaranteed.”

Nope.

But while the Europeans are sorting things out in their patch, economist Nouriel Roubini is warning of Iran triggering a global recession, too.

Roubini, of course, is nicknamed “Dr. Doom” for his gloomy predictions in the run-up to the financial meltdown four years ago.

Now he is saying the fallout from the Iranian crisis could last the rest of this decade.

Roubini, widely acknowledged to have predicted the crash of 2008, sees tough times ahead for the global economy and is warning that without major policy changes things can still get much worse.

He also warned that a conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear program could lead to a global recession.

Roubini is a professor of economics and international business at New York University.

He spoke in an interview this week with The Associated Press at a dinner on the sidelines of the gathering of global big-shots gathered in Davos to discuss business, the economy and what-have-you.

Looking at economic prospects this year, he agreed with the International Monetary Fund’s latest forecast that the global economy is weakening.

Actually, he said he might be “even slightly more bearish” on its prediction of 3.3 percent growth in 2012.

“There are lots of sources of uncertainty from the eurozone, from the Middle East, from the fact that the U.S. is not tackling its own fiscal problem, from the fact that Chinese growth is unbalanced and unsustainable, relying too much on exports and fixed investments and high savings, and not enough on consumption. So it’s a very delicate global economy,” Roubini said.

He said the biggest uncertainty is the possibility of a conflict with Iran over its nuclear program that involves Israel, the United States, or both. That could lead oil prices now hovering around $100 a barrel to spike to $150 per barrel, he said, and lead to a global recession.

That’s the thing about bloody economists.

They are always banging on about uncertainties.

Still, those uncertainties never stop them making their predictions.

Here’s hoping Dr Doom is dead wrong.

It says God locked out of Mt Eden prison cells

But God is omnipresent and can’t be locked out of anything, especially prisons from which mere mortals of the criminal persuasion can and often do escape.

The HoS’s impiety is compounded in the first sentence of the story.

God has been remanded without a chance of appeal at one of our toughest prisons.

As Alf’s astute constituents will have observed, that first sentence shows the HoS hacks are profoundly confused about what exactly has happened to God, because it implies He has been locked in, not out.

But if you bother to read on to find what God might have been banged up for, you find his omnipresence has not become flawed and he has been locked neither in nor out.

Rather, some of his latter-day disciples have had a disagreement with how things should be done in the pastoral-care department.

There’s a hint the clerics might have walked out on their prison work: the prison bosses say they have left attending to the pastoral needs of the inmates.

But maybe they were told not to come back.

Both the disciples and the prison bosses – like all of us – eventually will get to meet their Maker.

They will learn then what He thinks of how they handled the disagreement.

But as Alf found, you must get to the second paragraph of the HoS to get a whiff of what’s been happening –

Inmates at Auckland’s Mt Eden prison have had church services and one-on-one meetings with men of the cloth slashed since the jail was taken over by private firm Serco five months ago.

See?

This is all about the goings-on of a very few members of His earthly flock.

The “men of the cloth”, as the HoS puts it, seem to have got hot under their collars and given up on serving the inmates of this particular prison after a run-in with the prison bosses.

Serco admitted the prison had been using a temporary chaplaincy team since four permanent padres left in October after failing to agree with the company’s plans. Serco said the situation “isn’t ideal”.

Salvation Army prison visitor Collin Mellors said he rarely attended Mt Eden any more since it was taken over by Serco.

“I used to be there a lot but since it changed hands it has become a bit awkward to re-establish yourself,” he said.

“I know that a number of inmates are unhappy because the chaplains simply aren’t there to provide a friendly face.”

One long-term prisoner has told the Herald on Sunday many men felt they were being denied a spiritual lifeline.

“Since I found the peace of God, my lag is easier to do but the past few months have been hard for a lot of people in here,” the inmate, who has asked not to be identified, said.

“Church visits have been cut from once a week to about once a month and we can’t get to see a padre when we want to.”

The prisoner said he knew of at least 30 others who had been affected. He also claimed complaints to prison bosses had fallen on deaf ears.

The nature of the disagreement between clergy and prison bosses is not explained.

Not do we know for sure if the clergy quit or were shown the door.

But we do learn (from “full time” and “part time”) that the HoS has abandoned the compound-adjective.

And we learn that the jail’s two full-time and two part-time chaplains left their jobs not long after the takeover.

Serco’s Sydney-based spokesman Paul Shaw, not the clerics, is the source of this information.

“We are advertising for two full time chaplains for Mt Eden and expect the posts to be filled within weeks,” Shaw said.

“Of course it isn’t ideal, but at present we have a transitional chaplaincy team of six who are providing pastoral care, bereavement services and mass. They are based at local churches and their availability means we can quickly meet prisoners’ requests.

“The team will remain in place when the two new posts have been filled. We place a great importance on meeting the religious and spiritual needs of prisoners,” he said.

Oh, and according to this prison spokesman, only one complaint has been received about these arrangements and there are no outstanding requests for baptisms at Mt Eden.

Alf wonders to what extent the media’s aversion to privatisation comes into things.

Mt Eden – the HoS notes – became New Zealand’s only privately-run prison in August after Serco won a 10-year contract from the Government, valued at about $380 million.

Jarrod Gilbert, from the Howard League for Penal Reform, has seized on this while clucking about a situation of “great concern”.

“Before Mt Eden was put into private hands, there were concerns that this would lead to financial corners being cut and, as a consequence, inmates would suffer,” Gilbert said.

“If new measures like cutting the number of chaplains have been introduced so that a private management company can make greater profits, then I think a lot of people would be very worried about that.

“Alarm bells should be ringing. If they are cutting back on chaplains you have to wonder what else is going on.”

Alf doesn’t much care what is going on, actually, so long as the inmates remain locked up and – when they come out, as eventually they must do – they do not re-offend.

That will be the measure of the worth of privatised management.

As to the matter of God being locked in or out, depending on whether you believe the headline or the first paragrah, let’s get to grips with what God’s omnipresence means.

In Jeremiah 23:24 God declares, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?”

This means God is present in all places, but He has no physical or material dimensions.

It is as spirit that He is everywhere, in heaven, earth and hell. Although it surpasses the understanding of creatures such as we are, who are limited and bound to material bodies, God Himself is present everywhere in His majesty and power.

Another of Alf’s sources explains it this way:

The universe that God created finds the Creator everywhere. He is everywhere present. There is no place that a person can hide and no chance that a believer will out of His protective care. He is everywhere present in His works and in His personality. This does not mean that God is the same as the universe – merely that His presence is everywhere in the universe. The truth of God’s omnipresence if comforting for the believer for no one can escape God’s notice.

The HoS hacks would do well to go back to Sunday school.

Alf would have second thoughts about expressing his thoughts on some matters if he was operating out of a house in – let’s say – Iran.

He is valuing his freedom of expression today having learned that the authorities there have arrested at least half a dozen journalists and bloggers.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, these arrests appear to amount to a pre-emptive campaign of intimidation to thwart protests surrounding parliamentary elections scheduled for March.

The arrests, including those of two prominent women whose blog posts are widely read in the country, were not reported by the official media.

Rights groups and people who know the detained journalists said the government apparently wanted news of the arrests to spread informally, to heighten the atmosphere of fear.

If the buggers who have been rounded up are the Iranian equivalents of Bomber Bradbury or the tossers at The Standard, Alf might not lose much sleep.

But in this case they could finish up being given death sentences.

The Iranian authorities are apt to react somewhat firmly, when they don’t like what they read, and don’t seem at all bothered about bumping off bloggers – or anyone, probably – who piss them off.

And so the Daily Mail reports –

Two Iranian bloggers are to be executed for ‘spreading corruption’ – as Tehran cracks down on freedom of expression in the run up to its parliamentary elections in March.

Dunno what the “corruption” thing is all about.

But the arrests of journalists and the imminent executions of the bloggers is the sort of thing that gets the US fuming about freedom of expression and civil liberties and all that carry-on.

And sure enough, as the Daily Mail tells us, US State Department mouthpiece Victoria Nuland has expressed dismay:

‘We are deeply concerned by the alarming increase in the Iranian regime’s efforts to extinguish all forms of free expression and limit its citizens’ access to information.’

She further said:

“Iranian courts confirmed death sentences for bloggers Saeed Malekpour and Vahid Asghari, both of whom were not accorded due process and now face imminent execution on charges of ‘spreading corruption.”

Alf gets a big chuckle out of the Americans banging on about due process, because he is aware of how they have locked up lots of people in Guantanamo without much regard for due process.

Oh, and the French are kicking up a fuss too.

The French government condemned Iran on Friday for a series of press arrests and for the death sentences confirmed for two Iranian bloggers and Paris called for “the revision of these unacceptable decisions.”

A Foreign Ministry statement said that France is “extremely concerned about the situation of bloggers Saeed Malekpur and Vahid Asghari who have seen earlier death sentences against them confirmed in past days.

France also “condemned with the greatest firmness” a recent wave of arrests of journalists and denounced these practices as an attempt to control the press ahead of legislative elections on March 2.

France has called on Iran to respect the international commitments it has signed in the relevant areas of freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

Alf is sure the Iranian leaders will pay that request the same heed as it pays to all other bleats from the West for them to give up on whatever they are doing with that nuclear stuff.

The nuclear thing, as it happens, has got world leaders all wound up.

The death sentences for bloggers and round-up of journalists comes as Israel is urging the world to act quickly to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and the UN has urged the West to resume talks with the pariah state.

Moreover, in two days Iran’s parliament will debate whether to stop exports of oil to the European Union.

This would deny the EU a six-month phase-in of the embargo it decided should be slapped on Iranian oil as part of tough new sanctions aimed at forcing the curbing of its nuclear programme.

So what does Alf make of the media crackdown?

Actually, on occasions he is tempted to think he would conduct something similar here, if he was running the show.

That photographer feller who was involved in taping the PM’s conversation with John Banks certainly should have been locked up.

The same goes for the likes of Barry Soper, who have never paid Alf’s media statements the attention they deserve.

But death sentences seem a bit heavy, even for Bomber Bradbury, although a good question to ask is whether our society would be much better off without him, and at that point of the argument…

The Maori who have come out of the negotiations triumphant will be popping the champagne corks or their indigenous equivalent to rejoice.

The NZ Herald tells the story –

Far North iwi Te Aupouri will celebrate a major milestone tomorrow when it signs a two-part deal which gives it a hand in governing 90 Mile Beach.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson says he hopes it brings much-needed economic development to one of the most impoverished areas in the country, while a tribal negotiator said the iwi will work hard to move Te Aupouri to a brighter future.

If co-governance arrangements are the secret to boosting economic development, perhaps we should proliferate them around the country.

Come to think of it, bit by bit we are proliferating them around the country but it is being done somewhat insidiously and the Government does not brag too much about this path to brightening our future.

In this case, says the Herald, Te Aupouri is the first of four iwi in the region that will sign individual settlements but collectively settle issues of overlapping interests.

The tribes – Te Aupouri, Te Rarawa, Ngai Takoto and Ngati Kuri – are known as the Te Hiku Forum when they group together.

The beach is one of the collective issues.

The deed of settlement to be signed at Te Kao’s Potahi Marae recognises Te Aupouri, Te Rarawa, Ngai Takoto and Ngati Kuri will have 50 per cent membership on a new beach co-governance board.

The Northland Regional and Far North District Councils will fill the board’s remaining share of seats.

So what does this mean, in terms of representation?

Oh, yes.

Half the seats at the management table will be held by local government people representing the interests of the whole population in that neck of the woods, both Maori and non-Maori.

The other half will be held by iwi representatives who will be batting only for local iwi.

“The public” are being seriously short-changed.

After this craven surrender, Finlayson was full of flannel about how over three years he had come to like and respect Te Aupouri people but the area faced huge problems.

A helicopter ride where homes without running water and power were pointed out to him was something he would not forget.

“It’s a beautiful part of the country. On the coastline, for example, are some wonderful beaches and beach properties, and you go inland a couple of miles to visit the marae and you see the most appalling poverty.

“Hopefully this settlement … is a part of what’s going to be very much a focus on the Far North.”

But providing running water, electricity and what-have-you hardly requires co-governance arrangements.

Was there any more of this 50:50 stuff in what transpired up north?

Certainly there was. The deal includes giving the iwi-

*Membership of a new Te Hiku Conservation Board, which will have equal public membership and work with the Department of Conservation.

* A joint share of 21,283ha of Crown forest land on the Aupouri Peninsula.

Oh, and we should brace for more surrenders in the future, because another regional tribe, Ngati Kahu, pulled out of the Te Hiku Forum unhappy with terms.

The tribe has applied to the Waitangi Tribunal for binding recommendations to force tribal ownership of government-owned land.

But let’s get back to the thing about developing the economy and giving Maori brighter lives.

How does that work?

In his previous post on this subject, Alf pointed out that revenue now collected by the Crown from tourist buses which use the land will go to a joint Crown-tribal body.

This body will spend the money on projects to regenerate flora and fauna.

Increasingly as the co-governance idea catches on, therefore, we can expect Crown revenue to be channelled into deals that give half the dosh (and maybe more) to iwi.

Are you happy with that?

Or complacently indifferent?

They are not so clever when it comes to captaining cruise liners, apparently.

Alf was delighted to read that that New Zealand is proving a favoured place for European immigrants trying to escape the economic downturn.

This reflects well on the country: it’s a great place to live in, although not too many of the migrants have yet discovered that Eketahuna is the best part of the country to live in.

It also reflects well on the Government in which Alf is proud to serve: our economic management obviously is superior to that of the governments in the countries from which the migrants are coming.

Or rather, these migrants obviously believe we run a good shop.

But the Herald today published some dastardly stuff about costs of living increasing in New Zealand and wages not increasing to match, while Australians enjoy longer lives and lower unemployment.

Figures included in Statistics New Zealand’s annual report, New Zealand in Profile 2012, compared the living standards of New Zealand and its five main tourism markets: Australia (1,111,000), the United Kingdom (220,000), the United States (188,000), China (132,000) and Japan (79,000).

New Zealand has higher unemployment levels than Australia, with 5.3 percent of the working population unemployed in Australia compared to 6.8 percent in New Zealand.

People are also living longer in the Lucky Country. The male life expectancy at birth in New Zealand is 78.8, compared to 79.4 across the Tasman, while the female life expectancy at birth here is 82.7, compared to 84.4 in Australia.

Australia’s GDP per capita is higher, at US$54,000 compared to US$31,000 in New Zealand. The Consumer Price Index is higher in New Zealand, at 5.3 percent compared to 3.6 percent.

And so on.

When word gets around about these comparisons, we may no longer attract the influx of Europeans who are now coming here.

But whoa.

One element of the story at Stuff was a bit more disturbing.

It tells us -

Italians and the Irish are leading the influx as European job markets stall.

There were 50 per cent more Irish migrants in the year till last November than in 2010 (1545 compared with 1030) and 29 per cent more Italians (160 compared with 124).

Alf has no problem with news that the Wellington Irish community is flourishing as the jobseekers arrive.

According to one of the newcomers:

“It’s dismal [in Ireland]. There’s just absolutely no work at the moment in construction, and so many other industries.

“People talk about the recession in New Zealand but it’s absolutely nothing compared to what’s going on at home.”

It was “unbelievable” how many Irish people had come to live in Wellington since he arrived.

And the Irish do make a nice drop of whisky.

Fair to say, Alf is relaxed – by and large – about the Italians, too.

But he adds a proviso.

He is relaxed, depending on what jobs they can get.

Italian chefs, fine.

Italian fashion designers, fine.

But just think of what might happen if one of the buggers comes here brandishing the sorts of credentials that result in his taking command of one of our inter-Island ferries!

But they have stretched the truth when telling us in a headline: Woman forced to walk home at 2.30

Good grief. An image was immediately conjured of jack-booted fiends coercing the woman to walk home at dead of night.

Heavily armed, perhaps.

The first paragraph laid it on even thicker – not only was the hapless woman coerced into making this walk, but – it seemed – she had been ill.

A Christchurch woman says she was forced to walk home at 2.30am after being discharged from Christchurch Hospital.

But no.

Read on and you find she chose to walk home.

Here, according to Stuff, is what happened.

First of all, Rosalie Thomas, 59, suffered an angina attack and was taken to hospital about two weeks ago.

There was an element of reluctance in her being taken for treatment (even though, presumably, the ride was free).

“I didn’t want to go to hospital really, but the paramedics said I had to, so I went in quite late,” Thomas said.

“I was in a nightie and dressing gown and didn’t have any money or my phone on me.”

She was discharged about 2am

… and had “no way to get home”.

By her own account, a nurse told her to call a taxi and ask if she could pay them later,

…but I rang one company and they said `no’,” she said.

“Then after about half an hour they said they would give me $3.40 to catch a bus, but I would have to wait until the buses started in the morning.”

So there we have it.

She was given a bus fare, but would have to wait for the buses to start running.

She opted not to do this.

Thomas said she did not want to “sit in the waiting room for hours”.

“I was stressed out and I just wanted to get home to my own bed,” she said.

And so she walked to her Linwood home.

Nobody stopped to help her during her walk, she said.

“I’m just really concerned that this is a big safety issue,” she said. “Someone else might have been attacked or something.”

Not if they opted to sit in the waiting room, unappealing though that might be.

“I must have looked ridiculous walking down Moorhouse Ave at that time in my dressing gown.

“Anything could happen and maybe I was just lucky, or maybe I looked a bit mad so people avoided me.”

Fair to say, she probably did look mad.

So what has the hospital got to say?

Oh, dear.

For starters, we are given that crap about privacy, even though the patient implicitly abandoned any entitlement to privacy by going to the media.

Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) Christchurch Hospital quality manager Shona MacMillan said she could not comment on an individual patient for “privacy reasons”.

But MacMillan did go on to point out that Canterbury District Health Board encourages patients to let them know, preferably in writing or by calling customer services via the main hospital telephone number, if they are not happy with any aspect of the care provided to them.

She also said staff made “every attempt” to help with transport, including providing access to phones to call relatives and friends.

But maybe not in this case, eh?

If a patient is elderly or physically unable to get home and does not have any family member or friends available to pick them up, the CDHB will explore other options, which can include assistance with a taxi fare, MacMillan said.

By walking home, of course, the patient in this case demonstrated she was physically able to get there.

Oh, and there’s another option.

“If the patient is well enough to organise their own transport but have no family or friends able to collect them at a particular time, they are welcome to wait in the waiting area until they have someone available to collect them.

“If not, staff can help with contact details and timetables of public transport providers, including bus services.”

So let’s agree that it probably was not much fun, wandering home from hospital in night attire at that time of the morning.

But let’s forget about being forced to walk home.

He happens to harbour a low opinion of tow-truck operators whose business includes hauling illegally parked cars away (fair enough) but then charging an arm and a leg for the owners to get their vehicles back.

Having an operator come off second best would have been hugely cheering, although – to be sure – the outcome could have gone in the company’s favour.

We’ll never know. Tow-truck operator Craig Burrows has simply refunded $230 because he is public spirited.

He coughed up to spend time with his son and avoid wasting public resources, according to what he told the NZ Herald, although he believes he would have won the case easily.

This story began when Burrows’ company, an outfit called Vehicle Recovery Group, towed Dan Dwyer’s Toyota Corolla, which was parked in a Mt Eden fruitshop’s carpark.

It so happens this Dwyer feller is a lawyer, and he took the matter to the tribunal on the basis that $230 to retrieve a car that was towed less than 5km to a Grey Lynn yard did not accurately reflect the true cost of towing.

Mr Dwyer has behaved admirably. He wants motorists to act on Consumer New Zealand’s opinion that towies should charge only “expenses reasonably incurred in removing an unlawfully parked vehicle”.

But guess what?

The day before the tribunal was scheduled to hear the case, Vehicle Recovery Group offered Mr Dwyer his money back.

The company was given an opportunity to comment before the NZ Herald published an article about this matter.

He declined.

But Herald readers – inevitably – wrote in about their experiences with tow trucks and Burrows changed his mind.

“Bottom line is: I was away that day and I didn’t want to waste the public’s time and energy.

“I had a thing for my son’s school which I had committed to … I wasn’t going to pull out of that to go to court for some guy.

“We did the nice thing and gave him his money back to save any drama, and he goes to the public.

“Now we’ll have every Tom, Dick and Harry wanting to take us to public court.”

So how does a $230 fee reflect his company’s costs?

Burrows said fees took into account his business costs, which included rent, maintenance, supply of trucks, wages, fuel and after-hours fees.

They also covered occasions when towies turned up for a job but the car had already left.

“It’s a cost of running a business … You think we sit here like King Farouk or something? It costs six to eight figures to run a business. We don’t just pull a figure out of the sky because we feel like it.

“We don’t sit here rolling in all this cash, because our overheads are horrific.”

Burrows proceeded to point out that illegal parking often cost businesses thousands of dollars, by denying customers access to the privately owned carparks.

And he said it was frustrating some motorists felt they should get a pat on the back for the lack of respect they showed for others’ private property.

“At the end of the day, people shouldn’t even have had to put a sign up to say you shouldn’t park here.

“It’s always someone else’s fault. There was a sign there; he [Mr Dwyer] chose to take the risk. For every time he’s been caught, there’s 500 times he hasn’t.

“Why do people expect to park at someone else’s property and not pay for it?”

Burrows has a point.

But it’s the way tow-truck firms too often deal with motorists when they become involved that results in their slump in public esteem.

The Herald today regales us with examples.

They include complaints from a 65-year-old whose car was towed while her dog and wallet were still inside, and another from a woman charged a $100 fee by a towie who was just about to drive away.

The article also includes a list of motorists’ rights.

You should read about your rights and remember them.

You never know when the knowledge could come in handy.

Don would be just the bloke to run the World Bank.

The job is up for grabs later this year.

President Barack Obama – according to a Bloomberg report spotted by your widely read member for Eketahuna North – may put his mark on the World Bank by nominating Lawrence Summers when Robert Zoellick’s term expires later this year.

Summers is Obama’s former National Economic Council director.

Bloomberg’s sources were “two people familiar with the matter”.

While a Summers nomination may draw criticism from some Democrats who disagree with his past stances on deregulating the financial industry, he has support inside the administration from top officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and current NEC Director Gene Sperling, said one of the people.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also being considered, along with other candidates, said the other person.

A bloke named Lael Brainard, the US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, is compiling a list of potential candidates to replace Zoellick.

It is a tradition for the US president to choose the leader of the World Bank while European leaders select the head of the International Monetary Fund.

The nomination must be approved by the World Bank’s executive board.

Summers, 57, is now a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

But at Reuters, blogger Felix Salmon has got his claws out.

He advises Obama not to nominate Summers because:

It’s a dreadful idea.

For one thing, Summers wouldn’t actually be very good at the job, since he doesn’t have any of the required qualifications.

The only way to be an effective World Bank president is to be an effective diplomat.

Salmon points out you also need to be an almost superhuman manager, because the World Bank has more than 10,000 employees from over 160 countries, with offices in more than 100 countries around the world.

The range of cultural expectations they bring to their jobs is truly enormous, and the amount of political jostling and mutual incomprehension which results is entirely predictable. In order to manage this rabble, you need a very high level of cultural and interpersonal sensitivity.

Then there’s leadership and the ability to get your organization to line up behind how you think the Bank — and, for that matter, the World — should work.

Summers is not known for his work on global poverty reduction, and his previous tenure at the World Bank is remembered mainly for the pollution memo — an “ironic” proposal to increase pollution in poor countries, which resulted in the label “perfectly logical but totally insane” being attached to Summers for many years thereafter.

The memo, for the record, said:

‘Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

He proceeded to lay them out.

The first was a matter of minimising health costs: measurements of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. Hence a given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages.

“I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”

You can read the second and third reasons for yourself here.

Salmon goes on to remind us that Summers himself is the first to admit he’s no diplomat. Moreover, he spectacularly couldn’t run Harvard University, when given that job.

But most important, from the point of view of nominating Don Brash, Salmon argues that giving the World Bank job to any American is a bad idea.

We’re long past the point at which it makes any sense at all that the president of the World Bank should always be an American, and I was quite heartened, back in 2009, when a trial balloon was floated suggesting that Obama might appoint Lula, or Manmohan Singh, to the job. My own favored candidate would be Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala — she should ideally have got the job back in 2007, but better late than never. And accepting it would give her a gracious way of departing her current gig, which doesn’t seem to be going so well.

This sounds thoroughly compelling, except that Alf would struggle to properly pronounce the name of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, should she get the job and he have cause to mention the World Bank and its boss during an economic debate in Parliament.

But it’s easy to say “Don Brash”.

Don’t forget that Brash has experience as a politician (before becoming Leader of the ACT Party he was a National MP who became leader of the opposition in 2003).

He has a wide background in public policy and chaired the Government’s 2025 Taskforce, charged with investigating the reasons for the recent decline in New Zealand’s productivity performance.

Oh, and don’t forget he had five years in Washington working for the World Bank, so he is familiar with that outfit.

On the business side, he was head of Broadbank Corporation, the managing director of the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority and the managing director of Trust Bank.

And before entering Parliament he was Reserve Bank Governor from 1988-2002.

Not just any old central banker. The Economist once described Brash as the “world’s best central banker.”

The case for sending Brash to Washington is solid. Mrs Grumble has already drafted a letter to Lael Brainard, to be copied to President Obama…

This wouldn't pass muster at Mark Perry's school.

A Herald on Sunday report, lamentably lacking in material detail, tells us (a) the cops have complained about a TVNZ reporter, alleging he attempted to deceive relatives of Carterton balloon victims, and (b) the reporter is a bloke by name of Simon Bradwell, who denies any wrongdoing, and (c) TVNZ is standing by the reporter but is looking into the matter.

And now – dear blog reader – you know as much about it as the HoS.

What the HoS knows, of course, is sweet FA because –

Details of the complaint have not been revealed, but Bradwell “vehemently” denies any wrongdoing.

It seems a relative reported Simon Bradwell to police in the aftermath of the disaster which claimed the lives of 11 people on January 7.

Exactly what Bradwell did or did not do is a mystery.

But looking into it will keep a few bureaucrats busy for a while, because –

The police complaint has been passed to the Ombudsman’s Office, which overseas codes of conduct for public service organisations and will rule whether there was a breach.

TVNZ spokeswoman Megan Richards said the broadcaster was also investigating the accusation and that they took the complaint seriously.

Thanks to something Richards is quoted as saying, we get a whiff of this matter being about an alleged deception.

She said: “The reporter vehemently denies any attempt at deception and at this stage it seems possible that there has been some kind of misunderstanding with the family concerned, at a time of great distress for everyone.

“We are very willing to talk directly with the family, if that’s how they would like to handle it.”

Deputy Ombudsman Leo Donnelly can’t enlighten us much further.

He is quoted as saying it was “not clearcut” what had occurred.

“We have only just received the complaint and we need to speak to the complainant before determining whether the conduct was reasonable or not.”

At this point of its pathetically sparse report the HoS has dipped into archives for a bit of background stuff to add a few more words.

Bradwell, a Wellington-based reporter who specialises in covering crime, has been at TVNZ since 2005.

Oh, and it has contacted the reporter who is under investigation, but learned nothing more.

When contacted, Bradwell referred questions to TVNZ.

Hence we are in no position to form any judgements about the propriety, ethics, morality, legality or anything else about what is supposed to have happened.

But Mrs Grumble has opined that she would get rid of the bugger as a TV reporter.

Certainly she would not put the bugger in front of a TV camera, and all because she can’t stand the sight of that spiky hair-do.

She recalls how a British headmaster a few years ago threatened pupils with exclusion if they gelled their hair too much.

Mark Perry has banned spiky hair that stands up at more than 90 degrees.

He says “exotic” styles contravene the school’s strict dress code.

But some furious students held a silent protest on the playing fields and refused to return to lessons after lunch.

Dunno what the boys were protesting about, because Perry said parents were told of the rule when they applied to St Peter’s Church of England Aided School in Exeter, Devon.

He said: “We have not banned hair gel but some of the more exotic hairstyles it is used to create.

“We are disappointed that a small minority of students chose to escalate something which is never normally an issue.”

Perry – for what it’s worth – is bald.

Mrs Grumble, who is not bald, says if she was running TVNZ she would introduce a similar rule and then consider expelling Bradwell.

At best she would give him a back-room job, where viewers are spared the unsightly spectacle of his spiky mop.

She would track down his hairdresser, too, and name and shame him, her or it.