Labour continues its mad dash for the cliff face and it’s too late (oh dear) to change leader

Phil Goff delighted Alf yesterday when he insisted he will lead the Labour Party into the election and anyone suggesting otherwise is flogging a dead horse.

But where is he taking them?

Readers who are unsure of the answer will get a hint – a strong hint – if they study the cartoon above.

And it seems Labour’s fate is sealed, no matter what it does.

If they change leader, they are electorally dommed anyway.

SNAFU at HQ? Our troops are being sent to fight with short-sighted weaponry

Hitting the Kiwis is a piece of piss ... especially when they can't hit us.

It could be a load of bollocks, but it seems to have come from a bloody good source.

And if it’s not bollocks, then Wayne Mapp will have some explaining to do.

It’s a report at Stuff today that – bugger me – says our troops are having to fight with old and obsolete weapons.

The world has 400,000 or so Catholic priests – and it’s fair to suppose some will fall by the wayside

Uh, oh. It looks like another Catholic priest is in difficulties with authorities on this earth while doing The Lord’s work.

Stuff today tells of a Christchurch Catholic priest being investigated over alleged “financial irregularities” in his parish.

The Stuff report says Sacred Heart, Addington, parish priest Father John Fitzmaurice, who also ministers to the Carmelite Monastery in Hoon Hay, has been stood down.

The announcement was made in a letter from Catholic Bishop of Christchurch Barry Jones read out at masses across the city yesterday.

Heads should roll after reheated tucker – oh, the outrage – is fed to Her Majesty’s corgis

Alf makes no secret of his strong royalist leanings and great admiration for the monarchy and for Queen Elizabeth 11.

No job to serve Her Majesty would be too menial, too onerous or too messy.

Accordingly he is offering his services today as a royal axeman, willing to lop off the head of whoever has been guilty of high treason in The Palace kitchen.

Dunno if the bastard – obviously a closet republican – has been identified yet.

But he or she has fed the royal corgis frozen and reheated dog tucker instead of the freshly cooked meals Her Majesty requires for them.

According to sources, the Queen, who is on holiday at Balmoral, was furious when she made the discovery while dishing up her pets’ supper one evening.

Learning why it’s dangerous to become legless in pubs – like charity – should begin at home

Alf could understand a mother saying she was shocked that her daughter was raped.

But according to a report at Stuff, she was shocked that her 17-year-old daughter was raped after being “turfed out” drunk from a suburban Christchurch bar.

So does this mean she was shocked that her daughter was drunk (too pissed to stand, actually), and was raped in that condition?

Nope. She is shocked that the bar staff threw her drunken offspring out of the bar (which she had entered by misleading them about her age).

Sure enough, there is no suggestion the drunken girl’s family were in any way responsible for her getting comprehensively rat-arsed.

Safety first – and now you can see the difference between rugger and that other game

"After this gig, I have a test match to referee."

Ha! Alf’s jaundiced view of soccer has been thoroughly fortified by the referee who called off a New Zealand secondary schools premier football match.

The ref’s reason for this extreme action was that he felt it was unsafe for a player to wear spectacles, even though they were specially made for football.

And so the game between Napier Boys’ High School and Wakatipu High School (Otago) in Napier was abandoned even before it started.

Officials awarded Wakatipu a 2-0 win and NBHS was relegated from the top 16 play-offs to a lower tier where they can finish 17th at best.

Napier lodged an appeal against the abandonment but lost.

The kid has worn his glasses for other games.

So far as we know, he has come to no harm.

Maybe this time Housing NZ can give three pugnacious women their marching orders

The public can rejoice this morning. The right of Housing NZ to evict three frustratingly pugnacious females from their state houses in Lower Hutt has been upheld – yet again.

Take notes of the names of Robyn Winther, Huia Tamaka and Billy Taylor. If they turn up asking to rent property from you, have a hard think about the consequences should you ever have need or cause to terminate the lease.

They were served eviction notices from their Housing NZ homes in suburban Pomare in March 2009 after three Mongrel Mob gang members, who were their partners, were involved in the home invasion of a neighbouring Housing NZ tenant in 2008.

But this is a tenacious trio, fiercely determined to remain put.

So far they have sought and failed to overturn the evictions through the Tenancy Tribunal, Lower Hutt District Court, High Court, and Court of Appeal accusing HNZ of breaching the Bill of Rights.

Now that we’ve got rid of the stocks, this will have to do to punish young pilferers

Namby-pamby molloycoddlers around the world are expressing their outrage today at the mother who tried shaming her son into abstaining from stealing.

The mother made her young son sit in public in Townville wearing a sign declaring “I am a thief”.

But his humiliation did not end there – he was made to wear Shrek ears and was also seen writing lines, believed to say repeatedly that he would not steal, according to dozens of witnesses who contacted the Townsville Bulletin.

The boy spent almost an hour on Sunday near a popular park in Townsville while his family ate lunch nearby.

The mother has explained to the Daily Telegraph – and a damned good explanation, too – that she didn’t want him to make the same mistakes she did.

Aerodromes have something in common with the dodo (and moa) – they have been deemed extinct

Scramble, scramble, scramble - we are under attack from language dictators.

Bad news for the Hood Aerodrome operators, not too far down the road from Alf’s home in Eketahuna.

They are in the process of updating both the look and content of the aerodrome website.

They are advised not to dawdle. Before long they will find the word “aerodrome” has been declared obsolete.

Several other aerodromes around the country are threatened by this development.

The word “aerodrome” has been deemed surplus to the requirements of the English language by the smart-arses who decide these things.

The Daily Mail reports –

Now that red phone booths are long gone, where can United Future pack in its supporters?

Are they waiting for Dr Who - or Peter Dunne?

Alf is mystified this morning.

First, he reads that after National and Labour, the Greens were the only party to register above the 5 percent threshold, up 0.2 per cent on 9.3 per cent.

The ACT Party and New Zealand First each claimed 2.2 per cent, the Maori Party 1.5 per cent, and Mana 0.9 per cent. United Future had no support.

Second, the Herald reported The Boss has committed himself to seek agreements again with all three of his support partners – United Future, Act and the Maori Party – irrespective of whether National needs their votes to govern after the election.

“If we are in a position, come November 26, to get around the table irrelevant of how large our party vote is, we are definitely going to make the phone call to these support parties and sit down and have a discussion with them,” he said after the United Future conference in Wellington.

Does “conference” mean he and Dunne sat down for a chat?