No wonder Tuku Morgan is rapturous – the Waikato regional council has just given Maori a special deal

Iwi within the Waikato Regional Council catchment are celebrating the council’s decision to create two Maori seats, according to Waatea News.

Tainui chairman Tukoroirangi Morgan says his iwi is “rapturous” at the council decision, says Radio NZ.

Of course they are celebrating. Of course they are rapturous.

They have just persuaded non-Maori on the council to tip the political playing field in their favour.

Two more years of hard labour – Goff plan will encourage leftie MPs to hang on for longer

Alf can see an awful down side to Labour’s plan to raise the retirement age.

His concerns are additional to National’s position, that Labour’s retirement plan is a response to unaffordable promises, including across-the-board tax cuts, exempting fresh fruit and veges from GST, and resuming contributions to the Cullen superannuation fund which it says will leave a $16 billion hole in the books.

Labour leader Phil Goff is reported to be hoping he can outflank National on debt and the national savings debate.

Brendan Burns is burbling about resource rental charges: is that because he can’t pronounce “tax”?

And if we introduce a resource rental charge on this lot, we could collect enough money to wipe out the public debt.

Alf misses the robust critiques of bad farm policy that would regularly flow from former Federated Farmers dairy leader, Lachlan McKenzie.

Lachlan stood for president of the feds, but the job went to Bruce Wills. We haven’t heard much from him since then.

But another McKenzie has popped up to tell city slickers and greenie tossers what he thinks of their silly ideas.

This one is Ian McKenzie and he has done a fair job of pouring a bucket or two of water over Labour’s water policy.

Labour’s plan is to have farmers and other large-scale water users pay a “resource rental charge”, to spare taxpayers the need to cough up $500 million for funding new irrigation schemes and for cleaning up polluted waterways.

Ha. Fancy words to avoid saying “tax”, eh?

Come to think of it, buggers like Brendan Burns – Labour’s water spokesman – probably struggle to spell and pronounce a word as long as “tax”.

Good grief – the Palace could become Buckingham Hotel if Charles becomes King

The good news about Andrew Marr, a British broadcaster, is that he has abandoned republicanism after spending two years following the Queen across Britain and on several trips abroad.

Nope – not because he was impressed by her budget-trimming approach to the celebrating of her diamond jubilee next year (more of which later in this post).

Alf has just read of Marr saying his time spent with the ‘shrewd, wise and kind’ Queen has helped to transform him from a republican to a monarchist.

The not so good news is his disclosure of Prince Charles’s secret plan to ‘move out of Buckingham Palace and turn it into a museum’ once he becomes King

Or is a hotel on his agenda?

If it was a deer, you wouldn’t bother bringing a one-pointer home – but hey, this is the Rugby World Cup

Yes, it’s true.

Alf needed more than his normal ration of Scotch to maintain his equilibrium and keep his nerves under control last night.

The All Blacks were running it much too fine, for his liking.

But today is another day and the cup is ours.

And he thoroughly endorses the judgement this morning of the great Sir Colin Meads.

A one-point margin doesn’t matter much today, he said (or words to that effect).

But it mattered a helluva lot with 15 minutes to go last night, when the French were in full cry.

Origin of the pisces: does it affect the taste, and if it does should we check the origin of the chips, too?

It tasted good to Lange and his mates in 1980... and they didn't much worry about its origins.

Researchers at Auckland University’s business school, obviously with nothing better to do, are calling for mandatory country of origin labelling for seafood.

Radio NZ gave air time to the thinking of these tossers this morning.

They argue that a government investigation into the abuse of crew members on foreign deep sea charter vessels means the vessels’ catch can not be claimed as a New Zealand product.

The logic of this argument escapes Alf.

Armed with their fancy degrees, it seems, the business school brains are saying:

(a) The government is looking into the abuse of crew members on foreign deep sea charter vehicles; and

(b) Therefore any fish caught on those boats can’t be regarded as New Zealand fish.

And they have argued this (if they were correctly reported) even though the boats are fishing in our EEZ and they are using New Zealand fishing quota.

So when is New Zealand seafood no longer New Zealand seafood?

Some of us are pushing harder than others to lift the world’s population to 7 billion

One bloke's brood ... Ziona Chana is credited with having the world's biggest family.

The world’s population is nearing seven billion, as Alf noted in a post the other day.

But some of us on this planet are doing more than others to hurry things along.

The Daily Mail has introduced its readers to a bloke who has 39 wives, 94 children and lives in a 100-room house.

When the buggers sit down to dinner, they typically tuck into 30 chickens, 132lb of potatoes and 220lb of rice.

Lower your self-esteem, if you aim to murder someone but want the judges to be lenient

So now the bloody judges are taking self-esteem into account when they jail murderous brats.

That’s gotta be a load of bolloocks. If you kill someone, you should be banged up for a long time regardless of what some bloody shrink might plead about your sad lack of self-esteem.

But that’s not the way it’s being done in Godzone in the 21st century.

And so Alf is dismayed to read of what has happened to a teenage girl who was convicted for killing a retired schoolteacher.

She has had her sentence reduced

… after new evidence showed she was immature and had low self-esteem.

Rats threatened to take over under the failed 50:50 governance model at Maungatautari Reserve

Alf was delighted to learn that the year-long battle about who should have how much say in the running of a wildlife reserve in Waikato has been resolved.

The Maungatautari Reserve is a 3400 hectare area of forested extinct volcano land in the Waikato basin between Cambridge, Te Awamutu and Putaruru.

The governance brouhaha has threatened the protection of the wildlife behind a multi-million-dollar predator-proof fence.

The dispute embraced funders of the Maungatautari Reserve, the Waipa District Council, Environment Waikato, a handful of surrounding landowners and local iwi, Ngati Koroki Kahukura.

And it threatened to derail years of work at the wildlife sanctuary near Karapiro.

Now here’s the important bit:

Changes to royal rules of succession would be a step much too far in favour of bloody women’s libbers

Well bugger me, Alf spluttered on hearing of changes afoot for the monarchy. It looks like another serious setback for blokedom.

Under the new deal, our future Kings or Queens – yep ours, coz we haven’t become a republic yet despite the best efforts of a bunch of constitutional reform tossers – would be decided simply by order of birth.

This means a first-born daughter of William and Kate will accede to the throne regardless of any male siblings under new plans which have been personally approved by the Queen.

It also means the Princess Royal would leapfrog over her younger brothers, Princes Andrew and Edward, to rise from tenth to fourth in the royal pecking order in the line to the throne.