A foggy memory about money serves oldies well – here’s hoping Banksie doesn’t get his back too soon

With his leadership a matter of media speculation, Labour’s David Shearer must have relished an opportunity to go on the front foot and lash out at a bloke whose position as ACT leader is impeccably secure: John Banks.

Banksie – we can be sure – sleeps soundly at nights, confident in the knowledge his caucus is 100 per cent with him and no other ACT MP is likely to stab him in the back, wallop him on the head with a bound volume of Hansard, or do any of the other things that results in a leader’s replacement.

Not so with Shearer. who seems to have difficulties managing his office, let alone a caucus or – God forbid – the country.

So it’s a bit rich for Shearer to be calling for Banksie to be stood down from the Cabinet over the trivial matter of a bit of some unexplained money.

It’s good to see The Boss treating Shearer with a bit of well-deserved contempt.

Sending also-rans overseas as horse meat is all very well – but what about Kiwi gourmets?

If you lose money on it, you should be able to dine on it.

Being “in clover” means having good fortune.

That goes for cats, too. The Cats in Clover Cattery in the Bay of Islands sounds like Heaven for a moggy. It boasts 14 large private cat apartments, and two semi-communal rooms, overlooking subtropical streamside gardens, rich with bird life.

“Our cattery provides the highest standards of care, cleanliness and accommodation. Cats in Clover is a place where you can leave your cats with confidence in the knowledge that they will be well looked after by an animal lover and former vet nurse whose first priority is the welfare of your pets.”

But horses might have a different experience.

Especially clapped-out race horses with a track record for losing.

They could finish up at an outfit called Clover Export Ltd, down in Southland, where they will be turned into tasty cuts of horse meat.

If it’s a sell-out you want, get Sanitarium involved in whipping up a media fuss

English Bob can help you give it a go...

Alf has no immediate plans to get into the retail business.

But if he did he would make sure the Sanitarium people are involved with the publicity.

He would make a special effort to re-label his goods in a way that makes them look like Sanitarium products, because that company has become adept at whipping up media headlines that in turn result in the highlighted product becoming a sell-out.

A splendid example is Marmite, the yeast-extract product, which began disappearing from shelves about six weeks ago.

Maybe it’s not the diet for Gerry Brownlee – living on sunshine alone can have grim outcomes

Is it the diet that gives you red spots?

Mrs Grumble, who is concerned about the weight being carried by the likes of Labour’s Parekura Horomia and our Gerry Brownlee, thought it a good idea if Alf suggest they watch the 2010 documentary film “In the beginning there was light”.

The movie centres on Swiss chemistry doctor Michael Werner, 62, and 83-year-old Indian yogi Prahlad Jani.

Both these gentlemen claim to derive sustenance from spiritual means rather than being fuelled on food (or over-fuelled in the cases of our two chubby MPs).

It’s a concept also known as breatharianism.

Alf caught up on recent developments in a Herald Sun (in a report to found here) –

They shouldn’t be allowed to booze until they are adults, and it seems that’s around age 24

It's because she hasn't grown up yet...

Alf has been strongly fortified in his belief the drinking age should be raised much higher than is sought by MPs who support returning the drinking age to 20.

The Sunday Star-Times had a report on the topic the other day, saying this support is gaining momentum as MPs face calls to address binge drinking.

The tossers never asked Alf what he thinks.

He happens to think the drinking age should be much higher than 20.

Dunno what Dad would have made of these criminal and queer happenings around Godzone

A quick look at the news items posted on the NZ Herald website this morning disquieted your long-serving member, as he prepared to attend the RSA service in the Eketahuna Town Hall.

No, dammit. Disquieted is not the right word. He was dismayed.

And he wondered what his dad would have made of it.

Was this the New Zealand for which the supreme sacrifice was made by so many Kiwis in World War Two?

Persistent Parker regurgitates his pap about Mexico despite being properly chided by Ambassador

But in this country you have to keep an eye on the rear end.

Dunno why the Mexicans bothered making a fuss over Labour MP David Parker’s warning that New Zealand risked turning into “Australia’s Mexico”.

The absurdity of the comparison was obvious to anyone with a reasonable share of brain cells.

For starters, Mexicans speak Spanish and use lots of maize in a diet that features tacos, enchiladas, mole sauce, atole, tamales, pozole and burritos. We Kiwis are fish and chips and meat-pie people, a diet complemented by steaks, oysters, mutton-birds, pork and puha and so on.

Mexicans fed on maize must be bursting to cross the border to get into some decent tucker, like Kentucky Fried and Big Macs.

Kiwis who go to Australia simply find the folks there are fish-and-chips and meat-pie people too, although they have turned the meat pie into something worthy of a banquet with a dish called the floater.

A tip for Australia’s aboriginals: get your land claims in ahead of the Maori takeover

... and when we've won this claim, the Sydney Harbour Bridge could do with a Maori makeover.

The inevitable has happened: a Maori woman is laying claim to a chunk of Australia.

It’s not a big chunk. It’s a reserve in Parramatta.

But it’s the thin edge of a wedge.

Before long – who knows? – similar claims will be spawned and matters won’t be resolved until all of Australia has been declared Maori territory.

Then the claimants will look further afield and bit by bit we will learn that the whole world, actually, has been wrongfully taken from Maori.

This scenario became a real prospect when Alf heard this from Radio NZ –

Invitation to Eric Joyce: come Down Under, mate, and teach the MPs here how to toughen up

Learning how to butt heads and come out the winner would be useful at Question Time.

Never thought it would be written here. But Trevor Mallard is a pussy cat.

Mallard – it might be remembered – escaped an assault charge when he was Minister for the Environment after an altercation with National MP Tau Henare by pleading guilty to the lesser charge of fighting in a public place.

But fair to say, Trev is thoroughly genteel when compared with Britain’s Eric Joyce, who recently was convicted of four counts of assault and – when asked to tally the number of people he has thumped over the years -reckons it’s probably 100.

Maybe the way to stop the poaching of kereru is to permit sales of fried pigeon and chips

Put it on the KFC menu and it might be saved.

Oh dear. It looks like native wood pigeons are as doomed as the moa, at least in some parts of the country.

And for much the same reason. They make good tucker (or at least, that’s what Alf is told, although he has never eaten pigeon pie, or pigeon kai, or any other pigeon-based dishes).

In the Far North, some people obviously are tucking in, even though the bird is supposed to be legally protected.

The consequences are reported in the Sunday Star-Times here.

Maori poachers hunting wood pigeons to the verge of extinction in the north are refusing to listen to pleas to stop from their community.

And –

The birds are in decline in Northland, where hapu mumbers say they have found evidence of illegal hunting.