We don’t demand haute couture in the House but wearing Highlanders’ discarded kit was a blue

It's a nice shade of blue ... but what would happen if Alf wore this in the House?

Alf took serious offence at a Labour politician, Clare Curran. desporting herself in National colours yesterday.

Accordingly he approved of the Speaker giving her a red card and kicking her off the Parliamentary pitch.

As it turned out, she was thrown out of the House for wearing a Highlanders’ rugby shirt.

Today she is reported to have bleated about an “over reaction” from Speaker Lockwood Smith.

The Dunedin South MP had appeared at Parliamentary questions wearing the southern team’s old blue, gold and maroon kit in protest at the new lime green colour.

Speaker Lockwood Smith declared the shirt violated Parliament’s strict dress codes and ordered Curran to leave.

Parliament’s dress code dictates male members must wear a tie or jacket buttoned up to the neck. Women must wear ”normal business attire” however there is no specific detail on what is allowed.

Welcome Prince William – what a shame we don’t behead anti-royalist rabble nowadays

Unabashed royalists like Alf are chuffed that Prince William arrives in New Zealand today for a three-day visit.

He will be there, enthusiastically waving his Union Jack and wearing his tie with the Queen’s face emblazoned on it, when William touches down in Auckland just after 11am.

The prince’s first task will be to visit Eden Park to see redevelopment work and be briefed on plans for next year’s Rugby World Cup.

On Monday, he will attend a wreathlaying ceremony at the National War Memorial in Wellington.

But then – if it hasn’t happened already – the poor bugger will be exposed to the repugnant antics of some of our more odious citizens.

A bunch of protesters is intending to turn up when the prince opens the Supreme Court building in Wellington tomorrow.

Alf is ashamed to say some of our members of Parliament will be among the protesters.

He yearns for the good old days – a few centuries back – when your royals could have ordered the beheading of these rabble-rousing bastards.

In this case they are left-leaning trouble-makers, so their beheadings would lift the nation’s average IQ with two swings of an axe and do good things for the gene pool.

The curious dislocation of Clare Curran

The Labour Party’s Clare Curran is gurgling today after discovering that Lords of the Blog has a posting about Red Alert.

Curran describes Lords of the Blog as a cross parliamentary blog from the House of Lords, which only goes to show she has no grasp of the importance of the hyphen in a compound adjective.

No, it is not a blog for cross parliamentarians. It is a cross-parliamentary blog, which means parliamentarians of various stripes contribute to its contents.

Anyway, Clare carries on –

A Clare case of political gall

Gotta give the Curran gal marks for gall.

Clare Curran, Labour’s spokesperson on Communications and IT, might have kept quiet about the reversing of decisions made when the Clark Gang was running the show.

But not only did she issue a media statement to welcome the Key Government’s decision to intervene on section 92A of the Copyright Act.

But we don’t have to be petty too, Paula

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has her knickers in an unfortunate twist and is threatening to ban Labour MPs from regional job summits. Her problem: Labour MP Clare Curran has been pamphleteering.

Paula says she had asked officials to invite local MPs from all parties to attend job summits in their areas but was disappointed to hear that Curran was involved in distributing pamphlets at the Dunedin venue.

Perplexing stuff about copyright

Okay, maybe Clare Curran deserves more respect than Alf gave her when she criticised the Nats’ for scrapping the Government Shared Network (GSN).

Yesterday she showed admirable grit by trying to stymie the most controversial of changes to our copyright laws.

She was rebuffed (sad to say) by the Nats.

Alf is bemused about his government. Refusing to budge on a matter notoriously championed by Labour’s dippy Judith Tizard – and by nobody much else, so far as Alf can see – is the stuff of farce.

A Clare view of ICT

What was that noise I heard from the Labour quarters of Parliament?

Why, it sounded like a pathetic whimper of protest from Clare Curran, member for Dunedin South.

Armed with degrees in anthropology and history, she’s obviously the ideal person