The Hobbit and handouts – would they really have gone to Scotland if we didn’t fill the trough?

Alf had agreed with The Boss about providing troughs for the snouts of movie moguls.

If we’ve got to pick winners, and then nourish the buggers with public funding, then let’s pick winners from a glamourous industry like movie-making.

The photo opportunities for The Boss and his team are apt to have much more appeal to voters when they are pictured with movie people than – for example – coal miners.

At least, that’s what Alf thought until he found the Grumbles weren’t on the invitation list for the premiere of The Hobbit.

He is now taking a more jaundiced view of things, and especially he is wondering why the Government doesn’t want to disclose information about their handouts and other help to The Hobbit makers.

Icon on Ngati Toa’s cake

Now that Ngati Toa have been given some sort of right to the Ka Mate haka as part of a treaty settlement, and say they want to protect it from “inappropriate use”, here’s hoping they deliver the goods.

Inappropriate use should be any use of the haka by anyone anywhere except on a Ngati Toa marae, preferably in a sound-proofed room.

If that means Alf never sees one again, or hears the intimidating whoops and grunts that go with it, he will breath a sigh of enormous relief.