Well done, Boss – we are now reassured that those brain fades haven’t become a chronic condition

Alf’s memory isn’t up to much nowadays but he does recall some of The Boss’s struggles with forgetfulness.

There was the time when John could not remember being told of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s surveillance of internet tycoon Kim Dotcom.

And then there was the time – as TV3 reported – when he heard that most voters in a new poll thought the drinking age should have been raised to 20, and he said he agreed with them.

Well done, Beatrice, for deciding against a space trip – now let’s see if Kim Dotcom can have your seat(s)

The head gear’s far out, but she’s staying down here on earth.

Alf is delighted to learn that one of the Royals has had the good sense to reconsider becoming a pioneering space tourist.

Princess Beatrice was expected to be one of Sir Richard Branson’s most famous passengers. But the Daily Mail reassures us today she will not be going anywhere near his Virgin Galactic spacecraft after a test pilot was killed last week.

The story has been written by a newspaper scribe with a name that suggests he has writing in his genes, Sebastian Shakespeare.

‘Beatrice was excited by the idea of space tourism, but there is no way she will be going on one of the flights, if they are ever allowed to take place,’ a source close to Buckingham Palace tells me.

Get back to broadcasting, Pam – telling the press to piss off won’t get policy into the headlines

“Great news, people – it looks like I won’t have to wave my undies.”

Alf remembers the potty-mouthed Pam Corkery (and not too fondly) from the days when she was a Member of Parliament for the Anderton Mob and rejoiced when she gave it away to go back to broadcasting.

She should have stuck to broadcasting and not taken another crack at politicking as press secretary for the Internet Party’s leader, Laila Harre.

She was an Alliance list MP and a colleague of Harre back in those days for just one term, from 1996 to 1999. Then she quit.

We must suppose the only politicians with whom she became acquainted during those three years were greenies and pinkos, because – as the Herald reminds us today:

In her 1999 book, Pam’s Political Confessions, she said, “Politicians are, by and large, far more self-deluding, devious, bloated, insecure, egocentric w****** than I had feared.”

She certainly did not exchange pleasantries with Alf at that time, to find there are politicians who do not meet her disparaging description.

Oops – maybe there has been an awful misunderstanding about cultivating Cam’s friendship

Keep an eye out for an account of saucy goings-on here at Labour Party HQ in Eketahuna North.

Gotta admit to feeling somewhat uneasy about leaking further bits of this and that to Whaleoil.

Until now Alf had understood he was doing the party a big favour by passing on anything that might show up pinkies, greenies and their ilk in a bad light.

What’s more the encouragement of Jason Ede had given Alf the strong impression this sort of thing was good for scoring personal brownie points – and enhancing one’s political ambitions – up there on the Ninth Floor of The Beehive.

Ede should need no introducing. His name has been peppered into umpteen news reports in recent days (whereas Alf, dammit, hasn’t been mentioned once).

But maybe his encouragement was misunderstood.

What the bleep has happened to the Dotcom video? Order to remove it robs Nats of a vote-winner

But his party’s video could only have strengthened John Key’s hand.

The Alf Grumble re-election campaign team will be having a strategy session tonight.

They will be examining the ramifications of an unseemly intervention in the election campaign by a prissy mob called the Advertising Standards Authority.

This bunch have given the thumbs down to the Youtube advertisement and ordered it be removed.

Is Rodney Hide aiming to become the namby-pamby headmaster of a school where no kid is a loser?

Look at the scoreboard…neither side has lost.

Had Mrs Grumble got her reading glasses on, Alf inquired when she read the headline on Rodney Hide’s column in the Herald on Sunday this morning.

Surely she had misread it.

Nope. The headline sure enough said:

Rodney Hide: They’re all winners, more or less

So the headline writer had failed to sum up the essence of the column?

Nope again.

Some stuff is best read for laughs, including advice to take the Internet Party seriously

Sadly, he is not on the Mana Internet list.

Alf enjoys humour so was immediately tempted to look for the laughs that were bound to be extracted from a Herald item under the headline:

John Armstrong: Internet Mana best taken seriously

Armstrong is a political writer for whom Alf might have a higher regard were he to take some note of the Eketahuna North member’s words of wisdom, which flow regularly in speeches in the House, on the hustings and to mates in the Eketahuna Club, but are never recorded by the aforementioned political writer.

This lack of an appreciation for powerful and well-considered rhetoric means Alf reads Armstrong only for the chuckles.

A marriage of mana and money makes a moaning minnie of – guess who? Yep – Sue

And so the decision has been made.

The Internet Party and Mana Party have teamed up for this year’s election.

Alf and his fellow Nats are feeling seriously unthreatened.

Hone Harawira will be top dog in this odd coupling – he will have top billing on the alliance’s party list.

Mana has given up the number two spot on their combined list to the Internet Party’s leader, who will be named tomorrow (or so we are assured).

This is all too much for dear old Sue Bradford to stomach. She has spat the dummy – as she warned she would – and quit the Mana Party.

Before The Boss gets into bed with Winston Peters, should we remind him of the whiff of fish?

It looks more like churlish defiance, when Banks does it,

There are days when Alf thinks it’s a shame the Common Sense Party led by the short-arsed Peter Dunne doesn’t command much greater support.

Not too much more support.

Just enough to give them a few more seats in the House than just Dunne’s.

And then The Boss would not be facing the dilemma portrayed at the weekend by the NZ Herald’s John Armstrong.

It’s the dilemma of being lumbered with Banks by virtue of needing his vote to secure a majority on legislation where National has no backing from the Maori Party.

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.