No, Hekia, all New Zealanders do not – alas -respect the laws of our lovely land

Is anything like this happening off the East Coast?

Alf’s gotta have a chat with Hekia Parata. She has been expressing some very strange beliefs on Morning Report.

Hekia – fine lady – was being questioned about the role of the police in protecting the Petrobras oil search from the greenies and stroppy Maori.

As Stuff reports, police issued maritime notices yesterday requiring the Greenpeace flotilla to remain at least 200 metres from the two ships.

The protesters face a fine of $10,000 or up to 12 months’ jail for breaching the notice.

The stroppy buggers were abiding by the 200m limit last night but will decide today whether to stick to it.

The undermining of confidence – or why Radio NZ should try poking around in chicken guts

The buggers who produce the business bulletin for Radio NZ’s “Morning Report” had good news for us about employment growth when they kicked off their new year.

Then they found some stuff published by the Institute of Economic Research last year and fed that to their listening audience as if to say the more cheery expectation should be ignored.

The outrage is that Radio NZ cherry-picked their data and by-passed the optimistic stuff tucked away in the tables in the NZIER report.

Alf, who believes pessimistic economic news undermines business confidence and exacerbates recessions and slowdowns, was dismayed.

Did the wankers at Radio NZ have a bad Christmas holiday or something?

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.