Kapiti council took a hard line against old folk but is keen to okay a cycling club’s tree-lopping

Some mad bastards are running freely around the country after threatening to poison infant formula. But the  news media have been just as enthralled by the antics of some tossers with a powerful urge to protect  trees.

Alf is not sure what has happened today but overnight – as you can see here – the owners of the Titirangi sites where a kauri and a rimu were scheduled for removal have released an open letter saying the kauri  can stay.

This sounds like discrimination against rimu, but Alf – to be candid – couldn’t care less.

Accordingly he thinks Environment Minister Nick Smith is looking dangerously like a greenie for saying he hoped the kauri would be saved.

“I expressed to the [Auckland] mayor [Len Brown] a preference for the 200-year-old kauri to be spared, if at all possible, but that the Government respected the fact that it was a decision for the Auckland Council.”

This fuss led Alf to recall the appalling way an elderly couple in Kapiti were treated last year for doing the environment a favour and letting in more sun by lopping a few trees.

The bloody council fairly obviously knew it was being unreasonably bloody-minded by sending in the cops to help deal to the couple because it apologised while persisting with prosecuting them. 

Maori Party congratulates former co-leader – but she also is reminded she has retired from politics

Have they got one of these things for my mouth?

A bit of political howz-yer-father within the Maori Party seems to have escaped the attention of the news media. This is not surprising, because the news media seem to be under instructions to ignore anything that happens unless it involves a road accident, a drowning, a mountain climb gone wrong, or some other form of tragedy.

Maori Party co-leaders, fair to say, joined others in congratulating Tariana Turia for the damehood thing that was bestowed upon her in the New Year Honours.

But they short-changed her in the whakapapa department by overlooking the papa side of her bloodline.

Hon Tariana Turia (Ngāti Apa, Ngā Wairiki, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Whanganui) will forever be remembered in our nation’s history as the founding co-leader of the Māori Party. The Māori Party is the only indigenous party to be elected to New Zealand’s Parliament and to operate as an independent voice both in parliament and government.

Bob won’t press on with his monorail project but iwi leaders can play the treaty card

Alf is wondering today what might have happened if Bob Robertson could wave the Treaty of Waitangi in support of his proposal to run a monorail through the Fiordland National Park.

As we all now know, the proposal has been scuttled by the government.

And Robertson has said he will not appeal against the decision or pursue any legal action.

He has taken it on the chin, after Conservation Minister Nick Smith turned down the application for the $240 million project, saying it didn’t stack up economically or environmentally.

Murray McCully’s meddling at MFAT – might it bring about his ministerial demise?

Bugger.

It looks like your hard-working MP will have to wait to see if his formidable talents are appropriately recognised by The Boss with a long-overdue promotion.

That howz-yer-father about the ACC and the Pullar woman culminated in Nick Smith’s resignation from his ministerial portfolios.

Great (although Alf is not publicly displaying his approval).

Trouble is, Nick’s ministerial jobs have been given to others, at least for now.

The sorry thing about Nick and the Pullar woman is that he won’t be sacked

"What else should I be saying sorry for?"

Just quietly, Alf has been struggling to suppress his urge to join the Labour tossers in demanding Nick Smith’s head.

They reckon he is not fit to lead the Government’s local government reforms and must be sacked.

This follows Nick doing something Alf would never do: he apologised.

The advice never to apologise was drummed into Alf by his dad.

Nick, obviously, was not blessed with such sound parental guidance.

Let’s just have one council to make the most of the efficiencies that flow from a mega-merger

So who said size is cods?

Bigger is better.

Nobody puts it as baldly as that.

But that’s what drove the formation of Fonterra. It also drove the merging of four existing government agencies to create the new Business, Innovation and Employment Ministry.

This made Steven Joyce a genuine Pooh-bah, our Lord High Everything.

Some people wail about lots of civil servants being made redundant or something, which will swell the dole queues.

To the contrary, this will free them to wait patiently for proper jobs in the private sector, because – as we all know – governments don’t create jobs, private enterprise does.

Climate change dogma is challenged by satellite data on the earth’s release of energy into space

Wow...it's not as warm up here as I was predicting.

The Greens are grouching again about climate change and all that carry-on at the same time as scientists are affirming that we are no good at forecasting anything to with the future.

Because forecasters only forecast something they reckon will happen in the future, this means we haven’t progressed much from the days when a pile of chicken guts would be consulted before decisions were made.

But the forecasters will keep on forecasting and getting it wrong because the incur no penalty for getting it wrong, which happens most of the time.

Well, almost nobody.

They’ve got the right idea in Romania where they have been considering legislation to keep witches from misleading the people.

A month after Romanian authorities began taxing them for their trade, the country’s soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don’t come true.

The witches kicked up a fuss about this, saying they shouldn’t be blamed for the failure of their tools.