Sizing things up with Paul Holmes – we just need to know our history to understand Tame Iti

Paul Holmes – a self-confessed cocky little bastard, although we didn’t really need to hear it from him – got some things right and some things a bit wrong in a column in the NZ Herald today.

He has gone out to bat for Tame Iti and dishes up a few morsels of history to persuade us the stroppy Iti has good cause to be angry because the Tuhoe people have been given a raw deal.

The New Zealand government has always displayed a capacity for savagery and vindictiveness in their dealings with Tuhoe.

No doubt Tuhoe did suffer a raw deal.

Whether we should suffer Iti’s antics as a consequence is another matter.

Tama Iti may well be deep into political consciousness – but what else was he up to when the cops pounced?

We need not be frightened, he says.

It was great to watch the performance of one of our special citizens – the stroppy Tama Iti – on Q+A yesterday.

This Iti feller should be in Parliament: just imagine him as Minister for Tuhoe Affairs, getting Mallard in a lather as he ducked and weaved at Question Time.

Iti, of course, is one of four defendants awaiting trial after some howz-yer-father in the Ureweras a few years back.

Dunno why he has adorned his face with something that looks suspiciously like a street map of Wapping. Paul Holmes didn’t ask.

But Holmes did pick up on Iti’s contention that the charges were ridiculous.

If Murray Deaker had been watching his P’s and Q’s, he would have avoided the N word

The Dambusters with Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) and his dog whose name should not be mentioned in polite company.

So what does sports commentator Murray Deaker have in common with a celebrity hairdresser and a perfumier? They have all startled people and maybe upset some by using the N word.

The thing is, it has become increasingly naughty to use the N word over recent decades as attitudes change and its offensiveness is increased.

Alf wouldn’t mind betting he would be in bigger trouble if he publicly used the N word than if he brought the C word into play.

Metiria’s curious parallel universe

There has been a distinct browning of the Greens, in recent days, with the election of Metiria Turei as co-leader. It’s become more a khaki party now than a green one.

She was banging on this morning about attracting more Maori to her party, thanks to her election, and said something about the Greens always being a pro-Maori party.

No more, please, no more

Down here in Eketahuna we are profoundly indifferent to Sunday newspaper reports that

Millie Elder has been arrested again and is facing new drugs charges, as well as an allegation of shoplifting.

Broadcaster Paul Holmes’ estranged daughter is now facing charges before three courts and a possible jail term.

Alf looks forward to the glorious but improbable day when he learns (this would be news) that this pathetic creature has not been arrested and is not facing charges, and moreover that she has found God, and become a missionary in the Congo.

All going well, the Millie meter (a measure of the column centimetres consumed in any one edition by stories of her antics) would register zero a week after her departure from these shores. Bliss.

Ah, so she does recognise rejection

So how did Prime Minister react, in the days and weeks after last year’s electoral drubbing?

Paul Holmes put the question to her husband, Peter Davis, on Q & A yesterday and was told:

I think she felt rejected basically, because she felt she’d done a good job which I also believe and had put her best foot forward and had been frankly an almost incomparable Prime Minister and yet somehow the public had not seen that the same way. So it took some time for her to frankly come to terms with that and if I was in that position I’d feel the same way I guess.

She should have felt rejected because she was rejected, along with her gang.

Dumped, spurned, given the electoral heave-ho, thrown on the political scrap-heap.

The trivialising of current affairs

Alf missed Paul Holmes’ Q and A interview with Lockwood Smith, Speaker of the House (and a bloody good bloke, in Alf’s book).

But he has just read the transcript on TVNZ’s website. And he’s gob-smacked.

Almost half the interview is consumed by Holmes’ fascination with Smith’s relationship with Alexandra Lang, whom he will marry in July.

Women’s Weekly pap.