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.

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Let’s flag John Key’s next press conference – it will be humiliating, after a wayward wager on the Warriors

The price to be paid for taking a bad bet.

It could have been worse.

The Boss could have been as daft, in the wager department, as the retiring Green MP, Keith Locke, who made his valedictory speech last week.

Mr Locke recalled losing a bet when ACT MP Rodney Hide won the Epsom seat in 2005 and having to run down an Auckland street naked.

“I’m no less into gambling although I’m tempted to put something on the Warriors to win the NRL grand final.”

It’s a measure of his judgement that he would have lost that bet too.

Alf would never put his money on a team that is headquartered in Auckland.

But alas, The Boss is not so chary and he put his money on the Warriors, too.

Or rather, he put our flag on the outcome of the match.

Psst – want a good election tip? Put your dosh on Goff being put out to pasture soon after the race

A better bet than the prospect of a Goff-led coalition.

Care to spare a thought for how Phil Goff might be feeling this morning?

On second thoughts, forget about it. Let’s get used to the idea that in a few months he will be political dog tucker.

Alf confidently asserts this on the strength of news that the National government is trouncing Labour, according to the latest Horizon poll.

National has 10.2% more support than Phil Goff’s Labour, and is continuing to widen the gap, with its support up 2.2% since May against a 0.9% rise for Labour.

The only surprise there is that Labour was able to lift its support at all after dishing up that capital gains tax pap.

An outrage: ministry must cough up for upsetting a jailbird whose crimes include aggravated robbery

Alf will be spending some time today checking out who’s who and what’s what at an outfit called the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

We have far to many tribunals.

This one deals with claims under the Human Rights Act, the Privacy Act and the Health and Disability Commissioner Act.

Its only useful purpose – at first blush – is that maybe Alf will need a job there one day, because it provides a bit of work for some former MPs.

Its members include Keith Shirley and Brian Neeson, neither of them – in Alf’s experience – inclined to smoke the sort of stuff that would addle their brains or mix with lefties who who would convert them to their namby-pamby world view.

Alf accordingly would like to think neither of them was involved in the decision that triggered his (a) enormous indignation – no, make that enormous outrage; and (b) immediate research into the tribunal and its purpose.

Suppressed names short-change us in reports about a naughty step-father and a political smear campaign

Lest any of the good people of Eketahuna North suspect otherwise, even for a brief moment, let’s have this on the record.

Alf is not the bloke found guilty on charges of indecently assaulting his stepdaughter.

Nor is he Don Brash’s love child.

Mrs Grumble – fair to say – urged Alf not to make this declaration.

She said it was only attention-seeking. Moreover it was thoroughly unnecessary, because it would be obvious to constituents that he is not the mystery feller in either case, because –

* He is still married to her, his first wife, and they do not have step-children;

* He has never been a national figure (she unkindly said “and you never will be”); and

* He is bloody near as old as Don Brash.

Don Brash is not too old to lead ACT – but is he daft enough to want to quit a great political party?

So how will he look in a yellow jacket?

It’s not often that Alf gets niggly during his visits to the splendid Keeping Stock blog site.

But at the age of sixty-mumble-mumble, Alf still aspires to leading the National Party, although he keeps this ambition very private so as not to give the buggers in the Beehive any grounds for questioning his loyalty.

He is thoroughly devoted to the National Party, of course, and has been naive enough to think nobody(especially him) would want to lead the ACT Party after leading the National Party.

It seems he is wrong.

A few reports at the weekend suggest Don Brash is scheming to do just that.

Twyford gets it right – partly – on the farce of Maori representation in the Super City

Alf is agreeing with Labour’s Auckland Issues spokesperson Phil Twyford, who reckons the Auckland Council’s funding row with its Maori Statutory Board is evidence the board structure is flawed.

But only up to a point.

Actually, flawed is a somewhat mild way of expressing it.

The board has become a bloody travesty.

Twyford should use red-blooded language like that, too, because he says it should be abolished.

If it’s simply flawed, then it can be fixed.