Wall and the Warriors of Change go on the warpath – don’t laugh, folks – over a newspaper cartoon

People who were pissed off with cartoons published in The Press and the Marlborough Express last year did what we are all entitled to do and expressed their objections at the time.

They exercised something wonderful called their freedom of speech (as did the enterprising Toyota dealer who devised the advertisement shown here).

Soon there was a debate raging. Were the cartoons racially offensive – or were they not?

And then we were all huffed and puffed out. It was all over. Or should have been.

Alas, some sad bastards get their knickers in a serious twist and want to see heads roll if they have taken offence or otherwise been affronted.

The mob baying for Banksie’s blood includes some Nats but he hasn’t burgled or been boozed

John Banks is unlikely to be able to lay claim to the Maori Throne. Not successfully, anyway.

Accordingly it will be difficult for him to argue that a conviction for breaking the law around electoral donations might disqualify him from sitting on that throne one day . A conviction therefore is on the cards, when he turns up to learn what sentence has been decided for him, even though his offence is not in the same anti-social league as the burglary and drunken driving that landed a certain high-ranking indigenous person in trouble.

Well over half the people questioned about Banks’ fate in a survey accordingly have a fair chance of finding the judge goes along with them when they say they want him convicted.

Banks – it will be remembered – was leader of the Act party before he resigned last month. He was a former government minister, too.

Alas, he was found guilty in the High Court at Auckland of knowingly filing a false electoral return.

Does Rolf’s jail term mean fellow inmates must endure his accordion music for almost six years?

But fellow inmates might have cause to complain if he took it into jail with him.

Rolf Harris hasn’t done quite as well in a British court as a contender to the Maori throne did in a court in this country.

Nevertheless Rolf has been treated more generously than Alf expected. He will be banged up for just five years and nine months (a doddle, really, by the time good behaviour comes into considerations) and the cops have opted not to make the bugger stand trial for possessing a stash of child porn.

Mind you, the jail term was almost immediately referred to the UK’s Attorney General for being ‘unduly lenient’ after concerns were raised by a small number of members of the public.

Son of the Maori King appeared before a judge who takes booze and career prospects into account

If you can pitch a defence about how your career will be damaged, should you fall foul of the law, then try to arrange for Judge Philippa Cunningham to hear your case.

Appropriate expressions of remorse will go down well with her, too.

And she may well look kindly on you if she believes an addiction to booze or whatever has been your downfall and you are willing to be weaned off it.

We can only imagine what sentence she would have dished up had she handled the Rolf Harris case, because his career is over and a conviction will not bugger up his employment prospects.

But back in his younger days it’s reasonable to suppose he would have been given a break in Judge Cunningham’s court – provided he was remorseful, which he hasn’t been so far.

His name may well have been suppressed, too.

 

Rolf was a grumpy bugger, back in the 1980s, when his kiddie fiddling flair was a dark secret

And I use this for sniffing out my prey.

The Waikato Times has caught up with Maxine Hodgson, who was involved in bringing Rolf Harris to Hamilton in the 1980s.

Harris, of course, is a performer with a special talent for playing a wobbleboard and – as he is more notoriously known nowadays – for his flair as a furtive kiddie fiddler.

Alf is inclined to think it might be better not to mention having anything to do with Harris.

Especially when the irony around one’s involvement with the disgraced Ozzie wobbleboarder is brought into considerations.

A lesson from Britain: we should be getting our jails ready for an influx of pensioner prisoners

Forget about the sex stuff…he should be banged up for playing a bloody accordion.

Where Britain goes we go…

Or we did once.

Probably that’s no longer true. Nowadays we are just as likely to go where the Yanks demand we go or take our cue from the Treaty of Waitangi and go where iwi want us to go.

But we can learn from the country of Alf’s forefathers nevertheless and the Queen is still our Head of State.

Whether we should learn from changes in Britain’s prison muster is a moot point but it can do no harm, surely, to start kitting out our jails by providing wheelchair ramps. zimmer frames and what-have-you for a more elderly population of inmates.