It has happened only once, so far, but no matter – the very special Maori King has made it a tradition

Alf has enormous regard for the indigenous people of this country, who – by virtue of the New Zealand Government signing some Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People – have officially been deemed “special”.

Alf’s mate and former Parliamentary colleague, Simon Power, said as much in a ministerial statement on 20 April 2010.

It was a ministerial statement he made as Minister of Justice on the matter of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it explained why our wonderful government supported it.

Celebrities are likely to shy away from finance companies thanks to our new regulatory package

It has been one of Alf’s big disappointments that nobody has asked him to endorse their product in TV and other advertising.

He has especially yearned to promote his favourite whisky (he would happily name it publicly here, if its makers would pay him).

But he would never endorse a bank or a finance company, essentially because he regards bankers and financiers as the business world’s equivalent of cockroaches.

He keeps his money secured under his mattress. It’s not a huge fortune, but it is a tad lumpy because coins account for part of it, and so it is stored beneath the mattress on Mrs Grumble’s side of the bed.

Because of his attitude to bankers and financiers, Alf was disappointed when folks like Richard Long and Colin Meads helped persuade ordinary Kiwis to invest in this finance company and that.

Simon Power sets his sights on celebrities, but fools who want to part with their cash won’t be deterred

Follow me, folks - the grass is nice and plush over here.

Oh dear. It looks like a nice little earner for a few celebrities is about to become a tad risky for the buggers.

Those of them who lend their names to advertising campaigns to promote investment products might face stiff penalties under new laws if they are found to have misled mum and dad investors.

The Herald says Commerce Minister Simon Power yesterday announced a raft of Cabinet decisions on his major rewrite of investment laws, a response to the collapse of the finance company sector and the global financial crisis.

Banning forced marriages would prohibit shotgun weddings, which need reviving to help taxpayers

The headline-grabbing antics of ethnic women’s groups got Alf in a right tizz this morning.

The buggers are lobbying the Government to pass legislation against forced marriages. claiming that escalating numbers of “high-risk” young victims are coming forward to seek help.

Shakti, which runs refuges for Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern women in New Zealand, has joined with Pacific Women’s Watch and 46 others to petition Parliament to outlaw forced underage marriages – which they say put young girls in situations that can lead to horrendous physical and sexual abuse.

Calls to Shakti’s crisis line have risen to 350 calls a month since July 2010, when they averaged 250 a month. Among these are many young girls – and though more are coming forward, there would be others who are too fearful, Priyanca Radhakrishnan of the Shakti Community Council says.

Alf has every sympathy with the notion that under-age girls should be protected by the law.

But they are protected already.

What could a new law do that the current law can’t do to deal with offences committed within “honour-based” forced relationships, eh?

Publicity-shy Aucklander should want us all to know he is frisky enough to jump on a car bonnet

We have two clues - he is aged around 46 and has been stressed.

Alf expected the Whale to be thrashing around in high dudgeon this morning, over the continued name suppression enjoyed by an Auckland bloke. He was not disappointed and refers his constituents to an item headed Smarty Devil in Disguise still afraid of his own name.

The Smarty Devil in question is described in the Herald as a high-profile household name but the newspaper goes no further in identifying him because the bloody judge has granted continued suppression of name.

His occupation may not be published, either.

But according to the Herald’s understanding, the bloke was arrested after an argument with his wife during which he jumped on the bonnet of their car in central Auckland.

Jumping on the bonnet of a car is not among the more heinous offences in this country and anyone caught doing it need not feel too ashamed. Indeed, Alf would be quite chuffed, were he known as someone who can jump on the bonnet of a car, because it is widely speculated among his constituents that he is not frisky enough nowadays to be able to perform such a feat.

Alf accordingly would demand that his name be published in such circumstances.

How Joanna Sihamu has made life hell for all male celebrities aged somewhere near 46

If it isn't Simon or John or Mike it must be...

Alf has huge sympathy for fellow celebrities whose names are being bandied by the public as speculation mounts over the identity of a 46-year-old household name arrested in Auckland.

Thanks to the misguided ruling of a namby-pamby magistrate, the media must not disclose the identity of a bloke who was arrested in Auckland’s Quay St on Wednesday and appeared in court on Thursday charged with disorderly conduct.

That decision has been regurgitated today by the Sunday Star-Times in a report that proceeds to narrow the range of possibilities by ruling out a few names.

Feeding car-boot lawyers and felons to the lions would be good for fiscal rigour, too

Did that car-boot lawyer taste innocent or guilty, Leo?

Our splendid Government is doing a lot to save just $5 million a year, which just goes to show what a fiscally rigorous lot we are in our endeavours to give taxpayers a better deal.

We will be legislating to curtail a defendant’s rights to this, that and the other as part of changes to the criminal justice system announced yesterday, including (in many cases) the right to a trial by jury.

The real outrage is how come bottled water costs more than booze or petrol

But a whisky bottle can't foot it with water bottles when it comes to providing footwear for poor people.

Dunno what the latest booze fuss is supposed to be about.

But a report at Stuff highlights research showing alcohol is so cheap that it costs less per drink than bottled water and only slightly more than milk.

So why doesn’t the research emphasise that water is now so outrageously over-priced, it is more expensive than booze?

More expensive than petrol too. Much more expensive.

The researchers from Otago University’s Wellington campus – a right rum lot, Alf suspects – are turning their preoccupation with the low price of plonk rather than the high price of water to a political purpose.

Fair enough – we’ll scrap the tasers if we can deal with bad buggers as they do in Morocco and Algeria

Alf was jolted from his slumbers by a Radio NZ report about tasers.

Nope. It wasn’t that some bad bastard had been zapped by one during a weekend in which our police officers have run into more violent stuff from drunken young people.

This time, the Government has been zapped.

The United Nations was reported to be urging the New Zealand Government to consider giving up the use of tasers.

Actually, it turns out that just one laughable bit of the UN, its UN Human Rights Committee, is doing the urging.

The committee has “18 independent experts who are persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights.”

The countries from whence they come include great upholders of civil liberties and human rights such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritius, Colombia and Egypt.

Outrage: if the spoils of victory are going to our opponents, we might as well make Goff our leader

Alf has been hugely comforted by the certainty that a cosy job would be found for him, should he quit parliamentary politics. His ministerial mates would stick him on the board of an SOE, a quango or one of umpteen other types of publicly funded organisation.

Their structures provide for oodles of political appointments, and they enable our ministers to dispense favours and patronage.

Alf is comforted no longer. We are giving these plums – the spoils of victory – to our bloody opponents.

The idea used to be that the jobs were dished out to long-serving, and maybe not-so-long-serving, members of the party in Government.

That was the point of winning an election. You got to run the bloody country – dig up the conservation estate, run down the public service, turn Auckland into a Super City then govern it from Wellington, think about taking travel privileges off the oldies but back off when they squawk loudly, and so on.