We could be more understanding by learning te reo, but it’s hard to modify your ethnicity

Dunno if Vernon Small has been learning te reo.

But he thinks New Zealanders generally should spend public money preserving it.

His reasoning (on page B5 of the Dom Post but not online) is simple –

It is a taonga guaranteed by the Treaty – perhaps the pre-eminent taonga.

Well bugger, Alf muttered on reading this.

Don’t remember that bit of the deal.

Perks and piss-ups – the trick is to find an acceptable way of making the public pay

Another bucket of bollocks is published in the Dom-Post today, this time on the matter of MPs’ miserable spending allowances.

Vernon Small, one of the rag’s parliamentary press gallery hacks, makes it seem like he has been talking with a whistle-blower:

MPs are secretly negotiating to award themselves more generous perks.

If they were secret – you can be sure – a bugger like Small would not get to hear of them.

But there is no whistle-blower. Rather –

The behind-closed-doors talks were revealed by Auditor-General Lyn Provost in a report that found former housing and fisheries minister Phil Heatley unlawfully spent $1402 of taxpayers’ money.

So who’s out of touch, when it comes to gloom?

The lefties put an interesting spin on Vernon Small’s Dom-Post story today portending a further 60,000 workers losing their jobs by next year.

Note Alf’s use of the word “portending”. This is the stuff of economic forecasting, notoriously subject to change.

Just take a look at the positive forecasts from the Treasury in December 2007, which fast came unravelled as the recession took hold in 2008.

Never mind. Small sees this as jolly good stuff for a story.

Of bank checks and dipsticks

The most extraordinary thing about a Dom-Post report headed PM runs bank ‘health check’ is that the writer found anything remarkable in the PM checking the health of the banks.

Press Gallery scribe Vernon Small almost breathlessly says