I read that Mike Hosking and Toni Street are leaving TV1’s prime-time show Seven Sharp.

I’ve never been a fan of the somewhat brittle and abrasive Mr Hosking but I acknowledge his intelligence, interviewing skill and often caustic wit.

As for Toni Street, no-one could fail to be charmed by the warmth and generosity of her personality, her skill both as interviewer and occasional peacemaker and her good-humoured tolerance of her co-host. She came through the lens. And that is the highest compliment you can pay to any television broadcaster.

So we are losing a great and, I suspect, irreplaceable team. I doff my hat to them both. You will be missed. I will miss you.

*To defend the post;
*To take the post down;
*To explore the issue further;
*If necessary, to apologise for what I’d written.

I decided not to take the post down. I wrote it. People read it. Some approved of what I’d said. Others were deeply offended. Taking the post down would do nothing to change that.

But an apology to Guyon and Māori upset or angered by my comments is clearly required. I failed to check my facts, by taking the time to listen to several editions of Morning Report. Despite my own fairly extensive background on National Radio, Including Top of the Morning, Checkpoint, Jim Mora’s The Panel and a variety of other programmes, I’m not a frequent radio listener. But that won’t stand as an excuse. I should have checked.

I didn’t. Instead I simply assumed that listener complaints were justified, that non-Māori listeners were unable to understand significant parts of the body of the programme where the host was practicing his Te Reo.

That is clearly not the case. And for that I sincerely apologise.

Disquiet is apparently being expressed by some National Radio listeners over what they claim to be Guyon Espiner’s excessive use of Maori words and phrases during his interviews. They don’t understand them. But Guyon’s wife is Maori and I find it entirely reasonable that her husband would want to be able to communicate with her and their children in both his own native tongue and hers.

So far so good. But should the same bilingualism be expected of Guyon’s primarily pakeha National Programme audience? Well, it’s entirely possible that more National and Concert Programme listeners understand Maori than listeners to commercial radio. But that’s hardly the point. English is the first and for many, including a majority of Tangata Whenua, the only language spoken and well understood by a considerable majority of New Zealanders.

So the question is: Is it Mr Espiner’s job or responsibility as a current affairs interviewer on National Radio to educate that majority of public radio listeners who neither speak nor reasonably understand Māori?

I would have thought not. His job is to conduct, on behalf of his substantial radio audience, interviews on social and political issues, both national and international, that are relevant to their lives. That brief must certainly include a raft of issues pertinent to Maori, including of course the survival of Te Reo.

But it is not and cannot be Mr Espiner’s job to educate his listeners in the Maori language. Indeed such an intention can only be seen as presumptuous. He is not Maori and, by his own admission, even his wife is amused by his efforts.

What is not in doubt, however, is that his efforts on behalf of the Maori language are well-intentioned and even noble. But they are, in my view, misplaced.

When I was a kid my mother and I lived in a small flat above a shoemaker’s shop in Dunmurry, a village near Belfast. After school I used to dump my school bag in the attic and rush down to chew the fat with the shoemaker, whose name was Bob Stewart, as he made the most beautiful men’s brogues. The cobbler, I learnt then, should stick to his last.

Good advice, Guyon.

For almost two decades now I have railed against the excesses of social media. I have done so on radio, on this website and on Facebook. The general tenor of my complaint has been that, across these media, intelligent debate has been replaced by frequently anonymous personal abuse.

My complaint about Bernard Hickey was not that he was a supporter of MMP, but that he derided the opinions of those who weren’t or had expressed reservations about it. They were, apparently, mere whingers and moaners. I think in this essentially fair minded country of ours we call that ‘playing the man and not the ball’. Or, if you want to be posh about it, ‘an ad hominem attack’. It was to that that I took exception.

As for MMP, my post was scarcely an onslaught, it was an expression of reservations: ‘not entirely persuaded; not entirely happy, disquiet many New Zealanders feel…’.

I’m writing this because, among many reasonable expressions of disagreement with what I had to say in the post, including several by good friends of mine, there is a sprinkling of the sort of personal abuse that I find unacceptable. I turn 80 in just over a week, ladies and gentlemen, but there is bugger all wrong with my brain.

So here’s the deal: I welcome spirited debate. I don’t welcome ad hominem attacks on anyone whether because of their age, gender, nationality or the colour of their skin. And that includes elderly male, white skinned, Irish curmudgeons.

Right! Time for a lie-down.

Just read a piece by Bernard Hickey in Newsroom in which he takes to task people like me who aren’t entirely persuaded of the merits of MMP or entirely happy with the result it has delivered in this year’s general election.

I know Bernard and am something of a fan. But I share the disquiet that many New Zealanders feel when the party that is preferred by more Kiwis than any other fails to win the election. More importantly, I do not expect to be treated as a numbskull for feeling that disquiet. It is, at the very least, both understandable and defensible.

So I take strong exception to the final paragraph in Mr Hickey’s piece. He writes:

“Job done, and let’s hope that’s the end of the whole whinging and moaning about MMP for at least another three years.”

That “whinging and moaning” is what we call ‘democracy’, Bernard. Let’s hope we aren’t at the end of it yet.

In her excellent Sideswipe column in the Herald Ana Samways today takes a look at.some ‘untranslatable’ words from other languages. They include the German ‘Backpfeifengesicht’ which apparently means ‘a face that is begging to be slapped’.

Despite having been a lecturer in German literature, I’d never heard the word. But I can tell you that when I was at school in Belfast we had a shorter and equally expressive word for certain unfortunates among our classmates. The word was ‘bangable’. Some people just have bangable faces. Faces that invite you to hit them.

Now you don’t have to remonstrate with me for making this observation. I don’t applaud the instinct to assault people with bangable faces. Indeed I condemn it with every fibre in my being. I merely observe that such an instinct exists. And it’s better to acknowledge such instincts and expose them to the light of reason than to let them fester in the dark of denial.

After all, some of the world’s most violent criminals have gone under the moniker ‘Pretty Boy’. Say hello to Pretty Boy Floyd. (Don’t stare though. Pretty Boy doesn’t take well to people staring!)

This is not democracy; this borders on autocracy. Only the names of the powerbrokers change. When the leaders of the two largest parties in the country have to go cap in hand to the joker in the pack in order to govern, something is very amiss with the system. This might not be the case if the joker in the pack were motivated by altruism on behalf of the citizenry. But that really is stretching credibility.

It’s fun though. No denying Winston really is a hoot. So that’s all right then. Isn’t it?

The aphrodisiac qualities of power and fame are to a large degree unrelated to the physical attractiveness of the powerful or the famous person.

Whether your name is Trudeau or Muldoon the aphrodisiac qualities of power will apply, differing only in degree. In my career as a television interviewer I have observed this at first hand on numerous occasions.

Trouble arises when the powerful person fails to recognise the connection between their power and their attractiveness. They fall victim to the delusion of their own inherent and irresistible appeal to the opposite sex. They can neither understand nor accept rejection. Down this path lie inappropriate advances to women and rape. Think Harvey Weinstein and armies of rich and/or famous men.

And you, Brian? Well, my father was a womaniser who abandoned me and my mother and did prison time for bigamy. Sometimes it’s quite useful to have an appalling role model. Teaches you what to avoid.

Cheers!

OK, what we have now is a sale! You might call it a bargain basement sale. Or a reverse auction maybe where the price of the goods goes down with every bid. Let’s join the bidding.

‘Item 2017 on your programme, ladies and gentlemen, Running The Country. Can I get a starting bid of a zillion dollars? Gentleman with the blue tie. Thank you sir. Any retreat from a zillion dollars? Lady in the red dress. 500 million. Thank you madam. Any retreat from 500 million? Young man in the green jersey. A lifetime supply of mung beans. Thank you young man. Elderly gent with the dead cat. Five bucks. My goodness! Thank you sir. That’s going to be hard to beat. Dapper Gentleman smoking the cigarette. What’s that sir? Minus anything any of the others bid. And a partridge in a pear tree. But you’re willing to share Running The Country for the next 3 years with any of the previous bidders. Any further retreats? No? Final chance, ladies and gentlemen? Going, Going! Gone! That concludes the auction, ladies and gentlemen. If the gentleman smoking the cigarette will join me and the other bidders in a dimly lit back room, negotiations can begin.’

So I was surprised by his column this morning which is an unqualified assault on Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that she will not release Labour’s tax policy until after the 2017 election.

This morning’s column headline left little doubt of what was to come:

“HOW JACINDA’S CUNNING PLAN FELL APART”

And the subhead removed any doubt of what was to come:

“‘Let’s not do that’ becomes Labour’s motto as tax nips the party’s ankles.”

Armstrong begins:

“Like the sands through the hourglass – it has taken just four short weeks for Jacinda Ardern’s ‘campaign of our lives’ to become more akin to The Days of our Lives.

“Labour’s Wonder Woman has found herself cast in a long running soap opera – but not as a super hero.”

Read it here:

 http://nzh.tw/11922858

Well, in short, I think Armstrong is absolutely right. Given the relevance of taxation policy, directly or indirectly, to the lives of every man, woman and child in this country, it is simply outrageous to say, “Not telling! Not even a hint! You’ll just have to trust us till after the election. Long after!”

Well of course you could read their current policy. And that would be fine if the Leader of the Opposition could guarantee that it won’t change between now and the 2020 election. But she can’t/won’t do that either.

So here’s what this boils down to.

Jacinda wants you to make her Prime Minister of New Zealand this year. I’m assuming that she has some opinion in her head of our current tax system, whether it benefits or disadvantages most New Zealanders. For the answer to that question she refers us to Labour’s current tax policy which she says will not change without a mandate from New Zealanders at the next election in 2020. She’s saying, ‘Give me almost three years in office as Prime Minister before I even disclose my ideal tax regime. In the meantime here’s a taste.

Seems to me that’s a helluva lot to ask.