Well we were spared the icy Amy Adams, and the feisty Paula Bennett remains as Deputy Leader of the National Party. So there is some good news for those of us who believe that it’s at least preferable that our leaders present a tolerably pleasing impression to the rest of the world.

I’m on shaky ground here, I know. New Zealanders have the admirable quality of placing greater weight on substance than appearance or mellifluous voices in choosing their political leaders. Think Savage, Kirk, Rowling, Key, Clark… But their tolerance for idiosyncrasy is not without limit. Bob Jones effectively put an end to Rowling’s career by dubbing him ‘the mouse’ on account of his very light voice.

I have reason to remember this particularly well. In a previous incarnation I hosted a late night TV show called Edwards On Saturday. We had Bill and Glen Rowling on one night as the main guests. Glen played the piano and Bill talked to me. The programme was broadcast live.

About half way through, as I was interviewing Bill, there was a minor commotion. Bob Jones walked in through the studio door accompanied by a human-sized mouse on a leash, squeaking. Inside the mouse costume was broadcaster Jim Healey. Bob had told security that he and Healey (sans mouse costume) were late guests on the programme and been allowed in.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this guest appearance of ‘Mouse Rowling’ was a factor in ending a very decent politician’s career.

You may not like it but, in politics, image really matters.

I got to know Pat well when we were both teaching in the journalism course at AUT. Like me, Pat hated meetings and did his very best to disrupt them with humorous asides. Usually with considerable success. My favourite example is of a debate on the future of semiotics in the curriculum. Pat’s contribution was to the effect that they should be sent back to wherever they’d come from. I wholeheartedly agreed. But behind the humour there was a highly principled journalist and an honest man, devoted to his calling and the truth. His role in the Arthur Allan Thomas case is itself testament to that. I am privileged to have known you, Pat. I doubt you will be resting in peace – far too much unfinished business: truths to be told, wrongs to be righted. Cheers mate!

We went to the Banksy exhibition. I really like the political commentary in his work, and I wanted to see some of it en masse. Mainly prints, often duplicated several times in different colors. A couple of large works. Good information on the walls and a very good short doco. Not a bad small exhibition.

BUT – the entry price was $38 for everyone over 10. I don’t think I’ve ever paid that for a small exhibition, even in Europe. No concessions for students, seniors, school children.

I may be able to afford it, but what about students, particularly art students? See some Banksy, don’t eat for a couple of days…

Up the road at the Art Gallery you can see the Corsini exhibition for $19 – or $15 for students and seniors. Kids under 12 free.

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?