Rodney Hide, leader of ACT,  the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, has apologised for bilking the very people his party purports to represent – taxpayers.

Photo: Mark Mitchell

Hone Harawira has reportedly sent an email to the Maori Party apologising ‘unreservedly’ for any harm he had done to it in his ‘choice of words’ to  former Waitangi Tribunal director Buddy Mikaere. The ‘choice of words’ included ‘white man bullshit’  and ‘white motherfuckers’.

I was reminded by these events of my Northern Irish Protestant mother’s uncharitable interpretation of confession in the Roman Catholic church - that you could sin on Monday, confess on Tuesday, commit the same sin on Wednesday and so ad infinitum.

Confession of that sort would be worthless since it would not be motivated by genuine remorse or real intention to change one’s ways, but would  simply be a device to get oneself off the hook.  

Hide and Harawira’s ‘apologies’ strike me as equally worthless. Read the rest of this entry »

Herald on Sunday

Dear Sir Douglas

In more than 40 years observing New Zealand politics there have been few Ministers of the Crown I could say I truly admired, and fewer still in the National Party. You were one of those very few.

Your comments, reported in this morning’s Herald, on the international travel subsidy granted in perpetuity to retired long-term members of parliament, caused me for the first time to question my assessment. They were, in a word, shameless. Read the rest of this entry »