Thoughts during a recent trip to the supermarket

So, everything that appears in regular non-italics was said, everything in italics was thought, but was perilously close to being thought out loud. Warning: this is a post with quite possibly the most swearing in it I have ever written.
I arrived home from work tonight at around 6pm for Attila the Wife to ask me to drive to the local supermarket to get a loaf of vaguely specialty bread for her to use in the making of dinner. 
"Oh for fuck's sake, what a colossal embuggerance. I just wanted to slump on the couch and wish I was dead for a while. The supermarket? Really? You must fucking hate me."
Spend five minutes looking for my wallet, only for Attila the Wife to find it in the trouser pocket of the shorts I was wearing in the weekend. Attila then completely unable to suppress a look of smug triumph.
"Shut up. I fucking hate you." 
"Shut up. I fucking hate you."

Stomp to car. Reverse out of driveway only to have to wait for old lady in motorised shopping trolley, white knuckles clutching at her steering wheel in fear, to drive past at 5 miles an hour.
"Hurry up you stupid fucking whore!"
Now following at five miles an hour then waiting at a quiet intersection for her to decide which way she's going to turn and then for another two minutes while she waits for the car that is five hundred metres away to pass by. 
"Oh my good fucking God! How have you not been beaten to death by a queue of traffic yet! Fuck! My! Life! Where the fuck is Morgan Freeman when you need him?"
Drive up to narrow chicane and dutifully wait for on-coming van to drive through. On-coming van driven by dreadlocked hippy lady meanders up to chicane and then stops just short to let me through despite me having waited for her.
"Jesus fucking Christ almighty, what the fucking hell is wrong with you?! Have those shitlocks piled on your stupid fucking head caused your brain to overheat?! Fuck me, why aren't you in a commune somewhere in fucking Bolivia! Fuck off and die."
Drive through traffic lights and then straight through roundabout, noticing both cars in front didn't indicate when exiting.
"Am I the only fucking person in creation that obeys the fucking road rules? Bastards."

Approach supermarket, notice Christmas decorations in adjoining shop windows with smiling stock-photo families smiling inanely.
"Fuck off you bastards. I hope someone finds a pipe-bomb under the fucking tree."
Enter supermarket. Walk through fruit and veg section, scowl at other dreadlocked hippy lady.
"I hate all you hippy bastards."
Get detained near butchery counter by woman with a horde of children, all dithering idly through aisle.
"Hurry UP you bastards! Why couldn't you keep your legs together you stupid fucking trollop. Fucking hurry UP!"
Finally get clear only to nearly get cleaned out by some wanker coming out of a bisecting aisle who doesn't even apologise and then runs into another trolley rounding the aisle-end.

Ha. Not this time. Or any other time.

"Why don't you think that there might be someone coming from the other direction, cunt-chops? I hope you die in a house-fire. Arsehole."
"Arsehole."
Locate bread. Find only bread that almost meets but falls just short of Attila's expectations. It might as well be mouldy, baked by Hitler and be in Sri Lanka. Grab the least worst and turn, only to be cut off by a large, puffy, tattooed, female Bogan-thing.
"Ugh. Look what you've done to yourself. Underneath that thick layer of greasy white fat is a thin, un-tattoed person but sadly is still a fucking idiot."
Get to check-outs only for the dreadlocked hippy lady to take the only free one with her half-full shopping trolley, oblivious to the fact I have only one item.
"What's yellow and red and looks good on hippies? Fire."
Pay for my item and walk up to self-opening doors. Doors only start to open when about a foot and a half away.
"Just another fucking thing to add to the litany of inconveniences deliberately put in my way by the rest of mankind."
Start to move through middle of door, only to be obstructed by a horde of other people coming the other way who cannot think far enough ahead to look through the doorway to see if there is anyone in their path or to think about maybe making some space for them.
"What am I, fucking invisible?!"
"Let me through, I'm a doctor."

Move to car, reverse out of carpark and drive toward carpark exit. Shitbox car stops ahead of me on the other side of the driveway, lets out passenger and then within twenty metres of me, does a U-turn, forcing me to stop suddenly.
"What sort of fucking arsehole are you, you fucking arsehole! As long as you're alright you stupid fucking shitbrained ring-sausage dickhead wanker!"
Muttering in this manner went on for as long as this car was within eyesight. Finally lose sight of this vehicle and turn off to my street. Avoid four wheel drive on wrong side of road driven by contractor who has a phone up to his ear.
"Oh my, aren't we important, you selfish bastard!"
Pull into driveway. Sit dejected and scowling, overcome because of the recognition that as I get older, there will be more and more that the world offers me that will confuse, irritate and outrage me. Car door opened by Attila who asks if a cuddle would make me feel better.
No. I need a gallon of rum and a taser for when I'm next out in public. That'll make me feel better.

Incidentally, the bread wasn't right either.

Just a quick one before putting up the new site...

Okay, I admit it: I've been a bit of an idle bastard and haven't moved particularly fast on transferring everything over to the new site. Trust me though, it is in the pipeline. But just as a sweetener for your continued support, here's a couple of letters I've written to Members of Parliament recently.
Love from Jono the BArSTewARD

Changes are afoot...

Ah there you are. Pull up a wingback and pour yourself a snifter of something expensive. Settled? Good.

Right, the fact of the matter is that there's a distinct smell of change in the air whether I win, lose or draw in the election ending next weekend. As a consequence there will be quite a bit of work done on giving this blog a bit of a shake up. The biggest change is that it will be moving to a new website, but not to worry, I'll provide links and clever things that take you directly there and you don't have to strain yourself by making any extra clicks to get there. 
Another thing you don't have to worry about is that the current mixture of bile, misanthropy and ranting will not change. The headings will not change either: I will synopsise*, I will pontificate on beer and things will continue to get fucked as they have since time immemorial (i.e. since March this year).

But there will be new things. Shiny things. Things you can buy that will give you validation in your life. You can tell me I'm selling out if you like, but if you got paid in lumps of coal like I do, you'd be trying to augment your income as well, believe me. Besides, Google Adsense doesn't want a bar of this blog because of all the fucking swearing.
No, the new version of the blog will be 27.8% better and 41.7% brighter. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, massage my ego and tell me so.
See you there.

Jono the BArSTewARD

*It's a neologism, run with it.

Because some bastard has to change the world...

I'm flattered to have regular readers of this blog and I must apologise for the lack of action. Just because I haven't posted for more than a month, it doesn't mean that I haven't been busy. I have accumulated a new volume of bile and cynicism in this time because I have put my hand up, paid my deposit and I'm running for office in local government.

Actually, it's rather fun. For an exercise in vanity there aren't many dodges quite like it. You get your name put on all sorts of paraphernalia and suddenly in your pursuit to become one of the great and the good you become important to community groups, journalists and other assorted ratbags. But for all that fun there are the inevitable chains that drag. I get loads of emails and they are of two kinds. The first starts with 'Dear Mr Bastard, As a council candidate we realise that your time is precious. Rather than coming to talk to our group about what half-baked idiocy you stand for, please answer these six questions with answers of no more than 200 words by X O'clock tomorrow. Yours etc...' I dread these emails because that's 1,200 words or around an hour and a half of writing and you do have to use the maximum allowance because the questions aren't easy ones like 'What is the name of your cat?' It's like being at university all over again only the deadlines are much tighter.

"For the cheap price of one arm and one leg we'll run you
an ad that can be seen by our wide circulation if they all have
a microscope and haven't voted for someone else already."

The other kind of email are very kind invitations by advertisers to spend your campaign funds with them. This is all well and good if you have campaign funds to spend, after all, candidates in my particular contest are allowed to spend up to $80,000. Believe it or not, some will spend the full allowance, but I won't be mainly because this is more than twenty five times my budget and once you take out printing costs, petrol and other assorted niceties such as vouchers for the volunteers who are helping pollute the letterboxes in my ward, I have just enough left for... actually, there's nothing left. So the advertising emails, while tempting, go unanswered especially when the cost of advertising is either expensive or horrifically expensive. But then, this is democracy for you. The cap was brought in to prevent candidates effectively buying their way in, but with the limit so high this problem persists unmitigated.
If you'd like to help by foolishly throwing a bit of cash my way, click here.

So for all this effort and outlay, what have I seen?
Well: Traditionally local elections get an extremely poor turnout by voters so candidates really have to work their freckles off to get their messages across. This particular election is important for my city as we rebuild and there is a considerable amount of money to be spent (carefully). What is bewildering is that the public really don't care. They don't care that the people they are electing administer an annual budget of $2.2b and that the incumbents that they elected to do this in my ward are a housewife and a former male stripper. People don't want to see leaflets in their mailboxes, billboards around town and have flyers given to them in the street because they see the whole election as a colossal annoyance. These are the people who have also been unified in their outrage at the saga surrounding the performance, pay and exit of the Chief Executive of the council; they are also uniformly irritated by the patchwork nature of the repairs to the streets of Christchurch; the are uniformly angry that the central government seems to be calling the shots in our city. Will they vote? I hope so. They have had their ballot papers mailed out to them, all they have to do is tick a few boxes and put it back in the post... a task beyond the ability or bother of many, believe me.

Why did I bother to put my hand up? Because some bastard had to and I genuinely believe that I have something to contribute to the council table: me with my shiny new LLB, my background in field engineering, my elegant suit and my finely tuned bullshit detector. 
The results are in on October 14.
Watch this space.

How to survive the apocalypse from the comfort of your own kitchen

Kyle Chapman wants to be mayor. Yeah, good
luck with that.

Every time there is an election, be it for local or central government, Kyle Chapman makes a $200 donation to the Electoral Commission. Strictly speaking this is a deposit that designed to weed out frivolous candidacy that the candidate will get back if they receive 25% of the votes of the eventual winner. Kyle Chapman is a good example that this doesn't necessarily work, but the Electoral Commission has his money and doesn't care. This year Kyle has decided to throw his hat in the ring for the Christchurch mayoralty and for a seat on the council in the Hagley-Ferrymead ward bringing to mind such phrases as 'pissing in the wind', 'a snowball's chance' 'about as likely as Elvis landing a UFO on top of the Loch Ness Monster's forehead' because Kyle, bless him, is a knob. The studious of you will have read his wikipedia page that states that he is the leader of the Right Wing Resistance and is a survivalist intent on creating a 'European land base'. Let's just think about that for a minute... survivalist... European land base. Kyle thinks that we are still one step away from oblivion and he and the other survivalists will be all that is left in a world that closely resembles Mad Max. If cockroaches and Kyle Chapman are all that are left, then I'll be glad to be dead. 

But then, I am going to survive the apocalypse. You see, I learned how to survive a nuclear, biological or chemical attack when I was in the Army. I also know how to purify water, build shelter, navigate through a minefield without being blown into purple mist and I learned to handle weaponry should Kyle and his mates come knocking. However, the real reason I am going to survive the apocalypse is because I can live off the land and make stuff in the kitchen. Well any fool can make stuff in the kitchen, even if it's toast you say. What happens when the bread runs out? I can bake more. Pasta? I can make that from scratch too. Other provisions I can turn my hand to and make from raw ingredients are sausages, beer, marmalade, pickled onions, chutney, fruit leather, in fact I am probably only limited by my imagination and the tools I have in my kitchen. My pantry is replete and when I open the door I smile. I get enormous satisfaction from making and consuming my own food, however this stops short of posting photographs of said food on facebook, although I have to confess to once taking a photo of some sausages I had braided simply because I was proud of myself and wanted the world to know how clever I was. 
A self-braided sausage is a beautiful thing. 
You ought to try it.

George and Michael deep in discussion about submitting a
name change by deed poll.
I suppose I could have called them Kyle and Chapman.

Further to my kitchen-based pottering, my flash new garden has more fruit trees than I could ever possibly handle once they are in fruit. Purely for my own edification, here is a shortlist: three apple trees, a pear, two limes, three lemons, three large feijoas, a nectarine, a peach, a quince, seven olives, a grapevine, a passionfruit vine, a papaya, three blackcurrants, boysenberry canes, two kiwifruit vines, a mandarin, a large strawberry bed, a cranberry and a cherry tree. What I don't make into cider will become jellies, jams, more marmalade and unwanted gifts for those unfortunate enough to know me.
It just so happens that there are extensive vegetable beds and we have a couple of new inmates in the form of hens named George and Michael. More birds will be arriving named Elton and John, Lionel and Ritchie (Yes I know that hens are female and those are all male names. We thought it would be funny and the hens have not framed a convincing argument illustrating their opposition to their monikers). It seems that Atilla the Wife and I didn't buy a house, we've inadvertently bought a very small farm (738m²) that happens to have a house on it. So come a nuclear armageddon and the resultant shriveling of the food supply, we'll be fine thank you very much and Kyle and his survivalists in North Canterbury can eat shit and die.

LLB: a study in futility or a passport to greatness?

Just because you have a law degree, it doesn't
make you Rumpole. God, I wish it did.

This post is brought to you by the letter L and the number four and a half. I was tempted to muse on the L that I have just been working on, which is Lime and Grapefruit Marmalade, but this is not the sole source of my joy this weekend. You see, I found out on Friday that after four and a half years of dutifully turning up to lectures, only half listening to them and then panicking when it came to exam time, I have now completed my law degree. I have finished and bring on the lawyer jokes, because until I pass the bar exam I cannot be called a lawyer and I still have my soul in my possession. A law degree is a funny thing because it doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't do without one except sit the bar exam, and even then, you still have the additional proviso that in New Zealand you have to have passed the legal ethics paper. So if you aren't contemplating becoming a lawyer in New Zealand, you may have letters LLB after your name, but it entitles you to bugger-all.
Those undergoing the arduous slog of their law degree can take some comfort in the fact that once they have been admitted to the ranks of LLB holders, they are entitled to describe themselves as 'esquire' rather than 'mister'. You can do this, but no-one does. Why? Because you'd have to be either Bill.S Preston and about to undergo a big adventure or a bogus journey, or you'd have to be a massive, massive tool.
The only other thing holding an LLB allows you to do is to fold it into a $45,000 paper dart and see how far it flies.

So, unless you become a practicing lawyer, your shiny new LLB is of no use whatsoever, so what does a law degree actually teach you? Does it teach you what the law is? Behave. The law is viciously convoluted: many brilliant minds have been working for thousands of years and creating millions of laws by legislation, precedent and action that if Methuselah himself had started trying to describe it as a fresh faced young student, he wouldn't have finished in his 900th year. I think it politic to adapt PG Wodehouse' description of futility for this one. You've as much chance of describing what the law is than a one armed blind man has of getting half a pound of melted butter into a wild-cat's left ear with a red hot needle. It just can't be done. So, does a law degree give you a basic handle on what the law is in a specific area? Well, yes and no. I have a friend who happens to be a partner at a Christchurch law firm and he said that everything he learned at law school twelve years ago is now completely and hopelessly out of date.
So what the bloody hell have I been doing for the last four and a half years that was so arduous except for the cryptic crossword?
Logic, old thing. Logic.

Shotguns at the ready... pull!

My degree announces to the world that I have reached a standard in expressing logical thought. I can approach an issue from several angles, break it down into its elements and then solve each element until an overall solution manifests itself. Then I can walk away and hopefully email a bill to someone. You know what else four and a half years at university has taught me?
Not to do it again.
It's also taught me to be slightly more dangerous in a pub quiz, however, I hope that my new found qualification can be used properly in arenas other than answering trivia questions in a pub, although that's a pretty good start.

You shag one goat...

Anonymous.

As a group it is the name of a crowd of computer hackers with a social conscience that also carry the neologism ‘hacktivists’. They’ve hit the headlines in New Zealand recently having hacked into several National Party websites in protest at the controversial GCSB Bill, but that isn’t what this post is about. It isn’t the action of this group that is my focus, rather the anonymity that the internet has afforded them. As a tool, the internet has massive potential for the sharing of ideas and information. It has given many an avenue of self-expression hitherto unknown in human history and like many new tools, it is prone to abuse by… well, tools.

The internet doesn’t ask many questions about identity. When creating an internet persona, it won’t ask you for proof of ID such as a passport, drivers licence or copy of a bill with your address on it such as you’d have to provide to satisfy the bank that you’re not really Fred West when you apply for a loan. Anyone with access to a computer can create a facebook account or email address with any name on it they like. For a start this has enabled people to realise the potential silliness of creating pages for their animals: I recently discovered a Lady-Penelope von Knockwurst, which is a miniature dachshund and I once created one for a small chicken I found in my driveway named Rubina. For all the capacity of the creation of levity, there is also a sinister side to internet anonymity, specifically anonymous trolling. For the uninitiated, trolling is the activity of deliberately riling someone on the internet for the troll’s own entertainment, which they can do behind pseudonyms or even without naming details. The notion of electronic bullying seems like a harmless enough idea – after all, sticks and stones, it isn’t face to face and no-one is physically hurt by it. Well, it isn’t that simple. True, at it's most harmless trolls can mock quite deserving targets, such as The Pakeha Party, but at its worst trolling can be reckless and dangerous and have the most serious of consequences.

This is Amanda Todd who committed suicide because of
constant bullying arising from the actions of a troll who
published photos of her flashing her breasts at a camera.
She was 15. There are myriad of other high profile
examples and thousands that will go unreported.

Why can’t the victims just turn off their computers and it will just go away? There are a number of compelling reasons why it is just as serious as face to face bullying. Let’s take for an example a teenager today. At no time in their life has there not been an internet. They have been encouraged to get online and do things including the creation of their on-line persona in the form of their pages on social media sites. It is as much a part of them as the way they are perceived face to face. Their emotions are vested in the impression their facebook and twitter accounts creates. When someone mounts an attack on their facebook profile, be under no illusion that it is a personal attack. Another compelling argument is that once something is on the internet, it is next to impossible for it to be removed. There have been documented cases where teenagers have been victims of personal information or compromising images of themselves being published online for anyone in the world to access. Copying this information and these images is as easy as ‘right-click and save image as’. I just wrote that removing information from the internet is next to impossible, I think I actually mean it is impossible and bullies and the targets of this bullying know this. And then there’s the point that teenagers will not turn off the computer and walk away. The internet is such a necessary tool these days that information put on the internet will follow them forever such as when they apply for jobs and their prospective employer Googles them or when their family go to look them up. It cannot be underestimated the potential harm involved in cyber-bullying. Some cases have resulted in self-harm and even suicide by the victim. It is that serious.

Artists impression of poor old Spiros.

Who are the bullies? That’s a bloody good question. You see, with the freedom of anonymity comes a lack of accountability for a person’s actions. The troll can insult, defame and gloat with impunity and there is virtually no way for the victim to find out the true identity of their tormentor. The only tag a troll leaves is their IP address, a series of numbers that identifies only the computer it comes from. Under the rules of evidence, knowing the IP address wouldn't be enough to secure a conviction as it would have to be proven who was using the computer at the time. Let’s also have a quick look at what recourse a victim has: Let’s say for example that a troll creates a Facebook page suggesting the victim, who we’ll call Spiros, once shagged a goat. The page 'Spiros is a Goat-Shagger' goes up on Facebook and Spiros finds out about it. Spiros can request the originator of the page to take it down, but what would be the odds? Spiros can complain to Facebook, but if the page does not fall outside Facebook’s terms of use, then they are not obliged to remove it. What can Spiros do next?  From there the only thing Spiros can do is lodge a defamation action through the courts which could take as long as two years to be heard and cost Spiros tens of thousands in legal fees. In all this time, poor old Spiros is being maligned as a goat shagger and there is nothing he can do until the government passes draft legislation recommended by the Law Commission.

Incidentally, I searched to see whether spirosthegoatshagger.com existed and so far it doesn’t (yet).

... and we fuck goats.

So anonymity is a wide-ranging cloak that is being used for all sorts of nefarious activities on the internet. My assertion is that anonymity is the cloak of a coward. If a person has a view, they should have the stones to front up and voice their opinion. I think it carries a greater measure of credibility for someone to use their name and be accountable for their actions. Pouring a metaphorical bucket of shit over someone on the internet while hiding behind the name anonymous is… well, you’d be a bit of a goat-shagger wouldn’t you?

Love letter to Wellington 2

We know a thing or two about earthquakes in Christchurch, in fact I would think that we've hosted some of the best earthquakes in New Zealand. I jest of course in my flippancy because in reality they are insidious fuckers that creep up on you without warning. When an earthquake hits you never know whether it is the beginning of something bigger or if it is a mere wobble that serves only to make the day more interesting. When it is something bigger the moment is bad enough. I'll just elaborate for the uninitiated when I say that everything moves: everything rocks, jumps, jolts and rolls. It is the most colossal and unholy noise. In an instant you don't know if you're going to be collected and battered by something falling on you, something that may kill you and the worst thing is that you are completely helpless and at the total mercy of a force that is arbitrary and knows no reason.

Victoria University Law Library

And then you've made it out the other side of the earthquake. There is an eerie calm but for the cacophony of alarms and sirens going off. And then you wonder how your family have got on. What's happened to your friends? Lesser concerns crop up: Is your home alright? What about your stuff? And then when the electricity is off and your water suddenly won't run and you can't get through on any phone to anyone, you realise how alone in the world you are and worst of all, how vulnerable you are. Because you didn't expect to have your basic supplies cut off, you haven't got an emergency supply of water, tinned food, gas for the barbecue, petrol for the car...
Every subsequent shake, wobble and jolt makes you immediately suspect whether this is the one that will kill you and destroy everything you love.

Be under no illusions, earthquakes are frightening no matter how big and tough you think you are.
Christchurch proved this with a 6.3 magnitude quake and 185 people died. This is also why I feel absolutely no sense of spite or malice toward those who experienced the 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Wellington and Marlborough. You've just been frightened out of your wits with one of the most sudden and nastiest shocks a human can experience and I offer nothing but solidarity. It might be a school-night but I cannot recommend having a few nerve-settling glasses of wine or beers enough. Sleep will be hard enough to come by tonight.
Go well.

Why should I vote for you? Hmm? Well I won't then.

About twenty five years ago a movie came out named Brewster's Millions that was based on a 1902 novel by George Barr McCutcheon. The hero, played by Richard Pryor, has to spend $30m in 30 days in order to inherit a $300m fortune. This condition is imposed by the miserly testator in a similar vein to a parent forcing a child who is caught smoking to smoke a whole pack as a means of deterrent for future smoking. Part of the plot is that the title character spends most of the money by entering the New York mayoral election under the ticket Vote None of the Above. It is a colossal waste of money and on his way to frittering away the money he succeeds in convincing the electorate that the standing candidates aren't worthy of their votes. This has made me start thinking recently...

Taito Phillip Field: expelled from the Labour Party and
jailed for corruption. Voted in by the good people of
Mangere. Would you buy a used car off this man?

In the wake of the Aaron Gilmore, Brendan Horan and David Garrett fiascos, media commentators have responded by pointing out that there is a paucity of ideal candidates on the lower ends of the party lists. Cynics would also mention that there seems to be a paucity of suitable candidates at the upper reaches of the lists as well. I move on by saying that we have an incumbent government that has passed, and is considering passing legislation that even its own voters aren't quite sure that they like. How can the current government ride roughshod over the opinions of detractors of the GCSB Bill when they include safeguarding interest groups such as the Law Society? The opposition is not strong enough to defeat the bill and there are significant questions surrounding the efficacy of the opposition in everyday parliament at all. We are being shown that accountable government needs strong opposition to keep it honest, but the harsh glare of the opposition spotlight seems to be falling on the leadership of the Green Party which is the third largest party in parliament, rather than on the leadership of Labour, the second largest. The question has to be asked, are Labour voters getting what they wanted from their leadership? Are National voters happy with the current crop of policies? How about the good voters of the Maori Party? Are they happy that their team has had their own internal squabbles and performed so poorly in the recent Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election? Are ACT voters happy that their leader actually wants to be a National MP again? Are Green voters... actually, I would imagine Green voters would be fairly happy with the way things are going for their party but I won't pose a question for every party, mainly because I cannot cover every single category of woe that betides, every renegade MP, every gaffe and each faceplam.

Frequently, the only option for voters who are not happy with their usual preferred party is to vote for someone else or cast a protest vote for some lunatic who is standing for a seat dressed as a carrot. 
My question is why vote at all?

A recent graphic from the New Yorker depicting impressions
from Republican voters on their party. It could easily apply
to many political parties here in New Zealand.

The conventional position of voting for someone else aligns the voter with a fresh set of policies that they may not agree with and so this option could be considered to be less than ideal. By willingly not casting a vote because the usual preferred candidate or party isn't good enough or because their policies aren't ideal an elector is making a statement: I thought about voting for you, but you're no better than everyone else. So what affect will this have? Okay, so X candidate loses one vote, but doesn't lose that vote to Y candidate. Their opponent won't gain that vote and so still may not get in, but their majority is reduced, sending a message that they need to lift their game. If there is one thing an MP pays attention to it is what their electorate majority is. This also applies to the party vote. A non-vote actually reduces a party's percentage of the electoral vote directly affecting its allocated proportion in parliament. The party vote is all about numbers and parties need votes, voter apathy is something the parties abhor. But this isn't voter apathy. This is active voter dissatisfaction. 

Brendan Horan: You may have voted
for NZ First and now it doesn't want
him. He's still in parliament.
Is your confidence in NZ First eroded?

There are a couple of adages that bandied around at election time: if you don't vote, don't complain; and don't vote, it only encourages the bastards. The first quotation can be successfully argued against - I didn't vote because I am complaining. I felt in my opinion that my position wasn't adequately represented and voting for someone else is sheer electoral recklessness. When I feel my vote is deserved by someone, I'll use it. The don't vote and don't complain adage only applies to those who are apathetic and foolishly waste their right to vote. Voting None of the Above is willful and considered and therefore not apathetic. Let's look at the second adage: don't vote, it only encourages the bastards. Well yes, it does but the active non-vote is a statement to encourage the bastards to be better MPs. MPs want your vote, they need your vote and in order to get that vote they have to be good performers, capable, intelligent, diplomatic and productive. Voters for ACT, NZ First and National should be unhappy that their party vote allowed David Garrett, Brendan Horan, Bob Clarkson, Richard Prosser and Aaron Gilmore into parliament. It's a veritable rogues gallery of stupid, useless bastards. The party voters have been badly let down by these clowns, so why not send a statement and say, I refuse to vote for you unless you provide list candidates who deserve voting for, not some shitkicker who falsely applies for a passport in the name of a dead baby; someone who is accused of hoovering dry his elderly mother's bank account; someone who repeatedly made coarse, sexist and racist jibes in parliament and in public; someone who... you get my point. Electors may also feel that other figures in politics have let them down such as the party leaders for varying reasons. 

Personally, I feel there are only a handful of MPs that are actually deserving of my vote across the whole political spectrum. As for a party vote, I am a bit bewildered as to who really deserves it and so I am uncommitted at present although I may be swayed. Vote None of the Above provides a third way beyond vote for X or vote for X's opponent Y. As a proponent of this movement I have to say it exists a little half-halfheartedly because it doesn't seek to completely discourage people from voting. What it does seek to do is to encourage people to use their votes a little more critically than just blindly following a party or candidate. People should step back and actually ask "Why should I vote for you, you useless bastard?". We want MPs who aren't going to embarrass themselves, their party and our parliament. We want MPs who will work hard, do what they say they are going to do and show some integrity. I would like to see more MPs step back from the party line and say "I'm a member of this party, but I don't actually agree with this. I won't vote for it."*

The thing about this movement is that it does not fall under any particular part of the left-right spectrum. From Mana through to ACT, we need to cast scrutiny over our representatives and not be so hasty to put them in a position of power. We only get one chance every three years to change things and we need to take our votes a little more seriously. I think we need to adapt our adages: don't vote and complain and don't vote to encourage the bastards. As a political force, Vote None of the Above will be a success if it takes a chunk out of voter turnout and can actively engage politicians to say why. Obviously because of the cross-spectrum nature of this movement, that interaction needs to take place on a individual basis, so what should you, the voter, do?
Email, write, ring or collar the candidates in person. Ask them, why should I vote for you? If you don't get a satisfactory answer, tell them why. If you get no answer at all, they weren't prepared to work for your vote anyway. This is an interesting form of electoral engagement that puts the onus of performance back on MPs and make them work a little bit harder to satisfy the public.
It is also going to be fun to watch.

*Votes in parliament are an interesting affair. Most votes on bills follow party lines but there is the occasional conscience vote. I would prefer to see all votes be conscience votes because it means that the MP actually has a position and stands for something rather than following the position of the Prime Minister. 
I am not likely to see this changed in my lifetime.

A fap in a teacup. Think I mean a flap? No, I mean fap...

There's nothing more fascinating than watching a train-wreck in action and I say this with due apologies to the people of Lac Megantic who suffered such a literal thing in the last week. I mean the metaphorical train-wreck that is the establishment of the Facebook group The Pakeha Party, who have pledged to get 500 paying members and become an actual functioning political party. Most reports have cited that the page already has X number of likes, but by the time the report is published that figure is obsolete due to the astronomical response to people who either approve of its foundation or who like the page merely to get continuous updates on this fiasco.

Pakeha Party co-founder David Ruck.
Nice eyebrow piercing Dave.

The founders of the page did so with a simple ethos: any additional benefits the Maori ask for exclusively for Maori - we ask the for the same things for Pakeha. This is rather simplistic and as their popularity grew and the party gained media attention it was highlighted as being a rather unrealistic basis to form a party. One of the founders, Ashley Sargeant, was interviewed on Radio Live by Duncan Garner who asked if they were opposed to the Treaty of Waitangi and treaty settlements. Our interviewee responded by saying he wasn't opposed in principle. Garner pounced, because any additional benefits Maori gain are based upon redress and the the principles of the Treaty, the Pakeha Party doesn't really stand for anything. A considerable amount of the benefits the Pakeha Party allude to directly arise out of the Treaty settlement process. Ngai Tahu are an example of a tribe that was settled perhaps 5-10% of what their claim would otherwise be worth (as a tribe, their iwi held around 90% of the land mass of the South Island). With that settlement the tribe invested in commercial property and a number of other commercial ventures. With careful management, this portfolio has achieved enviable success with profits used to extend the tribe's holdings as well as being used for social benefits for tribe members across a broad range of areas including scholarships for higher education. Ngai Tahu are an example of good management of their assets being used for the benefit of their people. There are of course shining examples of bad management of settlements meaning that certain tribes receive less individual benefit and are more reliant on social services that are available to all. A number of the causes of social issues arising among Maori are unique to Maori and it would be remiss of the government not tailor its efforts to deal with them based upon ethnicity. Even if it were likely that the Pakeha Party group could gain the same benefits as Maori, they certainly wouldn't want to inherit all the social ills that Maori face including lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence and incarceration rates.
Duncan Garner therefore could legitimately question whether the Pakeha Party stood for anything at all.

And then there is the Pakeha Party's catch-cry that it is not a racist party (no doubt pronounced ray-shist, by  the page's adherents). It does not stand for ethnic divisiveness, rather wants to highlight inequality in the treatment of between Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand. Well, the group is struggling with the paradoxical nature of that statement because by highlighting the division and poorly enunciating its rather clouded intentions, it has immediately attracted consideration that it is a group motivated by bigotry rather than any more laudable intention. It is a page of largely incoherent ranting and poorly informed and poorly spelled boorish diatribes. It claims not to be divisive, but there is as much traffic on the page decrying the concept of the Pakeha Party by a torrent of Maori and non-Maori. 
But there is a Mana Party and a Maori Party, the page's authors argue. Why should there not be Pakeha Party? In the case of the Mana Party, it is not exclusively a party for Maori. It just so happens that it didn't capture the imagination of non-Maori, probably because Hone Harawira can't do up his fucking tie properly. As for the foundation of the Maori Party, the answer is a bit more complex. The party exists to act as a representative of a very different social society within a Westminster government. Maori society has key differences in an array of areas, for example land ownership - the European model holds that the underlying title of all land is held by the Crown but can be purchased and sold. Maori never really own land, they are stewards for it. A principle called kaitiakitanga unless I'm much mistaken. The Maori Party was founded to be a conduit between the two systems as well as providing representation, although that representation has been severely eroded due to the machinations of party politics. Why should there be a Pakeha Party when the system of government is based upon a European model, conducted in English and with considerable ethnic representation of European New Zealanders across most parties? It is comically naive to suggest that Pakeha is under-represented in parliament.

The Pakeha Party page thinks 'this guy is Epic! lol'

So if the Pakeha Party is on course to become a political party I think it nicely underlines my opinion in this post. Stupid people should be denied the vote because they just can't use it properly. If the number of likes this page has as of this morning were converted into votes, it would gain around 2.5% of the electoral vote. The threshold for gaining seats in parliament is currently 5% and there is every chance that the Pakeha Party could eventually capitalise on the stupidity of it's members and get into parliament, having a say in how our country is run. Were the Pakeha Party to follow through on its threat to incorporate, this could be quite a worrying thing especially in an election where a minor party holds the balance of power. Will it get that far? As I mentioned earlier, fifty thousand Facebook likes comprise people who genuinely believe that their interests will be best represented by the Pakeha Party but may also consist of people who are content watching this lunacy unfold. I haven't liked the page, but I'm in this camp.

There now follows a selection of quotations and comments from the Pakeha Party Facebook page. Then we'll hold a moment of silence for the death of written English:

Bill Ruffwater

have to say thank you,the war that has been brewing is now closer,cant wait to go to battle with my maori brothers

And this isn't divisive?

Matt Bowden

hell yeah love this page!!! for all out there calling this "racist" , pull finger. WE ARE pakeha and we shall REPRESENT ourselves as pakeha no questions asked, why should we not? while the politics of our countries past are very important in knowing WHERE we came from we dont have to take on our ancestors wars. You or I or any other kiwi living today didnt fight in 1845-1872 did ya? just as we didnt ask to be born here (even though i woulda picked here anyways if i could) we still share this country and live together. if this is racist then having a "maori" party is too. dont hate us just koz we white :)

I don't hate you because you are white. I hate you because of your tiny mind and your appalling spelling and grammar.

Emma Burns

How about a name like One People or One Nation?

Anyone remember the Australian One Nation party led by Pauline Hansen?

Pene Rakau

‎#TE Wā Patai!!! ZZZZZZZ Wh@'z The Connectionzzz Between "Simon POWER" "ASSET SALEZ" "TANGATA WENUA" @ "WEZTPAC???" # ^^200 MILLION DOLLAR CARZ???? ZZZZZ####

No, I have no idea what this one says either, but I'm fairly certain they don't support the Pakeha Party.

Natasha Blackbourn

I'm all for this, but could we change the name to The White Party or something like that??!! I hate the word Pakeha, it's like they own us.

There's a grand idea. Call it the White Party instead. I'll go and get the Klan hoods.

Jack Lean

yes a very good party, oh it is very ,udy cold, Here to the Pakeha Party

What? Oh never mind.