...that I'll be there.

Unless they read my blog. But I'm pretty sure there are not too many Belgians who read the blog.

So when I get to Bruxelles I think I'll order sprouts.

Anyway, while I'm away the blog will be updated here.

It's also clickable in the sidebar: Not at home

*Max Headroom, wasn't it? "That's the trouble with the Belgians. They have no way of knowing."

Tooling about on a work project I came across some research showing more than half the New Zealand population moves in any five year period.

So I tried to remember the last time I stayed in the same house for five years. It was...1978-83.

I should be careful how far I research stuff though. I went so far into that topic, I ended up here.

Would you pull the rope if you were this guy here?

(That last one is a movie file. You probably need broadband to see it. But it's worth it).

(Via B3ta).

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 65% The Flash 60% Superman 60% Green Lantern 55% Iron Man 50% Hulk 50% Supergirl 40% Batman 35% Catwoman 35% Wonder Woman 30% Robin 17%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Paris cops have shot and killed someone after PSG football club fans nutted off.

Parc des Princes is just a short bus ride down the road from us. PSG is our team. A few weeks ago I took Maria to a night game there. There were armed riot police all over the show; plainly for a reason.

* In possibly related news - We got a complete PSG outfit for Maria to wear: Shorts, socks, shirt and a fantastic hoody sweat shirt. Now she won't wear any of it because a boy told her only boys wear that stuff.

In Rwanda, France is playing on the side of the angels. No one gives Rwanda much attention. You can't care about everything. The butchery there and in Burundi was the single most despicable act of genocide in recent history and there has been some pretty hot competition for the title.

When there are monsters around, you can (a) ignore them and let them get away with; (b) invade; (c) organise international action to hold murderous thugs to account for crimes against humanity anywhere in the civilised world.

The last option is the only good one.

Ce petit couchon va la marche
Ce petit couchon reste a maison
Ce petit couchon manger rosbif
Ce petit couchon manger rien
Et....ce petit couchon dit 'wee wee wee' toute la voie à la maison.

***Apologies for the roughness of my grammar. She does it too fast for me to be sure, and also I'm ignorant.

Not only is this a lie, it is a disgusting piece of divisiveness.


I will never understand how anyone can aspire to lead a nation by setting one group against another.

(These billboards are a work of communications genius. It's the substantive ideas behind this one I can't stand.)

While reading through the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 I couldn't help wondering if this is still the Code of Practice observed at the BBC and National Radio.

Good thing too. Who, after all, could demur from this clause:

2. Scenes of Passion
  a. They should not be introduced when not essential to the plot.
  b. Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown.

Or:

Dancing in general is recognized as an art and as a beautiful form of expressing human emotions. But dances which suggest or represent sexual actions, whether performed solo or with two or more; dances intended to excite the emotional reaction of an audience; dances with movement of the breasts, excessive body movements while the feet are stationary, violate decency and are wrong.

In fact, looking down that list, it's hard to think of a prime time show that wouldn't violate every clause.

On reflection, how would life not be improved by violating every clause from No. 2 on down?

So there I was idly browsing Amazon for kids' Xmas presents and right there on the front page I came across this:



What are they doing selling that to kids?

Filthy buggers.

The advocates for the Iraq invasion are recanting in all directions.

I've been reading Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial, cataloguing the unbelievable incompetence of the invasion.

Elementary questions about weapons of mass destruction and post-invasion administration weren't asked before the invasion. It just beggars belief - not even asked!

I mean, wouldn't you expect the President would have a meeting at some point where he said, 'where are the first chemical weapons attacks going to come from? What will happen to our guys when the attacks come? How will we deal with that?' If he had just asked that, he would have found out no one really knew because there wasn't any real evidence there were any chem weapons. And wouldn't he have said 'who is going to run this place after the fighting? What will they need? How will the government work? What will the people do? How do we know that?' Cos if he had asked any of that, the emptiness would have been exposed. It's understandable that superiors in the chain of command bullied seniors to suppress doubts or tailor their advice - that's how large organisations always work. But real leaders think through their vision for what will happen and search through their organisation to see how it's all going to work. Direction comes from comprehension. It just didn't happen. I can think of a few reasons why, but I'm still staggered.

The incompetence of the post-invasion US regime is breath-taking. Paul Bremer has to have been one of the greatest disasters in US history. Tommy Franks was not competent to run a candy bar. Just a loud-mouthed oaf. Abizaid is a weak, over-promoted fool.

But the interesting, troubling problem is that in all the told-you-so commentary going round, no one has an adequate answer to 'what happens next'? That is, except for the people who just want to up and leave and watch the slaughter like they watched the slaughter in Srebinica.

It will take the US ten years to get out of Iraq.

The world's largest fetish festival opens in Paris a few weeks.

Check out the dress code.

Think I'm washing my hair that night.

It was easy to spot New Zealanders at Stade De France. You didn't need the face paint and black scarves; we were the ones wearing polar fleece.

Wynne Grey was over-enthusiastic about the All Blacks last week, and under enthusiastic this week. The main difference was that France played better. Much better.

If the ABs are back at Stade de France in a year, playing France in the final of the World Cup, I'm not sure they will win.

French crowds go to football to be entertained. They bubble. They are happy to be there. What other rugby crowd is as good-natured?

Why do New Zealanders travel all that way to sit grim and silent?

The French rugby union handed out to the crowd leaflets honouring New Zealand for our rugby and for Dave Gallaher, noting he still lies at Passchendale, "where he fell for us." They called on the crowd to honour the All Blacks, their rugby and their song.

The crowd fell completely silent for the haka and the brilliant light of ten thousand camera flashes sparkled like lightening blowing over a storm. We could hardly see it because the French team stood between us and the haka and we were practically at ground level.

Can you imagine anyone droning out 'God Defend NZ' during a game to urge the All Blacks on as the French chorus La Marseillaise to urge on Les Bleus? Then again the All Blacks scored just as the French sang 'Marchon! Marchon!'...

It was the biggest crowd of New Zealanders I've seen in Paris, of course. A bit shocking to see us behaving like Americans: "I'll have a diet coke, mate." Not even the slightest effort to read the way it's written. "Yep, we're from Cannabree. Gizza beer can ya mate?" What would those guys think about a Frenchman turning up in Christchurch and not making the slightest effort to speak English?

We called out 'Carter y va Marquer'. (When I asked Maria to translate the song she said, "It means that guy...he's gonna get a goal!"). During the football world cup, people would sing Zidane Y Va Marquer after a song playing every few minutes on the radio. So the Carter version made the French wince at the cunning reference to the best player in the world and the appropriation of their iconography. A bit like the French singing Loyal at us. Only we would belt it out as Daniel Carter lined up his goalkicks, and the French knew we were right. New Zealanders just ignored it, thinking it was some kind of French thing.

Only about one in six New Zealanders looked around when we called out 'kia ora!'.

We tried to get Pokarekare Ana going as we queued in the rain for the train. We were the only two interested.

Gosh the All Blacks are charming.


On Tuesday we bowled along to the Embassy and I was able to give Mr Henry a few pointers on how the guys could go a bit better. If we lose tonight, it will only be because they don't follow my plan.

Although...the 'bring back Buck' suggestion didn't look like it was going to get much of a run.

While I was talking to both l'entraîneur de l'équipe de rugby néo-zélandaise and, later, Anton Oliver, someone cut in and I drifted off - and in both cases they came back over, apologising for being interrupted. I couldn't believe how careful they were to be well-mannered. Everyone wanted their time, and they were gracious and charming with everyone. Every player there had just been dropped from the top team but you wouldn't have known it.

Josie, managing not to drool I'm sure, observed how young they looked. Surely the All Blacks look younger than they used to. Don't they? Like the policemen. What's happening here?

We asked a couple of the guys if they'd had a chance to do any sight-seeing while they were here. Yes, they'd been to Euro-Disney. So, you see, there really is something to do in Paris.

Tonight we'll speed down to the Eden Park bar before the game. On the way to the ground we will sing 'Carter y va marquer'. We will chant 'Allez All Blacks!" We will revel.

The third Thursday of November is the day annually when the beaujolais harvest comes to town. I brought home a couple of bottles of home and Josie wrinkled her nose in consternation.

"I thought beaujolais is meant to be rubbish."

"It is, apparently, but there must be some reason everyone drinks it now."

You can tell we are wine snobs with deep knowledge of the juice, despite knocking back a little EVERY DAMN DAY of our lives.

Suspicions were hardly allayed by the label of one, telling us it was pisse-dru.



'Thick piss.' Sounds like my kinda wine.

We chilled them a little, knocked the scab off and...well really quite good, I thought. A light and easy red. I still struggle with the big cabernets and merlots and the French pinot noir must be the most over-rated drink in the world.

But to wash down some gorgonzola slapped on chunks of pain de campagne fresh from the boulangerie... oui. Oui, oui, oui.

Why should media only apologise when they mis-spell someone's name? Aren't there sometimes other things they get wrong?

Check this one out:

THE NEW REPUBLIC deeply regrets its early support for this war. The past three years have complicated our idealism and reminded us of the limits of American power and our own wisdom.

There was an idiot from the State Department on tv the other day trying to argue that Vietnam wasn't a defeat, although the US pulled out too soon. And Iraq will be a not-defeat of the same order, though it's imperative not to make the same non-mistake of pulling out too soon.

Still, I'm uncomfortable with simply pulling out and leaving the population to slaughter. Diplomacy to get Syria and Iran involved is vital. The TNR's climb-down pretty much sums it up:

In the end, this struggle will be over the difference between a largely intolerable outcome and a completely intolerable one.  This magazine has long advocated deploying U.S. power to halt the mass slaughter of innocents. Saddam Hussein distinguished himself at the mass slaughter of innocents: About this, there can be no dispute. Yet, in this case, we supported an invasion that has led to the same savage result.

A continuing series about news you shouldn't miss.

In Tonga, wilful destruction is the predictable result of the decay of a laughable, undemocratic, incompetent and backward monarchy, which has been tolerated for far too long by governments in the Pacific including New Zealand. Call me a neo-con, but why shouldn't we offend Tonga's monarchy? What are they going to do about it?

Milton Friedman is dead. I'm sure when I studied economics you used to get an A for getting the 'i' and 'e' the right way round. I didn't get so many As. I can still spot bollocks at a thousand paces.

The BBC claims he never lost an argument - that would be, except with the facts.

Friedman got the Nobel Prize for inventing the Nairu - the Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, also known as The Theory Of Why Unemployment Is Good And We Have To Have Lots Of It. It was perhaps the most destructive idea to blight developed economies in the late twentieth century. And there were plenty of candidates. He said low unemployment was incompatible with price stability. What the theory actually is, is a discovery that full employment is slightly redistributional. It shifts money from the owners of capital to people who would otherwise have nothing, not even an income from their labour. One reads about Nairu vainly searching for reflection that the cost of unemployment has to be paid for in the costs and consequences of unemployment. Factor that in and the theory collapses. Friedman never coped adequately with that simple objection. I'm, also amused at the illiterate obits describing Reagan as a Friedmanite. That would be because Reagan himself did, but Hullo! Reagan ran the most Keynsian economic policies since Roosevelt: A massive blow out in the fiscal deficit? Theory that tax cuts pay for themselves in faster growth? It's all in the General Theory. Friedman actually said, "If this is monetarism, I am no longer a monetarist".

Back in France, as the cops noted, there is daring and then there's stupid.

Ségolène Royal has won the socialist party nomination to run for President next year.

She is the only French Socialist with a chance of winning.

Her policies are either vague or odd. But she is certainly tough and unmistakably charismatic.

So, were I working on one of the campaigns, would I rather be in her position or that of M. Sarkozy just about now?

The truth is, both are eye-catching politicians, though flawed -- as they all are, baby. They all are. Neither looks like they have a flaw that makes them unelectable - such as Lionel Jospin's terminally dull personality, which doomed his candidacy five years ago, or (US Democratic contender) Howard Dean's air of fringe anarchy.

Both have been around long enough to have solid campaign skills and teams. Neither would surprise if they said something that ran the whole train off the rails. Neither is as moronic as George Bush or sleazy as Baldy McSlaphead.

Sarko is more pro-American and less patient with French statism, which makes him appealing. But he dog whistles to racists, so the sooner he is buried, the better.

Ségo panders. I'm not too worried that she is consistently seen as ambitious, self-serving and calculating: Those are indispensable qualities for successful political leadership (regrettably, but stilll...fact).

Who has the better strategic position today to win the Presidential elections in late April and Early May '07?

Sarko has the advantages and disadvantages of incumbency. He can control the agenda better. But he is also forced onto the defensive. He has mostly distanced himself from both President Slaphead Jack and Prime Minister Villepin - not easy for the most powerful minister.

But to set the agenda one has to propose ideas and for French governments that's a bad thing: any suggestions for change bring scorn; protests pour into the street, the talk shows and the newspapers. It always ends with politicians running away to hide. Sarkozy has been pretty good at making provocative comments without putting much weight behind them.

Despite the entrenched refusal to do any actual changing, there is rising political demand for change. Of course, exactly what change is the problem so no one is defining the change needed.

Anyway, I'm not convinced France needs radical change, so much as re-orientation and adaptation. Both, realistically, offer that.

But a mood for change is bad for incumbency. Overall, then, incumbency is maybe a net negative for Sarko.

Ségo has tidied up the nomination early and should be able to rally her party united behind her. Sarkozy isn't even sure if he will run against Chirac and could face a debilitating, resource-sapping, party-splitting glide path into the finals. Chirac probably won't run because he knows he would be humiliated. But he can damage and even destroy Sarko, which forces Sarko to play some of Chirac's games. Chirac might go out of his way to foot-trip Sarko.

So momentum is a net positive for Ségo.

There are doubts about Ségo: She can't point to much of substance that says 'vote for me'. She can only point to a mood she has captured. Don't doubt the value of mood. The risk is that pressure forces her into specifics that are so far unknown or that a hidden agenda gets exposed. Then the camapign gets derailed.

Sarko has a record behind him. He looks a less risky choice. Voters are risk averse.

Ségo got whupped in the candidate debates. She will go into the finals with low expectations, which is good for her, but to me she looks accident prone in the campaign.

The campaign skills thing then favours Sarko. By miles.

Then there is the excitement generated by Ségo being the first woman with a shot at the top. I have met a few woman who are motivated behind her because of this. It makes her look like change - the sort of change the electorate can swallow, cos no one gets hurt. I have also seen hints of her being resented for being a woman - both among woman and men. Is France a more sexist society than anywhere else? I doubt it.

So I think the gender factor is a big plus for Ségo. It gives her automatic support among a section of the electorate. It gives her sympathetic magazines stories - the ones that appear over and over in women's magazines asking 'is she like us?' and 'is it important she's a woman?' Well of course the readers will define that as an issue and say, 'yes I approve'. They will see the soft shots of her and think 'yes, she looks attractive'. So that's pretty good for her and Sarkozy can't get any of it.

Finally, the polls are roughly even but give a slight edge to Sarko. Ségo will get a bump from the nomination.

Looking back over this, it reads as if the campaign that looks best right now is Ségo's. But I would still install Sarko as the favourite. For now.

* Of the last 100 visitors to this website, 22 have landed here from a search engine. Eleven were hunting for some variation on 'Ségolene royal nude'.

Someone has been hotlinking from this site and suddenly my bandwidth has gone through the roof. About a gig a day is being downloaded - the whole site is only a few megs and I don;t get that much traffic. So it's someone with a high usage site hotlinking one of my images.

I've had to remove all the pix, or else this site and my email will be shut down. There is another alternative involving paying lots of money for more bandwidth, but I'm not inclined to do it for someone else's use of my site, thanks.

So until I can work out (a) who is hotlinking to me, and (b) how I can stop it, the pix are gone.

Someone recently, in conversation, accused me of being opinionated on this blog. Yes, me! Imagine it!

Anyway, in order to restore the balance, allow me to update you with clippings of interest from developments on the global newswire.

The formidable Rudi Giuliani has started his shot at the presidency. Much as I would like to see an Italian president, he won't make it. There is no way through to the Republican nomination for a New York liberal with progressive views about human relationships.

Al Jazeera's new network is nearly ready to launch. Looking forward to this. We get most of our TV news now from the BBC, CNN and Euronews - respectively, news for the pompous, news for the dumb and news for bureaucrats. Possibly we are all three. I wish we could see more attitude in television news. French talk programmes are wall to wall and there is something for every taste, but I can't follow it well enough. Al Jazeera is another tributary flowing into the great lake.

These kooks are no relation. Just sayin'...

Not that I want to laugh at the misfortune of an over-hyped, brown gadget or anything...but the world's biggest tech blog, Engadget, tried to install a Zune for a test.

HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.

Ahhh, feeling the Microsoft love, that special, special love. Especially loving that 'restart the machine when you uninstall'. And the app crashes. Ah, the memories. [Wipes tear from eye]. When I used Windows...Good times. And handing over your phone number to make the software go. You've got to love Windows, don't you? No. No you don't.

Meanwhile Super Frenchie discovers t-shirts that say 'Texas is bigger than France'. Read his outstanding return of serve.

Apparently, the All Blacks are in Paris.

We bought tickets from Ebay for the Paris game this coming Saturday. After the spanking they gave Les Bleus on Saturday night in Lyon (seven, count 'em, seven tries to none) this is going to be an orgy of eye-watering nationalistic happiness.

They are just so damn good.

(How depressing that the AB's website doesn't have a bunch of action shots from the game, as if it would be so hard to shoot a few royalty-free shots at the game and let the fans post them. How petty).

There's just that little anxious voice over my shoulder reminding me that I was at Athletic Park in 1999 when the All Blacks slapped France by fifty points, and then lost to them in the World Cup semi-final a few weeks later. Then there was the fifty points they put on the Wallabies in 2003 just before they got busted by the Aussies in the semi-final of that World Cup. And if I go all the way back, I remember how the All Blacks got beat up in France in 1986 just a year before they swept the world at the 87 Cup. So a shivering part of me is thinking they should be doing not so well now. Then I would feel better.

Anyway, allez tous les noirs.

This is awesome.

The French Socialists edge closer to selecting their candidate.

One might notice, from the linked article, Rainbow Warrior bomber Laurent Fabius, who is the candidate of the left, is opposed to Turkish entry to the EU. That's right. That's the left position.

Go Sego (whose involvement in blowing up ships in Auckland is limited to her brother actually attaching the bomb to the hull, and her expressions of admiration for him and her absence of sympathy for the murdered victim).

This site continues to receive daily hits from searchers looking for Ségolène Royal nude.

Bruce Reed says:

Any surviving GOP members of Congress can stop worrying about going to jail for selling their vote, because nobody will want to buy it.

Meanwhile Rue Rude has a list of the war records of US politicians, broken down by - well, y'know - whether they are pro war or not.

A week or two ago, while Josie was away at a conference and appearing on tv before a global television audience* of 300 million, I purchased some lamb chops and grilled them hungrily for myself while the kids prepared for dinner. French lamb chops are delicious. Scrumptious. Maria spied them lying temptingly on my plate and innocently inquired if they were for me.

"I would like to try one," she affirmed, sweetly.

So I gave her a piece and she demanded more and, notwithstanding she had devoured her own dinner moments earlier, promptly denounced me for finishing the remaining morsels myself.

"I love meat!" she assured me as the blood dripped down her chin. "Can you buy that for me again?"

So today I bought a tender juicy lamb steak for her dinner. When I showed it to her, her eyes lit up and her tongue began to pant. She looked closely at the decorative label stuck to the cellophane wrap.

"It really is a lamb!" she said.

"Yes, it used to run around a farm going 'baa baa'."

I swear she drooled.

"I love lamb." She licked her lips. Repeatedly. "Baa baa," I reminded her.

"Can you cook dinner soon Daddy, please."

* Well the producers claimed a global television audience of 300 million. I pointed out that barely 300 million people speak English - maybe twice that number as a second language, and it's not like the audience at any one moment for a worthy BBC documentary is likely to be half of the entire English speaking world. Y'know, just saying.

But she did fantastically well anyway.

In 2000 the average FTSE 100 chief executive is paid 39 times more than the average employee.

Now, a ceo in the same position is paid 98 times more.

This apparently reflects a move to more performance-based remuneration.

Hands up everyone who is surprised that corporate performance has not accelerated at the same pace as remuneration.

Hmmm? Didn't think so.

Why do shareholders pay so happily for so little?

Harry Hutton asks:

But are they right to hang Saddam Hussein, of previous good character, for a first offence? Will the death penalty deter other people from committing genocide? It will be egg on face time if they string him up, then it turns out they got the wrong guy.

Chortle.

Meanwhile, ever the contrarian (yes, how I admire the contrarian), Hitchens says don't lynch him.

Microsoft's new iPod killer, the Zune, is about to be released.

It's even getting reasonable reviews.

And, y'know, maybe it's a piece. But I can't help noticing the Zune is, umm, brown.

Brown?

HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.

Is the whole of Microsoft on crack? Brown!

Check out these. The opposite of brown.

Not every phrase translates so well.

Or, if you are going to translate, maybe the whole phrase should be translated, not just bits.

A show on French MTV is called "Shake Ton Booty."

Off to see the ABs spank the English this afternoon.

Anton Oliver and Aaron Mauger got themselves in a bit of bother, suggesting the Twickenham crowd is boorish and racist. The English can't believe it is possibly true. Well, it is. I heard the ugliness myself last year when I was there. I wrote about it here at the time.

Classiest English riposte, if that's what it was, appears in this morning's Guardian from Eddie Butler:

Anton Oliver wrote of English 'arrogance' and 'hubris', and of the 'opprobrium' heaped by the Twickenham crowd on some of his Kiwi mates. All Black hookers traditionally have a rich and colourful lexicon when it comes to their colonial overlords, but in the short history of blogs by their number, rarely can 'hubris' and 'opprobrium' have enjoyed each other's company.

Can't help think the All Blacks lack a bit of firepower in the back row and defence in the midfield.

Last week I bought - on Ebay - tickets to the Stade de France game against France on 18 November.

Today's match is just a warm up for the real thing.

UPDATE: Yeah so we were lightweight at 6 and 8 and full of holes in the mid-field. But it's hard to argue with a 41-point spanking on an off day.

There is a story I am not sure I believe about an octopus climbing out of its storage tank one night by pushing the lid off with a tentacle, sliming its way down the side of the tank and making it most of the way across the floor towards the door before the morning shift arrived. It is said to have happened at the Wellington marine resource centre - and good news for the centre - it has finally, finally received a resource consent.

The existing cramped facilities are open about one Saturday a month. It's one of the best activities for kids in the region. The rich Cook Strait marine life is breath-taking and the resource centre is a window into its amazing diversity. You can't leave the centre without a renewed respect for the Wellington marine environment. So when the centre wanted to expand to allow more people to see it, and provide better educational and marine research facilities, naturally it ran into a wall of opposition - from raving environment - destroying fanatics who claimed having the centre on the same coastline the airport juts into, teaching kids how beautiful the marine environment is, could somehow compromise that coastline. As if the coastline was unchanged...well it isn't.

Wellington needs to unlock more of its south coast. It is one of the most spectacular pieces of coast in New Zealand and too many moralising hippies get away with locking it off from the majority.

When I left Wellington the campaign to get the resource centre a licence was in full swing. I remember looking at its posters at the airport and wondering if it would be any closer when we came back. Two years later and its closer only in that a piece of paper finally says we're allowed to have the centre.

Well good.

One of my former law lecturers infuriated me by decorating his political philosophy in the opulent coat of professional analysis. It's an intellectual ruse - and an ugly one. So I took a shot.

I've had all sorts of bother with this site loading slowly lately. Possibly it's just getting a bit bigger than the rudimentary software can handle. But I've tried deleting some stuff to make it faster. We'll see, won't we.