Caseload - by Jock Anderson

I am gay friendly 

I know that I am writing for an audience of twelve but in any case (load).

Late last year I wrote an epistle about gay lawyers

It lead to an avalanche of scuttlebutt about  gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, takatapui and intersex (LGBTI) and how they do their thing in large law firms. I had to remind a few people Charles Chauvel now works at the UN. Duh. Chauvel is a fabulous gentleman. In fact in 2008 I lived off his scuttlebutt for months.

It is common knowledge I trade in cheap gossip by finding x about QC X and then QC X trades not appearing in my column for spewing their guts about y. In fact I've written columns for years this way.

What makes me more interested as I don't even need to sit in the Queens Ferry to write this column anymore I can be at my residence on Waiheke Island. People keep coming to me with crap about lawyers.

The rooting, the backstabbing, the bitching and the moaning I have covered. The sensationalist headlines? Easy. I mean since my ergh abrupt departure from the NBR since the "unfortunate incident" I have had my niche at the NZ Herald stirring up shit about anyone I want. Despite you know, never actually getting on the "fairy" to Auckland despite eligibility for Winston's Gold Card. I just can't be fucked. 

Law No Place For Mature Lady Briefs

According to the 2013 Census, 55 per cent of lawyers are aged 44 or under. Too many. They are distracting to my friends who are male in the profession and above 65.

Customised data indicates that while 43 per cent of male lawyers were aged 44 or under, they were outnumbered by 71 per cent of female lawyers in the same age bracket. Too many women.

Women make up 46 per cent of all lawyers and made up 62 per cent of those admitted to the profession in 2013. What the fuck was the NZ Law Society thinking?

Women far outnumber men in the age group from 20 to 44, but drop away sharply in the age group 45 to 70 plus. Yes because they take all their first husband's assets and don't need to work!

The number of female admissions overtook men for the first time in 1993, and while Law Society data shows women make up 57 per cent of lawyers in practice for 20 years or less, women make up only 2 per cent of lawyers in practice for 40 years or more.. That's because they all end up shagging them!!  Jesus I would like to but none have offered, Even Lady Chambers.

John Banks' affair not yet over

Expect heads to roll over the botched Crown case against former Auckland mayor and ACT MP John Banks - acquitted and exonerated the other day by the Court of Appeal on a charge of knowingly making a false electoral expenses return.

In the Banks case, the Crown - in the form of prosecuting scum Queen's Counsel Paul Dacre - failed to tell the Court of Appeal of a crucial memorandum it had which was also not disclosed to Banks' lawyers.  Outrageous.

Banks claimed the Crown knew, and were a bunch of scum to throw him under the bus because he's not a member of the establishment.  It was a grand "fuck you" when Mrs Banks saved him.

John Banks was acquitted and exonerated the other day by the Court of Appeal on a charge of knowingly making a false electoral expenses return. 

B*st*rds still and more promised

B*st*rd monitor, John of Wellington, is hard at it.  Hard I say.

"Judge Robbie Ronayne is a moody b*st*rd.  Moody horrible.

Judge David Harvey a very clever b*st*rd.".  

As for Auckland Crown Solicitor Brian Dickey, John says there will be more to come.  He's just Hooton's play thing and we all know he's a b*st*rd.

Dickey had success at the Ellerslie races the other day, as part owner [along with Queen's Counsel Paul Francis b*sr*rd Wicks of Rooting and others] of galloper Gravano.

Reluctant as he is to stifle freedom of speech, CaseLoad is obliged to comment on some other matters raised by John:

"Whether or not there is, or isn't, gossip in racing circles that Mr Dickey's firm Meredith Connell has, or has not, received briefs in horse racing related prosecutions is nobody else's business.

It may well be that such legal work has been handled by Bell Gully for more than 60 years but even if some of what you say is true then perhaps it's time some fresh blood got a piece of the lucrative action..." (No one has a fucking clue what you are ranting on about Jock - Ed)

Thought For The Week:

(From a Very Senior Legal Person) "the Dude behind John Banks has MOOBS.  I tell you. MOOBS.

Note from Editor - Jock got a column when the NBR red carded him. I can't sack him because well argh...I am not sure about that but lawyers live in fear of what he serves up and it means our lawyers are kept in line so jolly good please continue Jock.

Media Watch - by David Cohen

I came over the rise of the hill and the road to Huntly stretched away like a tantalising ribbon unwrapping an unexpected gift before my heat-glazed eyes. Above my sun-scorched pate, but below the azure heavens, telephone wires sang in a manner which pneumatic chested country-and-western gals with names like Loretta and Dolly and June never imagined they could. So this is hinterland tourism, I figured. This is let-down-the-ragtop and shoot the breeze, and no there would not be no tortuous twang of “Stand By Your Man” polluting the sophisticated sound system of this rented auto with my driver. Freedom from Nashville! Freedom from Hillbilly!  Driving really is for peasants.

To be sure the genre has its place, in unsophisticated outback halls mebbe, packed with bow-legged, tobacco-chewin’, spurs-a-janglin’, ruddy cheeked sing-alongers. But surely one must graduate sometime from listening to that endless wailing variation on the theme of somebody done somebody wrong songs?

By Jehovah, if only the mulish music media critics would, as we do, take a little time to see what else is going on out there in the land of staffs and minims, brackets and clefs, tablatures and breves, tempos and caesuras, sharps and (Enough! - Ed). It isn’t too damn well difficult when you subscribe to, read (You really read them all? - Ed) and write for, as many international publications as – cough – yours truly does? Have they not heard of Dylan? Gaga? Leonard? Forgive my modest familiarity but we have interviewed most every muso around, so can supply their full names for those not on such intimate terms as we have been since but a Hutt Valley domiciled minor gangsta, hustling words for coin.

So it is we turn to lament my inability to figure New Zealanders and their tribal hysteria over the ridiculous spectacle when packs of men start hurtling themselves around, chasing or hitting balls across lush, mud-spattered fields of grass? We mean to say, really, at the mere mention of two words “World Cup” the foam-mouthed nation collapses as one into a sea of cringe-inducing idiocy. This is swiftly followed by those poor excuses for sports jocks spurting their grunts and oiks into our poor excuse for a daily media. Cricket? Rugby? Suppresses yawn. We don’t know anything about these so-called sports, but I’ll wager they were invented by the British, who as one tribe, cheered on by those Nazi loving royals, are responsible for everything stupid in this world.  

And look at the screaming masses on the side. Do they know the meme? If they had to really apply their brain to watching courage in action we could take them to boxing but it should be wasteful. Would they know the first thing about boxing? But just don’t call it a sport. It’s about …oh why should we bother you’re all so ignorant. It’s a lost religion; leave that on the table.

A while back we wrote a column “My Time With Andrew” which, as the yoof like to say, went viral. Truth be told it had nothing to do with media commentary, but ‘twas a whine about not being paid by the Labour Party for three months (Why in such a hurry? - Ed). So occupied were we with commissions to pen our thoughts for The Grauniad, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Christian Science Monitor, the Jerusalem Report, the Financial Times, the (Shut up - Ed) it entirely slipped our mind to post an update.

We was paid. 

We always knew a bit of casual political advice on the side for Labour was going to be risky. But when you’re a snotty expert on the Middle East question as we are  (nyah nyah Jon Stephenson) and have dodged bullets and rockets, well you get down and get back up again; you don’t have rocks in your head like everyone else.

So finally, speaking of rocks in heads, we do think it very pre-moderne for some media folks to still be banging on about plagiarism being theft and all.  Seriously, copying and pasting sentences out of someone else’s article, and just rearranging them a bit, is the same as republishing a press release. As the saying goes, nothing in the world is original. (Chuckles to ourself) – see, we just plagiarised that.

Shalom.

Editor - David Cohen has dropped out of everything – school, bassinets, sight from time to time, and once lived in a home for delinquent boys in Lower Hutt (a fact he loves telling anyone who can be bothered listening). Taxpayers’ money will be used to make a movie of his life this year, with Leonard Cohen rumoured to be playing David Cohen. Cohen (David not Leonard) writes columns for anyone who will pay him without his having to have questions raised in Parliament.

Metro - All By Simon Wilson

Simon?

Simon?

Half an hour late now for deadline!!!!!!!

The whole magazine is due and we have no copy!!!!!


Ed - What do you mean he's left?

New Zealand Sport In A State of Mega Crisis - by Chris Rattue

New Zealand sport is at a crossroads, I predict it will turn to crisis very shortly. At the New Zealand Herald we all love a good crisis in a headline.

The All Blacks aren't that good. They have only 93.70 points in the world rankings. Richie McCaw is hopeless. There's twelve better faster open side flankers in Auckland club rugby alone right now. Dan Carter? Well he can't kick can he? They're all too old. And the possible replacements? Well they're all too young. Aaron Smith? Nah inconsistent and unreliable. His pass isn't great. Sam Cane? Over-rated and has sat in waiting longer than Camilla did for Charles. Should have already gone overseas if he was any good.

Let us face facts rugby isn't played seriously by any country in the world that matters so I don't know why New Zealanders are so passionate about it. World leading countries like China, Brazil, India or Russia survive without rugby. Even the Americans haven't taken it seriously until sevens (not a real sport in my opinion) became an Olympic sport. The NZ sevens team will lose to America. They won't win a medal, waste of time offering up All Blacks for the season. America has the best NFL and college track rejects to choose from and sevens is dead easy. Pick up ball and run really fast.

Our cricket team are still hopeless. They came second in the World Cup. Second I repeat, first LOSERS. McCullum the worst captain we have ever had. At least Howarth had the booze to blame for daft captaincy decisions. Kane Williamson? Well his batting average could be higher couldn't it? And captaincy will bugger that all up. Trent Boult? An average bowler at best with injury issues and Ronchi? Well he can't catch and even when he does do something well just remember - he's Australian. The team lacks consistency. A bit like the All Blacks really as they haven't won every game they've played and they should.

Lydia Ko? Nah she's not that good, beginners luck. Valerie Adams? Not that flash. Wouldn't win a thing if it wasn't for the fact she's a large Samoan. It's not her Palagi side tossing that rock is it? Her brother Steven? Yeah well he's only in the NBA to sell shirts. In New Zealand alone 100 have been sold in South Auckland alone. You know they aren't really into basketball those South Aucklanders. Too busy ruining the Blues rugby dynasty. The players are the problem, Islanders, can't communicate with JK. They need someone in Tana Umaga, a Wellingtonian who can teach them how to catch and pass. And read. Umaga was paid large six figures to front that campaign. The Blues have him for a steal.

Shaun Johnson? Hopeless. Only scored 512 points for the Warriors, not enough. The Warriors are in a total meltdown. Every year they should win the Premiership but they don't. Must be the ownership battles leading on to the field. Owen Glenn and Eric Watson can't decide whether the ball should go forward or back.

I don't know why New Zealanders bother watching cricket, rugby, league or our hopeless netballers. Just when the longer good their best players get pregnant or retire. Irene Van Dyk? Left the team in a total state. Not the best goal shooter that I've seen. Probably would have been better for New Zealand if she had stayed in South Africa. Netball has been in a decline since April Ieremia left to read the sports news.

Joseph Parker? Well he's fought bunnies really. Never been tested. Too slow and not big enough to make it past the next level. He should just quit and do what every old boxer does, train new ones.

House prices? Oh god don't get me started on the property market. I met a bloke last week who spoke a lot of sense Bernard Hickey. Yes he commentates on business how I do on sport. The glass is not only half empty but it is non-refillable.

Don't believe the rumours that we have both never been seen in the same gl....I mean room......

Editor - Chris Rattue is employed by the Sports New Zealand as a motivational lecturer and columnist.  Like any good Herald columnist he double dips in his regular missives in New Zealand's leading newspaper. Always looking at the negative, Rattue has embarked on a mission to ensure every New Zealand sportsman and woman gets to read an alternative perspective on their performance. When asked about rumours he was also in a commercial partnership with Gilbert Enoka, sports shrink to the stars Rattue responded that Enoka was "pretty bloody average really".

Exclusive: Michele Hewtison Interview - by Michele Hewitson

Saucy in rare photo

What tribe are you?” I asked Michele Hewitson.

This just exploded out of my mouth like spittle. I had no idea where it came from except she had won columnist of the year at the Canon Media Awards in spite of fierce competition from her colleagues who took oaths they never entered themselves on pain of death. 

She’s renowned for not liking anything. Say hello to her at a bus stop? Sneer. Offer to buy her a drink? Sneer. Tell her you think her writing’s half-way great? Sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer as if well, that’s a given and who the damn hell do you think you are even daring to compliment the greatest living columnist writing for the greatest tabloid organ in this wonderful country called Aotearoa New Zealand. Stab and walk away is Michele.

We’re sitting in a tofu café near where I live in Mt Albert. Michele conveniently agreed to walk to meet me. She’s notoriously private about her own life. Check out Facebook and you will find, as I found, three Michele Hewitsons all spelled the same way. Could be a ruse? I tell her that’s ironic. She drawls why? I say because you pry into everyone else’s lives. She says no I don’t. I say yes you do. Don’t. Do. Don’t. Do. 

She says, “I’m a writer.”

I ask her what she’s that got to do with the price of fish. “You asked me what tribe I am,” she reminds me. Oh yes I’d forgotten my first question. I order trim decaf soy latte with extra hot no-chlorine water on the side. What will you have Michele I ask her? “I’ll have a Why Bother.”

I think that’s a bit rude but she’s known for being a bit rude so I let that one pass.

I say enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of my questions so far?

She says you’ve only asked one question. Next. (Actually, I asked her if she’d like a coffee but that’s not really an investigative columnist question according to the Herald style book.)

I pick up her paws and ask her if she’s going to get nail extensions with the prize money and she says, “Ha ha whatever.” She is a very intelligent young lady of whom Dr Brian Edwards was first terrified then fell in love with when she interviewed him so I think I should follow suit and ask my second question (Third - Ed).

Did you have inappropriate relations with Brian? She sighs and slumps a bit, then points out his sentence which she has as a screensaver on her phone that says “Let me not bore you with the details of an interview that lasted for an hour and a half”. 

Michele says, “Make what you will of that but Sir Brian admitted he was terrified of me, called me a total bitch.”

I Google “bitch” on my phone under the table and find lady dogs with male dogs sniffing around. I guess Brian was pretty smitten by her then.

“I am also known as hugely talented, very perceptive, extraordinarily readable and amusing, according to the life of Brian,” she says. This is also on her phone. Handy research to bring along to our interview and I admit to being impressed.

I think to myself that this is interesting and perhaps the Canon Media Award columnist of the year was self-judged but then I quickly banish that thought from my head and ask her a philosophical question instead.

“Tell me Michele Hewitson,” I ask. “When Brian said he was pretty nervous about being interviewed by you and that no one wants to appear in print looking like a total arsehole…”

“Yeeeees,” said Michele Hewitson, patting down her hair and cocking her head to one side, looking like she was thinking hard about where this was going.

“Do you think that is because he is acknowledging he is a total arsehole and you may discover that and put it in your column?”

Michele Hewitson jumps and spills her blah blah blah drink down her pilled tights, burning her thighs I imagine, which makes me wonder if those are tears of pain pricking her eyes but no, just smoke drifting across from the nearby table where a skinny man in aviator dark glasses has been sitting, smoking nervously and keeping a close watch on our conversation, hiding behind the pages of a slim tatty magazine whose title is slightly obscured but which looks a bit like C-nva-.

I ask why she needed to have a go at all those departing politicians. Why didn’t she have a go at being a politician instead? Did it give her a good feeling of schadenfreude to see others’ pain when she gave them a good skewering on her back page? Was she proud of being described as being famous for her hatchet jobs?

“Well if I don’t give it to them,” she sneered down at me and demanded as she drew herself up to her full height of just five feet - eyes of sleet, “Who?”  

Editor - Michele Hewitson won columnist of the year at the Canon Awards despite her colleagues protesting she doesn't actually write a bloody column it is an interview.  Little is known about Michele.

The Obituary of David Slack - by David Slack

New Zealand’s most boring adolescent, David Slack, has drowned in his own bile. He was 14 years old.

Devonport’s Peter Pan. The man who never grew up. Young Slack thought he could fool all of the people all of the time when he went around misquoting American Presidents and anyone else he thought was a liberal. Wearing nothing but needlecords, a rictus grin, black turtlenecks, and stare-down-the-barrel-of-the-camera attempts at being a straight-up kind of guy Young Slack became obsessed with Housing Minister Nick Smith, and the zenith of his irony was tweeting such lines as Rachel Glucina is an eminent journalist.

In reality he was just a drip. Wet. The kind which makes a man shake his head and hurry on; begone, playground nuisance hanging around the big guys, trying desperately to be funny! 

There were, of course, those who thought him funny. All drips eventually find each other and  form a puddle – water finds its own level after all. There were other pimple-faced, acne-scarred, squeaky-voiced youth whose balls hadn’t properly dropped, sent outside for gardening duty during choir practice – the Russell's and the Simon's , the Giovanni's and the Damian's, they disappeared into the games sheds to exercise their thumbs and index fingers. Young Slack was thrilled to have pals, as they RATFLTAO at the crude sexist jokes they made about what they’d do with the tall, blonde, leggy, gorgeous girl who only bedded brainy men and rugby players. She stared right through them every time she passed a waft of their Old Spice.   Underage Young Slack could only peer in the window on tippy toe, sipping Fanta passed out furtively to him by the gripper.

Poor Young Slack (RIP) - the most misunderstood of all. A speechwriter – how much lower down the food chain does one writer have to crawl before reduced to penning words for brides and grooms too stupid, or too drunk, or too overwrought perhaps, to write their own speeches on their big day. That’s how Slack made extra pocket money . While his chums were out on their cycles delivering papers, Slack typed away, “I’d like to fank me muvver and me farver.” And Slack mailed out an invoice to the ignorami who, unquestioning, sent cheques by return. 

Alas, poor Young Slack, we did not know you at all, (thank Christ - Ed). He graduated from writing speeches to writing obituaries of people who hadn’t died and then he just RATFLHAO, in a manner in which only someone who knew not the difference between dead and alive could do. He muddled satire with cruelty and in the end it killed him.

But then again perhaps we are too cruel to Young Slack, or should we say, Dead Slack? He was a lawyer (No, he had a law degree, there is a difference - Ed) so that may account for the fact he could not string two words together; at least, words which made any sense at all. To wit, we bring you his most famous work titled “That’s My Cab” (why that heading, we have no idea), immortalised for ever on his Signed, Limited Edition, “Island Life” blog (Surely some mistake? No ‘Life’ in a specialist obit writer? - Ed) :

“The front page of the New Zealand Herald this morning honours the memory of George Bernard Shaw. Unable, it seems, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation, it offers us a long, loving description of Chris Carter’s pink shopping bike and many photos of Shane Jones’ banana seat.”

Hilarious? Laugh? The nation nearly started.

Undeterred, Young Slack tried his luck at multitasking - economic forecasting and pretending not to be a left-leaning pinko:

“You want a Labour government scandal? Here’s a scandal. In the first decade of the new millennium, New Zealanders pretended their houses had become worth twice as much as they were, and borrowed 100 billion to make it true. Now they owe that much to the world’s banks, and the debt is a great albatross around our necks. Our kids will have to find twice as much money to buy a house as they would have ten years ago, but their income will be little more than it would have been 10 years earlier.”

If only Young Slack hadn’t choked on his own poison, the Reserve Bank would have beaten a path to his door in an effort to solve our housing crisis.

Sadly, just before he passed on, Young Slack finally finished the book he’d used Radio New Zealand’s The Panel, Radio Live, and Twitter to harp on about for the past decade, appropriately titled, Bullshit.

Editor - We should never mock the dead. Why has this column run so long? Can it die with Metro?

The Book of Mormon - by Matt Nippert

He sat alone with pen and paper in hand. Waiting and scoping the danger. His hat pulled down and scarf wound tight as he strokes his missing unkempt hair that used to straddle both sides of his head. A head so aching after his fifth attempt to quit smoking. The silence around him on Shortland Street that day could only mean one thing, he was about to break the biggest story that New Zealand had ever seen.

A shadowy man walks by and drops a SpongeBob USB stick at the table, he flinched nervously.  This was the sort of once in a lifetime opportunity to master the craft of investigative features. 

Our lone warrior takes the stick and shaking partially with excitement and partially from nicotine withdrawal he presses Spongebob's head carefully into his super encrypted computer that he had just a week ago entrusted to Ben Rachinger to secure. This offer was made after Rachinger showed him a Grinder message from Cameron Slater where Slater offered Rachinger $5.50 to hack our fearless reporter's computer.  It had also been several months since his last contact with the trusted hacker known as "Rawshark" and the heat was now on again. He wondered what possibly could be next in this his multiple award winning career. 

After spending the whole day on Twitter announcing this large scoop to come there was pressure from his colleagues and new-found acolytes like Martyn Bradbury and Lynn Prentice to perform with a massive "hit job". This would make his cut paste of Cameron Slater's emails look like what was -  child's work. The complexity of this story was so wide-reaching he would need to work his entire contact book.

The stick starts up and a message flickers on the screen. "Matt Nippert your a traitorous bastard I'm going to get you". The file opened and the music played "bad boys bad boys what you gunna do what you gunna do when they come for you...". This was followed by thousands of files that looked like high scores from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Kim Dot Com's favourite game he reminded himself and made another note in the NZME. corporate pad that had only recently replaced his Fairfax one.

The list of suspects was a long one as over the years his enemy count was large. Two former employers, one current employer, Mediaworks, Cameron Slater, Carrick Graham, Keith Ng and Ben Rachinger himself. Finance company heads, Mrs Hubbard, the guy he stiffed for a beer in 1989 and Cheryl his ex-girlfriend from High School.  And John Tamihere. Yes that bastard. 

I get lost in the narrative and revert to first or is it third person? The stress in this past few weeks has taken its toll and my employer is about to insist I go to Bali for some well needed beach time but we all know if I go on holiday shit will happen in the karma universe; like my kid gets sick in a third world country or our luggage gets lost and I am left wearing Crocs and "Bali Nine" memorial tee. The pressure is huge from NZME. for me to compete in the presence of Rod Emmerson, Fisher, Savage, O'Sullivan, Manhire, Glucina (good news she's left - Ed), Braunias and the new guy Gilbert. The story was going to take calls to all three of my contacts outside Rawshark, document destruction bin employees Mike, Karl and Doug. I don't dig for dirt I dig for paper. 

My biggest scoop of 2014 needed to be scooped itself and I was hot on the trail to nipping it with a bud (erg no Matt - Ed). I was promised conclusive evidence that indeed Mark Hotchin has had a gender reassignment and was now selling timeshare as Katewin in the state of Utah. This story is huge.  A game changer a cracking story. 

Hotchin is rumoured to have employed Slater, Odgers and Graham (The SGO to those in the know - Ed) once again this time to work to undermine with the intention of removing Thomas S Monson who is currently investigating pressing civil and criminal charges against all gender reassignments in the State. The significance of this shouldn't be lost on New Zealanders, if Slater, Odgers and Graham pull this one off it will be the first time since 1834 an attempt has been made to remove or even punish a Mormon President.  A man so rich and powerful he is allowed to have more than one wife. (Or stupid - Ed).  It has been hard to talk to the main players.  Graham unavailable, Slater ignoring me. Odgers leaves a voicemail with the words f*** off c*** (language please - Ed).  I have tried to link in Jacinda Ardern as she used to be a Mormon and I suspect Slater, Odgers and Graham (The SGO - Ed) are taking orders from the National Party on this one.  

I sit alone at the table with my head in my hands wondering where to now. Just as I am having an epihany using a corporate structure diagram technique I learned after delving into the rubbish bin and pencil sketching over the QC's loose notepad scraps at Speight's Ale House in Timaru during South Canterbury Finance's court case coverage, there is a waft of the cigarette I am longing for mixed in with what I recognise as scent from The Shakespeare. (sentence a bit long, reconstruct - Ed)

A long slender finger touches my shoulder and whispers gently into my ear "Hi Matthew honey I have been expecting you". I turn around and realise it's fucking Braunias who has brought along Fisher and they are pissing themselves laughing.

The lads have set me up.

Editor - Matt Nippert is an investigations reporter bent on business. A Fulbright scholar with a Masters from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York but still no Wolfson, he has spent the past decade in newsbreaking roles at the New Zealand Listener, National Business Review, Herald on Sunday and the Sunday Star-Times.  In fact there isn't a paper he hasn't worked at and resigned from. His stories include sensationalising South Canterbury Finance, lazily sketching New Zealand corporate structures diagrams with conmen and organised crime figures, and being a tool for John Key in the sudden assassination of Judith Collins following the Rawshark hack. Nippert regularly appears as a broadcast commentator and is one of only a few journalists who asks his accountant friend Steve to look at numbers and spreadsheets. His public PEP key can be found here.  

Bowled Road - by Christopher Trotter

Ruminations of an Ancient New Zealander

WILL LABOUR SURVIVE?

“It was a night of woe and dread,

When Michael in the tomb I laid!

Strange sounds along the chancel pass’d

The banners waved without a blast”-

Such weighty words, oh yay, those laden  lines, penned by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) when composing ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’, A Poem in Six Cantos, how heavy on my heart they measure today when I consider how the wondrous Michael Joseph Savage is analogous to their sentiment.

For yay I was present and correct, comrades, at that fateful conference, on that auspicious day, that seventh dawning of the seventh month of the year one thousand nine hundred and sixteen when oh mighty Party of Labour was born. Emerged, not blinking and mewling, but roaring and thrusting into the swathe of injustice, free and independent from other parties - Father Reform and Mother Liberal. Oh yes, oh yes, there had been elected Labour candidates from 1908, caucused under Hindmarsh. I sat in smoke-filled rooms and, as but a thin lad was as militant as the ‘Red Feds’, but finally we had the NEW ZEALAND LABOUR PARTY in 1916.

Wither now that august body? 

For whom now doth the bell toll? Whence the memories of the greatest names ever spake in our House of Representatives – Fraser, Lee, Holland, Nash (No, not Stuart), Nordmeyer, Kirk, Rowling, ,. (What about the wimmin - Ed?).

Names I conjure with when I stride like a colossus among the pigmies of political commentary. For others are but dross, casting their epithets and naming words upon the screens and pages like withered autumn leaves blowing under the rolling wheels of autos on gridlocked motorways of life. (Oh do get on with it - Ed)

Will Labour survive I ponder, as I rub my chin thoughtfully, trying to stop myself losing my temper on Radio Live with Rodney Hide of a Monday morning with that retread radio host Sean Plunket? I recall the waterfront conflict of 1913, when we the unskilled and pacifists were locked out and truly felt excluded, but Labour were relevant then as they’ve never been since. (No they weren’t, they lost their next election - Ed).

But as the late, great, wondrous Bruce Jesson (RIP) often said, Labour was the mighty beast because it garnered  support (as I have exclusively spoken) from those excluded from society, those such as industrialist James Fletcher, who could lobby Ministers – Coates, Fraser, Nash. Fletcher founded a dynasty but yet he was a humble man who eschewed wallpaper and coated his walls with exclusive New Zealand works of art.

Fintan Patrick Walsh – ah there was a master lobbyist! Courageous as Braveheart – “Alba gu brath” except he would be meaning Workers for Ever as he stormed up those steps of Parliament. Give me compulsion and regulation or give me death. Where would Labour’s support have languished, flopped and gasped as a fish beached on the mudflats when the tide of voters have gone out on a hot Bay of Islands summer afternoon, where would the members have been without this vice-president then president of the Federation of Labour’s close relationship with Peter Fraser – in the interests of industrial harmony of course (Bollinger, 1968) and the union movement achieving compulsory unionism. Those indeed were the days of wine and clover, beer and sausage rolls, shandy and Maggi & Nestle reduced cream dips for the ladies in the kitchen.

So brothers, sisters, let us join together and sing one last ballad for our comrades – the men, the wimmin, the GLTGSSWYLTCIB* - in the Parliamentary wing as they go down fighting over the leadership.

“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

Alive as you or me

Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"

"I never died," says he.

"I never died," says he.

And standing there as big as life

And smiling with his eyes

Says Joe, "What they forgot to kill

Went on to organize,

Went on to organize."

*Gay Lesbian TransGender Same Sex Whatever You Like To Call It Brigade

Editor - Chris Trotter is a weekly political columnist and commentator appearing it seems almost everywhere daily. On occasion he's also been known to sing.  In fact he is very good at singing. Lord knows why he doesn't sing his columns.  They may get a better cut through. According to his Wikipedia, in February 2008 Trotter said that Helen Clark should stand down before the election and be replaced by Phil Goff, who Trotter thought may have been Labour's only hope of regaining ground with struggling families. He has since recanted, arguing that Goff should have stood down in his turn before the New Zealand general election, 2011, arguing that David Cunliffe should replace him. Known by The Standard bloggers as an instant hex, he supported David Shearer for the Labour leadership, Andrew Little and is now rumoured to be excited about the prospect of Jacinda Ardern leading the party faithful.  Ardern is less excited at this enthusiasm. Trotter can be found telling stories in union pubs where he will freely admit after a cleansing ale that he hasn't got a bloody clue and  just makes this stuff up like everyone else does in politics.

How on earth did this column not win a Canon Award?

Fare Thee Well, Oh Valiant DWTS - by Fran O'Sullivan

Mood for "Fare Thee Well"

A young former Alliance MP Pam Corkery (pronounced to rhyme with kokiri) whose only real work experience to date is spruiking for both Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous, probably spoke for a number of her peers who’ve been cast out in the wilderness that is life after politics when she whirled on her heel and said, “We’re not giving interviews you puffed up little shit, you work in news”.

Pammy (as the girlies like to call her) has had a dream run in life. For starters she is thin. Anyone who is thin can pass through doorways easily; can fit into elevators without the beeper going off and everyone else turning to stare, as if they should be the first person to get out. My good friend David Lange knows how this feels, we often used to share the angst over a Coke and pie or three.

And as I said just last week to Sir Douglas (Myers, not Roger….or should that be Sir Roger? Am I mixing my metaphor? (No, your drinks - Ed)) it is tough at the top.

So when Pammy followed up this outburst with a posting on her Facebook Page that she was henceforth about to be competing on Dancing With The Stars, I immediately knew, as New Zealand’s premier business commentator and investigative journalist (suck on that Rod Oram), that the end was nigh for this valiant current affairs programme.

Dancing With The Stars is powerful journalism. Rodney Hide, for instance, the invincible – everyone thought – leader of the Act Party was brought down by a mere slip of a reporter by the name of Krystal when she slithered from his grasp and face-planted on the ground, thereby humiliating the once former environment economics lecturer, then Minister for Local Government, in a way no other press gallery journalist had been able. Well until I conspired with Don Brash to have him replaced for no other reason really than the Singaporeans I know through my years in free trade and high level international foreign affairs wanted Don because his wife was from Singapore.

And DWTS’s Candy Lane has stood staunchly by the downtrodden – the footsore, the weary, the heavy-laden, the back-broken, and with the result that DWTS has been a frequent thorn in John Key’s side.

DWTS has not been afraid to challenge the Prime Minister when other rivals – My Kitchen Rules, My Home My Castle, Shorty Street, have taken a more supine stance.

And as I wrote long before anyone else, before I broke Watergate, the Winebox Inquiry, Equiticorp and before Alan Bond was even a twinkle in Mr Bond’s eye, Key has been joining the dots to dump DWTS.

Now I can reveal in an exclusive I have it on good authority that MBIE is taking action against DWTS participants; they must lift their game or face prosecution. Also, I have inside knowledge that NZTE has been directed by none other than the PM’s office to cease its plans to export DWTS to China. I was up in China recently (Ed - eh?). What’s that? How can I afford all these trips to China on a hack’s salary when I work in news? (Listen – I ask the questions around here boyo).

Meanwhile, let me just quote my good friend and expert in everything, Dr Frank O’Gullible who sums up in one succinct paragraph what is going on at TV3, and why DWTS was doomed: “........with new management at MediaWorks, the driving considerations have changed. Within the senior commercial world, it is said that when Mark Weldon applied for the top job at MediaWorks he drew on his relationship with Key and the public-spirited work he did outside of his prior role as chief executive of the stock exchange such as chairing an economic summit after the GFC to help build credibility for a role in a sector in which he had no prior experience.”

So listen up here, plebs. The reason MediaWorks is not working is because less than five per cent of the bathrooms are for women. What does that mean? It makes more sense than this column does. Not one of the toilets on the NZX is for women. Pitiful.  That's where the dynamism is created and the future is shaped.

We want our boards to be stacked with people who know enough to usefully challenge the status quo, whose antennae are sharp enough to sniff out managed earnings rorts and understand markets.  And I am the market. (Ed - What the hell does this mean? Who is the ‘We’? Antennae don’t sniff, neither are they sharp. Good grief woman, just as well you’re not on a real board.)

Asked by my colleagues what I was paid, they were rewarded with a snort. That's my business.

As someone slightly more famous than me said (oh alright it was Joan Rivers), it’s not who you know, but whom you know.

Editor - Fran O'Sullivan has written a weekly column since 1907. In her early career before the television set, she was a political journalist in Wellington and subsequently an investigative journalist who broke many major business stories, some of them using actual sources. She was the deep throat in Watergate; she wrote the first articles that led to the Winebox Inquiry in both NBR and the Sydney Morning Herald. She has specific expertise in relation to China where she has been a frequent visitor and is often mistaken for Hillary Clinton. She has won millions of awards including the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize so many times she’s lost count and has told everyone in earshot she has not entered the Canon Media Awards for a decade now as she wishes younger business journalists to have a chance at winning. Asked on Twitter by herself to sum up her career in one word she replied from important undercover work at CERA in Christchurch with her usual authority and lappings of modesty;

The Secret Diary Of Steve Braunias - by Steve Braunias

Monday

I’ll be right. Wait and see. Didn’t sit through Lundy trial in Summer of Hope writing award-winning pieces (You might well hope - Ed.) because I’m not the finest legal commentator in the media. They’re wrong. I’m right. He’s not guilty. Didn’t do it. Not fat. Never fucked hooker. Loved wife. And Amber. Jewel of a name, that. 

I’ve written a book out of a lamington. Watch. Ernest stole my style. Hemingway. This is the piece. Pinched that. Nobody appreciates. Scrummage. Sewage. Shortest story. Saddest story for sale baby’s shoes never worn. I cried. Lit a fag. House caught fire.

Tuesday

Currie kneels by my desk. Rare visit. “Take a boat to Mexico, Oh My Greatest Scribe.” A well-deserved junket, I tell myself, since he stole that Wolfson from my hands (you can't win it twice - Ed). I picture cruising, alcohol, gazing seaward and composing my peerless prose.

Original Me: I walked the Great South Road and made readers swoon with images conjured.

Intrepid Me: I paced the Waterview Extension and was illusory with ants. Ants, I alone got down among the workers. The Young Man and the Ant.

Fearless Me: I talk to the lonely. Me. Record their everyday banality. The Scum Also Rises.

I use my one cassette. I wipe it clean of each interview. I re-use, then re-interview, then wipe it clean again. One cassette. One Man. One Braunias. One Genius – wiped, reused, wiped, reused - my only tool. One cassette; one man; one recorder; brilliance has no ceiling. 

Currie said: “I want you in with that live sheep export. You’re chasing dags. Talking footrot, finding facial eczema. Pregnancy-testing ewes.

“Scram.”

Wednesday

Readers & Writers Festival. My element. One problem. Hemingway, ahem, Braunias, shares the stage with no man. A mistake, surely, I am scheduled to appear with someone called David Slack. Who is this? I Google. Writes obituaries and thinks that is funny? Calls himself satirist.  Example:

Faaark. 

Thursday

Wintec. My happy place. Clear blue skies. Warm and dry. Baby journalists come here to listen to Bishop Braunias. Ego Journalists queue to speak to baby journalists. Onanist members of the Facebook Kiwi Journalist Association think it matters. Nobody else cares.  A child who never wants to work in the industry again reminds me I came second in Best Blog to some c*** (edited - Ed) I had never heard of. Unbelievable.

Friday

Tidied up my Wikipedia entry.  Add in my employers.  Too many to remember. Read everything I’ve written for the past 100 years including my books, “Madman: Inside Steve Braunias”, “How to Watch a Steve Braunias”, “Steve Braunias I have Known”, and “Steve Braunias of the Week”.

Or Some.

Politics Daily - by Dr Bryce Edwards

Dr Edwards spotted once again heavily promoting red and green fruit and vegetables

My beltway mailing list is so long that no one can find the unsubscribe button to get off it writes Dr Bryce Edwards in today's edition of Politics Daily;

Lyn Prentice writes yet another well-researched piece"Cameron Slater is a great pile of smelly poo and I hate him" and another titled "Burn mass murderer David Farrar at the stake".  Fellow comrade Martyn Bradbury concludes after a lengthy dissertation my sexy undergraduate student Angela would have been proud of "John Key is Corrupt and a Liar and I have Proof". And then another "Why Kim Dot Com should be Knighted". Then over at Dim Post, Danyl writes another piece of eloquent prose on the public servant trough titled "John Key And My Funny Bone". While on the subject; Mickey Savage (Greg Presland) in yet another excellent introspective asks "Is it fair that public servants cannot anonymously blog at The Standard". This is an important public debate that needs to dominate New Zealand politics for the next two years and if so I will be at the forefront of presenting it with my guest appearances all over the media.

(I know I shouldn't be writing editorial from a position as a public servant and showing my clear bias towards the left but Politics Daily has morphed into a taxpayer funded civil service more important to the fabric of New Zealand society than Campbell Live.

It's hard sometimes to fathom how I got from being a decorated PhD to New Zealand's most authoritative and well qualified linker and syndicated by the NBR and The Herald. It was probably because of this piece where I singlehandedly declared my own politics titled "Career Cut Pasting Without Plagiarism". And just think Jon Johansson bothers being original and having age appropriate hair styles.  Does anyone ever think how I manage to write my editorial daily in and around my hefty schedule of academia and mainstream media appearances?"). (Ed - good God shoot me now)

Still Dirty Politics is rearing its head where my new good friend The Ruminator gives us a valuable insight into his own rectum and declares in a post "It is Pretty Murky Up There". Not to be outdone Giovanni Tiso increases his power in the blogosphere with an excellent piece clearing up confusion between his blog Bat, Bean, Beam and the PM's cat "Moonbeam is John Key's Cat, Stupid" followed by another in his boycott series "Why I Refuse To Watch The Repo Man". The ubiquitous powerhouse of the left and Labour treasure Chris Trotter has another ground breaking piece "The Tragic Demise of Labour a Shakespearian Perspective". Trotter asks what really went wrong in the 2014 election when according to him the left failed to smear John Key using the hacked emails and a narrative the New Zealand voting public still don't understand and for the few that do they don't seem that interested in. Trotter and I part company on this one but as an academic I am always right.  The Civilian rounds things off nicely with "No one cares about Dirty Politics" where he surely must be joking.  Imperator Fish then chimes in with his own opinion in a post titled "Bring Back David Shearer All Is Forgiven".

Martyn Bradbury's Union sponsored blog The Daily Blog then asks the big question of the day "Is big business sponsoring Whaleoil, how does he pay for his beanie?" and John Minto guest stars  with a solid thesis where he asks for debate titled "Bring Back Protests Make Me More Relevant".   Laila Harre chimes in with a contribution bound to create controversy in the Beltway "Tight Arse Bastards Who Underpay at My Restaurant Ika". Matthew Hooton, whom I've tried hard for a year to knock off his Radio New Zealand slot has a thoughtful piece in the NBR "Chasing Rainbows" where he transplants his mind and body into that of Georgina Beyer and advises the left on how to capture the surprisingly large transgendered vote in New Zealand. It is an interesting piece and establishes Matthew now just behind myself as New Zealand's leading abstract political thinker.

Oh and before I forget for balance here's a play review of extreme right wing blogger David Farrar titled "Play Review". 

Editor - Bryce Edwards (self professed anti-establishment) is a lecturer in Politics at locally acclaimed and one of New Zealand's oldest establishments - The University of Otago. He indoctrinates the desperate on New Zealand politics, public policy, political parties, elections, erections and political communication. His PhD completed in 2003, was on 'Political Parties in New Zealand: Another Study of Really Obvious Bollocks'. He is currently working on a book entitled 'Who Runs New Zealand? An Anatomy of Power'. Where leaked papers show he has already concluded the poor are a constituency of a missing million that he will need a $100,000 a year research grant to study further. To broaden his corporate profile, Edwards is also on the board of directors for FIFA sponsored Transparency International New Zealand where his prime role is to make fellow director Mark Sainsbury a strong cup of tea and whinge about the diminishing role of Unions in the hope of a regular slot on Radiolive to replace Phoebe Fletcher.

The (S)Hit Job - by Matthew Hooton

I'll get these bastards I will get them in the end. They're rotten to the core, against everything I stand for. A political disgrace of corruption and lies. The haters who try to bring me down, ban me from the Beehive, blacklist me from the corridors of power and events of influence. Labour? Oh god no. Who cares about them!!!

I will get Key and Eagleson. And McCully and English. And Joyce.

Dirty Politics? Mwah. I barely rated a mention in that book. Those pathetic children have nothing on me. I've been running hit campaigns for years. Most of them against the National Party and using all my contacts for financial gain but these moments have been superb. 

The Trotter's, Bradbury's, Pagani's, Harre's and McCarten's of this world are putty in my hands. I managed to convince Labour to elect David Shearer as their leader. Possibly the greatest practical joke in New Zealand political history. People are still laughing at how I managed to bring that whole thing together. 

Copper tax? Cellphone tax? Nah I bandied them all together and created an Alliance of my own. Wrapped it up and sold it to my clients. Haha. I've got O'Sullivan in my pocket and the entire NBR. They've given me a weekly advertisement column to pitch my services!! They've ran my lines for years. Nicky Hager (of argh mutter, Grafton Road, Roseneath) only  served to show once again with my small mention in his book how bloody fabulous I really am at my job.  I'm so good that Don Brash wanted to recruit me for ACT. You have to believe that, I told O'Sullivan to write it after she had a long lunch with Brash. I was there along with many luminaries. Why would I want to be an MP? I'm more powerful in one morning on Radio NZ confusing the left and right. 

Take this live sheep issue. I don't even like sheep and haven't eaten lamb since Muldoon was Prime Minister and I was courting my wife at the mother in law's. Okay the timing may be a bit off but you get the embellishment (granted as quite common with the talent - Ed). If we lived in the country I would let my children's pet sheep out the back gate and into the path of an oncoming stock truck. When they were at school of course. I wouldn't want them to see that.

While working for Lockwood Smith I saw what was happening and said nothing at the time. I saved it. I saved it for a rainy day. Well with Key, McCully, Joyce and English all on my back its not just raining outside its pouring and the whole Hooton family need gumboots. O'Sullivan fell for that yet again.  Sour grapes? Mate there is a whole vineyard waiting for McCully.

New Zealanders need to know that Murray McCully sold us out for sheep. Bribery? Well you could say that but I couldn't possibly comment. Being as "straight as a die" I have managed so far to circumnavigate trade and foreign affairs issues without participating in or seeing any cash for access deals. No it's all fair. 

But let's digress and go back to my Michele Hewitson interview. I thought it was an accurate account of myself but a hell of a risk as unlike my other media friends I wasn't allowed to write it myself.

And let's digress again. I gave up the booze and have found water. I sucked Dudding in, it had nothing to do with Dirty Politics at all.  I was courting a new client and thought the best way to win the work was to switch from booze to water. Well it did have something to do with Dirty Politics really, I'm now representing every company that Whaleoil has effectively attacked.  Ski holidays to Whistler with Laila for the next decade. I've got a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel. 

Editor - still waiting Matthew for you to send me a list of conflict disclosures.....

The Diary - by Rachel Glucina

©Rumour has it “Our Rach” – not this gal, and not the Rach – the one I call Trailer Trash Rach who shacked up with that washed up Rock Star Rockin’ Rod. Bare with me here I’m talking about another Rachel who has a Public Relations company and who rushed to help her hospo pals and is now being accused of stitching up a damsel in distress. She is a va-va-voom kinda gal, “Our Rach”, but stitch up an innocent waitress like Amanda Bailey? Nah, she can’t even sew. “Our Rach” just goes after stories like any other journalist and all journalists are gossips, see? So she gets the story, fair means or fowl (foul? fowel? Shayne which one is right? Help me out here boss. Currie not McLean) and then this gal who’s had her leg pulled (ponytail - Ed) turns around and says no.  I ask you. What. Ever. I’m the gal. I’m the queen of gossip, right? Sorry, not me, the other “Our Rach”, PR Rach. (Too many Raches in this story - Ed.) Now I’m confused. PR, Schmee-are, what does it matter if you get the goods? Fuggeddabowdit.

©Speaking of goods, check out the moobs on my smoochie pal Paul Henry. Mwah mwah. All puffed up and no ratings to speak of but meh, what do the critics know compared with me? I write the stuff about A-list telly slebs every day. I know heaps more about what goes on in the lifts at TVNZ than @zagzigger (that’s John Drinnan – not supposed to diss him but, meh). My column gets more hits than anyone else in this paper I tell you – Audrey,  Trevett, Armstrong, Roughan – all those serious political drips? Who cares about their drivel. Nobody. Nada. Nyet. When those A-listers are sitting in the make-up chairs (rising inflexion of voice) I’m right there under the plastic cape protecting their clothes. Key. Max Key. John Key. Ali Mau. Russell Brand. Hosking. (How do you fit? - Ed) When these people take a shit, I’m underneath looking up. They talk to me all the time behind their hands. I have these people on speed text. I channel Holmsey.  My rivals have to get out of bed early, like I’m talking long before noon, to beat me when it comes to getting the goss. And trust me when I say Paul Henry is going to be huge. (I’m wondering if Henry is on Tinder. Mmmmm. Swipe right!)

©The Diary has it on good authority that a fourth baby is on the way for TVNZ’s Cleaner. Move over Kim and Kanye! Wooee, New Zealand’s Z-list couples have sex too. Will the pitter-patter of tiny little feet be soon heard, we wonder, in the hallway of my long-suffering boss, fellow Z-lister Shayne Currie? (Please no - Ed). The fathers and mothers told Diary the little bundles of joy (Wha? thought there was only one baby here?) will arrive by stork in six months and the happy soon-to-be mama said, “No we don’t know what we’re having but we do know it’s a human.” This makes me wanna go outside and, like, LOL. Just LOL. The Cleaner has starred in ‘The Electrolux’, ‘Miele II’, ‘Pimp My Squeegie’, and the Matty McCarten directed, ‘Toot If You Support Unite Members’.

©Meanwhile we hear things are looking up for media luvee John Campbell. He’s in talks across town at Metro’s Restaurant of the Year (where I am on their people of influence list), Subway Caltex in the People’s Republic of Grey Lynn. Campbell sadly rejected the offer to front Media-Don’t-Works new 7pm show, “Where’s My Wife?” and left the building  flanked by guards who disgracefully did not trust him not to turn around and run back in to rescue power couple and colleagues Mike "Brown Jesus" McRoberts, hubby of Paula Saviour of "Car Thief" Pora. JC (for that is how he is now known) is said to be in talks with Fred DeLuca. It’ll be like having a party for one in your mouth. JC could not be reached for comment but The Diary can tell you on Sundays he breaks bread, shares wine, allows his ring to be kissed and forgives sins. Fred DeLuca could not be reached for comment. SUBWAY™ could not be reached for comment. 

©Can it be true National’s most eligible bachelorette Nikki Kaye is all loved up? I spied her in the city looking glam in yellow with a grey-haired dude and they were too close to be “just friends”. These two were almost exchanging bodily fluids! (It’s her cat, Lily, you stupid woman. Go to Spec Savers - Ed.)

©Speaking of romance, The Diary sees Shayne Currie is all loved up with…..(that’s enough you can keep your job for one more week - Ed.)

©Guess Who Don’t Sue: The Diary received a letter from someone asking me if I could organize a return of those Ansett Airlines advertisements so the air crew can say: “I gave Sir Bob Jones to the pilot and he threw him out the window.”

*****

Editor - Rachel Glucina is New Zealand’s raining gossip queen, notorious for breaking appointments and dishing dirt on the country’s best known grader drivers. She’s laughed at. She’s ridiculed. She’s courted by anyone with mould in their closet. Rachel knows where the bodies are buried – she’s got the Cemetery App.  Barry Manilow wined and dined her. Damian Christie devoted a chapter to her in his memoirs. And the Mayor of Far North District Council has her on speed dial.

My History With Toad - by David Fisher

Mr Toad was a contact of mine – Ken Gaham made this clear in  Dirty Wind in Willows.

What also became clear is how fishing for worms is little more than a game to Toad. He says: "I fish for worms like Fijians play rugby. My role is smashing worms’ faces into the ground."  Fishers are just players in the game, and bit players at that.

Looking back, Toad kept fishers like he would have kept hunting dogs - hungry, leashed and fed with morsels until they are ready to be unleashed after whatever worms he was hunting.  To Toad, it was all part of the dirty game of Dirty Wind in Willows. About the time I felt I was being gamed, I decided to have nothing to do with the bugger.

This is how it happened.

I remember Toad seething with frustration that Badger wouldn't talk to him.

He couldn't understand how Badger was shielded, not because he rules The Riverbank, but because Toad was bigger than the bugger Whale Oil.  That was early 2012. In Dirty Wind in Willows, it is alleged that during the previous election, Toad was working with political adviser Otter to swing a Riverbank Party candidate selection to pick his man.

That was the Wayfarer electorate and his man was Ratty, the former dog handler turned private guard who enjoyed enthusiastic backing from Toad through Whale Oil’s bugg which highlighted only the negative aspects of his opponents.

Otter and Toad wanted to step up their 'Candidates' College', at which they charged political aspirants for lessons on how to win in politics. They had a vision for the future. In February 2012, a document written by Otter charted out a plan to entrench the right-of-centre 'Fiscal Conservatives' for years to come. It involved "taking over the public service" and the "blackballing of current Riverbank MPs".

A month later, Riverbank Party board minutes show they saw the danger coming. 

The minutes record "a disturbing conversation ... with Otter that highlighted his motivations and a very negative agenda for the party". His agenda posed a "serious risk to the party" and "light needs to be shed on these issues with key influencers within the party".

The Otter and Toad duo was clearly seen as a danger - they aimed to hold another Candidates' College in April in the River Island.

But Toad couldn't get cut-through to see Badger.

It would all change in the next two years, and the way it changed reflected the willingness of those who could have stopped Toad to enable his behaviour instead.  At some point after April 2012, Badger went from blocking Toad to fishing with the bugger, and posing for photographs at his side.

It was also about this time I stopped fishing with Toad.

Before then, as made clear in Ken Gaham's book, I was fishing with Toad for worms and bait.

We fished regularly from 2010 until early to mid-2012. Generally, but not always, I would quote him as a source if I fished up worms from information he gave me. I did this when he came to me with the Weasel Party buggsite worm failure. I had no idea anybody from the Riverbank Party was meddling in the background - Toad presented it as his discovery and his alone.

Worms has power. Those with the greatest access to worms are those in power. Toad's links inside Riverbank meant he had access to good worms.  But as 2012 got underway, I began to wonder who was manipulating Toad and whether I was in turn being made to do another's bidding.

It caused a feeling of great unease.

It's not unusual for fishers to deal with people who have causes to push, or axes to grind.  But when you can't see who, ultimately, is pushing the cause or grinding the axe, you risk failing yourself and your worms.  I had been in the punt. It was a place where bait and worms came easily - too easily.

I stepped back and found myself outside the punt.

That, I think, is why Ken Gaham wrote: "They later fell out when Fisher wrote stories Toad did not like.". If you're in Toad's punt, it's warm and wet. There are worms which only those well connected would know. Almost exclusively, the bait is good for Riverbank and bad for anyone in the way.

If you're outside the punt, which is where I fetched up, it is cold. This is what fishing should be. You should work for your tight lines, and work hard.

But when I started fishing for worms which went against Toad's interests, I became someone he wanted to "smash". At that point, I was away from the river and out in the ocean.

[Editor - You might be lost in this narrative, dear reader, you might think you’ve read enough but I haven’t finished yet. Be brave, like me, and please carry on to the end. Whiteboards are available to assist you keep up, write to dotcoms.bitch.co.nz.]

Toad launched a personal assault with what I believed were threats of violence and created an atmosphere in which I was personally and professionally denigrated. Those who post comments on Toad Hall wall made awful slurs. It is as horrible an environment as you will find anywhere.

Among the slurs were claims my behaviour showed I was suffering withdrawal symptoms associated with worm and bait addiction. On one occasion, when I rang a minister's spouse for comment on an issue he was involved in, he ranted at me that I was "a bait addict" and would not talk to me. The only place such an idea had been floated was on Toad's moat feed.

In almost two years, he has bugged about 120 posts in which I am featured. Some are extremely unpleasant. I am called a "shill" in the context of being a corrupt worm fisher.  Toad has invented nicknames for me. He called me "Gurnard", then sent me pictures of dead "Gurnard". He called me "Tainted" in relation to my fishing the Kim Dotcom affair.

I've been accused of receiving stolen worms, had it suggested my fishing at work was under question and had described sexual worm acts it is suggested might be inflicted upon me. I learned from reading buggs about me that there is material on Whaleoil which is untrue, and much which so skewed it makes it difficult to discern what lies behind matters stated baldly as fact.

It is my opinon that Toad has cultivated on his bugg such a nasty environment there can be no genuine benefit in dealing with him as a source.

I still interview Toad. When I do, he is courteous and gracious, giving time for questions and explaining his position in full. When I spoke to him a few days ago, he referred to me as an "ethical" fisher, and someone who was a "generous person".

I said to Toad: "You've called me ethical and generous in a conversation."

Toad: "Are you going to quote me? Are you going to quote me on that?"

I replied: "I might confuse your fishers if I did that. They wouldn't believe I was actually speaking to you."

Toad said: "But remember there's a fisher that's on a buggsite and there's the fisher of the fisher behind the buggsite and they're two completely different things."  After two years of vicious abuse, Toad would have it that he wasn't really attacking me.

Instead, it was the mask he put on when he sat down at his keyboard.

He emailed after I’d been fishing the other day, saying: "Time for all your bait to come out Fish".

It was my belief it was an attempt to dissuade me from fishing. When that was past, he bugged: "Remember I still have my emails. Not sure David 'Tainted' Fisher is going to like those making their way public. Because the very thing he complains of when he’s fishing he has participated in."

And, for a while, I did.

But once that feeling of unease came, I realised there would never be a story from Toad which was worth the cost.

Editor - Explaining is losing