I’m delighted to report that the day after I slammed the infantile “Be Kind” signs on the heavy traffic Wellington – Hutt highway, they disappeared. Hopefully so too nationwide.

The ratbag Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, when not murdering and imprisoning opponents, is endeavouring to free Saudi women from the horrors of extreme Islamic dictates as part of his modernisation agenda. He cites Cairo as his role example, where women dress in Western mode, don’t cover their heads for fear of arousing every male into a sexual frenzy and gad about, to quote Boris, as letterboxes, an apt description for the disgraceful primitive burqas. Needless to say, he faces tremendous clerical opposition and will probably end up being both murdered and unmourned.

At times it’s excruciatingly embarrassing living in New Zealand. Our sense of irrelevance, justifiable with our small population and geographic isolation, leads to an embarrassing self-consciousness and copycatism by our half-wit classes.

Recently I read well know British writer A.N. Wilson’s 600 page tome “After the Victorians” basically a world history of the extraordinarily eventful first half of the 20^th century. Of New Zealand, Ed Hilary got a single mention, albeit as part of the British Everest team.

Every year somewhere in New Zealand suffers from debilitating droughts. This year it’s been Auckland and Hawkes Bay.