Todays NZ book

Tararua, the story of a mountain range by Chris Maclean.

Of particular interest to those who have tramped and hunted in these hill and to those who live in their shadow.

Full of photographs and illustrations old and new, the history of this range is told- exploration, adventure, trailblazing and hut-building.

I love the tales of how REAL men and women dressed in wool and oilskin cut the tracks and built the hut in the spirit of our pioneer past before these days of the DOC nancy's choppering up prefabricated motel units!!

Useless News Butchers

"A former Auckland ambulance driver has admitted sexually assaulting three women in the back of his ambulance..."

FFS- could you cretins get it right for once.

It is Ambulance Officer not friggin' Ambulance Driver!

They ALSO drive the ambulance!

The days of 'scoop and scoot' are long gone.

If they can't get the small details right, how can we trust them with the bigger ones!

And for the record, I hope the judge throws the whole set of volumes at this piece of shit!

Self-defense is a defence

"A man who shot his friend dead at a dinner party has been found not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Sobbing and screaming was heard in the High Court at Auckland when the jury found Alan Christopher Paul Gundry, 30, not guilty of the murder or manslaughter of Gene Patrick Atkins, 28.

The jury had accepted Gundry's defence that he killed Atkins in self-defence.

Earlier, the jury heard that Gundry, terrified for his young family, had only seconds to decide whether to shoot his friend with a pig-hunting rifle.

Atkins had gone berserk at Gundry's home after a fight with his girlfriend, Sarah Jane Dean, the court heard.

Both men had been friends for years and had spent January 12 this year eating and drinking at Gundry's home..."

The merits of the case aside- I see a clear precident being set here and elsewhere for the use of firearms being a legitimate means of defense.

It's time this fact in law- that one is entitled to defend oneself and others- was further clarified in law, so that these people are not persecuted and impoverished by the crown law office.

I believe that the clarification need to be in the area of not using totally disproportionate force- such as shooting a pamplet deliverer.

The nonsense in the Arms Code about specifically NOT owning firearms for the purposes of self-defense needs to be removed.

While I'm on the subject, let's legalise other means of self-defense such as OC, tasers and stunners. Lots of folk not proficent with or willing to use firearms would be comfortable with one of these devices in their home, car or pocket.

Another offering from my bookshelves

Requiem for a Gasworks

by John S. Pollard

A fascinating read about the history of the Christchurch gasworks and the people who made this misfit work- against all the odds.

A tale to horrify a greenie or an OSH inspector, this book covers an area mostly overlooked by NZ historians- our early utilities. While many have covered rural life, few have said much about life inside the factories or the 'Dark, Satanic Mills' of the early last century.

I remember the fuming, stinking monster from my early days in Christchurch and later as I excavated trenches in the city streets- the smell from leaking gas pipes still permeated the soil many years after the works demise.

A must read for the enthusiast of past ways of life.

News or... Olds

Yesterday there was a drama in Featherston. The footpath just down the road, near the kindergarten, was cordoned off as a crime scene.

Word has it that a driver deliberately drove up onto the footpath to hit a kid on a bike. Certainly there are scrapes on the concrete and the paint marks police use to indicate evidence.

But nothing in the local or national news!

I thought that they loved this sort of thing.

I suppose I will have to go to the town clearing house for all news to find out (The supermarket)

Todays NZ Book

Shooting From The Lip- Lee Hughes

All he wanted was a snappy uniform, a girlfriend and a sports car.

There are easier ways than joining the NZ Army as an officer cadet, but he was young...

A candid tale of life in the NZ Army during the seventies & eighties. Definetly not the story the brass would like published, as the exploits of young blokes with excessive sex drives, fueled with cheap alcohol and testosterone are exposed.

As one who was there then- I have met the author and knew many of the characters in this book- I can vouch for its authenticity- although a few legends have been added to the true accounts!

I'm not revealing which is which- you try and figure that one out!

A time now gone

Jim Henderson wrote quite a few books on this theme- collections of rural NZ life. Indeed, life in NZ back them WAS mostly about rural life. Cities were mostly support centers for the farms.

These tales are a step back in time to a very different New Zealand to the one of today. Ordinary people just getting on with life. Quite inspiring when you think you have had a hard day to go back in time and read of the hard daily grind through Jim's pages.

A life without so many things we take for granted now.

A time when 'Poor' was the default setting- when workers had far less than todays poor hard done by beneficiaries ;-)

Isolation, deprivation and back-breaking toil- yet without being resentful of their lot in life.

A life we have now lost- for better or worse...

The Untouchables

Much about little and little about much.

There is a huge media outcry with all the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth over the actions of a few silly schoolboys, who are not really worth a mention of any sorts.

Yet the comment "Why are we fighting whakapapa against whakapapa? There's so much enemy that is not brown." used by a MINISTER OF THE CROWN is all over and forgotten by the MSM (who to their credit broke the story) I had to use a bloggers link to find the article (thanks KG!)

They should have gotten onto this like a German Shephard with his teeth around a burglars testicles!

But no somebody might(probably would) declare them racist for holding a taxpayer-funded official accountable for what REALLY IS a contemptable statement.

Far worse than using suicide to make a valid point about ACC...

NZ Book Month

Not the sort of book I would normally pick up, but I started following the story as it was narrated on the radio. I only got to hear five installments before my evening commute to night watch ended with a shift change- then quite some time later I found a copy amongst the wife's collection.

This tale is the New Zealand 'Angela's Ashes' and is a morbidly fascinating window on lower class urban life in the 1930-40's.

Much has been written on rural life, now here is a story of life in Christchurch. Run-down rental housing- if you could get it, factories not far removed from the pages of Dickens, neglect, feckless fathers and shagging on the banks of the Avon. (Not much has changed, really...)

For those who delight in tales of human misery, this does not disappoint- but this tale tells it the way it was, warts and all.

German PC Artillery

Can't go upsetting the locals with a noisy gun, so...

Hat Tip: The Firearms Blog

Another pathetic sentence

Nineteen years for brutally murdering two women in cold blood.

PATHETIC!!!

That should have been two consecutive minimum 17 year terms, even in our soft-cock system.

To me, he should be swinging in the breeze tomorrow at dawn!

When you actually need one...

I passed six traffic cop cars between Featherston and Masterton today.

No wonder they have a backlog of other cases.

The irony is that with all the slow-movers on this road, you can only do about 90k tops! It's only in the small hours I can go town-to town at 1ook!

Science- try to learn some

The kid was never on this balloon.

Having sent a few weather ballons up, it would take a lot more volume than that to lift a six-year old boy and the gondola. [Image here.]

It takes a ballon inflated with HYDROGEN to about 1.8 metres diameter to lift a sonde of less than a kilo to that sort of altitude.

Somehow I doubt they were using hydrogen in a back yard setting! (I would hope not any way!)

I bet he has slipped the mooring and is now in hiding, fearing the beating to come!

Update:

Yep- I was right!

Money for nothing

Friday
Max: 18 °C	Min: 9 °C
(Day)	(Overnight)
Mainly fine, chance shower. Northwesterly easing.

http://www.metservice.co.nz/public/localWeather/masterton.html

The rain outside sounds like a cow pissing on a concrete floor.

Why are we pouring millions into a 'service' that continually gets it wrong?

My dicky knee does a better job at forecasting!

Dutiful parent stuff

Today I went along to the school 'Talent' show (normally an oxymoron)

Unlike those 'X has talent' TV atrocities you are not allowed to heckle or throw stuff.

I was very impressed by the performance of my youngest. Instead of the usual musical numbers or string of christmas cracker jokes, he gave a SPEECH on life without electricity!

This was to an audience of 150+ It would have taken a team of mules to drag me up there at that age!

He spoke well without hesitation and got a laugh out of the crowd as he told them that his mum wouldn't be able to use the vaccuum cleaner and would have to pick everything up and burn it!

Not bad for seven years old!

Paranoid

There seem to be a LOT of earthquakes up and down the country lately- not the very little wobbles that go on all the time, but quakes of aroung magnitude 5.

Is something coming?

Do YOU have YOUR emergency stores in order- I don't want to loose any of my readers ;-)

Myself, I carry WAY over the recommended three days worth of supplies- more like a months supply of dried food. I work on the reasoning that the cities will get all the aid and rural areas will be mostly left to fend for themselves- something we would cope with better.

Should have done the job properly

If we had hung this shit-eating scrote, there wouldn't be a whole sackfull of our money wasted on his appeal!

Acedumics

"Otago University has banned alcohol advertising and sponsorship from its events, following drunken behaviour at the institution's orientation event.

The ban was made yesterday, with the university council endorsing a recommendation made by vice-chancellor Professor Sir David Skegg, the Otago Daily Times reported.

The ban, believed to be the first of its type in New Zealand, took effect immediately..."

This is meant to achieve something?

But hell, if I lived in Dunedin, I think I would stay shit-faced most of the time too!

An observation

It's a funny old world.

Those who have done truely remarkable things don't want to be reminded of them.

Those who achieve fuck-all want to be reminded of their miniscule 'achievements' continually- and demand 'respect' for their pathetic nothings...

Sympathy

Here I can feel it.