The 2005 National billboard you never saw

It was my favourite of the lot, but it never ran. Don Brash wanted it to, but others thought no one would understand what PPTA was.

I replied that the media would ensure that they soon did!

I think this billboard would have created a firestorm, which the teacher unions surely deserve.

It would have thrown the spotlight on the real wreckers of the New Zealand education system: unions that for decades have quite deliberately destroyed the futures of thousands of children by insisting that they be exposed to useless, boring, uninspiring teachers.

Let’s hope the latter-day Nats can summon up the guts to deal to these Labour-protected losers – and pay good teachers the six-figure sums they deserve.

(They just might too, as depowering the PPTA would be hugely popular with parents, students, business, and anyone who cares about New Zealand’s future.)

Ansell’s Ductionerry of Mispronounciations

A bug thenk yoe to those who contrubuted. Hair nairw is the first edution:

Air – how

Air gun? – How are you going?

An enemy – anemone

Another thing coming – another think coming (my own mistake!)

Any fink – anything

Ardest – artist

Asterix – asterisk

Athol eat – athlete

Awso – also

Axe – ask (African American)

Bairww – bell

Baww – ball

Beer – bare

Biww – bill

Bling cut – blanket

Blowen – blown

Bug – big

But – bit

Buww – bull

Can date – candidate

Car mourn – come on

Ceremoany – ceremony

CerVIEcal – cervical

Cheer – chair

Chlorine – clawing

Cloyed key – Clyde Quay

Coined – kind

Congradulations – congratulations

Cooww – cool

Cruel accounting – accrual accounting

Cut – kit

Cut shin – kitchen

Deer – dare

De tier rating – deteriorating

Deteriating – deteriorating

Devoid – divide

Droring – drawing

Ella funt – elephant

Every fink – everything

Fear – fair

Febree – February

Febuary – February

(Jeanette) Fitzsimmons – Fitzsimons

Foyt – fight

Foined – find

Floin – flying

Freud – fried

Freud chuckin’ – fried chicken

Freud eh – Friday

Furs day – Thursday

Godiv Neigh Shuns – God of Nations

Goid – guide

Growen – grown

Head – had

Hedant – hadn’t

Heenious – heinous

Heenis – heinous

Hoy – high

Hoyts – heights

Hunt – hint

HurriCANE – hurricane (hurrikin)

Hut – hit

I head the baww – I had the ball

Kea – care

(John) Keys – Key

Kil-omm-etre – kilometre

Kim Yoon Tee – community

Knowen – known

Larva – lover

Lectral ptishun – electoral petition

Lemming tin – lamington

Lenth – length

Liberians – librarians

Lieberry – library

Loin – line

Luddle butt – little bit

Mischievious – mischievous

Moined – mind

Moyle – mile

Muwk – milk

Myzild – misled

Nigh – no

Noyce – nice

Nucular – nuclear

Optune tea – opportunity

Perogative – prerogative

Piss cryption – prescription

Pitcher – picture

Problee – probably

Pronounciation – pronunciation

Quoits – kites

Renumeration – remuneration

Reuter – writer

Sad day – Saturday

Saline – sailing

Sheer – share

Showen – shown

Shovelry – chivalry

Shut – shit

Sidiv – sort of

Sievin’ – seven

Skier – scare

Sko – let’s go

Skoda bed – let’s go to bed

Skoi – sky

Skunk – skink

Slut – slit

Smaw -small

Spaykung – speaking

Spear – spare

Spoyce – spice

Sput – spit

Stray Leah – Australia

Sut dairn – sit down

Taww – tall

Thenk yoe – thank you

Tier – tear

Toyah – tire, tyre

Troy – try

Try Athol on – triathlon

Uk setra – et cetera

Un – in

Unvoice – invoice

Voice – vice

Vunrubble – vulnerable

ACT vertebrae visible in agreement

ACT promised to give the Nats a spine. And they’ve made a great start.

At least eleven ACT ‘vertebrae’ are visible in the agreement reached with John Key. 

To cynics like John Armstrong who say Rodney won no firm concessions, consider this…

National has signed up to some or all of these eleven points of ACT’s 20 Point Plan for New Zealand:

1.  ACT’s main goal: Close the $500-a- week income gap with Australia by 2025. Now the government’s goal.

2.  Point 1: Cut government waste. Rodney has a hand on the scythe.

3.  Point 2: Cut tax. All centre-right parties endorse United’s 30% rate for both personal and company tax. A good start.

4.  Point 3: Limit local government and cap rates. Rodney in charge.

5.  Point 4: Reduce bureaucracy. Well, not growing it is a start.

6.  Point 5: Cut red tape. With Rodney on scissors, the cuts should be deep and meaningful.

7.  Point 6: Reform the RMA. 

8.  Point 7: More choice in health. Heather to help make more use of private hospitals.

9.  Point 17: Get tough on violent crims. ACT’s 3 Strikes Bill to go forward.

10. Point 18: Review the ETS. ACT wins a stay, and time to convince the public of the high costs and zero environmental benefits.

11. Point 19: Strengthen the constitutional framework.  Rodney’s  Taxpayer Bill of Rights goes forward.

The cynics may say that Key is just stringing its feisty junior partner along.

But John will know the cost of enraging the likes of Rodney Hide, Roger Douglas and John Boscawen.

He knows ACT aren’t poodles seeking baubles. They’re pitbulls with principles. Best keep them well-fed or government could get ugly.

The agreement is a credit to the negotiating skills of both John and Rodney.

The National caucus may have agreed quickly. But not, I suspect, lightly.

An ACT ad people would have liked

A National ad people would have liked

It’s the Keyhive (with the ACT 5)

Clark gone. Peters gone. ACT more than doubling its share in a week (as we predicted). Rodney romps in in Epsom (as predicted). Not a bad night at all.

The two most corrupt politicians in New Zealand history have left the building.

And two selfless patriots – Roger Douglas and John Boscawen – have entered.

(I’ve only spoken to ACT’s fifth MP David Garrett once by phone. But his standing in the Sensible Sentencing Trust suggests he’ll be a strong MP.)

The sad thing for me was seeing my friend Stephen Franks not only miss Wellington Central, but also miss getting in on National’s list.

By one lousy place. 

What a waste of a thoughtful and talented man to rank him 60th.

I am inspired to see John Key realise his 35 year goal to be PM. If he looked  euphoric, it’s because he’s been planning for this day since we was 12.  

John is the nice guy he seems. It’s incredible what he’s achieved, both in business and in politics.

If he can run the country the way he’s run his life so far, we’ll be in good shape. 

Let’s hope, with ACT’s support, he can.

On Sunday programme tomorrow

TVNZ’s Cameron Bennett came to the flat on Thursday to interview me for this week’s Sunday programme.

It was a busy time with the laptop chirping with ACT business, so I hope my distractedness wasn’t too obvious.

My job was to rate Labour’s campaign, while Tom Scott will be rating National’s.

(No pressure!)

Then a panel will be rating our ratings. I understand.

When Cameron asked me to rate Clark’s campaign out of ten, the first word out of my mouth was ‘Two.’ Then for the next take I upgraded her to a six.

My 2/10 was for the way her Slippery John attacks backfired and just made her look like Sleazy Helen.

But taken as a whole, including her surprisingly human performance in the last debate, and strong Labour branding on the ground, I thought a 5 or 6 was fairer.

If I’d been asked, I wouldn’t have ranked the Nats much higher, if at all. I thought the big ad battle was pretty close to a nil-all draw.

ONLY ONE PARTY IS PROMISING REAL CHANGE

If a child asks a parent for endless lollies and the parent says no, we call them a good parent. If a politician does the same, we call him a heartless right-winger! It’s crazy.

If you keep letting politicians bribe you with your children’s money, you’ll get the government you deserve. 

If Labour and National had adopted ACT’s 1994 tax cut strategy sooner, we’d all be a lot richer now. We pay a very high cost for waiting for timid conservatives to see sense.

Give ACT the numbers tomorrow, and Rodney Hide will make sure National stokes the engine of economic growth and gets us all richer quicker.

No more communism by stealth. No ruinous Emissions Trading Scam. (That’s likely to leave the Greens’ little girl without a job as her mum shovels $3000 a year to the Russians.) 

If ACT’s ‘3 Strikes’ policy had been in place earlier, Emma Agnew, Karl Kuchenbecker, the trio murdered in the Panmure RSA and many other poor souls would still be alive.

William Bell had amassed 102 convictions when he killed Mary Hobson, William Absolum and Wayne Johnson.

Antonie Dixon had been found guilty of 160  offences when he killed James Te Aute.

If ACT had been running things, they would have both gone to prison for life after their third violent assault. Before they killed. Not after.

It’s not just in the crime area where the difference between voting ACT and Labour/National could be the difference between life and death.

ACT’s 20 Point Plan for the economy would boost Kiwis’ pay over time, not by $10 or $50, but by $500 a week.

We’d grow the economy, so we can afford the full year course of Herceptin that richer countries can afford. Under Labour mismanagement, a New Zealand breast cancer sufferer must find $100,000 – or die. 

And the Labour government would rather you died than let a private hospital save your life. That’s not mad. That’s bad.

Other parties say they care. But only ACT has the cure. 

Normally-socialist Sweden has been implementing ACT’s school scholarship system since 1994. 

Today, only one party in Sweden doesn’t support it, and that’s the Communists.

Each parent gets a scholarship from the government for about $100,000 per child – the same as the state spends on your child over thirteen years of schooling. 

You’ll have to spend that money with schools. But you can choose whether they’re public or private schools. Or even home schools. 

The point is, those schools will have to do what you want, not what bureaucrats want. And in Sweden, that’s led to a flourishing of new, smaller, schools and a surge in education standards. 

(And the areas that have benefited most have been the poor areas, where they had no choice but bad schools before.)

Do you want a government of change? Or just a change of government?

If you want real change, you won’t get it from National alone. You’ll need to strengthen the coalition with a spine of principled, experienced, gutsy ACT MPs.

With Rodney Hide ahead in Epsom by 56% to 27%, your ACT party vote will definitely count.
 
It will have the same power to flush away Helen Clark as a National party vote.
 
But in improving New Zealand, it will be much more powerful.
 
Because by adding more ACT MPs to the National/ACT coalition, you’ll be boosting the chances of getting the above results for you, your family and New Zealand.

ACT is peaking at the right time – as usual! If National get 47% of MPs and ACT 4%, Rodney Hide is going to have a lot of clout with John Key.

Once, ACT’s founder had the guts to do what was right for New Zealand, and our modern, energetic society with its wonderful array of choices is his legacy. 

Now it’s your turn.

 

ACT couldn’t use these – but you can!

If only ACT really was a party of millionaires, you might have seen more of these.

Feel free to email them to your friends and family, as long as you include the authorisation below.

For the press ads below, the body copy was never written, so what’s in there is just filler.

If you send them on, don’t forget to tag your emails: ‘Authorised as demanded by Labour’s, NZ First’s and the Greens’ outrageous assault on free speech by Nick Kearney, 37 Beach Haven Road, Auckland.’

Tomorrow’s ad – and three rejects

I think the above would have made a popular billboard, but the party had higher priorities.

Maybe it’s not too late to sell it to the Exclusive Brethren.

Below, two competing ideas for the final day full page press ad tomorrow.

The first uses John Campbell’s idea from the TV3 debate of stacking up children’s building blocks into towers.

The aim was to counter the main threat to ACT: people thinking they needed to vote National to get rid of Labour.

Of course they don’t. It’s not the number of your blocks, but the size of your bloc that counts.

I’m a bit worried that we’re not going with this.

The party decided it was more important to emphasise the symbolic cup of tea between John and Rodney.

This sent the signal to National voters to give Rodney their party votes in Epsom, and to ACT supporters round the country that it’s safe to vote ACT. 

Newspapers being about news, I thought we should feature several relevant facts up big, in case people didn’t read any further from the headline.

These facts are that Rodney’s safe in Epsom, that ACT doesn’t need 5% to make it back, and that there are three big policies that ACT will drive a hard bargain on if ACT holds the balance of power.

But after much debate, the guys in Auckland decided to go with the following simpler approach, challenging the voter and leaving the detail to the body copy…

What do you think?

Adding the Key blessing

 Advertising writers know that people do read body copy if they’re interested in the product.

This ad is written for those who want to know the truth about the ETS.

It points out yet another important difference between populist National and principled ACT.

But today we’ve added the Key/Hide ‘cup of tea’ photo. This sends two other messages.

It tells all ACT supporters around the country that their votes will count. Because they know it’s also telling National voters in Epsom to vote for Rodney.

Why doesn’t John Key just come out and say this?

Because much of National’s funding comes from the mansions of Remuera, Parnell and Epsom.

And many of their blue-rinsed residents have yet to appreciate the tactical nuances of this new-fangled voting system called MMP.

Put simply, the idea of not voting blue would make them see red.

ACT has a big challenge in the next few days. We have to convince centre-right voters that to achieve their goal of getting rid of the odious Clark, they have two choices.

Not just one.

To change the government, they can vote for either National or ACT. It’s the National + ACT total that counts. Not the National total alone.

If the National/ACT total exceeds 50% of MPs, we get a National-led government.

It doesn’t make the slightest difference to the centre-right’s numbers whether National get the entire 50+%, or ACT gets 10% of it.

That’s what people don’t get yet.

But it sure as hell will make a big difference to the country.

ACT’s thrust for the next few days will be getting voters to recognize the huge difference between a change of government and a government of change.

That difference is ACT.

Stay tuned for those ads.

Press relations restored

I’ve just had a phone call and exceptionally gracious apology from a very pleasant advertising director.

It seems she is no comfortably-shod feminazi out to sabotage the ACT campaign, but just wanted to protect her client from itself after the Green spoof controversy.

And contrary to my prediction, the ad appeared in an excellent position for a run-of-paper placement.

This restores my faith in God (AKA Alan – Wellington’s god of retail advertising, Alan Martin), who’s catch cry was ’It’s the putting right that counts.’ 

The late Mr Martin once put something right for me – a faulty fridge connection which nearly electrocuted me.

I rang him on a Sunday in a somewhat agitated state. He was as good as his word and said he’d ’sack the bastard’ who’d left the wires exposed.

(I had to plead with him not to put things quite that right and let the poor man keep his job.)

In the same vein, I will now praise this woman to the heavens whenever I get the chance.

Voting ACT: a matter of life and death

These three ghoulish faces will greet you in tomorrow’s paper.

They nearly didn’t make it.

This post was so very nearly going to be a whistleblowing story of a sabotage attempt by an overzealous newspaper advertising director.

Right at the death, she spooked us with a long list of reasons why you shouldn’t be allowed to see this ad in her publication.

First, we delivered it a few minutes late. This happens in election week, when strategies are a bit of a moveable feast. We did our damnedest to hit the deadline, but just missed.

(My remembering that I’d spelled Teresa Cormack’s name with an ‘h’ didn’t help.)

Then she said our cheeky authorisation line breached the EFA.

(This despite both the NBR and the Sunday Star-Times – hardly the right’s best friend - having no problem with the same line last week.)

Then Miss Bossy-boots said we needed to get the permission of the murder victims’ families before we could mention their names. 

How this is any business of a bloody advertising director, God only knows. Surely it’s our lookout if one of the families takes offence, not the paper’s.

Oh and I’m sure the paper’s journalists faithfully ring for permission every time they write a story about the same victims.

Yeah right. 

Next hoop she made us jump through at the end of a long and stressful day was to question whether the Privacy Act would let us publish the number of convictions each killer had accumulated before being let out to kill.

Since that was one of the very points I was making in the ad, she may have had a point there, I don’t know.

But by then, I was smelling a stinky, rotten, blood-red rodent. I felt like Don Brash trying to get Helen’s private police force to investigate the theft of his emails.

As I said in my intemperate reply, we’ve come to a pretty pass when a newspaper defends the ‘rights’ of killers not to have their atrocities exposed. 

Somehow, someone got this busybody to see sense and the ad is supposed to be running uncensored.

That said, I’m not expecting to see it anywhere near the front. (But then in this particular paper, the back is quite near the front.)

I’d just completed Plan B when I got the good news. Plan B was to go ballistic in the other media with the story of bias against ACT.

Let’s hope Saturday marks the beginning of the end of this sort of nonsense.

Another good day at the factory from Mike Boekholt, and special thanks to media buyer Gwyn Jones for fighting our corner superbly.

Hope you like the ad.

Helping Rodney scupper the ETS

You read it here first. ACT’s new ad for the Sunday Star-Times tomorrow. Poking the borax at parties who tell it like it isn’t.

John Key is a genuinely nice guy, but I doubt I’ll be getting a Christmas card from him this year after this.

While I don’t like upsetting my friends at the Nats, I just can’t agree with someone who knows that man-made climate change is a hoax, but would rather waste billions of our dollars on a fix that won’t work, than use his public platform to explain the science.

John thinks explaining is losing. Maybe he’s right. Maybe not. But surely if you’re really ambitious for New Zealand, it’s right to try. 

Rodney and Roger are made of sterner stuff, and I’m proud to try and explain their position. I hope this ad helps get ACT the traction they deserve.

If it doesn’t, it’s my fault. They approved the copy as written.

The photo of Rodney – which I really like - was by ACT Hutt South candidate and artist Lindsay Mitchell.

(I remain mystified why such a passionate and knowledgeable candidate as Lindsay is ranked only 14th. Bob Jones launched her campaign, and Bob doesn’t come out for just anybody.)

Thanks to Mike Boekholt, Lance Tomuri and Andrew Rundle-Keswick for the artwork.

Back with ACT

OK, OK, so it’s been harder for me to sit out an election than I thought. In the end I just couldn’t say no to a cause I believe in.

This, then, is the World Premiere of ACT’s new press ad. It runs in the NBR tomorrow.

I think it sums up why we need ACT in these troubled times. I hope Rodney, Roger and John can find the money to run it more than once.

My thanks to my artistic partners Lance Tomuri, Mike Boekholt and Andrew Rundle-Keswick.

Ambulance ambience

Stephen Franks rang on Friday to say we’re providing a lot of enjoyment to the centre right, especially with the Helen and Winston Trusts billboard.

This turned into a drinks invite and a nice meal with Stephen and Cathy at St John’s Bar.

None of us had eaten there before, and all agreed that the fish dishes were exceptional.

I had been in the building before – on an outing from  Waterloo when I was a nine year old cub and St John’s was an ambulance station.

Free Speech Coalition Tauranga Special

Our latest billboard should be up by now in Tauranga. David Farrar’s idea, executed by art director Mike Boekholt.

Morning-after Report

After filming the Media 7 show, the guests and crew retired to the bar at the comedy club where it was filmed.

Some hours after that, I retired further to the London-something-or-other pub next to my hotel for a beer, a sausages and mash, and the final overs of Team Vettori’s jittery victory in Chittagong.

So my relaxation was well advanced when a journalist from National Radio rang wanting my comments on an anti-abortion campaign involving the nuking of Wellington.

This just a week after the Aftershock doco where my home patch was levelled by an 8.2 earthquake.

(It occurred to me that, the odd cockroach aside, only one creature could survive such a twin pummelling. But he’d have to win Tauranga first.)

Then a few minutes even later, one of her colleagues rang seeking my reaction to Labour’s Two Johns attack ad.

Great, suddenly I was the late night go-to guy on all things advertising. I suspect Mike Hutcheson put them up to it.

Anyway, as this idea was obviously derived from the Soap  radio campaign I did for Labour in 1987, I was happy to discuss it. But not while that happy.

Fearing I’d sound like Muldoon the night he called the snap election in 1984, I suggested he ring back early the next morning, thus ending any hope of a well-earned sleep-in.

In the eventual interview on Morning Report , mustering all the sincerity I could fake, I did my best to give a reasonable impression of a person happy to be alive.

Which airline bans apostrophes?

I thought it was oil we were supposed to be running out of, not punctuation marks.

Seems the dangling possessive is just the latest artefact to be restricted on Air New Zealand flights, along with cellphones, bomb jokes, knives that don’t bend,  laptops, liquids, legroom, and decent food.

As you can see from these four screenshots from yesterday’s Air New Zealand inflight quiz, the airline now has a zero tolerance policy towards apostrophes. 

Why this possessive prevention programme has been mounted is not immediately clear.

Perhaps Air New Zealand see themselves as stewards, not just of our cabin ambience, but also of our linguistic environment.

Perhaps it fears that environment becoming polluted by overpunctuation.

Or perhaps it’s more worried about the legal ramifications of its quiz writers developing a bad case of POOS (Punctuational Obfuscational Overuse Syndrome).

Either way, Air New Zealand, it’s not on.

Punctuation marks are navigation aids. They help guide readers on their  flight path toward the destination of understanding.

They’re our linguistic landing lights. 

You’re our airline. Please show more respect for our language.  

Kiwiblog spoof now real billboard

What began as an idle suggestion by me on Kiwiblog and a quick mockup by Whale Oil has now become a real billboard for the Free Speech Coalition.

It went up this afternoon in Auckland and, weather permitting, Wellington. 

Stay tuned for the Tauranga special

The bottom line, if you can’t read it, says ‘Authorised as demanded by LabourFirst’s and the Greens’ outrageous assault on free speech by David Farrar of the Free Speech Coalition…”

On Media 7 tonight

I’m in Auckland to record the TVNZ7 show Media 7 about (what else?) political ads.

The recording was last night. It screens tonight at 9.30pm if you’ve got Freeview. Otherwise you can see it on the website.

We had great fun – ‘we’ being host Russell Brown, mayor/Labour president/ad-man Bob Harvey, political marketing lecturer Jennifer Lees-Marshment, and me.

It was my first TV programme outside of game shows, so I was a little nervous about the format. Would it be a lefty ambush?

If so, I was ready with my defence of Iwi/Kiwi (which I’ll blog some day).

But the reality was much more congenial.

Russell was a very fair host, Bob was great fun, and Jennifer I knew from having talked to her class at Auckland University in 2006.

The most openly partisan panelist was almost certainly me, as I couldn’t resist lampooning Clark’s outrageous ‘trust’ positioning.

But the producers seemed happy, and the audience laughed more than usual apparently. Producer Phil Wallington wants me to come back for a one-on-one some time over Christmas.

The programme is produced by Top Shelf Productions, whose owner Vincent Burke I recognized from my philosophy class at Vic in 1976.

While I’ve had a complete rearrangement of flesh and facial hair in the interim, Vincent’s still got the ginger pony-tail he had back then, and hasn’t changed a bit.

Pub quiz humiliation

Went to my first Courtenay Precinct pub quiz last night.

I got to the Welsh Dragon Bar (AKA Taj Mahal) just before the 8.30pm start time. 

As one who loves listening to accents, I enjoyed the British pub feel of this bar jam-packed with Welsh paraphernalia and Irish and English clientele.

A husband and wife from Widnes were at the only non-full table. They kindly allowed me to join them, and even more kindly insisted on shouting me a beer. 

The husband explained I was helping them drain last week’s first prize. ‘We’ were the champions! Victory seemed assured.

The reality was a bit different. Think the All Blacks the last time they played somewhere Welsh. 

Chinese speakers: WASH your English

I was the guest speaker at China Toastmasters in Taipei a few years ago.

My topic was The Crazy English Language.

I desperately wanted to be of use to these brave people. (Learning to speak in public is hard enough, let alone in your second language.)

So I sweated for three weeks to think of what I could say that would help them in their heroic efforts to master my mother tongue.

Nothing happened in my head that was remotely useful.

Then at 3pm on the day of the speech that was due to start at 6pm, it finally dawned on me what I should do.

I’d write a poem about the mistakes Chinese people make in English, and how they can avoid them.

I worked out there are four parts of speech that they typically scramble and cause us confusion: 

• tense
• article
• number, and
• gender.

Iris told me why.

It’s because they don’t use these devices in Chinese. 

For example, say a Chinese speaker is telling you about something happening yesterday, today or tomorrow. 

They’ll establish which day it is right upfront, at the start of the sentence.

Then they’ll just stick with the normal present tense after that.

They’ll say, “Yesterday I go to beach”.

They quite logically wonder why the stupid English speaker would want to bother with ‘went’ or ‘was going’, when ‘go’ is really all you need.

And if it’s tomorrow that you’re doing the going, why waste valuable brainpower putting together ’I will go’ or ‘I will be going’?

‘I go’ works just fine there too.

(You’ll see they also see no need for a ’the’.)

That, in short, is why Chinese speakers speak English in shorthand. They’re just being logical.

(Mind you, I’m not sure that logic always holds true. I had to politely correct my China Toastmasters introducer for saying, “Our next speaker, she is from New Zealand.”)

For those Taiwanese and Chinese friends who want to be more clearly understood in English, memorise this little rhyming checklist:

WASH your English

Was or will be?
A or the?
S or no S?
He or she?

© J Ansell 2004

If you’re a linguist with Chinese experience, you may wish to expand on this, as I’m by no means an expert.

This morning’s Sunday Star-Times article: Labour plus the work of vandals

The following appeared this morning, minus the bit after the defaced blue billboard, which I’ve just added.

____________________

No dangling babies on red ribbons this time for Labour. But their first big billboards have no Helen, no logo, and no party vote message either.

Why this reluctance by both main parties to keep their leader’s mugs off the big sites?
 
Like National, Labour seem to be running two parallel campaigns. So much so that you wonder if they’re being done by two separate agencies.
 
The billboards (including the candidate ones) make full use of Labour’s glorious red and the powerfully emotive ‘Keep it Kiwi’ line.

Then you have the press ads, which feature a polished white-clad Helen on a white background with the Labour logo that’s missing from the billboard, and the slogan ‘This one’s about trust.’
 
In the ‘trust’ TV ad, Helen is so haughtily hypocritical she deserves a point-by-point response:
 
“National wanted us to go to war in Iraq. I said no – that’s not where New Zealanders’ values are at.”

(They’re in Afghanistan, so I sent us to war there.)
 
“This election’s about trust.”

(Or should that be ‘trusts’?) 

“It’s about who’s being straight up”

(like Key and Rodney)

“and who isn’t”

(like me and Winston). 

“Our actions”

(forging paintings, stealing public money for pledge cards, shutting down free speech, lying about donations, ten years of deficits)

“versus their words.”
 
But the production values are good, and the message is upliftingly nationalistic – though the PM looks like she’s got a bad case of myxomatosis with the light forcing her eyes into a puffy squint.
 
Labour’s candidate billboards are very simple and strong.

But all parties’ billboards are so devoid of entertainment that we’re reliant on the vandalised versions for our jollies.

One can titter sympathetically at Sue Moroney’s misfortune,

and perhaps less so at this Nelsonian’s attempt to turn National into the National Front.

I shouldn’t give advice to vandals, but this billboard is not just in appallingly bad taste.

It’s also overdesigned – like the National originals.

The perpetrators seem to have missed the obvious opportunity to blank out the B in Brighter. That would have been a bit clever. 

And if their goal was to echo the Nazis’ unquestioned flair for poisonously potent propaganda, they blew it by adding Party HARD.

It’s probably just as well I can’t quite make out the photograph.

Spot the coronation singer

You know our Kiri sang at Prince Charles’s wedding in 1981. And of course Elton John sang at his wife’s funeral in 1997. But you’ll never guess who sang at his mum’s coronation in 1953…

My new Taiwanese national anthem

It was my wife’s homeland of Taiwan’s 97th birthday on 10 October. (Double 10.) 

I don’t think their anthem does justice to their strong capitalist instinct. So, in honour of this dynamic fellow democracy, I took the liberty of composing a new one:

TaiwanTaiwanTaiwanTaiwan
Taiwanta new computer
TaiwanTaiwanTaiwanTaiwan
Taiwanta motor scooter
TaiwanTaiwanTaiwanTaiwan
TaiwanTaiwantit now
TaiwanTaiwanTaiwanTaiwan
To spit on Chairman Mao!

© J Ansell 2004

A warm welcome also to the new Taiwanese ambassador, Mr Charles Tsai.

(Note: if you are from Communist China and you are offended by the terms Taiwanese national anthem and Taiwanese ambassador in this post, I invite you to kindly get stuffed.)

To Matt McCarten and other S-men…

THIS
IS A
KEY

 
THESE
ARE
KEYS 

 

 

 

THIS IS
JOHN KEY

THESE
ARE TWO
JOHN KEYS
 

 
THIS IS
ALICIA KEYS

 

AND THESE
ARE ALICIA KEYS’
TWO

 

 

 
If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to start calling you Matt McCartney or Magna Carten :-)

Is anemone an enemy?

On Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? last night, both Mike Hosking and his contestant repeatedly pronounced anemone “an enemy”.

They did it so often I had to check that it wasn’t meant to be pronounced that way.

(It isn’t.)

This inspires me to compile a list of the Most Mispronounced Words in English. Right up there near the top would have to be pronunciation, which so many pronounce pronounciation.

Maybe the list should be called Mispronounciations?

Vunrable for vulnerable would be up there too.

 Feel free to contribute.

Nelson’s unhelpful column

Noticed this as we drove through a Richmond intersection en route to Nelson. Apologies to The Scrapbook Store - that lamppost has a lot to answer for! 

(Looks like a good shop actually.)

Further up the road is the recently-voted top provincial bookshop in the South Island, Nelson’s  independent Page and Blackmore.

One of the owners, Peter Rigg, was at the For the Love of Words book launch event and liked what he heard, so is going to push my book.

Painkiller poems

Writing rhymes with a twist in the tail can be a maddening pastime.

 

I like to get the scans just right, and often the words won’t come. Then the poem has to be abandoned.

 

Sometimes a poem will take on a life of its own, and you don’t know when it’s going to end.

 

Two in my book (In Defence of Egyptian Daddies and A Lake in Massachusetts - about the longest place name in America, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagunggamaugg) took four months each to write.

 

But it’s all worth it when you get comments like this one that arrived today:

John’s poetry is a powerful antidote for pain, which I can personally vouch for.

 

I recently attended a poetry evening at Nelson Library at which John was performing.  I was in intense pain due to my rheumatoid arthritis, and was considering having to leave.

 

The pain was so bad I had beads of sweat on my forehead, and didn’t know how I was going to cope. I had an overwhelming urge to dig my nails into my friend’s leg to relieve some of the pain.

 

However, once John started telling his funny stories about the English language and reading his hilarious poetry, I began laughing so much that I had a huge reduction in my pain level, which was amazing and wonderful.

 

“Poetry for the people, poetry for the pain.”

 

Margaret A. Fearn, Nelson

I rang Margaret to thank her.  She’s had rheumatoid arthritis for 47 years.

 

It’s in her bones, lungs, joints, muscles – everywhere. Yet she has an extremely positive attitude to life – and writes poetry! 

 

It’s a great feeling knowing I made a difference to her, even if just for a short time.