A Short Message (Of Hate) From Our Sponsor

Goodness gracious me, but wasn't that a debauched weekend. It was - I actually can't say quite how debauched because it was possibly a step too far even for me - I have survived though and feel all the better for it.

Anyway, someone who shall remain nameless seems to think that travel blogging is somehow low-rent or cheap and common or something, and to him I say: `Nameless, play nice now.` Yes, travel blogging is available to all and many, and too many, but really what is the alternative; Proper Journalism (with capitals)? Researching facts and figures, places and people? Well yes, that I could do. But here in Nelson, a quiet and peaceful city in a quiet and deeply non-controversial country, there are no stories I could relay to you that wouldn't get both myself and several other people into trouble. Names are to be changed to protect the guilty even if this happens anyway, naturally. The real stories are so life threateningly interminable (paronomasia-laden double negatives included for effect; words like paronomasia doubly so) that I can consture one right here and now without fear of being contradicted - and not just because none of you lot are going to watch Kiwi news broadcasts:

"John Key (leader of the National Party, won the election in November) has said today that he is willing to go on record in regard to the most pressing issues of today at a unique conference, headed by his representatives through which he will deliver his messages on issues relevant to all the people of this country, which will be decided upon at a series of preliminary meetings to be announced at a later date after consensus actuations are taken and collated by dedicated teams of National Party subsidiary volunteers, at a date yet to be announced." And so on.
Plenty of proper stories also make the news over here, but they are the usual occasionall murders, attacks, crime figures, housing prices, global doom prophesies and the odd story about brain-damaged kids acheiving at high levels in school or various other random feelgood items that occur on at the end of television news and mired deeply within pages of doomsaying in newspapers. I begin to see the appeal of "TV Life!" and "Weekly Gossip!", "Massive TV Woman's Metropolitan Sex Cheating Scoundrel Wow Mega Weekly OK!!!" and all the others.

Anyway none of the things that make it into even this kind of publication interest me, so I can't imagine why anyone else would care. If David Beckham elopes with Owen Wilson while Angelina Jolie smokes crack in Shia LeBoeuf's house, all on live TV, then everyone who ever met them gossips about it in Cosmo, I could frankly give a lot less than even the most miniature conceivable shit.

And if taxes go up by 2% - oh yes, all this is utter bollocks as well, folks - then fuck them and fuck all who set store by them, let them do what the hell they want because two things are certain with regard to all the financial inanity that besets us on all sides like the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men (thanks, QT ), and is presented as being oh-so-god-almightily important: One; there is nothing any of us can do no matter how much hand-wringing takes place, so deal with it or leave whichever country you think is being run so terribly badly (but of course all that free health care and clean running water is okay with you, yeah?), and Two; if you stand to lose so much money when the per cent increase, even when compounded, can be given in single figures then you have enough money to do with already, and I do not care for any arguments to the contrary. Oh, it's hard to pay off £40,000 in taxes every year, but then you are by definition in the richest 5% of people on planet Earth. Put down the designer jacket, the car perpetually at only 25% occupancy, and the £300 mobile phone, and stop bloody whining.