I see the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has taken upon itself to rain on frontman Paul Henry's parade. Has anyone else noticed the plethora of articles and advertising slots devoted to the great man's flaming re-entry into public life in this country?
We didn't go anywhere this weekend; well nowhere beyond the ordinary, beating the usual path to work, one eye on the speedometer, the other peeled for the highway patrol, but in between, at night, we were glued to the television.
Lawyers are revolting - what's new, do I hear you say? - over the expansion of the Public Defence Service to handle up to 50% of criminal legal aid cases. It's a move that has come out of the report into the legal aid system by Dame Margaret Bazley.
I am feeling slightly daunted, not to say dismayed, at the prospect of the forthcoming election. Already there are signs of the fug of a kind of information war through which we will all have to negotiate a path to the ballot box.
Simon Cunliffe considers Don Brash's 'Dear John' letter.
This week we take the rare step of republishing a poem that has already appeared in the Monday's Poem column. It is by Rhys Brookbanks, a University of Otago English and History graduate, a former Otago Daily Times poetry contributor, and a newly qualified journalist.
For a while now I have been exercised by a matter of some urgency. A great deal of urgency, in fact. Let me explain.
They poured on to the streets in a frenzy of excitement, fists pumping, chanting, waving flags, giving praise to God and country. A great Satan had been destroyed.
I have been cursing my heritage of late. Digging up blackberry and cursing.
I'm minded of mice in a cage, the ones with treadmills, on which the tireless creatures are forever spinning. An unfortunate allusion, perhaps, but one which springs to mind as the royal nuptials approach. We are still more than a week out from the date and already we can't get enough of the big event and the players in it.
Much as it is cheap fodder for indignation and a bit of chest-beating outrage on the part of critics of the Government, I can't get too worked up about the Department of Internal Affairs' purchase of a fleet of new ministerial vehicles. After all, ministers have to get about in something.
From an uncharitable vantage point, the burgeoning "commissions", "task forces" and "working groups" established by this administration could be seen as vehicles through which to smuggle into public policy a range of untried or potentially unpopular notions.
Pardon me for swimming against the tide, for presuming to contradict the commentariat's bellowing consensus, but the whole Darren Hughes-Labour debacle, as it has been claimed to impact on the leadership of Phil Goff, is not quite as clear cut we would be led to believe.
Funny old world we live in. Wars and natural disasters apparently have a silver lining. Well, not for us per se, rather the economy - according to that handy time-honoured yardstick, Gross Domestic Product.
Not quite so fast, Mr Joyce. A disquieting tendency is beginning to emerge around matters of public interest in so far as they concern the powers that be and anyone who questions or criticises how those powers are exercised.
Went to a book launch the other day and savoured every moment of it. And not just because the occasion was the unveiling of Otago Daily Times Monday's Poem selector Emma Neale's latest novel Fosterling - which is fabulous in more ways than one. But also because there is every reason to suppose that such events might justifiably be labelled "endangered".
Our Scottish friends were among the lucky ones. Their house in Christchurch had escaped serious damage.
"It came very suddenly; it was very sharp and violent."
What a circus this whole Maori Party fandango has become. That said, you don't have to like Hone Harawira, admire his inflammatory rhetoric or agree with a single thing he says to acknowledge that he and others like him play an essential part in our parliamentary democracy.
The other day, in an idle moment, we happened upon the Doha Debates on BBC World.
