As the countdown to September's general election becomes ever more frenetic, one thing is becoming increasingly obvious: those parties which stick to their knitting and produce fresh, even visionary ideas and viable policies stand to be the big winners.
Excuse me, but isn't Judith Collins the Minister of Justice?
While there might not be much to like about Vladimir Putin, Russia's president deserves respect - the kind of respect you would show for a hissing cobra in close proximity.
They are the powers behind the all-powerful.
The Labour Party is guaranteed one thing in the countdown to this year's general election: there is no danger of David Cunliffe peaking too soon.
The applause from his colleagues ought to be long and loud when Shane Jones arrives for Labour's weekly caucus meeting at Parliament next Tuesday.
If there is any such thing as karma in politics, then the National Party should deservedly pay a heavy price at some point for so blatantly putting naked self-interest ahead of the public interest with regard to the no small matter of reform of the MMP voting system.
In what is ominously but obviously fast becoming a year-long de facto election campaign, you can guarantee National will try and drum one particular message into voters' brains in coming months.
John Key's U-turn on working with Winston Peters was utterly predictable.
Some of his victims never saw it coming.
A mixture of grin quickly swallowed up by grimace swept across John Key's face following Colin Craig's intellectually lazy and politically stupid verbal doodling on the non-question of whether man has actually walked on the moon.
Stetsons at dawn? Even in their wildest moments of untrammelled optimism, the Greens - along with the wider environmental lobby - would struggle to come up with something which so marvellously helps their cause to quite the degree that the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has managed to do.
So, for failing the families of the dead, a bunch of company directors and their chief executives are going to be wined and dined by the prime minister.
Allies and enemies of David Cunliffe are fast discovering Labour's leader of two months is something of a two-headed hydra: it seems at times there are two David Cunliffes - one speaking from the heart, the other speaking from both sides of his mouth.
The song says you can't beat Wellington on a good day. Even a bad day, too.
Well might the Biblical warning about reaping what you sow haunt David Cunliffe as he delivers his first speech to a Labour Party conference as leader.
Maybe it was too early in the day, but the delegates' traditional rendition of the old union anthem, Solidarity Forever, was somewhat lacking in gusto at this week's Council of Trade Unions conference.
When it comes to commenting on opinion polls, there is a simple rule that all politicians should follow. Don't do it. It is a mug's game.
David Cunliffe had been Labour leader for barely 24 hours before he was boldly declaring he had put his party on a ''war footing''.
Cometh the hour, cometh Cunliffe?
