From PublicAddress.net
Auckland's petit mayor John Banks is set to pump up his annual salary to the tune of $45,741. What's his rationale? When I was employed by the Auckland City Council a continuance of a salaried position let alone a pay rise had to be justified annually according to a written set of official milestones and objectives. John-John: the ratepayers would like to read your list. And no, polishing up the mayoral jerkin and riding a demi-bike around the Viaduct on a Friday lunchtime is not a chargeable activity.
Apart from that, local media is frothy with good news. Costume designer, amigo and chick par excellence Ngila Dickson won a BAFTA (she laughed, she cried). Perceived celebrity Mike Zeta-Hosking is suing a magazine (or something) for putting a face to the children he talks about, and a new series of 24 is coming back to ruin my Monday nights for the six to eight weeks (nee hours) until the writers run out of ideas and make the good guys who became bad guys become good guys again... who then go bad.
And my eye works. Kinda. It's neither degenerative nor fatal but it's not treatable either. A pocket of fluid has swollen behind my right retina and created a bump in the light-sensitive surface, distorting the field of vision like a tiny, annoying fun house mirror. I put the phenomenon down to stress but the silver-haired opthalmologist in the bespoke pinstripe suit told me no: it's a common enough symptom and nobody knows what causes it. The same thing happened around 1997: a different GP referred me, by coincidence, to the same specialist. I can still read / write / fire a Beretta 92S at a suspect fleeing the scene but I'll be happier when the field of optical distortion has gone away. Which it probably will, the eye doctor said. If it becomes a problem the pocket of fluid can be cut or popped by a laser but as he pointed out, with the gentlemanly restraint of someone who has lived twice my time: something that crops up maybe every seven years can't really be called a problem. I joked that I'd probably be talking to him about in another seven years. He had the charity to simply bid me good afternoon.