Wow, that's true-believerism (TB) for you. While everyone else is roasting marshmellows over the flaming wreck formerly known as the ACT Party, the true-believers are deciding who should be boss over said flaming wreck.
This is like a bid for the Nazi leadership in 1945 ("Nien, *zis* is how ve should take over zee vorld!") or officers on the Titanic competing to get a promotion ("No, I want to stay with the ship!" "No, *I* want to stay with the ship!").
Well, good news everyone - you can *all* stay with the ship. Except for Deborah. My, what a lovely yacht she has. And isn't it lovely that she's found love, instead of all this angry-shouty business?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's interesting to see how her self-write-up on the ACT website changed between June and October last year, right about when she didn't get the deputy leadership and the Roger Kerr thing blew up.
And the ACT list... second on the list, Heather Roy, her greatest virtue is that she didn't gun for the leadership when the caucus turned into a shooting gallery. That this is a spectacularly rare virtue in the ACT caucus should speak volumes.
And who's third on the list? Sure, Muriel Newman gunned for the leadership, but she was actually running a de facto campaign for the deputy leadership, which was what she got - so half a brownie point for only pretending to take a shot at the leadership.
Or maybe they're affirmative action spots... at any rate, Labour should congratulate ACT for having as many women in their top 5 as they do.
I still don't understand why anyone would want the leadership, less than 3 months out of election, of all times. Maybe it really is just a malicious rumour, which would be awful mean, picking on the fat kid with no friends (ACT, that is, not Rodney). Or, maybe Ken Shirley genuinely believes that his charisma and homely good looks will send ACT rocketing over the threshold.
Or perhaps, once again, I'm reading too much into it. It's all rather hard to tell these days. ACT has been hanging out in Margin-of-Error territory for so long, I think Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle applies to even the most rudimentary observations of its behaviour. I suspect that one can start a real leadership coup just by looking at Gerry Eckhoff funny.
Come on, give it go.
Anyway, in Hide's defence, let it not be said that he never changed from his old Perk-Buster ways. Nowadays, he scandal-mongers in a much more dignified manner, standing up much straighter than before, and he enunciates, rather than bellows. Seriously - he does! (Personally, I liked his bellow... Brownlee's bellow doesn't quite do it for me.)
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In other news, the National Party has banned me from their conference. Well okay, not so much banned, as making-me-pay-to-go-to-the-bits-with-food-and-drink. I find it incredulous that any party would allow a journalist to attend their conference stone sober; however, I was informed by a National Party spin doctor that it was a case of "One Law for All".
Hrumph... anyone want to spot me $60 for the Saturday function?
And finally, I was going to chime in on the National billboards, but it seems that bandwagon is long gone. I have to say, most of the parodies sucked, especially the ones from the Labour-hacks (the ones the Labour Party itself was sending were excruciating).
However, Lyndon Hood has pulled off another swifty, with a hilarious set of spoofs (one of which looks very do-able, for genuine culture-jammers with a ladder and some paint).
Heheh, I liked the one with The Invisible Man.