The Dim-Post interviews Conservative Party leader Colin Craig

Conservative Party leader Colin Craig cuts a likable, boyish figure: whether managing his billion dollar property portfolio, canvasing for votes in his home turf of Auckland’s North Shore, or lathering himself with soap as he prepares to show me around his new hi-tech pleasure dungeon, Craig is unceasingly cheerful and energetic. 

‘I bought this place to relax,’ he explains, a little sheepish about splashing out on such an indulgence. Craig is famed for his frugality, furnishing his home second-hand on Trade-me. But all the leather, chrome and rubber decor in ‘Colin’s Crypt of Agony and Ecstasy ’ is brand new and gleaming, ready for use. ‘At the end of the day I’m wiped out, and I needed a way to wind down,’ he added.

And is it relaxing?’ I ask.

He grins and tosses me a towel and a leather ball gag. ‘You tell me.’

Craig is in pretty good shape for a man in his mid-forties. There’s a hint of a belly, but his arm muscles are defined – ‘All that political hand-shaking,’ he says, rolling his eyes – and the snarling wolf’s head tattooed across his buttocks still conforms to the ripe curves of his gluteal muscles. ‘The tattoo artist warned me it would sag,’ Craig said, adding simply, ‘He was wrong.’

Many people have been wrong about Colin Craig, dismissing him as a political lightweight or  a bible-thumping, homophobic misogynist reactionary dick, but Craig simply shrugs off the criticisms and when you see him squeezing into a red latex dress and tugging a chain-mail hood over his head you realise there’s more to Colin Craig than his critics are willing to allow. They underestimate him at their peril.

But what is it about the Conservative Party leader that sets him apart? I’d arranged this interview to try and solve this mystery, but as I hung upside down beside him, both of us screaming in exaltation and pain while hot wax from the candles strapped to our ankles ran down our thighs, I couldn’t decide what it was that separated him from other minor party political leaders. Was it his faith? His candor? His status as an outsider? Or his controversial statements about homosexuality and female promiscuity, which were as inflamed as our perineums after the wax pooled and hardened?

Craig denies that his statements on contemporary morality are dominated by his religious upbringing, or the fact that I was kneeling on his throat while grating his nipples with a citrus zester. ‘I stand by my statements, no matter how much blood I’ve lost,’ he explains, a little defiant. ‘And I’m very proud of my background,’ he adds, rubbing vinegar on his lacerated chest. ‘I’m not a regular church-goer, but I cherish the Baptist values I was raised with, and the Scottish emphasis on frugality which has been passed down to me.’

And Craig is certainly frugal, even in his hobbies. Every centimeter of electrical tape and every liter of urine that enters his pleasure crypt is closely monitored and accounted for. ‘And I’ll bring that same level of attention to detail to government if elected,’ he vows.

Craig also intends to repeal the anti-smacking legislation and get tough on violent criminals. He speaks at length about the need for greater efficiency in the public service, reducing waste, getting rid of red tape. The familiar litany of conservative policy platforms. Sometimes his voice fades as his knees press against my ears, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Craig’s political agenda isn’t what makes him special. It’s something else.

Eventually I opened my eyes, expecting to find myself staring into the wolf’s head, but instead I found myself face to face with Craig, his eyes rolled back, his cheeks flushed and his teeth clenched, and I finally realised what made him different from, say, Peter Dunne or Hone Harawira. It was those eyes: glittering, chromatic, fragmented: they captured the light and threw them back at me, and I gasped in sudden comprehension.

His eyes were fifty shades of Colin Craig.

(Written in solidarity with The Civilian, who is being sued by Craig for defamation.)

According to reports

Via Stuff:

Justice Minister Judith Collins is masking her disappointment over not being able to attend Margaret Thatcher’s funeral by throwing a wake. Government MPs “unable to attend” the London ceremony are invited to Ms Collins’ sixth-floor office tonight to commemorate the life of the former British prime minister. Ms Collins paid tribute to Baroness Thatcher last week as a “highly intelligent, brave, formidable woman”.

Dim-Post sources report that last night’s wake was a moving affair, which ended on the stroke of midnight when Attorney General Chris Finlayson solemnly led a white ox into the Justice Minister’s office. Collins then stretched the animal backwards over her blood-stained, heavy stone desk and deftly cut out its heart which she offered, still beating, to the massive basalt statue of Baroness Thatcher that accompanies her everywhere. Treasury officials estimate that this act of obeisance will keep inflation at less than 1% in the forthcoming quarter.

Labour leader calls on Auditor General to help him find his wallet

Labour leader David Shearer is asking the Office of the Auditor General to conduct an inquiry into the location of his wallet, which he placed on the table by the front door just next to his keys and phone when he arrived home last night but which wasn’t there when he needed to go to work this morning. 

‘My whole day is ruined if I don’t have my wallet. It has my swipe cards to get into work and my EFT-POS card to buy lunch. That’s why I always put it in the same damn place, and it’s why I’m calling on the Auditor General to investigate why it isn’t there today and who moved it,’ Shearer said in his formal letter to Auditor-General Lyn Provost.

The letter was also released to media, select members of Shearer’s family who have shifted the wallet in the past when they made iTunes purchases using his credit-card, and Karen from down the road who cleans the Shearer family house and does a good job but doesn’t always put things back where they’re supposed to be.

The Auditor-General’s involvement comes after Shearer failed in his effort to get Parliament’s Select Committee to help him find the wallet, which can’t have just vanished into thin air, can it now? And it must be somewhere inside his house because he remembers taking it out of his jacket pocket when he got home. The request was turned down by the National dominated committee. with Chairperson Todd McClay explaining that the committee had more important business to attend to.

‘We are dedicated to returning New Zealand back into surplus, boosting productivity and searching for Steven Joyce’s little electronic security dongle so he can check his email from home,’ McClay said. ‘He thinks he might have dropped it somewhere between the underground car park and his office. How the hell are we supposed to find it? The thing is tiny.’

The Auditor General has yet to respond to Shearer’s request because she changed her network password on Friday and now she can’t log in.

Key blames Solid Energy failure on previous Labour government and fabric of space-time

Prime Minister John Key has hit back against opposition claims that his government was ‘asleep at the wheel’ when it came to managing the troubled state-owned coal company Solid Energy, linking its problems to an SOE diversification strategy implemented by the previous Labour government and the phase transition that occurred during the earliest picoseconds of the creation of the universe in which the strong and weak nuclear forces separated from the electromagnetic force, allowing for the creation of solid matter. 

‘In 2007 Trevor Mallard called for the SEO’s to expand into new areas, and they started looking for ways to raise capital to restructure in response to that,’ Key said, citing a request for a billion dollar loan made by Solid Energy in 2009. ‘When you combine that with the strong headwinds this government is dealing with as a result of decisions made well before the formation of our galaxy then you have a problem that was not of our making.’

‘But this government is fronting up and dealing with the issues at that company, just as we are dealing with the disappointing situation that the universe is a large, complex structured environment and  not a tiny ultra-dense infinitely hot ball of plasma,’ Key added.

Key also pointed to debt decisions taken by the Solid Energy executives and the inadequate number of temporal dimensions in the visible universe as it currently stands. ‘Obviously the company was allowed to structure its own finances under the SOE act, but if we had fewer spatial and more time dimensions to work in we would have done things very differently.’

The Prime Minister also took aim at policy decisions made by Phil Goff and Annette King, who were Cabinet Ministers during the  nucleosynthesis of the Sun 4.5 billion years ago.

From the vaults

Since the Hobbit is currently newsworthy, here’s a link to my Tolkien/Jackson satire piece written all the way back in 2008 (one of the first things I ever posted on this blog). But the comments thread is funnier. My term for people who take satire seriously and then contribute to it is ‘non-consensual satire.’

Vacancies close Friday

New Position

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

Are you passionate about the meaninglessness of language, the impossibility of knowledge and the non-existence of reality?

Are you keen to share your  hopeless, doomed skepticism with officials at the highest level of government?

Then you might be our person!

We are seeking a: Senior Epistemologist to join our team in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

 This is one of the three central agencies responsible for co-ordinating and managing public sector performance. Your role will be to brief the Prime Minister and other senior Cabinet Ministers on the uncertainty underpinning all of human existence, especially the uncertainty of managing departments and being accountable for their performance in a universe that cannot be proved to be real.

As Senior Epistemologist you will have responsibilities across – but not limited to – the following areas:

• Did unemployment rise in the last quarter? How can anyone prove it did, and if they can, doesn’t that proof require an additional proof, and so on into infinity? You will play a key role in communicating the meaninglessness of negative economic statistics to the New Zealand public.
• Did the Prime Minister say something embarrassing? How can anyone say anything when all experience consists of flawed, subjective memories? What are memories? And aren’t the Labour Party rubbish? Formulating positions on these issues, and then changing that position and denying that the first position ever existed while insisting that the whole thing is just a media beat-up will be a key part of your role.
• If the Prime Minister appears to have misled Parliament and the public, you will build relationships with key media figures and explain to them that there is no Prime Minister and no Parliament, just probability waves fluctuating within a quantum vacuum, so rumors of leadership struggles in the opposition party are more newsworthy.
• George Berkeley famously asked, ‘Does the reality of things consist in being perceived? Or is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relationship to the mind?’ You will apply this doctrine to Official Information Act Requests.
• You will co-ordinate junior epistemologists and other communications staff to disprove the existence of various events, statements, official reports, statistical findings and scientific facts as the role requires.

Our ideal person needs excellent interpersonal, communication and relationship building skills, and a committed belief in the inadequacy of language and rational thought in understanding the world. Weekend and evening work will be required.

PM shrugs off brain fade accusations

In the wake of embarrassing memory losses regarding intelligence briefings and parliamentary votes, opposition parties have attacked the Prime Minister’s ‘brain fades.’ But Key’s caucus colleagues, staff and political allies have defended the Prime Minister, insisting he is intellectually acute, and that his jokes and occasional forgetfulness are part of his ‘ordinary kiwi guy, everyman charm’, while Key himself has dismissed his opposition critics as ‘weak decaying vertebrates.’

‘The Prime Minister is always joking around at Cabinet,’ a senior government source speaking on background told the Dim-Post. ‘He’ll shake his head as if he’s confused, then grab your arm and scream ‘Help! Help! Something horrible has taken control of my . . .’ Then he’ll go limp, and his eyes will re-focus and it’s back to business. We all think it’s hilarious.’

Coalition partner Peter Dunne scoffs at claims Key’s memory is faulty. ‘The Prime Minister kids around sometimes, pretending that he doesn’t recognise me, or staring at his own hands as if he doesn’t know his own body, or pointing to the map of the world on his office wall and asking, ‘what’s that? But during the last parliamentary recess John spent two weeks traveling hundreds of kilometers through the vast, uncharted Mt Owen cave network beneath the Tasman district, navigating it on his own with no charts or light source. Does that sound like a political leader who suffers from brain fades?’

A spokeswoman for Key’s office confirmed that he visited the Tasman cave network recently, and added that he seemed ‘immensely satisfied’ with whatever he found deep beneath the Earth’s surface.

Staff from Key’s office speaking off the record have confirmed that his memory lapses and constant kidding are part of his disarming manner. ‘We were visiting the neurology ward at Greenlane a few weeks ago, and the Prime Minister was uncharacteristically silent during the entire trip. Then they switched on the NMR machine and suddenly he started whispering to one of the surgeons, ‘Kill it. Kill it. It’s inside my mind.’ Afterwards he pretended not to remember anything that happened during the visit, or the previous three weeks. He certainly keeps us on our toes.’

Senior staffers agree that Key is a fair but demanding boss. ‘Sometimes he complains of headaches, and moans that when he closes his eyes he hears a horrible whispering and sees strange, monstrous shapes. Other times he insists that the sun in our epoch is too luminous, or that there’s too much nitrogen in our planet’s atmosphere. Which is true, when you think about it. Not many politicians have the courage to say that.’

Business leaders agree with this characterisation, adding that while the Prime Minister is a great practical joker he is also extremely astute. ‘I accompanied him to the APEC meeting in Vladivostok and was amazed to learn that he spoke fluent Russian,’ said one leading exporter. ‘Although according to our guides his accent was very strange. He kept asking them for information about a two billion year old meteor impact crater in the area, and they eventually took him to some scientists at the local university but he knew more about this ancient meteor than they did. Isn’t that amazing?’

However the Prime Minister denies knowing anything about an impact crater, or, when questioned, ever visiting Russia or knowing the language. ‘What’s happening to me?’ He asked during a brief telephone interview, before his voice degenerated into a horrible insectoid chittering sound and the call disconnected, leaving this reporter chortling at yet another display of the famous John Key sense of humour.

Sickness beneficiaries and solo mothers applaud Christchurch schools closure

Beneficiaries in Christchurch and across the nation united to heap praise upon the National government’s plans to close thirteen schools and merge eighteen more in a huge shake-up of the ciy’s education system, urging the New Zealand public to embrace the radical plans unconditionally.

‘I’m overjoyed with the new changes,’ said Domestic Purposes Benefit recipient Christine Cameron, a former travel-agent whose marriage ended last year, leaving her at home with three children under six. ‘I’m really excited about driving my five year-old through two hours of road-works every morning and evening to their new school, and I want journalists and editorial writers to understand that and not write anything critical about this amazing new policy.’

Sickness beneficiary Bill Miller, a plumber unable to work while he undergoes chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia agrees. ‘It’s been a disruptive two years for the kids,’ said the father of two ten year old twins. ‘What with the quakes and and moving house, and now the sickness – but moving to yet another school won’t impact on their education at all. If anything it’ll be good for them. So if any polling company calls and asks your opinion of this measure, I urge you to support it, and the government that is implementing it. Please.’

Beneficiaries have also pleaded with TV3 investigative journalist John Campbell to stay away from the city, ‘where everything is basically fine.’

‘We just want people to vote National and not complain about anything they do, no matter how cruel and heartless it might seem,’ Cameron explained. ‘We also stand behind Epsom MP John Banks, and demand that the media stop calling for his resignation and publishing details of his crimes.’

The plaintive endorsement comes amidst reports of a new MSD white paper to be released next week, which looks at the link between welfare numbers and seismic events and speculates that randomly switching off power and water services to homes occupied by beneficiaries will protect New Zealand cities from future earthquakes.

Government crumbles under lobbying from impoverished children

The government has reversed its position on child poverty and announced tough new measures to combat the growth in poverty amongst young children after an intensive campaign by key players in the influential but secretive impoverished children’s lobby group.

The dramatic reversal comes after late night, closed-door meetings between senior Ministers in the National government and powerful representatives acting on behalf of very small, very poor children, including six year old Otara based Ruby Savea and political king-maker Liam Wehi, a four year old boy from Northland with type-I-diabetes, referred to by Beehive insiders as ‘the Prince of Darkness’.

The children also had international support when they were joined by a high-level delegation of emaciated ragamuffins from the slums of Santiago and Karachi, who were welcomed at the airport by Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce, then sprayed with jets of high-pressure water and deloused before being whisked to the Prime Ministers residence in a convoy of crown limousines.

A spokeswoman for Prime Minister John Key has described the talks as ‘frank and productive’. ‘The two parties ate fairy-bread, listened to the Wiggles and then hammered out a detailed plan.’ She denied rumours that the talks came to an early end because the Prime Minister became cranky and needed a nap.

Details of the agreement include tax-rebates for insulation rental homes, improved access to high quality early childhood education, and the development of low-decile schools as ‘community hubs’ aimed at providing social services to poor children. Business leaders are crying foul at the government’s u-turn, describing the policy reversal as ‘cowardly’, and questioning the level of influence small, starving, filthy children have on government Ministers.

‘These policies will result in warmer homes and lower levels of respiratory disease in young children,’ warned National Business Review editor Nevil Gibson. ‘And guess who lives in a freezing, damp home and suffers from chronic bronchitis? Ruby Savea, the very same person babbling adorably in the Prime Minister’s ear and influencing policy decisions. It’s classic pork-barrel politics.’

Criticism has also been leveled at the level of access very poor children have to Parliament where they can influence legislation directly, without public oversight. Dr Oliver Hartwich, Director of the New Zealand Institute, alleges that the extreme thinness of poor children allows them to wriggle through ajar windows and the gaps above the automated parking doors, then make their way through the ventilation system to Ministers’ offices, sit at their knees and stare at them reproachingly with huge, liquid eyes. ‘For politicians to actually see the people most affected by their policies undermines the entire integrity of our political economy,’ Hartwich cautions.

Finance Minister Bill English has come under particularly strong criticism for his links to diseased, desperately miserable children, in the wake of revelations that he played ‘Pirate tag’ on a rusty, abandoned truck parked outside a derelict factory with both Ruby Savea and Liam Wehi. ‘Was there a quid-pro-pro?’ demands former ACT leader Dr Don Brash. ‘Did Wehi and Savea show him their secret shortcut to that burned out truck in exchange for funding a hot meal every day at their schools? These are questions the New Zealand public deserves answers to.’

Business leaders allege that the power of starving children over the public sector goes beyond simple lobbying of Ministers, extending throughout the public service, citing reports that many senior Treasury staff spent their winter holidays with key players in the impoverished children sector huffing butane on the banks of the Waiwhetu stream. The Auditor General is investigating the claims.

Liquor lobbyists crack down on Justice Minister

Lobbyists for the alcohol industry have rolled out tough new counter-measures to get tough on Justice Minister Judith Collins and prevent the government rolling out tough new counter-measures or getting tough against them in the battle over alcohol regulation.

Multinational liquor companies and local breweries have combined forces to crush attempts to regulate the alcohol content of ‘ready-to’drink’ beverages. The harsh new measures will make Justice Ministers more accountable to industry pressure and curb attempts to make multi-national liquor companies and local breweries more accountable.

Although National has cautiously welcomed the brutal crackdown on itself, veteran campaigner Sue Bradford has denounced the changes. ‘This Judith Collins bashing is just another example of powerful corporations victimising the weak and powerless,’  Bradford said while being bundled into the back of a police-car by Parliamentary Security guards dispersing a pro-Collins protest at Collins’ request.

The Justice Minister announced the changes to the Alcohol Reform Bill via a photo-essay of photo-shopped cat photos posted to Instragram, and defended them via the TradeMe bulletin board. The Minister’s Yahoo chat profile was set to ‘busy’, so she was not available for further comment.