Of Espresso; Nuts; Prostrate Cancer; Grammar; Labour Leadership – The Three Boring Men & Quotas Again.

Please excuse me for being prescient.

On this post I offered to drop almost all principles I hold, and to vote for Maryan Street if she had a tilt at the Labour Party leadership, and so could guarantee the passage of her End of Life Choice bill. I meant it.

On this post, given not Maryan nor any other woman Labour MP stepped into the sandpit with her hand up, I posted the below regarding the call by Labour women for a gender quota  one month earlier:

I am also disappointed that after wanting gender quotas just last month, not one Labour woman MP has tried to contest the leadership away from this dreadful man [David Cunliffe], and save us from him. Apparently Labour women do expect to be given by quota what they don’t have the gumption to contest when they have equal footing. There’s plenty of capable women Labour MPs, why aren’t any of you contesting? You know you’ll be getting this shameful hypocrisy pointed out to you when at some stage in the future you’re furthering the coercive state by legislating gender quotas on the private sector, because we know that’s the agenda.

My prescience comes in when we now look at what’s happened: with no woman MP contesting, the labour leadership contest has turned into a boring showcase of manliness, barely a policy to be seen, other than one uncosted goose-step to the Left after the other into the shock and awe tax surveillance state this party will be taking us 2014:

Watching the rugby at a pub. Going fishing. Beer and BBQ. In appearances at least, the Labour contest is a manliness competition.
— Philip Matthews (@secondzeit) September 3, 2013

He's right.

Grant Robertson is interviewed by Seven Sharp at the pub on his love of rugby.

On the same show, following night, David Cunliffe has moved from scaring the horses to scaring the fish, filmed outcast on a reef somewhere, rod in hand.

And Shane, threatening a no show on Seven Sharp tonight for reasons I'm not au fait with, well, giving him the due of being himself – and I do like him for that - he’s just stayed being the bloke we all know he is. Albeit on Q&A, Sunday, I gained a lot of respect for his economic conservatism, at least as compared to Chavez Cunliffe, with his choreographed smile dancing around his face in some mad dervish with his hands, and Living Wage Grant Robertson who has become invisible somehow. But unfortunately it’s evident from his lexicon that Shane is a racing man, and can't lose his racy stripes:

I get the feeling SJ is bagging feminists in a (weak) effort to prove his masculinity. Come on Jonesy. You're better than that. That's weak.
— Morgan Godfery (@MorganGodfery) September 2, 2013

So, in protest, I’m devoting this blog to issues of manliness. My purpose is to be as boring as watching these three statist men trying to out-bid each other for our affections, and thus serve as punishment for the Labour women expecting representation on a plate served up by the coercive state, rather than fight for it even when they had an equal opportunity.

Indeed, leaving politics aside, manliness issues are timely on this blog. I’ve made as many posts against the barbarity of hunting and the various other incidents of sickening animal cruelty that too many (mainly) men in New Zealand have perpetrated, as I have made posts against statists and the politics of big state slavery; so my bloke cred is no doubt running on low to stuffed for those many readers who happen on this site not truly understanding that I am a liberal. Indeed, the only manly thing I’ve done lately is not go to a doctor, which I've not done so I can stay as uninformed about my health as these three Labour men are about economics or the philosophy of individualism that once shone so brightly upon a free West. For I’ve spent the last two months with this dull pain in my groin area, low down, sitting there like a weight that had got me hypochondring, as you do, on if I might have prostrate cancer or something equally dreadful. For dreadful it would be given I’m a prude, I was brought up that way, so I’m not going to no doctor until some bright spark invents a test for prostrate cancer I can do with my trousers on and preferably alone. Though I’m happy to report this time I think I've beaten it off on my own resources.

I had tagged the peak of this pain to about mid-morning, then plateauing to a level some notches below that for the duration, though ameliorated by the pleasant anesthesia of the six o'clock martini. Given the timing, as an experiment Monday morning just gone, instead of for breakfast drinking double shot short blacks until my vision began to blur, normally six, I had a cup of green tea. The pain went, weight lifted, and has not been back again. And it was that quick. So I’ve either found the cure for prostrate cancer, or perhaps just good sense: either way, the best thing is now I know what the discomfort was, it's not that bad, I can put up with it, so I can ditch the green muck and go back to espresso.

Because I'm going to live only this once.

Talking about nuts, while writing I’m watching on Seven Sharp the three contenders standing suited in a paddock … is it? Yes, a paddock, perhaps a park, under a cabbage tree, sadly trying to express their individual identities, as men must, through the colourful ties noosed around their necks.

Sorry, nuts, as in cashews – I’ve drifted off topic. I’ll end this nonsense with a manly tip.

Every real bloke will understand the pantry raid. We get hungry, men, thus have to graze, often. My grass of choice, given the real stuff is illegal in this kindy of a country, is cashew nuts. Despite we share the cooking duties, for some reason the pantry, together with the weekly expeditions to keep it stocked, are solely the domain of Mrs H. I do lawns, vege gardening, vacuuming - I'm quick because I don't bother going under things - and wheelie bins. Because Mrs H was taught if you save the pennies - Mrs H is English – the pounds will look after themselves via the magic of compounding, cashew use outside of cooking, given they're expensive, can be a source of contention. So, of course, being like a good martini, one part clever to two parts stupid, I have devised various means of stealth. This manly tip concerns how to defer a day of judgement within a marriage or the rainbow of relationships.

The photo below shows how a man without wile would approach such pilfering.

Note how the offender has eaten half the cashews on the top shelf, and he will be found out as soon as his significant other enters the pantry. Here’s what you do:

Note how I’ve tipped the remaining cashews up one end so that when you put it back in the shelf the container looks to be full.

If you follow this tip you can put the absence of nuts off right up until that time those nuts are needed for the curry being cooked for friends coming over in just one hour and it’s too late to get to the supermarket to replace them. Admittedly this then becomes a bit of an unholy mess, maritally, but we’re men, that’s how we swing.

Conveniently, containers looking like they are full of substance, but otherwise empty, returns me full circle to the contest for the Labour Party leadership. A fellow blogger has suggested to me that perhaps none of the women MPs felt up to the task of nannying the nation this time around? Two answers: there are many able Labour women quite up to the task, though secondly, if we take this question at face value, and assume that were the case, then a gender quota in leadership would have put a woman into a position of power she was on her own terms not comfortable with, and thus possibly not capable of. Think about it.

Which reminds me, finally. In the Q&A mentioned that played on TV 3 this Sunday, both Nathan Guy, and then Harvard educated David Cunliffe, used the word‘learnings, instead of the correct lessons. What is going on here? Learnings is used by people who want to patronise someone: it’s used to look-down on the people or person it is employed against, to put them down, as if they were a ‘little simple’ of mind. So why would two politicians use it on national TV in reference to people they want to vote for them?

The only answer is, they must be stupid. Or simple of mind. Whatever, stop speaking like that, please; leave it to the hate sites, not the Fortress of Legislation.

Right, noting I’ve not worn a tie since at least 2002, not even to a funeral, I've got this sore shoulder thing happening so I’m off to worry about that for a bit.