The older you are the harder you fall ....

I want to register my disgust with a system which requires a hospital social worker to inform an elderly woman who is struggling against the effects of a stroke and severe neuropathic pain, that her last vestige of independence, i.e., the State pension she paid for all her life through her taxes, is to be reduced to pocket money because she has been in hospital for more than 13 weeks.

Without a family to speak for them, this rule leaves older sick people – especially stroke victims – in a dreadfully vulnerable position.

The possibility of regaining some vestige of their lost independence and dignity is often all that keeps them going. To have the financial means of achieving that independence ripped away from them, to add to the already enormous burden of stress and anxiety they are experiencing, is nothing short of cruel – not to mention, counterproductive.

The cost of keeping a stroke victim in hospital is far greater than the amount the state claws back from the meagre State pension – as indeed the costs of long-term nursing care will be if they are unable to regain their independence.

It is in everyone's interests to get them back to being fully or partly independent as quickly as possible and the people involved in geriatric stroke rehabilitation work hard to see patients regain sufficient mobility etc to be able to return home.

Having a home waiting them is therefore a vital part of rehabilitation and obviously there are essential ongoing expenses involved in that. Yet, the system reaches a cut off point and requires fragile, disabled people to make the case to have part of their pension reinstated to keep up those essential payments – rates, insurance, gardening, care of pets etc.

But they have to know they can do this, have the will to do it and be able to do it.

Many may have lost the ability to write, they may have lost language function and, most critically, they may be confused and easily stressed by anything complicated or unusual.

The system doesn't establish if there are essential expenses before clawing back what's left – it grabs it all except $33.50 a week and places the onus on the individual to make the case to get some reinstated to meet those expenses.

But what I have an issue with is the workhouse-style mentality behind the rule.

Like many rules thought up by well paid bureaucrats looking forward to a fat occupational pension, and rubber stamped by politicians of similar mindset and circumstances, it affects poor people worst.

A person with an occupational pension or income from other sources cannot have that touched by the State when hospitalised for more than 13 weeks. It is only any element of income administered by the State that is clawed back – primarily because it can be. 

And that's the nub of it.

NZ superannuation may be based on investments; the administrators of the scheme may have fancy job titles and be paid a lot of money; it may call its scheme members clients; the state may treat them as tax payers (even to the point of still taxing their pocket money!)– but the mindset of those who framed the legislation was firmly locked in 19^th century notions of State-administered charity.

The 13-week rule undermines the principle that the old age pension is an inalienable right, i.e., society acknowledging the financial contribution older people have made through their work and taxes.  

It also highlights the fact that NZ Superannuation is not a normal superannuation scheme that happens to be administered by the State. It is still a benefit which the State retains the right to claw back to offset long term health care costs.

After 13 weeks of hospitalisation, the state superannuant has to pay, in part, for the free hospital care everyone else enjoys.

I can see the logic when a person goes into permanent elder care of some sort although even then, the reduction of state pensioners to recipients of pocket money, i.e., $35 a week, and a $250 a year clothing grant, has a Dickensian feel to it.

All beneficiaries, including unemployed people, are affected by this rule and there are arguments to be made about that, but my concern here is with pensioners.

It may be convenient to have a "one rule fits all" approach but this cold, bureaucratic calculation sends a potent negative message to already vulnerable people.

That message is they are unlikely to ever return to home, and their home will be sold to defray their long-term care expenses.

This may galvanise some into greater efforts to recover and get their full pension reinstated but the reality is that for others it will knock out what little stuffing they have left.

It has the very real potential to add huge stress to already anxious and frightened people and is likely to undermine the mental and emotional strength they need to fight against the combined odds of age and serious disability.

The fact that families will often find the means to pay those domestic expenses is not the point.

The point is that this treatment of state pensioners constitutes a breach of their human rights – if not in terms of the current law – then certainly in terms of natural justice.

We are all bros here

Cast your minds back to the Hobbit Affair when the NZ government allowed a certain film company and a certain film maker to hold the country to ransom by demanding tax breaks and changes to labour laws. 

In reading this, it helps to be good at deciphering anagrams but for those who are not or cannot be bothered, here are some clues: Tansies Ash could be The Assassin and Termini Simper of course could be Prime Minister; Bracken Jetposserot might be Peter Robert Jackson - or not; the Warsaw Brethren might – just might – be Warner Brothers, and Greybrew Loner could possibly be Gerry Brownlee.  Noturnaides might be Trade Unions, and I will leave it to you to work out who Arburlo the dragon is. 


Termini Simper (known to some as Tansies Sash) a youngish and some say, charismatic, Wizard with an eye to the main chance, and Bracken Jetposerrot, a middle aged, well-to-do Hobbit with a love of food, have dreams of raiding the great treasure of Aburlo the Dragon some of which is hidden in the mountains above the town of Smelly Wood.

To help fund the expedition they have enlisted the help of the Warsor Brethren – a clan of very acquisitive Dwarves from the fabled Holly Woods far in the North.

They refer to themselves as Treasure Inc.

Although Arburlo guards her treasure well, constant raids have left her tired and a bit fed up and she has developed a few chinks in her once powerful armour.

The path to her den is guarded by her legions, the Noturnaides. Once united and powerful, their ranks are now divided and depleted as a result of constant battles with clans like the Brethren.

In keeping with their legendary acquisitiveness, the Warsor Brethren have already demanded a huge share of the treasure as the price for their involvement but they are worried that there are still legions of the Nortunaides wandering around which might interfere with their current and future plans.

One day, while Bracken Jetposerrot is out scouting around for the best location to assemble the expedition, he encounters a small and rather poorly armed but very stylish band of Noturnaides. Their leader, knowing the Warsor Brethren and Bracken are very, very rich, cheekily demands payment to allow him to proceed.

Bracken has to use the Ring of Celebrity (which, among other things, ensures that only his good side is ever visible) to make his escape.

By the time he gets home he is furious. Not only has he invested a lot of his own money and reputation in the expedition, but the Warsor Brethren are beginning to be a bit unreasonable and expecting him to do rather more than he had hoped to do so this is the last straw.

He tells all the townsfolk that the naughty Noturnaides have put the whole expedition in jeopardy. As he anticipated, the townsfolk are angered by this. They have been promised a share of the treasure (albeit a very small one) and a lot of them have no time for the Noturnaides.

When Bracken reports back to the Warsor Brethren they are furious as they are not used to being blackmailed (as they see it) by a tiny gang of upstarts.

Bracken calls on Termini Simper who appears in his trademark puff of blue smoke followed by his bodyguard, Greybrew Loner who arrives some later on a very tired donkey. Simper suggests they all head to his place to regroup and retrench and have a rethink.

One of the Brethren, a very sneaky fellow known as Slywares, demands an increase in their share of the treasure as a gesture of good faith. Somewhat to their surprise, Simper immediately agrees. His plan is simply not to give the townsfolk as much which they can blame on the Noturnaides. He reasons that this will leave the legions with no allies and allow him to crush them once and for all which will leave all of Arburlo’s treasure unguarded.

He strides around uttering phrases like –"taking the long view", "win-win situation", and "leverage". The Warsor Brethren smile in their beards; they like the cut of this Wizard’s jib.

Together Simper, Bracken and Slywares hatch a plan to bamboozle the good folk of Smelly Wood. They stage great rallies and send out messengers far and wide to tell all the citizens that the Noturnaides are "the enemy within" and must be defeated for the good of the whole land.

The Noturnaides and their allies try to rally support but Treasure Inc is well served by the bedazzling and discombobulating powers of the Ring of Celebrity– and the fact that some of the Noturnaides’ allies decide to go home to mow the lawn.

Now, Aburlo had never trusted the Brethren or the Wizard but she had trusted Bracken Jetposerrot. When she realises she has been betrayed, she comes down from the mountain to confront them. But while the Hobbit and the Brethen distract her, the Wizard attacks her from behind and strikes a powerful blow that forces her and her legions to flee.

Despite the fact that the fight has caused damage to the town and created divisions between the citizens, brave little Bracken Jetposerrot is lauded by placard-waving townsfolk, some of whom are calling on Treasure Inc to fulfill the old prophecies of Aburlo’s complete demise.

And so it comes to pass that the Warsor Brethren are free to take possession of the greatest part of the treasure, and Bracken is a happy little fellow as he gets to keep a good portion for himself. However, because he likes to be seen as a good-hearted little fellow, he plans to throw a big party for the townsfolk.

Termini Simper, with a broad smile, does his usual disappearing act knowing he now has even more effective ways of increasing his share of the rest of Arburlo’s treasure, with interest.

But, nothing is ever straightforward in a fairy tale and once the power of the Ring has waned, some of the townsfolk ungratefully demand payment for helping the Brethren and some want reparations for damage to their property. Some even demand settlement of ancient claims on the treasure.

The Brethren get stroppy again and it looks like another battle is brewing. Bracken realises too late that he has helped to create a monster and tries to intercede, but the Brethren are now firmly in charge and threaten to banish him.

The Wizard reappears to warn them about a new army of Noturnaides being raised across the sea and demands that Bracken use his Ring to help them. He agrees because he knows which side his bread is buttered on, and he does like buttered bread.

There’s another big battle, which, sadly for Arburlo, Treasure Inc wins by convincing the populace yet again that she is their true enemy.

The Brethren offer Termini Simper a job as a consultant on future treasure raids and go off shaking their heads in amazement at easily conned the good folk of Smelly Wood were.

Although Bracken Jetposerrot gives a portion of his share of the treasure to a select few of the folk of Smelly Wood, he returns home an even wealthier Hobbit.

The End.

Real estate agents are at it again

The housing market balloon that deflated so rapidly after the bankquakes and earthquakes is reinflating, despite the dodgy repairs to the many holes in its fabric.

If it takes off into the stratosphere, trailing desperate red-zoners from its mooring lines, thanks will be due to the politicians who have failed to control the process. In exerting full bureaucratic control of some aspects and none at all on others, responsibility for what happens in Canterbury will rest with them but we mustn’t ignore the sterling efforts of those estate agents who are generating the vast quantities of hot air without which the housing balloon would remain grounded.

The old hyperbole is flowing like the wine at a CCC senior management team-building weekend, and adjectives are flying like Lake Ellesmere’s geese would have if they’d been able to.

The city is teeming with discerning buyers and determined sellers and the market is bursting at the seams with bargains of the century.

I suppose it should reassure me that Christchurch still has restful sanctuaries, secluded and private havens – and other such tautologous examples of sales jargon.

But, what really grips my imagination is the anthropomorphism – which seems to know no bounds. 

Buildings tempt, exude, entice, allure and promise; they are sophisticated, chic and generous. One wonders how mere mortals have the confidence to set foot in one let alone use the toilets. One ad promised rooms that will "enfold you". I’m not at all sure I’d want to live in rooms that wanted to enfold me, however elegantly proportioned they were.

Mostly I read the ads for the typos – the computer’s revenge on the orthographically challenged. My week’s favourite was the house that is "defiantly for sale".

Getting into the anthropomorphism groove I imagine a grim-visaged little eastern Christchurch villa :

“All I can promise you in the exuding and brimming department is the silt that oozes up through my floorboards every so often. I’m definitely private and secluded now that I’m pretty much the only house left in the street. I’m not very alluring although the feral cats seem to quite like me. I never was chic and sophisticated, I’m more your down to earth sort of house – especially now my foundations have crumbled and sunk. And my owners – well, they’re not so much determined as desperate. So I suggest you take all that estate agent puffery and stick it down my portaloo.”

I do apologise to those agents whose common sense and professionalism prevents them from engaging in overly silly embellishments. For what is the point? We all know the code.

I am a tad tetchy because anything that exudes the merest whiff of profiteering makes me angry, and I went over to my mother’s house in Wainoni last week to find burglars and vandals have targeted it again. The last time they visited, one of the charmers drew a picture of his genitalia on a cupboard door – no doubt making his mark for posterity. Sadly, posterity won’t be able to express its delight and wonderment at the discernment, intelligence and artistic skill of this product of our times because my Mum’s house is going to die.

It is still essentially solid. Its piles are knackered and its nine load bearing brick pillars sheared in February so they were replaced with steel props that have been holding it up for a year. Its big fireplaces were demolished by the insurers and some doors don’t close but in the main body of the house there are no cracks in the thick lathe and plaster walls and ceilings, and its rimu cladding, flooring, skirtings, windows, panelling, doors and beams are all in good order.

But, it was cheaper to rebuild than repair it, and now that is all academic as it is in the red zone. One year after being red-stickered and, on the same day that my Mum finally got a cheque from the EQC, CERA red-zoned the land. So, in all likelihood this big family home will be bulldozed and end up in a tip.

In the light of this and what so many others are facing, the inanity of some housing ads rings way too hollow.

Bring Back Romance ...

Chris Trotter in a Valentine's Day column referred to romance, chivalry and courtly love as ‘revolutionary ideals’.

I know what he means – I guess. I too shudder at the sight of laddish behaviour in girls and young women but even a cursory glance at the history of patriarchy reveals that the concepts of chivalry and courtly love were products of the same social forces that have deformed, and continue to deform, relations between the sexes.

The idea that the codes of romance, chivalry and courtly love were developed or even encouraged by aristocratic patronesses as a means of controlling their brutal husbands is about as historically accurate as the Victorian idealisation of the Arthurian legend.

The code of the gentle, perfect knight with his concepts of honour and protection of the weak – like the code of the Samurai in Japan – was an ideology that served the purposes of the knight’s lords. Those who create highly trained fighting forces always face the problem of controlling them, and how better to make them fight and die for you than to make it a sacred duty?

The primary duty of the European mediaeval knight was to God and his earthly representatives – the church and the feudal lord or king – to protect their land and property.

Foremost among the feudal lord’s property was his wife who was tied to him by a combination of laws and customs which granted him an authority that extended to all in his household and to his vassals.

Whilst the concept of droit de seigneur may be an historical fiction, it is historical fact that in English law up to the late 20th century, the courts could not accept the possibility of rape in marriage because a wife’s conjugal duty and a husband’s corresponding conjugal right to demand sex clouded the concept of ‘consent’ on which rape law hinged.  This was a potent remnant of old patriarchal controls which varied in form and scale across time and cultures, but remained constant in their essence – the assurance of male domination.

Marriage for all classes was for convenience – romantic love rarely entered the scenario. For the labouring classes the desirable bride possessed skills, health and ideally, a dowry, all factors intimately connected with the survival of the family unit. For the nobility and the rich it was simply for the transmission of title, family name and wealth. Romance wasn’t an issue, but sex certainly was.

It has always been the case that if sex is possible, sex is probable. Until the advent of blood and DNA testing this posed a problem for the central pillars of patriarchal rule – patrilineality and primogeniture. These legally codified concepts within monogamous marriage were the primary means by which paternity was assured and property and name were kept in the male line.

The male blood line could only be guaranteed by marrying a virgin and keeping her sequestred until she had produced at least the requisite male heir and ideally, given the uncertainty of life, several spares. 

The arrangements for the sequestering of women could involve locking them up, restricting where they could go, never allowing them to be alone, the use of chastity belts etc. They also involved the creation of horrible punishments for unchaste or adulterous behaviour both in the present and in the afterlife. As most women also forfeited their property to their husband on marriage, they were deprived of any means of independent life.

But these arrangements also had to be practical to be of any long-term use. For the labouring classes, women always were (and remain) essential players in the family economy – they had to work as hard and often harder than their men. There was not a lot of sense in locking up working women or tying them into crippling corsets or binding their feet. And aristocratic women had to be educated and free enough to run a household when their husbands were away.

So, supporting the formal and the coercive structures were powerful religiously based ideologies such as a division of labour that was ordained by God, and in which woman’s place was in the domestic sphere. And, most important in any consideration of chivalry, was the ideology of the duality in the nature of woman – the madonna/whore dichotomy. On the one hand there was the purity and sacredness of the madonna, and on the other, the profane, physical nature of real women.

The mediaeval attitude to women was powerfully influenced by the ancient Greeks’ belief that woman was the inferior, lesser sex, incapable of higher thought, secretive and untrustworthy, and therefore in need of protection, control and correction. But for mediaeval Christians, a woman was also the mother of God – which created a perplexity of the first order. The code of chivalry and the rituals of courtly love were products of the cult of the Virgin Mary.

The chivalric code emphasized a spiritual, pure, chaste love –unsullied by the messy business of sex. This was not so different from the Greek idealisation of male love being on a higher spiritual and intellectual plane than that which could exist between man and woman. But for Christians, sodomy was a mortal sin so the object of this chivalric love had to be a woman of unsuliied reputation.

And for the messy business of sex there were plenty of peasant girls. One of the Victorians’ mediaeval sources – De Amore - tells the would-be chivalrous knight that if he feels compelled to "love’" peasant girls then first flatter them but if they resist, to feel free to take them by force, i.e., mediaeval date rape. By raping peasant girls the knight could free himself of his profane lusts so he could more easily engage in rarified, ritualised flirtations with the women of his own class.

The code simply divided women and children into those who could be used and abused with impunity, and those who any knight worth his salt had a sacred duty to protect ie women of his own or a higher class.

What changes?

The answer to our modern problems doesn’t lie in the reinvention of chivalry – it lies in challenging our society’s hypocrisy and double standards, its crass commercialism, self-absorption, consumerism and hedonism.

Yes Chris, men AND women should be honourable, kind, caring and compassionate. But they also have to find a means of making the world’s predators respect those qualities.

Whenever I reread Jane Austin, I enjoy her wit and her intelligence but I can never ignore the wraiths that inhabit the spaces between her well crafted lines – the masses of poor people whose lives and labour were sacrificed in order that the delicate manners and mores of the aristocratic and the affluent could exist.  Romance, like leisure, is something only some people can afford. And it can be a powerful ideology designed to both mask and protect the interests of the powerful.

Earthquake poem

I shrugged and flexed my spine
And your future and your past
Fell like ninepins in a cloud of choking dust
At first you ran cowered and hid
Joined your forebears in their terror
Then resentment joined the fear
And you raged and railed
Labelled me capricious and cruel
As if I shared your small momentary passions
I yawned and stretched and flexed some more
And kept on
Not because I want to teach you a lesson
Remind you
Of your often graceless impertinence
Or your soft and short term impermanence
Simply because it is what I do
Periodically
That my upheavals trace your vulnerabilities
And place them in a vast universal frame
Should serve simply to remind you
That your rhymes and your reasons
Are no match for my times and my seasons
I was I am I will be
Well after your days are no longer numbered

And still in the Ureweras.....

I wrote this back in 2007 and tucked it away in a file. With the trial of the Urewera Four going on I thought it deserved an airing.

Masked, heavily-armed paramilitaries patrolling the Ureweras – it's enough to give one nightmares. In the last couple of decades, similar groups have appeared in almost every country around the world. They're extremely powerful, well-resourced and able to operate at every level of society. They're equipped with the latest in high-tech automatic weaponry, personal armour and communications devices. In appearance, equipment, training methods and ethos they owe more to foreign than to domestic influences.

They are the paramilitary branch of the New Zealand police service.

I don't doubt that a small group of people, fired up by real and imagined grievances, had been dressing up as guerrillas and plotting the downfall of those they see as their oppressors. Very likely it was a good thing they were stopped – for their own good at least.

But, in the political nightmare stakes, those black-clad, anonymous, heavily-armed computer game look-alikes win – hands down.

I recall the images of the police at Orgreave during the UK Miners Strike in the 1980s. Masked, minus their police numbers, brought in from outside the communities they were policing, earning vast amounts of overtime, mocking the striking miners by waving their pay slips at them, they lined up in formation, banging their batons on riot shields before parting to allow the police horses to charge the strikers. Prior to Orgreave, horses were usually used for crowd control and never aggressively and that was not the only seminal change in police tactics.

This was not in response to an external threat, to the spectres of communism or terrorism. It was a calculated use of one part of the armed wing of the State against citizens who were simply fighting for their jobs. Looking back at footage of that time it still seems unreal and it marked a turning point in the way the UK police organised, equipped and trained.

These days the armed units of the police in democracies like ours look exactly like the police always looked in the worst dictatorships. We've got so used to these faceless, black-clad paramilitaries on American TV shows, we've accepted the importation of their style, ethos and methodology without question.

No one is seriously going to argue that there is a real terrorist threat here but there are people who want us to believe there could be and they need to nip any emergent threat in the bud. Actually, they want to use political fringe groups to justify the existing hardware, to practise using it and to argue for the funding for more.

Sensible people in the UK have looked on in horror as a Labour government has presided over an erosion of seemingly inviolable rights. Some Americans are slowly waking up to how much of their constitutional rights have been removed. We are seeing a shift in legislative powers and the way the police operate here in NZ.

We have become inured to the fact that we live in a virtual panopticon – which allows the domestic State and its apparatus to intrude into our lives to an unprecedented degree. This comes perilously close to being the stuff of conspiracy theorists but, anyone who thinks that the forces which control the world's economy and the political structures which support that control are benign and have the best interests of ordinary people at heart, is deluded.

The power of even the NZ State, relative to the power of a tiny disparate group of citzens, is immeasurable. Tame Iti may behave histrionically at times, but at least he shows his utterly distinctive face. He's open and honest about his intentions, we all know exactly what his agenda is – and we we all know that his ability to impose it on the rest of us is limited – at best.

Can we say that about the paramilitary wing of the Police? How much do we know about its organisation, its ideology and agenda? A lot less than we know about Tame Iti.

The Ureweras are symbolic in many ways. They were the last stronghold of Māori resistance; Māori who lived there were punished for that resistance. This police action will create martyrs to an old cause.

It is interesting that this has happened in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of a disturbed man in Christchurch, which has resurrected the debates about the shooting of Stephen Wallace, and the keystone cops effort in Rotorua. And of course it comes at a time of changes in legislation to grant increased state power in the name of countering terrorism. How convenient that the police should find an armed group with alleged terrorist links. What better way to justify the laws and have a practise with their new toys?

A day in the Ureweras....

The trial of the Urewera Four is made all the more fascinating by the on/off appearances in the saga of one Jamie Beattie Lockett who was described in the Herald on Sunday on Oct 21st 2007 as a ‘self-styled activist’ when he was arrested on fire arms charges after the Urewera raids.

This is the same Jamie Lockett whose fire arms charged were dropped in October 2008 and who was arrested again last October for trying to take a weapon into court. And the same Jamie Lockett who the NZ Herald in October 2003 described as a "self-described hard man" and as the "former minder" of one Mark Lyons.

Seems that you just can’t keep a good activist / hardman / minder down.

Lockett the hard man claimed to have been beaten up while in prison in 2003, and interestingly Lockett the activist also claimed to have been beaten up in Mount Eden after his firearms arrest. We await to hear if he gets beaten up again while on remand for trying to sneak a bit of rope with a metal ball on one end into court.

Photos of Lockett the activist in court after the Urewera arrest, peering over the top of his reading glasses made him look rather more like a slightly bemused school teacher, than a hard nosed minder/mercenary.

Police allegations that Lockett the activist claimed to be "a vicious, dangerous commando" who is "declaring war on this country", and who said that "white men are going to die in this country" were used to justify denying him bail.

Those statements seemed highly dramatic at the time and in light of his subsequent discharge on the firearms charges, they clearly entered the realms of the wildly melodramatic.

A Melbourne acquaintance, in an e-mail to ACT party member's Trevor Loudon's blog, said of Lockett, "Over the years Jamie has used his size and body strength as a business tool for many business ventures which a vast number of society dont know or understand. Including that of debt collecting and tracing people who "skip out" of making financial payments for debts owed. He later beacame a body guard and "minder" as is referred too for high profile business people who for reasons of there own find the need for personal protection." (Original spelling and grammar.)

The question that fascinates me is, why was Lockett the activist / hard man / minder in the Ureweras? Was it for ideological, personal or financial reasons – or a mixture of all three?

How someone like Lockett ended up in the mists of the Ureweras with someone like Tame Iti, is as compelling an area of speculation as how such a vicious, dangerous commando kept getting duffed up in prison.

So, is he a real and serious threat to NZ's internal security, or a Walter Mittyish man approaching late middle age who was variously a body guard, debt collector and self-styled enforcer who found a niche for himself in indigenous politics? Or his just an anti-police exhibitionist – and do I really care?

I must say, it does rather spice up the Urewera affair, especially if we bring Lockett's former boss into the picture.

NOT that I'm suggesting Mark Lyon, bless his silk socks, had anything to do with the Urewera affair but, when researching Lockett the activist/debt collector/minder, I was reminded of this playboy, drug user and general all-round waste of space.

This product of privilege in 2003 pleaded not guilty in the Auckland District Court on explosives, arms and drugs offences. He also denied assaulting a policeman, threatening to kill a policeman, theft, dangerous driving and assault.

In February 2004, Justice Phil Recordon warned Lyon it was his last chance to avoid jail when sentencing him for unlawfully possessing weapons. Despite Lyon's history and the prosecution's request for a jail term, the judge refused to send him to prison and instead sentenced him to 280 hours of community service.

If the community service was as arduous as the time he spent in the Cook Islands "resting" while on bail, Lyon wouldn’t have had a hard time of it.

Lyon had previously been fined for exporting drugs, using threatening language, possessing drugs utensils, driving offences and refusing to supply a blood sample. He'd been supported in previous legal battles by his father, prominent retired businessman and former Watties chief, Cliff Lyon.

You could be forgiven for asking what more Lyon Jnr needed to do to get jail time. If I was a cynic I'd think that being poor and / or brown would probably have done the trick.

Meanwhile, back in 2012, I hope that we are all watching the trial of the "enemies within" with great interest.