Greg Dixon's Weekend

MOUNTAIN MADNESS

Mt Aoraki. Mt Aconcagua. Mt Kilimanjaro. And next summer Mt Aspiring. There's no question that Auckland City Mayor and part-time mountain bloke Dick Hubbard is an old man in a hurry. But I have grave fears for what all that thin air may be doing to the cereal baron's gourd. At a gathering to announce some new police ethnic strategy this week, our Dick raved about his recent conquest of Kilimanjaro and how at the base of the hill is a township where prosecutions are taking place for the Rwanda genocide. It was, he sternly told his audience, "a chilling reminder of when ethnic differences totally get out of control, what can happen around the world and we would never want to be associated with that in any shape or form". A more prosaic statement of the bleedin' obvious I've not heard in some time but then our Dick really seemed to lose it. He went on to almost call himself mayor of Wellington. He might need to use the oxygen on his next climb.

MEDIA MADNESS

It's bad enough that the public think we journalists spend our time interviewing our typewriters, but TV3 isn't doing us any favours. For an item on travellers stuck at fog-bound Wellington Airport this week, 3 News happened on two "stranded honeymooners" who moaned they were paying for a hotel room in Raro while being stuck in momentarily Unwindy Wellington. But these weren't any old stranded honeymooners. They were, though viewers weren't told, One News reporters Dita De Boni and Ali Ikram. Putting aside the bizarre fact that the TVNZers talked to the enemy, isn't there something worrying in the media interviewing the media? I think so.

A WHITE HORSE TOWN

I have to say I'd never been to, or for that matter heard of, Ngongotaha, near Rotorua. But then I'm no heroin user. Still, I can only heartily support its campaign to be a smack-free community.

ON THE EIGHTH DAY

The way Destiny Church goes on you'd think they could all walk on water. So why in heaven's name do they need the Auckland Harbour Bridge?

AND ON WAITANGI DAY

Bugger the Rt Rev Peter Dunne's idea of changing the title to New Zealand Day. It should be renamed Protest Day, and we should all have free rein to gripe and march and throw stuff in order to highlight whatever is getting up our snoots. I'll be starting with dog owners who let their mutts crap outside my front gate and golf courses that shoot wildlife so the rich and famous might play on turd-free fairways.

OF LITTLE MINDS

The scene is the parliamentary debating chamber. Labour's Judith Tizard has just labelled National's blokes "little men". The Nats' Maurice Williamson, previously thought dead, rises to his feet. He wants to put the boot in. But how, without running afoul of the House's rules on sexism and, as he puts it, sizeism? Then, as NZPA observes, he realises it is all about relativity: "I thought a lot about Judith Tizard's attack. For someone who is six foot four and weighs over 90kg, I don't reckon I'm a little man. Then I suddenly realised it was Judith Tizard who was saying it ... There isn't a person in this House, including Gerry Brownlee, who isn't a little man relative to Judith Tizard."