I was waiting in line at my local Chinese takeaway last night for my shredded pork lunchbox and black glutinous rice with coconut milk when I realised in a blinding flash: "Hang on a minute. I can do that."
I rolled up my sleeves and went into thekitchen.
"What you want?", said the Asiatic.
"Please, stand aside, Mr Chan. I know what I'm doing," I said.
I reached into the fridge, brought out a couple of rashers of bacon, and shredded them. I found an empty plastic lunchbox, and shredded that too.
I dug my hands into a sack, and said, "Is this black glutinous rice?"
"No. Is black beans."
"Same difference," I said, and threw it with the shreds into a wok. I turned on the heat to full, and folded my arms.
"I think you see my point," I told the Oriental.
"You bad man!"
"No, Mr Lee. It's like this. We must stop Chinese and Indian restaurants from hiring semi-skilled immigrant labour. They should be hiring New Zealand chefs. These jobs should be filled by Kiwis. Do you see?"
"Are you really, Mr Wah? We must strive towards employment for Kiwis, and places like yours are standing in the way."
"I live here many many years!"
"But not as long as I have," I told the Occidental. Turning to my meal happily smoking away in the wok, I remembered that it needed coconut milk. I found a coconut and figured the best way to open it was smash it against a rock-hard object, so I leaned back and cracked it against my head. It opened, and a liquid ran out.
The last thing I remember was experiencing yet another blinding flash, and then looking up at an Indian doctor in A & E. "Hang on a minute," I said, and grabbed his stethoscope. "I can do that."
TODD BARCLAY
Now I know there may have been a few stories in the press recently about "employment issues" in my electorate office. There has been talk of "secret recordings". The police are investigating.
It all seems quite heavily loaded with innuendo, doesn't it! I know that it's raised a few suspicions. I know that people are saying, "Where there's smoke, there's fire."
But that's just the smoke from the cigarettes I used to smoke when I worked as a tobacco lobbyist.
There's nothing to see here. Move on. Look! There's something very important, an issue which threatens the very fibre of democracy in New Zealand - Kiwi jihadi brides.
As the Attorney-General, and Minister responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, and also as one of the foremost intellectuals in this age and indeed in any age since ancient Greece, I want to make it perfectly plain that the Government never once actually said there was such a thing as Kiwi jihadi brides.
Sophocles said, "What people believe prevails over the truth."
Well, I believe in the Prime Minister, and I'd rather take the word of Sophocles than the Green Party and other such extremists who are now claiming the Prime Minister misled the public last year when he referred to New Zealand women travelling to Iraq and Syria to become Islamic fighters. New information, which reveals that in fact no New Zealand women have travelled to Iraq and Syria to become Islamic fighters, is a mere bagatelle. Not many people know the word "bagatelle" is French, from Italian bagattella, and its first known use was in 1633 - but I do. I most certainly do.
WINSTON PETERS
Winston Peters. Photo / Peter de Graaf
I was warning the New Zealand public about jihadi brides and Chinese takeaways a long time ago. But there is a new threat, and that is jihadi takeaways. Is it possible that every morsel of halal meat contains a subliminal message to overthrow the NZ way of life and subject it to tyranny? We should be told.
