However I must say the picture is a very impressive and powerful. One American website had as its heading "The baddest ass on the planet". I think they mean arse.
Power: Talking about power, we have had another power outage in Auckland due to a fire caused by dipping power lines and the inability to get onto the property to cut the trees due to the farmers objection.
I think the farmer was a bit over the top and his grievance is about money. He wants compensation for the use of his land. Fair enough. But the law does not allow them (Transpower) to pay him so his beef is really with Government - not that I have any brief for Transpower who I think are just incompetent with short term goals to make money now and bugger the future. Of course, as usual they blame the previous management - it is never my fault.
They say the the CEO is on $1 million per year. Good grief.!!
I am sure if the old NZ Electricity Department was running it the salary would be around $300,000 and they would be so much more efficient. The profit motive is not always the most efficient method especially when an organisations needs to have a time frame of 20-30 years out into the future. People being paid, in many cases on a bonus/profit based system, can't think like that.
Bill McLaren: A great voice of Rugby died aged 86 on the 19th January. What I most remember about him, apart from his brillianty understated commentary, was his addition, in the Scottish way, of the 'S' to his words - 16 stones - lines-out. Sadly missed.
Gruffalo: One of Kipp's favourite books at the moment. I see the BBC ran a 30 minute TV show at Xmas in the UK. I hope one of our stations pick it up.
