"Deidre is innocent," Alliance leader Jim Anderton declared today. He's calling for the Coro St star to be freed, and a 'Free Deidre Now' poster has been put up on the wall of the Alliance office at parliament. "Wherever there is a wrong or an injustice, it is our duty to speak out. "Deidre has made her mistakes in life, but that is no reason for her to rot in prison. "Deidre was fitted up. She should be freed. The Alliance demands justice for the Weatherfield One," Jim Anderton said. Clearly NZ politicians don't have enough to do!

The Saga Continues: Deirdre, Jenny And Jim Tuesday, 13 October 1998, 3:56 pm Staff Reporter: Ian Llewellyn The line between fact and fiction often blurs in politics, never more so when real life politicians get involved in soap opera plot lines. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair brought upon himself ridicule from many and the support of outraged Coronation Street fans when he declared a character in the show, Deirdre Rashid (nee Barlow), innocent of the fraud charges she was imprisoned for in a show screened there some time ago. The trial was screened in New Zealand on Saturday. For those unaware of the story Deirdre fell in love with a ne'er do well conman who posed as a pilot, obtained credit by fraud and proposed marriage to the criminally gullible Deirdre. He was also already married. The badboy then managed to pin his various crimes on his one time lover and in a miscarriage of justice Deirdre was sentenced to jail. The outrage of Coronation Street characters spread to the real British world and (well I won't spoil the plot line for anyone who is interested). Yesterday at a press conference one journalist tried to bring New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley into the story line. A diplomatic, but clearly gobsmacked, Mrs Shipley said: "To be fair, I am not a follower of Coronation Street and so while I have sympathy for poor Deirdre, she's not my greatest problem." Now, Alliance leader, Jim Anderton has made a light hearted stand for justice. He's calling for the Coronation Street star to be freed, and a 'Free Deirdre Now' poster has been put up on the wall of the Alliance office at Parliament. "The Alliance demands justice for the Weatherfield One," Jim Anderton said in a press release in the politics wire. The release does call into question Mr Anderton's affinity with the programme as he repeatedly spells her name wrong. NewsRoom finds itself agreeing with Dominion TV Columnist Jane Bowron, no matter what the rights and wrongs of the case, Deirdre should be jailed for her poor taste in glasses, if nothing else.

Arent our politicians great at wasting OUR money

Oh yes!

I'd like to grab each and every one of our elected officials (yes, the women too) by their by their ties (ties are bullshit, BTW) and slap them very hard and slap them silly. Incidentally, there are a few politicians I like and it would hurt me to have to slap them but it'd be for their own good. Someone's gotta do it, fer chrissakes.

WAKE UP!!! CITIZENS UNITE!!! Its time people woke up, smelled the coffee, and slapped teh living shit out of some of our government officials!!! Some of my pet peaves are permits, licences, and 'environmental legislation'. I spend a healthy percentage of income doing my part to support the environment, I'm talking spending hard earned CASH. Not because its to my advantage, but because I think its the right thing to do. For political officials? What is their motivation. More than likely some membership at a swanky golf club to vote to save the environment and require excessive licencing and permits to scratch you own ass. 'for your protection', you now have to pay someone else to scratch you ass. you're not allowed to do it yourself. Unless you get a permit, get a licence, pay tax, pay off some local county official, THEN you can scratch your own ass without going to jail, but by that time its cheaper to just pay someone else to do it (billybobbyjoe - the mayor's cousin no doubt)- which is the entire intent in the first place. Are you pissed when you have to pay $90/hr to get your car or whatever fixed? Its always costed that much and more to hire a lawyer. But there again they are lawyers and making their own rules. Whats so expensive about what they do anyhow? Books? Offices? Insurance (thats another pissy subject - I mean they say they have to charge so much because it costs so much to insure themselves from being sued or liability issues, HELL they are the ones making MONEY doing that shit. grrrrrr. I never figured that one out, how an insurance company is in the business to pay claims, but when they do, its a loss and deductible or something? They take in money all the time, but when they have to pay it out its a LOSS? It would be like when I fix something, and buy parts, and though I charge the customer for the parts, could also take it as a business LOSS and a deduction? That makes no sense at all. Yet their profits increase on a monthly basis and its all LEGAL.. I mean WHAT? I'm talking about REAL cost. What do they spend to stay in business? Show me where the money really goes. Let me get back on track here. We're protecting the environment, right? OK I used to be able to SELL my used oil for a buck a gallon or something. Same thing with batteries and tires and scrap metal and all that stuff. It was RECYCLED. It had VALUE. People never just threw them on the side of the road, or dumped them in a ditch somewhere, cause it was worth something. Would be throwing away money. What happened? GOVERNMENT REGULATION. why does the govt do *anything*? what motivation? say I'm a govt official, can sit on your ass, do nothing, vs actually work to do something? That something must be pretty attractive, i.e. free membership in a country club to get me to move? I guess if I were a govt official I'd take it from a big company like Dupont, and introduce environmental legislation that would make ME LOOK GOOD, and do shit like outlaw freon R12, and introduce something 10 times MORE expensive - to protect a 'hole in the atmosphere'. wake up people. After the fact all that shit blew out with the wind, but ya know what??? The new stuff is still there and the old stuff is regulated and permitted and so damn expensive you can't afford to use it anymore, and what very few people KNOW is that when you mix the new stuff with certain unusual types of old system oil, it makes a posion so damn potent it can KILL you by just getting it on your hands? Thats really protecting the environment don't you think? Wow, that means we need MORE permits and regulations and registrations to PROTECT people from themselves. Course it will COST more. But thats ok. We are protecting people, our job, our duty, and that membership at the country club is REALLY nice! Makes me sick every time I ride down the country roads, trash, litter, tires, shit people used to be able to recycle or just throw away, but now it COSTS to do it, so people generally don't give a flock, so they just toss it. Not in my back yard kind of idea *I'm* not payin. I used to pick up trash on my roadfrontage once or twice a year, now its almost a once a month thing. I used to buy used tires in volume around $5 each. NOW the largest recycler has a sole contract with one company and won't sell to individuals or small companies any more. Why? Used tires are now some form of regulated hazardous waste. Well mabe I could buy them wholesale like I used to, just get NEW ones, costs more, not as good a deal for my customers but do what ya gotta do. Oops - can't do that. Wholesaler will NOT sell to me cause I'm not a govt licenced and permitted tire dealer, filing monthly reports and paying my accountant another whatever per month to do even more paperwork. Sorry Mr. Smith, I realize last year I got you good used tires for $50, this time its gonna be $400. WHAT? Course thats the same thing you'd have to pay at the big tire place in town. Why even bother with my little shop then? Tires. Grind them up and burn em in a power plant and they make great fuel, have done it for years, but NOW YOU PAY an extra $2-4 bucks for every single tire for 'disposal fee'. What? No kidding, look at your receipt next time you buy tires, if you do that sort of thing. Where does THAT money go? We used to have a landfill and places to take trash. To protect the environment (not in my back yard though) they CLOSED the landfill. Now you pay a company mega bucks for pickup, OR purchase special bags and put everything in them, and haul it in your car down to the local transfer station, where its put on trailers and hauled to some other place for disposal, course its a few miles from home and only open so many hours per week, and its pretty damn inconvenient, so its much easier to pay city official's second cousin twice removed $30/month for street pickup. *I* think govt should require mandatory recycling. I mean good greif. Its already been done, the conversion from raw material to finished product. Like steel production. Its much cheaper to melt old steel than make new from ore. And just THINK about the environmental aspect of recycling material vs strip mining some third world country for raw material? Another example. I used to get over $2.50/hundred pounds for scrap metal. Last week, I had five THOUSAND pounds of scrap metal, and what did I get? $43. Thats less than a PENNY a pound. Almost broke even to load and haul and deliver it, paying for fuel and mileage, where it used to actually make profit and clean up at the same time. Why even bother now? Priced a new car lately? Wonder WHY it costs $20k? 5000 lbs of metal is MORE than enough to make a car. Why can't you do your own wiring, your own plumbing, your own carpentry/construction, your own repairs, why can't you buy a big truck to haul your own equipment legally without $7000-10,000 in permits and insurance and registrations? wanna scratch your own ass? good luck. Emissions testing. Is your exhaust clean from your vehicle? Cars were built pretty good at any point in time from an efficiency/performance standpoint. Most 'older' cars, aren't even ALIVE anymore, percentage speaking. So WHY the hell do they insist on testing everything, and charging a fee? I wouldn't mind the concept, but the specifications are really screwed up. Initially they required a 2 gas analizer. I bought one of those. Works great. Measures unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. Fine. BUT then they said ummm 2 gas isn't good enough, you need a FOUR gas analizer. OK. No wait, the 4 gas machines have analog meter displays, you 'could' look at it from an angle, get paralax and thus an incorrect reading. Better require DIGITAL machines. OK. WAIT, some people may not be smart enough to go through the calibration gas procedure, the machines need to be computerized and automatic so they won't be messed up by dumb ass mechanics. OK. You following this, gone from a 2 gas to 4 gas to 4 gas digital, to 4 gas computerized machine. Oh yea, WITH a printout ;) FINE. But WAIT - it really should be connected to the state central computer, to check against vehicle identification codes, and that way be almost realtime, so you need to upgrade to a machine with modem capability and go 'ONLINE' with the state government. FINE FINE FINE. BUT WAIT!!! that STILL is not good enough. You need to actually LOAD TEST the vehicle, and need a dyno interfaced with the online computer system, to have a test system that is even better!!. Know what a dyno is? Like when you tune a racecar for max horse power output, a huge steel drum you drive the wheels on that spins and has turning resistance and loads down the engine yada yada. Can you IMAGINE how EXPENSIVE that is? Try around $40K for a ballpark complete turn key thing from scratch. HOW many machines did I just mention, that a shop would have to BUY, one after the other, scraping the previous, to stay in the testing business? And that is just ONE aspect of ONE type of repair business. Apply that pretty much across the board for any service type industry. I'm not making this up people. Whats the penalty for violating the rules and regs? To a small company - lock your doors, fine the living shit out of you, and potentially put you in JAIL. Instantly out of business. SO you have really deep pockets, pass the charge on to your customer, and know that if they DON"T pay the $90/hr, they do without, cause the little shop on the other side of town couldn't afford to buy the new $40 machine. All of a sudden, that country club membership is the smartest investment fortune 500 ever made. Oh, and never mind that they don't have to comply with the increased regulations. Take Exxon or any petroleum plant for example (just cause I know engineers that work there). They regularly DUMP raw petroleum into ditches and set it on FIRE, when something goes wrong in the continous flow system. Oh yea, EPA slaps their wrist, fines them a few THOUSAND dollars per day, but what ya gotta realize here, is its a multi MILLION dollar per day plant, and the cost of actually dealing with the problem is astronomical compared to just dumping and flaming the fuel and paying the pesky epa fines. Same thing with big cities. Atlanta regularly dumps RAW SEWAGE into the river, when the system overflows. Pays so many dollars per day fine, a mere slap on the wrist, compared to the cost of a new treatment plant big enough to handle the volume. If I did something like that? You'd see me on the side of the road in a white suit with a black stripe up the leg picking up trash following a raggedy old school bus with the word PRISON on the side. Oh my gosh, that makes me just so mad I'm gonna start spammin my congressman right this minute. Oops, but then I'd miss the new episode of seinfield. Mabe later... mabe later... mabe later... mabe... damn I wish I didn't have to pay $90/hr to get my oil changed. nothing I can do about it though. ;-P

Damn.

Don't even get me started. Separate e-mail on the way. All I can say in public is Oh Grow Up, love, sheila

News flash: Congressman Smith announced in a meeting with Purdue farms at his new retreat in Napa Valley, that Purdue farms has just been named 'corporate environmentallist of the year' due to new legislation making private ownership of geese illegal, after studies they funded traced ecoli contamination in public water supplies to goose excrement rain runoff from unregulated competing small mountain farms. *hugs*, whet

e coli exists wherever there is shit, which is everywhere. and no one should own anything, or anyone. sorry i said oh grow up its just a phrase i use to tweak the local dangerous lunatics. so that everyone doesn't label us a couple of rabid geezer/farmers who might blow up a public building with fertilizer, let's continue this in private. fearlessly, sheila

how annoying

Which part is annoying? Please be specific.

For some reason, the "continue this in private" annoyed me last night. Tonight, it doesn't bother me at all. Hmmm. . . nevermind.

okay. all i meant was lets not bore everyone with this stuff probably no one else cares about and is taking up lots of space.

i was actually thinking it was one of the more interesting threads. i want to hear more about the goose business. that's complete and utter bullshit. by the way, sheila, i am thinking about getting a couple of chickens. is this a bad idea?

I heard somewhere that a way to cure a dog of killing chickens is to take one of the slain chicken carcasses and tie it securely to their collar until it basically rots off. Supposedly, this will cause the dog to lose interest in chickens. I wonder if there is some similar treatment which may make Agatha lose interest in getting more pets. Next thing you know, she'll be wanting howler monkeys or a macaw. If I were gonna slap some politicians, I'd like to start with that sonofabitch Phil Gramm. I'd like to slap him so hard he falls over. SLAP! and then another, SLAP! and a couple more, SLAP! SLAP! See what kind of smart-ass partisan remarks he makes after a vigorous slapping. Hell, slap his brother Lou as well for all those pathetic power ballads. G'night!

Has anybody seen the John Waters movie Pink Flamingos starring Divine? Among the many things I could mention about this movie, two things stand out in my mind - - that gaping asshole - that poor chicken!

I have not seen that one, and now, thanks to Pete, albeit belatedly, I will *not* see it.