Friday, 10 April 2015 14:30

Useful

Written by Rural News Group

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Many readers of this fine organ have written to us over the years to say what a useless waste of space the Hound is.

So your old mate was pleased to read that his canine cousins harrier hounds (a super-size beagle) may soon be working at New Zealand’s borders to guard against importing pests and diseases. MPI is currently trialling two harriers (Morley and Muse) to see whether the breed could upsize its detector dogs. “Harriers could be a great asset for our border protection work,” says MPI’s Brett Hickman. Harriers closely resemble beagles but they’re taller. And, says Hickman, “they have great drive and excellent noses for food and plant materials and they are good with people.” It’s good to see there are at least a couple of useful hounds around the traps.

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True Reflection?

A fair question has been raised about how member-funded organisations should conduct themselves when taking a public position on any given issue.

Stuffed!

The canine crusader always has his nose in the air for more media maleficence, so was pointing as soon as he saw the Stuff headline: ‘Wellington residents respond to PM saying he doesn’t need his job!’.

Civil Circus!

OPINION: It really is getting harder to lampoon government bureaucrats when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Anyone in the primary sector will know about the clowns covering the countryside in the red tape we all have to wade through.

Spare a thought then for media outfit Stuff who were threatened with fines up to $200,000 by a snivelling civil servant from the MoH for illustrating a quiz question with a photo of part of the cover of a 45-year-old copy Playboy.

As Stuff notes, “It wasn’t the Playboy cover which caused offence. No, it was the back page which… featured an advert for a cigarette brand”.

As Regulations Minister David Seymour notes, “The real scandal here is, well, no wonder we’ve got problems in healthcare when they’re doing the Stuff quiz during work time.”

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OPINION: After all the criticism that Winston Peters leveled at the India/NZ FTA, it seemed just a trifle ironic to the Hound that the first NZ politician to visit India after Prime Minister Modi's visit was a member of the Ewe Zealand First party.

Wrong focus

OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.

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