MM> G'morning George,

 MM>> still befuddled enough 12 years later to happily pay more per
 MM>> litre of water than for they do now for a litre of petrol...
 GP>> What water is this?  & how much?

 MM> Its ordinary H2O, costs up to $5 a litre (depending on how 
 MM> many strange homeopathic claims can be crowded onto the 
 MM> label), whereas unleaded 91 petrol is currently above $1.50 
 MM> a litre and attracting militant protest from both consumer 
 MM> and manufacturer quarters alike.

 MM>> what awful crime sentenced NZ to its
 MM>> current 12-year spell of aimless drifting.

 GP>> Possibly daring to make the world THINK they stood up to the USA re:
 GP>> nukes in harbour?

 MM> Te-he...  I witnessed the Miracle of the Protestors;  I
 MM> counted 42 small craft trying to halt USS Blackbridge in 
 MM> the channel outside my windows here ... and then their 
 MM> transformation into first hundreds (on radio) and then 
 MM> thousands (on TV news) within the hour - as I counted 51 
 MM> buzzing around her as she turned into the inner harbour...

 GP>> (when we know that the USA won the real battle, in that nukes are
 GP>> parked in NZ harbours any damb time the yanks feel like it!)

 MM> Have to be a sub, cos' I haven't sighted a US Navy vessel 
 MM> for the thirty years since...

 GP>> Every two-bit terrorist-wannabe group has a Stinger or three, why
 GP>> doesn't NZ buy one or two?
 MM>                        
 MM> My very dear sir ... a Stinger ? They're so very dangerous 
 MM> !  Once the Royal Commission approved the Defence 
 MM> Committee's decision to rubber stamp the Civil Emergency
 MM> Controller's whim to allow a real Stinger to be launched 
 MM> against a living target,  there'd have to be a statutary 
 MM> period of grace of a week or two to enable the hapless 
 MM> pilot to appeal ...  we wouldn't want any real injustice 
 MM> done,  not in NZ !!! 

 MM> Besides which,  it only took 18 minutes to evacuate the 
 MM> whole of the Sky Tower to make sure everybody was `safe'  - 
 MM>  and should its 400 metres actually topple across central 
 MM>  Auckland City, well, most people have 359 chances out of 
 MM>  360 of not being crushed so why buy Stingers that might 
 MM>  devastate whole suburbs ? 

 MM>> Send us some real democracy !!

 GP>> It's in saddlebags on a unicorn being ridden by a beautiful virgin
 GP>> 20-year-old woman!

 MM> And, please, at which end of the rainbow should I wait for
 MM> them ?

 The other one.

BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... Murphy's Paradox: Doing it the hard way is always easier in the end...
 * Silver Xpress V4.5/P [Reg]
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5