Jim Hopkins: How to decipher those hits below the Beltway

They do say, at least the smart folk do, that a week is a long time in politics. They're probably right. Not that the rest of us would know.

Let's face it, if life was a Griffins Assortment, we'd be the whine biscuits, continually pleading, "What's going on?"

We'll never find out, of course, because we're not smart folk. We don't know what the smart folk know. We don't live where the smart folk live. We don't have apartments. We don't do Fashion Week and we never hear all the juicy goss. Consequently, we haven't got the foggiest idea what's what and who's who - and, more to the point, who's what's where, especially when it shouldn't be.

We're too busy mowing lawns and trimming verges and sprinkling Wet and Forget on our moss, mould and gunge. That's what you do when you're living outside the beltway - wherever that is.

Maybe the beltway is the bit in the middle. That's normally where you find belts. Or maybe its connected to the trouserway and they're both in a heap on the floor of somebody else's boudoir.

That was certainly the suggestion last week when the philanderthropic Dr Brash's bedside manner was the issue du jour.

The smart folk were unanimous: the very suggestion that there'd been a laissez-affaire beneath the Round Table meant that it was "Good nightie, nurse" for the dallying Doc.

And since the same smart folk had correctly predicted Dr D's first Orewa speech would send National plummeting in the polls and that his "inept" leadership bid was doomed to fail, most of us agreed.

Until yesterday, when the passionate Presbyterian (how's that for an oxymoron?) was suddenly thrown an unexpected lifeline. Which, being as how you're not in the beltway, you probably missed.

But fear not. Help is at hand. The Harold has produced an out-of-beltway dictionary especially designed to enlighten the confused and bewildered.

So, if you're constantly doing the whine biscuit chant - "What's going on?" - every time someone mentions affairs and shenanigans and when Mr Mallard tells a journalist that "anyone with the intelligence of a flea" would understand why he wasn't answering questions, just relax and enjoy The Bumper Boys' Beltway Book of Political Terms.

Here are some examples:

A corrosive and cancerous person: This is the finest compliment one politician can pay another. With phrases such as "weak, ineffectual" and "about to be replaced" available, "corrosive and cancerous" is lavish praise indeed.

Short of calling Rodney Hide the "Fred Astaire of MMP", it simply doesn't get any better.

Don Brash is printing the T-shirts as we speak and probably working on a press release saying, "I'm in awe of the Prime Minister too."

Any more unbridled admiration and both leaders will be issuing a joint statement denying rumours of an affair. "Corrosive and cancerous" ... Just feel the love, people.

Muckraking: What others say about you but never what you say about them.

The Exclusive Brethren: A bunch of strange white men, according to Pete Hodgson. And he should know, given his description includes two of the worst words in modern English: "white" and "men".

It's likely the Brethren will soon be declared noxious pests and hunters paid for every bloodstained prayerbook they deliver to a DoC office.

The Business Round Table: Basically, the Exclusive Brethren minus God. The Business Round Table is actually so sinister that the smart folk always hope that "right-wing" is put in front of their name in news reports just to ensure we treat their ideas with the contempt they deserve.

Rightly so. These guys are so devious and frightening that a former Round Table chief, Ralph Norris, was appointed to run Air New Zealand after the gummint acquired a majority shareholding. Think Dracula in an Armani suit and you've got the Round Table sussed.

Hard man: As in "Labour's hard man, Trevor Mallard" - (a) pit-bull terrier in trousers; (b) a bully in search of a school yard; (c) assuming the well-established psychological principle that we tend to accuse others of the things about which we feel guilty is correct, a "hard man" might possibly have more skeletons in his cupboard than there are members in the Business Round Table fan club.

Political editors: Gossip columnists too lazy to dig for a real story. (Why did the fiercely independent and incorruptible New Zealand Police suddenly decide it was essential to investigate Taito Philip Field within 24 hours of his announcing he'd defy the Prime Minister and remain in Parliament) and too silly to realise their justification for pursuing the Brash affair story.

After all, if it were proper to expose this affair because the damsel in question was No 2 at the Business Round Table, then we should have learned about it months ago.

If conflict of interest is the test, then the smart folk should not have waited for the "romance" to reach Caucus before revealing what they knew - or suspected. The fact that they did makes their pious self-vindication implausible. Tell the truth, guys, it was sexier than wading through the minutiae of campaign spending and the Auditor-General's reports.

Debt and Forget: A new version of Wet and Forget for all those parties with gunge on their election expenses.

Anyone with the IQ of a flea: (see Political editors).

Anyone with the IQ of a flea Number 2: At least there's somebody the politicians can look up to.