Jim Hopkins: Lig(h)ten up, don't put an 'h' in wine

Which raises the question - Where would you put an "h" in Greenpeace? Anywhere, as long as it's uncomfortable.

Which raises another question - What the hhell is he talking about?

Well, you know what he's talking about. He's talking about two things - one of which hasn't happened yet.

Though, strictly speaking, that's not true either. It sort of has and it sort of hasn't. Whanghanhui either is or is not h-less. That much we know.

We know the Geography Board has come to a conclushion. However, because it's Thhursday (in this neck of the whoods) whe don't yhet know what that conclushion is.

We know what Greenpeace did - its earnest army hopped on a boat that wasn't leaving New Zealand - their first mistake - then alleged its cargo belonged to Fonterra - another mistake - before eventually being removed from the vessel without being thoroughly fumigated - mind you, that was someone else's mistake.

The big mistake - the really big mistake - Greenpeace made was imagining we'd support their grand and glorious struggle to rid the world of palm kernels.

But we won't. No one gives a toss about palm kernels. Yes, all right. Two people care about palm kernels. One of whom has already buried those Cadbury cads and turned, for emotional consolation, to mung beans instead. And the other may, as we speak, be penning a virtuous declaration for The Harold:

"Dear Sir, I am worried about the kernels. So worried I can't sleep at night just thinking about all those rainforests that won't get rained on any more because they're palm paddocks instead." (Upon which, presumably, no pluviality descends.)

"PS: Why can't Michael Laws be nice to school children?"

We'll come to that but, for now, if the crimate climers want to get up anybody's rigging (or noses) they should start with the fossil-foolers who created a market for the stuff by insisting we all switched to bio-fuels.

Alternatively, they could go and do their Somalian thing aboard some ship in Indonesia. It would be instructive to discover how courteous that nation's police might be.

Take your Ambition East, my dears. Don't unfairly sabotage our biggest export industry. New Zealand dairy farmers aren't kings of the wild Fonterra. Wrong company, wrong ship, wrong crime.

There's nine billion reasons why Greenpeace should've stayed ashore - each of them a dollar earned abroad. In a climate of recession, the real crime is recklessly incriminating a company that underpins everyone's standard of living - including those hormonally dysfunctional, anxious folk (let's face it, all anxiety is just brain chemistry gone wrong) who support Greenpeace.

Better to do what Keith Floyd did. Told his bowel cancer had gone, the telly chef cheerfully tucked into a hearty lunch of partridge, oysters and shrimp, liberally lubricated with the finest red wine - and died of a heart attack shortly thereafter.

If only those gaunt and haunted Greenpeace folk would do the same. Not die, you understand, just lighten up. Forget the kernels, smell the coffee. Quaff the wine. Break wind. Sod the emissions.

Keith Floyd, it seems, knew what seems entirely lost on those, like Greenpeace, who measure merit in angst. The slowest death is an anxious life - as Clayton Weatherston is also about to discover.

But enough has been said of that awful matter this week. Let the victim rest and the killer rot. We can damn the sentence if we choose though it may be more salutary to contemplate the uncomfortable fact that this kind of murder is but the most extreme example of something true for us all - it's easier to hurt someone else than heal ourselves.

"But we're trying to heal the planet," cries Greenpeace. Fear not, anxious mariners. It will heal itself, as it has for four billion years, without any assistance from a bunch of anchors. Feeding a few cows the kernel's finger-lickin' palms will not mean the end of life as we woe it.

Show milk some human kindness, please. And while we're at it, wine as well. Because the fearful thought occurs that viticulture, our latest billion dollar industry, may be next to cop your wrath. Guilty of success, if nothing else, with five bottles of our plonk now being sold every second round the globe, but guys, gals, Lucy, Keisha: drink it, don't drub it.

Having a successful wine industry overseas doesn't mean the domestic whine industry should be equally busy. Putting an "h" in "wine" will be as welcome as adding one to W(h)anganui. Greenpeace will become the Geography Board of protest - mocked, scorned, ridiculed and generally dismissed as a sanctimonious bunch of well-fed busybodies.

Most fholk don't want an "h" in wine any more than they want one in than in Whanganui - as the Minister may yet determine The extinguished poet laureate, Sir Jam Hopkins, certainly appears to hope he will:

The "h" in Whanganhui

Is a silent one, you see

Like the "y" in "wine"

Or the "g" in "t"

Or the "sense" in "misery"

And the "h" in Whhanganhhui

Is the one you'll find in "dumb"

Things change, my dears,

That's wy the Qhueen

Has left Londinium

So too the "h" in whines from some

Loud shouts they've lost the plot

Come, raise a glass

And drop an aitch

No more Greenpeace gut rot!