Paul Holmes: All speed to police clampdown

The police speed campaign over the Queen's Birthday weekend was effective in reducing the road toll to its lowest in decades. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Well, Fiji is already a distant memory. The catastrophic oil spill on the gulf continues to gush uncontrollably - oil is coming ashore now on the western coast of Florida and BP might be facing ruination.

But what's continued to rattle round in my brain this week is how effective that police clampdown on speeding drivers last weekend was in terms of reducing the road toll to one.

It's easy to forget, as a driver, just how fast 100km/h is, and the effects of a collision at that speed with a stationary object. And few of us has any perception of impacting at 100km/h with another vehicle coming towards us at the same speed.

When that happens, of course, the collision is occurring at 200km/h. In that case, one is mince meat and if not exactly mince meat, one is likely damaged for life. It took me years to recover from a car accident I had at the age of 22, back in 1972.

The temptation on any holiday weekend driving trip is to reduce the time of the journey as much as you can. Who wants to spend longer than they have to in a car? But the curious thing I've found over the years is no matter how you might beat the speed limit on the open road, no matter what you do, a trip nearly always takes the same amount of time.

Factors other than speed always interfere - traffic, road works, the length of time you stop for a coffee. Keeping to the speed limit and watching carefully the behaviour of cars coming towards help keeps us alive.

In any case, as Andrew Geddes writes this week on Tim Watkin's most thought-provoking website, pundit.co.nz, the police can still ticket us below the designated speed limit if our speed is demonstrably unsafe for the nature of the road or the conditions prevailing.

But what the police did at Queen's Birthday weekend worked. They cracked down on speed and give the fast drivers a lesson in their pocket and an increase in their points.

But why do it only on a rare weekend? Why not do it all the time in a country where we might have become a bit blase about speed limits, given that the police have already decreed an unofficial speed limit of 110km/h on the open road by assuring us there will be a 10 per cent tolerance before we'll be ticketed.

SIR PETER LEITCH, the Mad Butcher, deserves his knighthood thoroughly. The man is indefatigable.

He worked at his business tirelessly over the years to build it into a nationwide franchise and he has always been energised in his efforts for others, either by raising money or simply helping out. He has been a great ambassador for the Warriors, never despairing when the rest of the country did, always brave and chin forward.

He can be quiet and reflective, thoughtful and sensitive, Peter. He is, after all, a serious retailer and product developer. But he is the kind of man who likes people and assumes, when he meets them, that he will find plenty to like. He sees the best in people.

He can also be hilariously, bawdily, swearingly funny. At a prostate cancer awareness lunch he arranged and hosted some years back he got Leighton Smith and me to talk to a big crowd. The speeches were quite serious. Then Peter got up on stage at the end and had the room in gales of shocked, brilliant, tears-rolling-down-the-cheek laughter.

I got to know him early on at Newstalk ZB, when I first started in Auckland back in 1987. The ratings for the suddenly introduced Newstalk format were heading south dramatically. There was panic at the station. The sales people were desperate as client after client disappeared.

I was introduced to a man who called himself the Mad Butcher and who made terrific commercials in his own voice. I was told before I was introduced to him that Peter was also rethinking his own commitment to advertising with us.

I asked him to stay, to be patient, and assured him that somehow we would make this format work. Somehow, I would eventually get the breakfast ratings up again. I don't know if that meeting had anything to do with it but Peter stayed loyal to ZB. He has reminded me of our discussion several times over the years. They were tough days for everyone involved with the station in any way.

Peter occasionally rings me just to see how things are going. I imagine he does that with many people. Once upon a time, it would be hard to imagine Peter becoming a knight. He wouldn't have fitted the mould of the conventional businessman knight, but our attitude seems to have changed for the better. He is truly a brilliantly New Zealand knight.

I CAME BACK from a couple of days to our apartment in Auckland, opened a window or two and sat down at the computer. From the other side of the room I suddenly heard a terrible sound, like a cat or a possum spitting or gasping.

It was unearthly, desperate. It gave me quite a shock because there could be no other living creature in the room. I ignored it. Must have heard things. Ten minutes later, I heard it again. This time I turned round to see if an animal had somehow made its way to this 10th floor dwelling.

Nothing. Ten minutes later, there it was again, this bizarre sound that was like a sudden, desperate sucking in of breath through a phlegmy throat. Then I noticed it. Someone had bought me something called an Air Wick Freshmatic. An air freshener.

I watched its operation in fascination. It has a little nozzle on top that protrudes, spits out its air freshener and then recedes. Quite cute. I like to look at it now and watch it working.

There is so much fascinating distraction in life.