Wily old Winston Peters proved once again last week he was adept at scratching a political itch, when he called on Muslim communities to "clean house" and turn in terrorists in the wake of the London attacks.
Political lightweights, and subservient National dependants, David Seymour and Peter Dunne were quick to condemn his comments as naked political opportunism and bigotry but feedback from the great unwashed suggests he verbalised what many were thinking.
Whether you love or loathe Peters, you have to admire his talent for political timing and eye for the main chance.
His other talents include that of being a proof reader, which I guess is a natural for a man who has spent the best part of the past 40 years correcting members of the press.
That talent, he told me last week, was put to good use proofing the writing of the man who spends his days writing most of Winston's press releases. And that's because his Chief of Staff David Broome also moonlights as a war historian.
Broome, a regular panelist on my radio show and a Wellington-based member of the Western Front Association, wrote an excellent piece on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Messines which took place in northern Belgium.
One of the great quotes of the Great War came from Major-General Tim Harington's press briefing on the eve of the battle when he said, "Gentlemen, I don't know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography".
And change the landscape they did when at 3.10am on June 7, 1917, underneath Messines Ridge 454,000 kilograms of explosives, placed into 19 huge landmines, created one of largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
Legend has it the window panes of Buckingham Palace rattled as the sound waves crossed the English Channel. Ten thousand Germans died instantly. The crater alone left at Hill 60 measured 80 metres wides and was five storeys deep. By the end of the battle seven days later, 700 New Zealanders had also paid the ultimate price of war.
The landmines were placed under the German lines by one of the greatest tunnelling efforts in history. What ensued was as Broome described it "a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Germans countermining in the sodden Flemish ground".