Jim Hopkins: Knight shows errant MPs the right path

Peter Leitch, aka The Mad Butcher, aka Sir Peter. Photo / Dean Purcell

Now there's a turn up for the cuffs, you'd have to say. We've gone from mad to bad in four short days, or roughly the time it takes a truck to get from one end of the Desert Road to the other.

How quickly doth our seasons turn, how fast our stars hath burned. On Monday, 'twas the honours great, now all's to custard turned. Indeed it has, gentle reader. Indeed it has!

A great wave of custard hath arisen up and swept away all those naughty MPs playing fast and loose with their (dis)credit cards. Shame on you, chaps and chapesses.

Shame on you! You have blotted our escutcheon. You have besmirched the honour of the realm (currently borrowing $250,000,000 per week just to stay afloat).

And, worse still, you have done this heinous thing in the very same week we saluted all those good and noble souls - six knights, one dame and many more besides - who have unbesmirched that honour.

Indeed, they have done much more than unbesmirch our honour. They've added lustre to it, sheen and splendour, merit and worth.

All you've added are golf clubs, charter flights, flowers, posh nosh, bottles of wine, more posh nosh and late night movies - no title will appear on your bill.

Which is probably why no title will appear on your names either, gentlemen, or not for a while anyway, unless we decide to call you "Visa Bill" Jones or Chris "Credit" Carter.

Gadzooks and egad and forsooth as well, there is a fearful symmetry, thinkst thou not, in a week that began with a knighthood for the Butcher and ended with us peasants discovering all these eager weevils wriggling around in the parliamentary pork barrel.

There's something maliciously and deliciously wonderful about catching our betters with their vouchers down.

However unseemly our glee may be, their exposure remains a source of petty pleasure, much like spotting that persistently prim librarian energetically snogging the tattooed truck driver at the rear of the reference section.

Ahh, how are the mighty (and the mighty pompous) fallen! And while it may well do us no credit whatsoever to relish their misfortune we are entitled, surely, what with the frozen cheek of winter pressed to ours and the dreaded ETS mere weeks away, to warm the cockles of our flinty hearts howsoever might we may.

Speaking of heat and those most feeling it, we can - and surely should - spare a charitable thought for that lanky but luckless Celt, Mr Paul Reynolds. Mr Reynolds has been appearing very frequently on our screens of late, eating a sizeable slice of humble fly.

Fishing on the Greenstone river, Telecom's CEO has waded into the XT debate and broadcast a most abject apology to his many disgruntled customers.

He hasn't spared the rod, put it that way, and rightly so. XT didn't work. It was the Culloden of cellphones, really, a shambolic mess that neither Mel Gibson nor Richard Hammond could rescue. So in stepped Mr Reynolds.

Desperate to assuage the rage of his unhappy clients, he's been saluting the Kiwi sense of fair play and praising our No 8 wire mentality. But XT's not using that any more, he insists, before demonstrating how terrific it's become by taking a call and saying "Bugger" to prove he's a good bloke.

Casting apologies hither and yon is never a good look, so there was much debate about whether Mr Reynolds' remorse did persuade us that Telecom isn't the BP of txting.

At least, there was much debate on that matter at the beginning of the week, when there were no juicier bones to pick. Now, with attention well and truly turned to our MPs' malfeasance, no one gives a toss about XT any more.

Alas, 'tis much the same with the Queen's Birthday Honours. Grubbiness has overshadowed greatness. Fiddles are our focus, not fealty. Attention's turned to petty pilfering of the public purse, albeit repaid and we've stopped saluting the Honoured few who enriched our social capital.

Which doth not best please the extinguished poet laureate, Sir Jam Hipkins (honour pending). Ever anxious to uplift our hearts, the laureate has submitted this modest tribute to his own (and everybody's) old mate, the gravel-voiced, league-loving, sausage sizzling, totally Mad Butcher:

Bravo, old sausage, noble sire

O'er tripe and mince you now soar higher

And we, like trotters, at your feet

Salute Sirloin, the knight of meat

Arise, my lard, Mad Butcher fair

No longer medium, now most rare

You've shown us what a man can do

With a great big heart and a barbecue

So go, proud Prince of Mangere

To Gummint house and bend the knee

And know it is our heartfelt wish

(Shared e'en by those who just eat fish)

That when before the sword you drop

You'll get a tap but not a chop!