Liberty Belle Is Back!

I’m back! I’m sorry for the columnus interruptus last year but it took a few months to get into the swing of writing a weekly column for the Herald on Sunday. And I must say I’m really enjoying being back in the media. I’ve missed it more than I cared to admit. However, this is a whole new year. An exciting year, 2005, for me especially, and I’m bursting to get into it, fighting the socialist lunacy that insists on going forth and multiplying.

That’s the exciting thing about politics – every year’s a new start; every week’s a new start. Call me Pollyanna, but I do believe that a positive attitude and an ability to laugh away trouble makes life exciting. It’s great to be alive.

I’m out running again in the mornings, this time through a fantastic bush track up in the hills, under the beech and rata trees, over a soft carpet of fallen beech leaves. Right now the fat, drunken wood pigeons are gorging themselves on karaka berries and kawakawa candles. And it’s out running that I get my inspiration – great thinking time and good for the head.

So this year Liberty Belle will mostly take the form of ‘lunacy sightings’. This is not original. When I was Liberty Belle on Dave Henderson’s Radio Liberty, my old mate Paul Hendry regularly called in with lunacy sightings. So I’d like you, dear readers, to send me your accounts of any lunacy you may spot. You can remain anonymous, or have your five minutes of mini-fame if you wish.

Lunacy sightings? Here’s a couple I’ve spotted lately to give you an idea of what I mean:

Near where I live is a park used as a cricket ground. The cricket club wants to upgrade the ground and shift a footpath that currently runs directly through the park to a new position running around the edge. However, the council won’t allow this because there’d only be grass on one side of the footpath and skateboarders might fall off onto the concrete and hurt themselves.

Have these idiots ever gone out into the real world and seen skateboarders taking the risks they enjoy? That’s the whole point about skateboarding – the potential for pain. Kids need pain – it teaches them a few facts about life.

The other lunacy I sighted, or rather heard, was Jeanette Fitzsimons on State Radio being interviewed about her demand that manufacturers should be forced to have bigger GE Free labelling of products. If I heard correctly, the co-leader of the Greens said manufacturers were reluctant to display the GE Free sign because it disadvantaged the sale of their goods. Doesn’t that tell the Greens something? That the majority of consumers don’t actually want to buy GE Free products? Buyer power is sending a message that it doesn’t want to be forced to be healthy. Isn’t the market wonderful?

Yours in liberty, and don’t forget to send me your lunacy sightings.
Deborah Coddington

Liberty Belle is a column from Deborah Coddington, Member of Parliament for ACT New Zealand.

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