Lyndon Hood: Travel Ideas For MPs

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With just a few days of Parliament left, MPs will – if they’re anything like me – be thinking about planning their summer break.

Ah, the traditional MP’s Christmas: the enforced seizure and redistribution of presents, the community-controlled opening of new liquor bottles, the crabby aunts trying to exaggerate your liabilities, the endless round of coup-plotting barbecues, and the chance to spend some time getting away from it all.

Always keen to help, Scoop provides a few holiday suggestions below.

And remember: The Minister is happy to take credit for the holiday New Zealanders will have, but the going back to work afterwards is due to market factors beyond her control.

Once the diplomatic traffic clears out, Copenhagen promises a magical Christmas, as the glittering fragments of shattered hopes and broken dreams swirl prettily in the moonlight.

Or try anywhere else Obama goes.

Pop over to Darwin and make a point of remarking how warm it is, thus annoying creationists and climate change deniers at the same time.

Pay a visit to Alaejos, Spain, which according to Scoop’s calculations is the global antipode of Wellington. So it is – in an interesting coincidence – both the place you go when sent as far away from the Beehive as possible, and also where you end up if you find yourself in a hole and keep digging. Handy for Paris.

Bridge the trans-Tasman gap and take a trip to Sydney. Now, frankly, if you want to reach Australia by 2010, you'll have to make some hard choices. Your current business-as-usual method of walking will never get you there. You must therefore embrace my plan of building big cardboard wings for your car and driving it off Cape Reinga as fast as you can.

Wander around our pristine wilderness, asking tourists what they think, then saying things like “That’s all very well, but think of the untapped mineral wealth!”

Put your travel perk to good use: Research! Go check out The Swedish Model. If your spouse is likely to become suspicious, consider meeting the Swedish Model in Thailand or something.

You might end up in a tropical paradise, drinking cocktails in the sun and getting back rubs from our trained staff. You’re pretty relaxed about that possibility.

Whanganui.

Go see some glaciers, before they melt. Stupid glaciers! Don’t they know they’re being played?

Take a trip to that country most beloved of politicians, Monomania.

Wherever you’re off to this summer, if you’re, for example, the Minister of Education, perhaps you might consider never coming back.

Suppose you normally go to Turangi. Well what you do is, have an advisory board suggest you go to Greenland. That way, when you decide to go to Hawaii, everyone will think you are a model of restraint.

Government MPs always want to go there, much as they might call for sanctions while in opposition: Cross the border to Nanny State!

Take a fact-finding tour of Zimbabwe, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. That way, next time you’re reaching for a comparison about having to use decent lightbulbs, you might keep things in perspective.

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