REPOST: Top ten best things about Winston Bloody Peters

Since the old faker has risen from the grave again -- as he does like clockwork every three years around this time -- I figured I'd repost this piece, largely unchanged*, from way back in 2005. Unchanged because it barely needs to be; and shows, no matter what you might think about him, the man is at least consistent. (The 11th best thing to say about him.) That is to say, consistently dishonest, demonstrating you can never underestimate the market for bare-faced, scaremongering xenophobia.

So getting right to it, here are the Top Ten Best Things about Winston Bloody Peters:

1. He's a perfect litmus test. You know immediately that when you meet someone wearing a NZ First rosette that you won't want them as a dinner companion. This immediately rules out 13% of the population, making the organisation of dinner engagements so much easier.

2.Sartorial elegance. As David Lange famously observed when Winston was late for a meeting, “I expect he’s been detained by a full-length mirror.” His focus on sartorial elegance over political substance at once raises the dress-sense of parliament and ensures little of substance is discussed there.

3. Unemployment. Winston has over the years offered benevolent assistance with unemployment for the otherwise unemployable. Who else for example would offer employment to the dozens of tailors’ dummies that occupy the other seats in the NZ First caucus?

4. The Perfect Politician. Winston is incurably lazy, possibly the laziest man in Parliament. In a politician, this is a good thing – a very, very good thing. The lazier they are, the less trouble they pose to us. As Winston showed when he was Treasurer, he doesn't want to work like a cabinet minister; he just wants a big office with his name on the door. This isn't entirely a bad thing: As Mark Twain observed, "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session" -- with more politicians in the legislature with Winston's work ethic, parliamentary activity would soon slow to a satisfactorily safe crawl.

5. Shamelessness. Winston offers willing students a master-class in baseless grandstanding. Winston doesn't care whether the mud he's throwing is based on fact (as it was with Peron) or on fiction (remember the [non] grounding of the Cook Strait ferry?), but just by pure chance some of the mud that needs to be thrown and wouldn't otherwise be chucked gets an airing that it wouldn't otherwise get – such as the disgraceful corruption surrounding the Berryman affair.

6. Winston keeps the country safer. The moonbat bigot constituency on which Winston has a stranglehold has been captured in other countries by thugs that are serious about the hatred they’re whipping up. The likes of Ian Paisley, [Jean-Marie] Le Pen and Slob Milosevic believe in the hatred themselves; they take the xenophobic bigotry seriously and do serious damage with it. Winston doesn't believe a word of it; he whips it up only so that he can be kept in a nice office and new Italian suits. As long as Winston is there, there’s no future for the National Front -- and no likelihood of civil war.

7. He’s not a professional Maori. Unlike countless others of rich beige hue who make a career out of that one attribute, Winston has eschewed that easy road to sucking off the state tit … and found another.

8. Entertainment value. In a sea of grey, bland parliamentary conformity Winston stands out – and that’s just in the NZ First caucus room. When Winston wakes up every three years, whatever else you might think he does at least makes the news worth watching again.

9. He likes a drink. That’s a good thing in and of itself in my book. As long as he’s buying.

10. No government. Since he does so little (see point 4, above) having Winston as a cabinet minister is certainly very much like having no government. The closest we're likely to get for years, anyway. But there’s even more to excite a libertarian! Remember the extended [post-election coalition] negotiations of 1996? When, for several exciting weeks, the country didn’t have a government at all? (And as people noticed the sky wasn’t falling in, The Independent was promoted to lead with the headline: "The Libertarianz were right all along.”) Meaning that, as long as Winston is still in with a shout, we have the exciting prospect every three years of an extended period in which we actually do have no government at all. 

If only that happy state of affairs could be replicated more often.

* I've added links where it might be helpful to anyone not alive, or lacking any memory, of what was around back in 2005, and deleted one phrase. And fixed a typo or two. Other than that: unchanged.