By Ali Ikram
Kids on planes, they're annoying when they kick off. Charles Chauvel is right - I was once on a plane with these two little demons who were making a hell of a racket. I called the cabin crew to see if I could get them moved away from me but then the hostess said, “But sir, they're yours.”
Mr Chauvel doesn’t deny his actions.
“Oh I was certainly on a flight with some pretty badly-behaved kids and I did turn to my partner and say, ‘I wish those kids would shut up.'”
Turns out the father of the kids is a right-wing blogger who was once an ACT Party member - the party of personal responsibility, in which recently one of their MPs suggested bad parents should be chemically castrated.
So what did the kids’ mum have to say?
“My feelings from that experience are that he would have no concept of how young families are and how they behave,” said Stephanie Phillips.
Exactly, that's the point. Kids are impossible to shut up when they start kicking off at that age - not even ACT voters can stop them.
The kids know you love them, so in fact perhaps the best person to tell your kids off on a plane is a stranger. Kids respect strangers because they don't know what they might do.
I have to confess that I once glared at a child who'd been crying for hours on a flight to the UK. I'm not proud of it and it worked a treat. Everyone slept soundly from then on.
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As the kids in the seats around him probably howled like banshees, Australian cricketer Michael Clarke preserved a stony airborne silence - a silence which began at the airport in Australia and continued upon arrival in Wellington.
“I have no comment,” was all that the cricketer kept repeating.
So that would be no comment then, but just in case he changed his mind between the plane and the waiting team bus there was always a journalist on hand to inquire like annoying kids on a plane asking dad, "Are we there yet?" …every 10 seconds.
Across the Tasman a pair of Sydney’s finest plumbers were using highly sensitive sonar equipment in an attempt to find everyone involved in the whole sorry affairs self respect, and Lara Bingle's engagement ring that she may or may not have flushed down the toilet.
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The Prime Minister’s war with the media got underway this week. The first target, The Sunday Star Times, that sent two reporters into a Super 14 games with toy bombs claiming it showed we were a soft touch in the fight against global terror as we prepared for the Rugby World Cup.
“In my view the Sunday Star Times' actions on Sunday were a stunt designed to sell more papers and nothing more than that,” said John Key.
But according to the PM, provincial rugby matches have much lower level security than internationals - even Chiefs games when Sione Lauaki's going to be there.
No we're not a soft touch on terror, oh no, we're a very firm touch - we're close to a poke on terror. We proved it this week when a trio of activists who vandalised the Waihopai spy base causing $1 million worth of damage walked free. Oh no, no soft touch here.