For the middle of winter, we’ve enjoyed some clear, peaceful days at Warrington. However, I haven’t been able to enjoy my walks along the beach because of the screeds of ugly, fascistic junk that seems to be filling the media in recent days.

I sometimes wish that I could just ‘turn off’ and ignore the crap, and make the most of apathy and walks on the beach in my quiet corner of the universe. Unfortunately, I just don’t seem to have the ability.

Top of the hit list: taxpayer funded advertisements that have been run by the National and New Zealand First parties attacking Maori and an “immigrant crime wave” respectively.

Where do the creeps get off? Millions of dollars of public money to bash minority groups – it’s a sick, sick world.

Also in the headlines a confused and bigoted rant by the Catholic Cardinal of Wellington who lays the blame for the ills of the world on . . . “liberalism.”

In an apparent attempt to return to the good old days, the Cardinal has lashed out at the “moral wasteland” of the modern world. But when exactly was the golden age of moral strength ? In 1917, when young men were sent up against the machine guns from the trenches of the Western Front? Or how about in the years when homosexuals were abused, reviled and prosecuted by their “good Christian” fellow citizens? Maybe the Cardinal was referring to the fifties and sixties – the same years when children were abused by paedophiles active within the Catholic (and other) churches?

The verdict on Cardinal Crusty – before plucking the splinter from someone elses eye, take the plank out from your own.

Do this eruption of right-wing boils on the body politic indicate a resurgence of the political right in New Zealand? Let’s hope Michael Moore’s new film takes the shine off the greedheads/warheads bald domes here as well.