Kiwiblog

The HoS reports:

Evidence of dodgy voting has emerged in the battle for Waitakere. A judge has found nine people voted twice and 393 people voted despite not being on the electoral roll. …

The Herald on Sunday has obtained a copy of Judge John Adams’ initial judgment. It shows Bennett gained eight votes after the recount while Sepuloni lost 12.

Labour bosses will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to accept defeat or pursue an electoral petition. Former president Mike Williams, who was a scrutineer in the recount, did not favour an electoral petition as he thought it unlikely Sepuloni would win.

I’d say the last thing Labour wants is an electoral petition, as based on past behaviour, the likely end result would be the margin for Bennett grows bigger.

A couple of Green MPs (I can’t recall which ones – Holly Walker is one I think) are doing a survey on the parliamentary oath. There has been a recent change made by the House to standing orders, so that any MP needing to be sworn in, will not be sworn in if they do not recite the correct wording of the oath on the first occasion.

This is because it had started to become a game with various MPs that they would recite their own personal version, be told it is incorrect, and then finally do the correct one.

I’m a supporter of the change to standing orders, because I think it was all about MPs grand-standing. I actually do not like the wording of the current oath, and think it should be changed. However as a citizen I have no power to change the oath. However MPs do – they can amend the Oaths Act. And I’ve never seen one of these grandstanding MPs put up a members bill to do that. If MPs do not like the oath, they should amend it, not ignore it. It is a legal requirement of being sworn in.

So I do give the Greens kudos for surveying people on what they think of the oath. Their questions are:

1. Do you think NZ Members of Parliament should have to swear (or affirm) allegiance to the Queen?
2. Would you support an oath that MPs swear (or affirm) to do their best for Aotearoa/New Zealand?
3. Would you support including an oath where MPs would swear (or affirm) they would do their best to protect the environment?
4. Would you support and oath or Affirmation where MPs would swear (or affirm) to honour the Treaty of Waitangi?
5. Would you support a change from a standard oath or affirmation to an arrangement where each MP makes a personally meaningful oath?

My answers are no, yes, no, no and no.

The oath should be something that 99% of New Zealanders would agree with – hence serving New Zealand should be the focus. Anything beyond that is starting to get into personal partisan agendas, which not all MPs would agree on. Just keep it simple – have the MP swear they will do their best for New Zealand.

I think most people have heard of Robben Island. It is the island prison 7 kms off shore from Cape Town where Nelson Mandela was jailed for 20 years. Most of the prisoners here were criminal prisoners as distinct from the political prisoners. It is now a museum.

Now like me you might think those cells look pretty bloody small for prisoners. Well as it turns out, these are where the dogs were housed, not the prisonerss.

The average prison cell was in fact half the size of the rooms the dogs had!

This pile of rocks was started by Nelson Mandela after he visited post-release. Each political prisoner added a stone to the pile.

Ironically the prison island has one of the best views of Cape Town, where you can see the city dwarfed by the huge Table Mountain. It’s an iconic view.

At the right top of Table Mountain you can see where the cable car goes to. This zoom photo from the island gives you a better idea of how much the mountain dwarfs the high rises.

We were shown about by one of the former political prisoners, and there is nothing like a first hand account of what life was like in the prison. This is a typical solo cell. Barely enough room to double bunk!

And this was Nelson Mandela’s home for the best part of 20 years.

I’ve often said that if my political enemies locked me up for 27 years, I would not come out of it preaching peace and reconciliation, I would have a list of names, a long list of names, and would not be happy until the list had them all crossed off – like in Kill Bill. But that is why Nelson Mandela is such a great man, and I’m just a vengeful c**t

The Productivity Commission has released a draft report into housing affordability.

If you do not wish to read the full 259 pages, there is a 40 page summary and even a four page brochure.

The Productivity Commission is based on the Australian model which has strong support from Governments of both sides of politics. It has been the ongoing commitment to reforms such as those proposed by the Australian Productivity Commission, which has seen Australia move more and more ahead of New Zealand. If we do not act on recommendations for improved productivity, then there is a cost.

They observe:

… the distribution of house prices in Auckland is now markedly different to that in the rest of New Zealand, particularly at the lower end of the Auckland housing market. For example, between 1995 and 2011, the gap between lower quartile house prices in Auckland vis-à-vis the rest of the country increased by over 260% in real terms.

This means that for people in Auckland, even the less expensive homes are becoming unaffordable for many.

Section prices have grown more quickly than house prices over the last 20 years, indicating that appreciating land prices have been a key driver of house price inflation in New Zealand. This suggests a shortage of residential land in places where people want to live. Land price pressures have been particularly acute in Auckland, where section prices now account for around 60% of the cost of a new dwelling, compared with 40% in the rest of New Zealand.

They note:

The prevailing approach to urban planning in New Zealand has a negative influence on housing affordability in our faster growing cities. The widespread planning preference for increasing residential density, and limiting greenfield development to achieve this, places upward pressure on house prices across the board. Constraints on the release of new residential land create scarcity, limit housing choice, and are increasing prices across the market.

It’s simple demand and supply. If politicians restrict the supply of land, of course demand will push the price up. Measures around the tax system can make an impact around the margins, but one has to also get the fundamentals right.

They recommend local authorities:

• take a more active approach to the identification, consenting, release, and development of land for housing in the inner city, suburbs, and city edge, both with respect to volumes of consented land and the time taken to achieve consents;
• adopt a strategy that allows for both intensification within existing urban boundaries and orderly expansion beyond them;

The Auckland Council especially has to release more land for development, otherwise a generation of middle to lower income Aucklanders will never have an opportunity of home ownership. Those poorer Aucklanders will be locked into being tenants for life, funding the retirements of the well off.

They also note the large sums of money now being spent on subsidising rental housing, and how this will increase significantly in future if fewer people can own their own home:

• $564m on income related rents for 69,000 state houses
• Accommodation Supplement of $1,200m paid to 320,000 people (around 50% of all renters)
• $36m on community housing providers

Feedback is open on the draft report for a couple of months.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has published its fourth survey of the state of democracy in the world, as at December 2011.They have five groups of criteria:

1. electoral process and pluralism
2. civil liberties
3. functioning of government
4. political participation
5. political culture

Countries are then ranked into one of four groups:

1. full democracies – 25 countries (11% of world pop)
2. flawed democracies – 53 countries (37% of world pop)
3. hybrid regimes – 37 countries (13% of world pop)
4. authoritarian regimes – 52 countries (38% of world pop)

The top 10 countries are:

1. Norway 9.80
2. Iceland 9.65
3. Denmark 9.52
4. Sweden 9.50
5. New Zealand 9.26
6. Australia 9.22
7. Switzerland 9.09
8. Canada 9.08
9. Finland 9.06
10. Netherlands 8.99

The bottom countries are:

1. North Korea 1.08
2. Chad 1.62
3. Turkmenistan 1.72
4. Uzbekistan 1.74
5. Myanmar 1.77
6. Equatorial Guinea 1.77
7. Saudi Arabia 1.77
8. Central African Republic 1.82
9. Iran 1.98
10. Syria 1.99

NZ’s score and ranking is the same as in 2010.

Stuff has a profile of new Labour Leader David Shearer. It’s a great read, and shows some of the extraordinary experiences he has had. My favourite is:

His wife Anuschka, Nush, as he calls her, worked with him there. “She is a Mt Roskill girl. I wish it could be more exotic, but it’s not.

“I was her flatmate in a house she owned in Auckland and moved in and then after a few months moved in a little further. We got to know each other over the Cornflakes in the morning.”

In Somalia, she was his head of operation. “She’s tough. I remember a bunch of Somalis all came in with their guns and bandoliers of ammunition across their chests and said, `Mr David, could you talk to your wife, she is much too unreasonable’. She said no way they were getting more money, because they were paid enough.

Heh.

Did a all day tour of the cape, which was highly enjoyable.  There were just eight of us in a mini-van so got to know everyone else well.

As proof that the world is a small place, one of the eight worked in Bonn for the UN Climate Change Office. She was holidaying after the Durban conference. Well the chairman of the group she was involved in (Kyoto Protocol negotiations) was a NZ diplomat called Adrian Macey, whose son was one of my best mates at school. So two degrees of separation.

Anyway first stop on the tour was to Seal Island.

Only 45 rand (NZ$7) to go out there on the boat to see the seals. Very choppy though.

Seals will use anything to sun bathe on!

A view of one of the bays after we drove through it.

A view from a lookout.

We were travelling through the Table Mountain National Park and just next to the road were these antelopes. You can’t get out and go over to them though in case there are any baboons around.

This is Cape Point. A magnificent place to have as a backdrop for lunch.

That is the new lighthouse. Much smaller but much more powerful than the old one. It can be seen 63 kms away.

A long way down if they slip.

The old lighthouse.

This is Bellows Rock, which sunk the Lusitania in 1911.

This is the Cape of Good Hope as seen from Cape Point.

The path down from Cape Point.

And the cable car for those going up, officially calledThe Flying Dutchman Furnicular.

An ostrich observing us from behind a bush.

The Cape of Good Hope.

We almost missed these Zebras, as they are so hard to spot from a distance against the rocks.

On the way back from the Cape we went to a town called Boulders which is one of three locations for African penguins.

Some penguins live on the ice. These ones are smart and live on a beach!

Yes, more penguin sex!

Penguins often mate for life. Aren’t they a cute couple?

The final stop in the day was the Kirstenbosch National Botancial Garden. It is at the back of Table Mountain.

A fine and noisy specimen this one.

We only had an hour at the gardens, and to do it properly you need half a day.

A typical path way through it.

The water is a different colour due to the minerals up the mountain.

As I said a very good full day tour.

AP report:

Cancer weakened, but did not soften Christopher Hitchens. He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity. As if granted diplomatic immunity, his mind’s eye looked plainly upon the attack and counterattack of disease and treatments that robbed him of his hair, his stamina, his speaking voice and eventually his life.

“I love the imagery of struggle,” he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. “I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.”

Hitchens, a Washington, D.C.-based author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes left and right, died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer, according to a statement from Vanity Fair magazine. He was 62.

“There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar,” said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. “Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls.”

A huge loss of such a wonderful writer.

An emphatic ally and inspired foe, he stood by friends in trouble (“Satanic Verses” novelist Salman Rushdie) and against enemies in power (Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). His heroes included George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Gore Vidal (pre-Sept. 11). Among those on the Hitchens list of shame: Michael Moore, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong il, Sarah Palin, Gore Vidal (post Sept. 11) and Prince Charles.

“We have known for a long time that Prince Charles’ empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant,” Hitchens wrote in Slate in 2010 after the heir to the British throne gave a speech criticizing Galileo for the scientist’s focus on “the material aspect of reality.”

Out future King he’s talking about!

The judicial recount of Waitakere has found a number of invalid votes for Carmel Sepuloni and the Judge has found that Paula Bennett received more valid votes, and with a majority of 9 is declared once again the MP for Waitakere. That’s a wonderful result for Paula, who so loves being the local MP out west. A big ups to her and her team.

For Carmel, she is out of Parliament entirely, and Raymond Huo is once again a Labour List MP. A bit of a blow to the rejuvenation efforts for Labour, but at least a boost to their fund-raising efforts.

Carmel might now regret her ungracious tone when she was declared winner after specials. Of course she has open to her the option of an electoral petition, but those things can cost $200,000 or so and off memory National has never lost an electoral petition, well for the last 40 years or so anyway.

John Hartevelt blogs:

It’s right that New Zealanders discuss and debate who should be conferred the top awards. The media should lead the discussion and the PM and his ministerial colleagues on the adjudicating committee ought to take heed.

Oh I see. It is the role of the media to lead the discussion on who gets knighted, and it is the role of the Prime Minister to tale heed.

I’m gob-smacked.

As to why Key mentioned Richie McCaw had indicated he thought a knighthood was premature, it’s simple.

If McCaw wasn’t included when the honours are announced, then the media focus would all be on him missing out, rather than on those who gained the honours. So Key gets it out early that Richie has said he doesn’t think it is appropriate while he is still playing (a stance I agree with), and that means when the honours come out, the focus will be on those who do get one.

In my column at the NZ Herald I make a case for term limits:

I still believe a term limit of say six terms would be a good thing for New Zealand. If MPs knew that they had a maximum tenure in Parliament, I believe they would focus more on what they could achieve during that limited time, rather than be focused on how to get re-elected time after time after time.

Arguably one could also have a term limit for the top job of Prime Minister also. Isn’t nine years enough for any one person to make a contribution?

I hope the constitutional review will consider term limits as an issue.

The aquarium in Cape Town is called “Two Oceans” because they have both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans here. It isn’t the largest aquarium in the world, but they did have some interesting exhibits.

Kids can view the tank from the interior, which is quite cool.

Nice natural camouflage in the sand.

I never had a sea horse when I was young, but I wanted one!

This critter loves standing up and posing for a role in Alien!

He looks a tough fellow.

While this one just makes me hungry. Yum.

More things best not to stand on.

African Penguins.

I love the hair style on these ones.

Fish and chips.

Love to catch that on your line.

They almost have human liek faces you want to name them.

The obligatory shark post.

And outside one of the many seals that sun bathe on the jetties.

The Herald reports:

National MP Nicky Wagner has been confirmed as the winner of the Christchuch Central seat after the result of a judicial recount.

Last Saturday’s official result had Ms Wagner ahead of Labour’s Brendon Burns by 45 votes. Mr Burns requested a recount and the result, released today, saw Ms Wagner increase the winning margin to 47 votes.

The result of a recount for the seat of Waitakere is still pending. On Saturday’s result Labour’s Carmel Sepuloni won the seat by 11 votes ahead of National’s Paula Bennett.

Will be interesting to see the Waitakere result, which is taking a lot longer.

Good to have the win in Christchurch Central confirmed. It is amazing to have National hold both Christchurch and Auckland Central. Now just need Wellington Central for the hat trick!

My cunning plan for WC is that as Labour got fewer party votes than the Greens in WC, have Nats in 2014 tactically vote for the Green candidate with James Shaw winning it comfortably off Grant Robertson. That then triggers a civil war on the left akin to the Tutsi and Hutu conflicts, and National picks it up in 2017 from the remains

John Pagani blogs at Stuff:

The biggest change people are talking about is to remove the electorate winners’ bonus that allows a party winning one electorate seat to bring in other MPs. The loophole created the shoddy deals in Epsom and Ohariu by evading the rule that requires a party to get 5 per cent to get into Parliament.

As it happens no MP qualified for Parliament this way. The only List MPs are from parties that exceeded 5% party vote.

And why is it shoddy for National voters to vote for Peter Dunne but quite okay for Green voters to vote for Labour MPs in marginal seats?

The single worst feature of MMP is the quality of party lists and the frequency of MPs getting into Parliament with too little democratic mandate.

Lists must be compiled “democratically” but what does that mean? In practice, the people who put together lists are unaccountable. I’ve been involved in list selection in three different parties – small, medium and large – and I’m convinced that the missing ingredient is public input capable of vetoing backroom deals.

The best model is the Greens’ one, where the party’s high priests emit a draft that goes to members, who can rearrange it. This  resulted in Steffan Browning coming to Parliament this year, when the draft list had him unelectably low.

We need the public to have an opportunity for rearrangement of every party list. I am not a fan of so-called “open lists”, where voters can rearrange the list as they vote – they make  the ballot paper too long.

Why not have independently run primary list elections six months before the election? Individuals could get an independent mandate for their place on the list.

I can’t see open lists working, but requiring a party to let all members vote on the final list is a possibility.

Another improvement MMP needs is an increase in the proportion of electorate seats. We could easily have 85 electorate seats – 15 more than today, and consequently 15 fewer list seats –  without disturbing proportionality. That would give more local MPs, with the small parties still tending to keep their status intact. Eighty-five would leave room for about another five or 10 seats to be created with population growth, without needing to increase the size of the House.

John is wrong here on the numbers. If the House in 2002 had 85 seats (and assuming National and Labour won the same proportion), then Labour would have had a three seat over-hang. Also at 95 seats, Labour would have had a 10 seat over-hang and National a two seat over-hang.

Also the Maori Party has had an over-hang in 2008 and 2011, and an increase in electorate seats would possibly increase their over-hang also.

Ministries are big simply because party leaders need to hand out rewards. Now they’re getting even larger because the prime minister is struggling to cram in all his support partners. This is an abuse that we don’t need.

Repeating a lie told by Trevor doesn’t make it true. The Ministry is the same size as under Helen Clark. And in fact the 2011 Ministry has one fewer Minister from support partners than in 2008.

Ministers ranked below about 9 or 10 in Cabinet are not part of the real Cabinet anyway.

This is basically correct. Any group which has more than 10 or so members will inevitably form an inner circle.

Ten MPs would be enough to run super-portfolios, with another dozen as ministers outside Cabinet. That would help create pressure from new talent knocking at the door, and improve the quality of ministers. Most MPs would never make Cabinet – but voters don’t need them to.

This is basically what I have long proposed.

I would reduce the pay gap between MPs and ministers. If there were no financial penalty for losing their jobs, ministers could be fired and resign on a point of principle more easily. Support parties would see policy gains as more important than salary gains.

A highly attractive feature of MMP is it helps make Parliament more powerful relative to the government. If chairs of select committees were to enjoy as much responsibility and reward as, say, ministers outside Cabinet, then that would be an alternative career path for MPs.

I think this is just stupid. Is John saying Jim Anderton stayed a Minister because of the salary, rather than his ability to contribute?

The Dom Post reports:

An embittered David Cunliffe is refusing to rule out quitting Parliament altogether as leader David Shearer moves to finalise his front bench.

It is understood Mr Cunliffe has been offered a front bench seat and a senior portfolio but has balked at his proposed ranking.

Offering Cunliffe anything less than his current rating or portfolios, always runs the risk of a refusal.

Labour has been allocated eight front bench seats in the new Parliament and it is likely Mr Cunliffe has been offered either the sixth, seventh or eighth slot.

The top places are likely to be taken by Mr Shearer, deputy Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern, finance spokesman David Parker, Shane Jones and Clayton Cosgrove with the remaining two slots open to Mr Cunliffe and his running mate, Nanaia Mahuta, or possibly Ruth Dyson or Maryan Street.

So lets look at this from Cunliffe’s point of view. You’ll accept Shearer, Robertson and Parker all being ranked higher than you. But if the story is correct it is proposed that two other MPs would be higher ranked than Cunliffe, such as Jacinda Ardern or Ruth Dyson. Cunliffe would have a fair point to ask why any of those named deserve a higher ranking than him.

Now of course it is at the discretion of the leader, what ranking to give out – but it is also at the discretion of the MP whether or not to accept.

Meanwhile, former list MP Stuart Nash, who is close to Mr Shearer, has been offered the role of chief of staff.

He said he wanted to discuss it with his partner first, and would give Mr Shearer his answer by Sunday.

“It’s a really exciting opportunity, because I believe David Shearer can take us to victory in 2014.”

That’s a smart move. Labour really are on their way to rebuilding.

Answers Tomorrow at 7 am

In April I blogged:

This means you could have a cabinet of 12. The Speaker looks after Parliament, and one Minister per major agency. One could have associate ministers outside cabinet who get delegated some of the specialist areas within an overall portfolio.

Yesterday Trevor Mallard blogged:

New Zealand has a ridiculous number of Ministers for a country our size.

It had got slightly worse under MMP but this government has taken it beyond absurd with 80% of the non National confidence and supply partner members bought off with a Ministerial post, and the final one on a promise of getting one during the term.

It would have been nice to have Trevor speak up when he had influence. I’ve long said we should have a smaller Ministry. It was in fact Helen Clark who increased the size of the Executive to 28. Key has just maintained it at that size.

I spent three years as a whip which included cabinet committee experience in the 1980s and the nine years as a Minister in the Clark government.

I saw lots of weak, and some frankly useless Ministers. Most, but not all, were in the second half of the rankings. They often caused more work than they added value. There was an enormous amount of time wasted explaining what was either obvious or buried in papers that if they had been read hadn’t been understood.

Trevor should name names!

I tend to divide Ministers up into three camps – leaders, administrators and bumblers.

The ideal Minister leads their portfolio and ministry. They impose the Government’s policy agenda on the ministry, listen to officials but do not always follow their advice. The number of “leader” Ministers in a Ministry does tend to be rarely more than a dozen.

Hence why I’d restructure the state sector into 12 super-ministries as advocated in my linked post. That way each super-ministry is likely to have a “leader” Minister who will apply strategic leadership to the portfolios within. Also there are probably only a dozen great CEOs in the state sector, so you get benefits at the CEO level also. Finally it reduces Cabinet from 20 to 12, which makes it a more effective decision making body.

The “administrator” Minister is probably the most common type of Minister. Unlike Trevor I would not call them useless. Their problem is more they just do what their officials tell them to. They do not apply external political judgement to issues, and hence as Trevor alludes to they need rescuing from time to time.

If there were just 12 Ministers in total, I think the paperwork would be too much. It is not that Ministers are not busy. Hence I’d have all full portfolios held by one of 12 Cabinet Ministers but maybe still have say eight Associate Ministers outside Cabinet who get delegated specific areas. This makes them a good training ground for becoming a full Minister, but still reduces the Ministry by eight or so.

I think we don’t need more than ten or a dozen Ministers. They should all be in Cabinet. And to trial talent we should use three or four Under Secretaries who report directly to the relevant Minister.

We broadly agree, but I’d call the Under-Secretaries Associate Ministers. Maybe could do it like the UK – Secretaries of State are full Ministers in Cabinet and Ministers of State are Ministers outside Cabinet.

It will be interesting if any of Trevor’s former Ministerial colleagues agree with his description of them as useless.  To spare the competent ones, he should name those he meant!

More importantly, he should lobby David Shearer to announce a policy to reduce the Ministry from 28 to 12 Ministers. That would be hugely popular.

For those that may need to call me (my preference is you don’t ) my temporary mobile is +27 79 140 5085.

Stuff reports:

Wellington technology blog, ReadWriteWeb, consistently judged one of the world’s most popular blogs, has been bought by San Francisco digital publishing company Say Media for an undisclosed sum.

Major US technology website TechCrunch, which itself was bought for US$25 million last year, is reporting the deal is worth US$5 million – about $6.6 million in New Zealand dollars.

Run by Petone’s Richard MacManus since it was started in 2003, ReadWriteWeb has a staff of just under 20, most of whom are based in the US.

MacManus said the site attracted about 5 million page views and 2.75 million unique visitors each month.
It had begun looking for a potential buyer a few months ago, as it needed more resource to grow, he said.

He planned to increase the blog’s technology coverage, including of technology hardware.

Well done to Richard McManus. This is the great thing about the Internet, that someone in NZ can be globally successful from his house in Petone.

Stuff reports:

TV3 has confirmed it has poached TVNZ’s political editor Guyon Espiner.

He will work as a journalist for current affairs show 60 Minutes, starting in February.

Espiner has been TVNZ’s political editor since 2006 and also hosted the Sunday morning programme Q+A for the state broadcaster.

I can remember Guyon starting in the press gallery in the 1990s, but that just makes me feel old!

Certainly a coup for TV3 to pick Guyon up, and good to see them beefing up 60 minutes. I suspect Guyon will appreciate a less hectic lifestyle as his two roles of press gallery in Wellington and Q+A every weekend must have been draining.

These are protea, the national flower of South Africa, which is where I am.

This is a photo of the area that used to be called the Malay Quarter. Slaves from Indonesia and Malaysia were brought here by the Dutch East India Company. The houses are all similiar style here, and as slaves often could not read, they were painted very distinctive colours so they could recognise which house to go to!

This is one entrance to the “Company Gardens” which were created in 1650 by the DEIC.

Mummy with nine chicks.

Jan Smuts was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and 1939 to 1948. He was the only person to sign the peace treaties ending WWI and WWII and also to sign the charters of the League of Nations and the UN. He wrote the preamble to the UN Charter.

This is the Cape Town office of the President of South Africa, Tuynhuys.

Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia and De Beers. Many New Zealanders have got to study at Oxford through a Rhodes Scholarship. 7,000 students have gained one since 1902. Eligibility is restricted to former British colonies, the US and Germany. Only three NZers a year can be selected.

This is Sir George Grey, yes our Sir George Grey. As well as being the Governor and Premier of NZ, he was also Governor of Cape Colony (and South Australia twice). He served in South Africa between his two terms as Governor of NZ.

This is the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the legislative capital, Pretoria the administrative capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital.

Why is it Parliaments are always surrounded by pigeons?

This statue is at Mandela Rhodes Place, and is made entirely from chicken mesh wire.

One of the many birds around.

This is known as the administration street, running next to the gardens, and linking up the Presidential office, the Parliament and various museums. A lovely area to walk around.

This is back at the waterfront, where I am staying. To celebrate Coke’s 100th anniversary here they constructed this from recycled coke crakes.

The view from the restaurant at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront where I had lunch. Was an atypical cloudy day for this time of year, but still some good views with Table Mountain in the background.

This is the Cape Grace Hotel, where I am staying. Highly recommended. The location is first class, the service excellent and the rooms are magnificent.

Statues of South Africa’s four nobel peace prize winners. Three of them are well known – Nelson Mandela, F W De Klerk and Desmond Tutu. The first winner though was Albert Lutuli in 1960. He was the first person to win it from outside Europe and the US.

These guys are just enjoying the sun. They seem to regard the jetties as belonging to them, as several of the jetties have seals sun bathing on them, or swimming next to them. I can see them from my hotel room which is amazing.