Colin James is a man I respect.

He is the best political journalist and commentator in New Zealand for the simple reason he claims not to have voted since 1966 to preserve his impartiality and objectivity when reporting and commentating, in great contrast to the Press Gallery remora fish pushing their own partisan agendas (you can always spot this when the likes of Barry Soper claim they are acting impartially).

About 9 years ago Colin James wrote an article ..(saying words to the effect that)...he warned that Labour may not win the 1999 election because they were moving from championing the cause of the "battlers" to the cause of the "losers", and the losers are disliked by the battlers.

In the end Labour did win the election and has been in Government ever since.

The trouble with Helen and Michael is their academic backgrounds; particularly Michael Cullen where he spent years studying Victorian English history, suffering from the usual socialist guilt and secretly looking in the mirror and vowing such things will never happen again if he has anything to do with it.

He was right that such social conditions for poor and working class people will never happen again, but not because of socialism but rather because of the evolution of the World and the creation of a middle class which is easily accessible, technological changes and various other reasons.

So rather than accept the World has moved on he has spent this century finding solutions to problems that do not really exist in the modern World, probably because he considers it his duty or some such other nonsense.

In an effort to prevent the recreation of the "East End of London circa 1885" throughout New Zealand (!) ..and this presupposes New Zealand circa 1999 was somehow on the brink of this ..and presumably Michael Cullen lives in a state of constant paranoia that the only thing preventing this would be for him to turn his back for five minutes...we have had a myriad of schemes and ideas (all of them unnecessary rather than bad) during the last 9 years.

1. Working For Families...(the middle class cannot be assumed to earn their own incomes)

2. Paid Parental Leave ..(if I turn my back infant mortality will hit 300 per 1000 live births)

3. Several thousand new public servants employed ...(it is not as if the scourge of unemployment will disappear with a booming economy is it?)

4. Measures to curb Global Warming ...(remember, London circa 1885 was full of smog and ripped whores)

5. Tax increases for the 'rich' ...(these chaps earning $1300 per week exploiting the working class need a good rogering)

6. Four weeks paid holidays ...(ha! that will teach the Capitalist exploiters for allowing their workers to live in squalor! ..oh! hang on...)

7. No Smoking ...(see above about London circa 1885 being full of smog)

8. etc ...etc

There seems no point going on with another 50 examples along similar lines except to say you get the general idea.....that non-existent problems are having solutions found in the paranoid minds of Michael and Helen terrified that history will repeat if they fail to act immediately.

I am inclined to think the first decade of this century will be looked back on as a great lost opportunity, much like New Zealand fell asleep in the 1960s and was unprepared for problems of the 1970s and 80s.

What would have been better is for a newly elected Government at the turn of the Century to accept their history lectures in the 1960s and 70s were just that...lectures about history...events long ago in a World which no longer exists and will never happen again.

As such, with their minds at rest, they could have started promoting success in New Zealand....encouraging business, exporters, scientists, inventors, venture capitalists, sportsmen and everyone else to strive for success, not to accept second best and have started returning New Zealand to the top of wealth and income tables.

In short they could have championed the 'battlers' (in all walks of life) who want to get on, rather than championing the losers (who don't), as Colin James had written some years earlier.

But no....they did not trust the people, and did not trust themselves....opportunities were lost, a seemingly ungrateful populace are not exactly thanking them for solving all manner of problems; and they could find a dishonest wideboy spiv ejects them in about 3 months time in ignominy.