Rooting

A good lesson for politicians. Don’t root around on your missus or it will bite you on the arse.

Chris Huhne has become the first Cabinet minister in living memory to be charged with a serious criminal offence after the fall-out from his acrimonious divorce left him facing court, a potential jail sentence and the end of his political career.

The Energy Secretary was forced to resign within minutes of the announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service that he had been charged with perverting the course of justice. The senior Liberal Democrat will make his first court appearance in less than a fortnight.

Mr Huhne and his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, have both been charged with the same offence after it was alleged that she agreed to accept speeding points on behalf of her then husband.

The charges carry a maximum life sentence although legal precedent suggests that a guilty verdict in such a case would probably lead to a prison sentence of fewer than two years.

Mr Huhne now faces the prospect of a court showdown with his wife, whose allegations about the incident prompted the police investigation that resulted in yesterday’s announcement.

The claims first emerged last year at the height of a bitter divorce after Mr Huhne left Miss Pryce for one of his aides. The speeding charge dates back to 2003 and the CPS decided to charge Mr Huhne after police seized emails between his ex-wife and a journalist.

There are many ways to understand statistics.

You could read some claptrap in the Herald about National party supporting, christian, meat eating, coke drinking, smoking, PC using rooters with tattoos.

Or you read what a statistician thinks about their rubbish article.

Leaving aside the gaping logical chasm in identifying website members as representative of all ‘cheaters’, what the data actually say is that more members support National, not that more National supporters are members.   As you may recall,we determined not so long ago that more New Zealanders of all descriptions support National than any other party, so that’s what you would expect for members of the website.   The proportion of National supporters in the election was 47%, among website members it’s 33%, so National supporters are substantially less likely to be members of the website than supporters of other parties. The proportion identifying as Christian among website members is very similar to the proportion in the 2006 census.   79% of website users are on PC (vs Mac).  Again that’s a lower proportion of PCs than in the population of NZ computers (the Herald said 10% were Macs in July 2010, and for Aus+NZ combined, IDC now says 15%) but one explanation is that Macs have more of the home market than the business market.  More members drinking Coke vs Pepsi is also not surprising — I couldn’t find population figures, but Coke dominates the NZ cola market.

The story doesn’t say, but we can also be pretty confident that the website members are more likely to be Pakeha than Maori, more likely to be accountants than statisticians, and more likely to have a pet cat than a pet camel.

For the record, I am a National party supporter, have a tattoo, am known to smoke cigars, eat meat, drink Coke, and am Christian. My only saving grace is that I don’t have a PC.

One thing the statistics prove to me though is that Labour supporters must be dud roots, they don;t even feature ion the statistics.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald investigates why politicians are inveterate rooters:

Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, said: ”Power is the great aphrodisiac.” (Although it has to be said his planned seduction of the B-grade movie actor Mamie van Doren went awry when she was repelled by his smelly socks.) He regretted saying that famous bon mot but it’s true. Because political leaders are the alpha males in the community, women are attracted to them, even though the men may be ugly and much older, as was Bill Clinton when he and Monica Lewinsky indulged in kinky cigar sex in the White House.

It’s the same with the recently resigned Italian prime minster, Silvio Berlusconi, whose orgies, or bunga-bunga parties, have become notorious. What repelled many people was the thought of this plump former cruise singer in his 70s, with a rigid, shiny face courtesy of plastic surgery and Botox, bedding teenagers.

But, as I know from my own past, the allure of the dominant male is strong.

A relative of mine was a prim and proper woman and a fanatical Labor supporter. Although she was married, she had flings with a charismatic prime minister and an unappealing but highly intelligent state premier. She not only admired these men but justified her behaviour as a feminine way of supporting the Labor Party.

Many political leaders have had enormous sexual appetites. Chairman Mao Zedong was a legendary sleaze and the recently murdered Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, fuelled by dangerous amounts of Viagra, had sex five times a day with any women his aides could find for him. Mussolini and Napoleon were just as voracious.

The thing is that we might be shocked by the amount of sexual excess but not surprised, which is why it’s strange that we continue to have politicians’ careers ruined or besmirched by sexual allegations.

So it appears that politicians break the no rooting rule because they can.

What appears common to most of these politicians is the risks they take, whether it’s sex in the Oval Office or mooching around for hookers in a Paris park. But then it could be said that most politicians succeed by taking risks.

It’s the nature of politics to gamble on making a grasp for leadership or to outfox one’s opponents with a risky strategy. Fuelled by a lust for power and driven by vast reserves of testosterone, which he needs to make it to the top, the alpha politician regards women as a just and proper reward for someone in his position.

Politics is about power and with it comes the exhilaration of being the dominant male. The risks of discovery these men take in their private lives is a part of the allure of such adventures. The excitement of the risk of being caught is underpinned by their arrogance and feelings of invulnerability, something that was clearly evident in Clinton’s dangerous fling.

But there’s more to it. The art of politics is being able to seduce your backers and the public to vote for you. It’s only a short step to these men thinking it’s only natural that they can also seduce any woman they want. If you believe Tiffanie – and there are many reasons for doing so – then Macdonald said to her: ”If you knew who I was, you would be very surprised.” It sums up both a politician’s massive ego and the thrill of being a powerful man.

Cactus Kate has blogged about the Remuera Rackets Rooter:

While men have voracious sexual appetites with or without multiple partners, the female is wired as such that if her box is being wrecked morning and/or night, a daytime rest and recovery is required, not being served by the local professional. It takes far more unhappiness for a woman to cheat on her husband than the other way around. Women for some reason have a conscience about it or perhaps a deep financial interest to keep their knickers on. The Remuera Rooter seems to melt this conscience away to remove the panties with his endless charms, ball machine and firm backhand. Bringing back the ADIDAS motto – all day I dream about sex.

This publicity as well as being a recruitment drive serves as a huge wake-up call for Remuera men that it is not good enough to get up at 6am, have a shower, get changed and go to your fancy job in the city and look at the Secretary or Juniors titties all day hoping one Christmas Party you can slide one in, followed by being fed when you get home with a 3 course dinner and pretending to be too tired at 9pm to engage in a bit of spank the married mank.

For God’s sake men, root your wife. Wake her up before 6am and give her one before you even shave and then go to work, do it again after dinner. Perhaps even thank her for cooking dinner and apologise for not rooting her enough until in a fit of men-o-pause she begs you to stop.

If you don’t do this it seems that the Remuera Rooter will service her for you as there’s a gap in the market well short of the baseline.

It never pays to dally with the help.

Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, has spoken for the first time of his “enormous regret” at the high-profile break-up of his marriage.

Mr Huhne also appeared to suggest that that the affair that ended his marriage may have been revealed by the News of the World using phone hacking or other dubious methods.

The minister faces a threat to his career arising from his acrimonious divorce. His former wife, Vicky Pryce, has suggested that he asked her to accept speeding points for a traffic offence he committed.

Prosecutors are still considering the case. Mr Huhne denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Huhne last year left Mrs Pryce after 26 years to continue his relationship with his former press officer.

Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway has decided to divert his focus from running one up parliamentary stenographers and instead focus on the things that matter to Kiwi voters…..like removing a ban on bagpipes.

Labour is calling on officials to overturn the ban on bagpipes being played at World Cup Rugby matches, saying it makes Kiwis look like a bunch of kiltjoys.

“If we can have the haka, then surely the Scots should be allowed a bit of skirt and skirl,” Labour’s unofficial spokesperson with a Scottish name, Iain Lees-Galloway, said.

The Palmerston North-based MP and colleagues Jacinda Ardern and Lianne Dalziel were approached for comment on the ban by a journalist from Edinburgh’s Sunday Post who said the issue had caused a furore in Scotland, prompting that country’s Sports Minister to issue a plea to games organisers to rethink their stance.

“I’m not sure on what grounds I was contacted, although I am a third generation Scottish migrant, from the McVicar and McCrae line, but I do know my long-passed Scottish grandmother would be outraged by the ban,” Jacinda Ardern said. “And men in kilts? What’s not to like? Richie McCaw fronted up in a kilt, with a set of pipes and played Amazing Grace at a recent charity auction and he’s an All Black.”

“Like the haka, bagpipes have stirred the spirit of sportspeople for centuries. And, like the haka they are an important part of New Zealand culture,” Iain Lees-Galloway said.

“Many of us have close family links to Scotland. Given bagpipes were included in the sensational and dynamic RWC opening ceremony, why not allow them at the games – even if it’s just before and after a match – as well.

“I can’t deny my ancestry. I support Scotland against any other team but the All Blacks. Surely a compromise can be reached before Scotland’s next game in Wellington,” Iain Lees-Galloway said.

I’m not sure, given his predations in the area that Iain Lees-Galloway should be talking about a “bit of skirt”.

Berlusconi is a serious rooter.

Silvio Berlusconi was at the centre of further sordid revelations about his sex life on Saturday after the Italian leader was caught boasting of having sex with eight women in one night.

…In one conversation taped by investigators in early 2009, Mr Berlusconi told him: “Last night I had a queue outside my door, there were 11 of them. I only managed to do eight of them, I couldn’t manage any more. You just can’t get round to all of them.

“But this morning I feel great, I’m pleased with my stamina.”

Makes Trevor Mallard’s or Murray McCully’s depredations on the fairer sex seem rather tame. A certain high profile political figure who had three on the go at one time also needs to try harder.

Great quote today in the Telegraph about why journalists don’t cover rooting politicians.

The extent of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s womanising has in the past been hidden because of a convention that the French press reports little on politicians’ private lives and the fact that its privacy laws are among the strictest in Europe, commentators and legal experts said on Monday.

Why is it the journalist don’t go after them?

Jean Quatremer, the journalist at Libération newspaper was the first French journalist to warn that Mr Strauss-Kahn’s treatment of women risked causing his downfall in Washington. However, he was only allowed to publish the information on his blog.

On Monday, he told the Daily Telegraph the Strauss-Kahn affair could be a “turning point” in France’s approach to its politician’s private lives.

More recently former President François Mitterrand was able to hide the existence of his (illegitimate) daughter Mazarine, and in 2007, the French only learned of the split between defeated Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal and her partner François Hollande after the electoral campaign.

But “DSK is an affair too many,” he said. “The so-called respect of private life is a fig leaf for journalistic cowardice,” he said.

“We are scared of falling out with politicians as they are our sources, but they need us in any case,” he said.

“Dominique Strauss-Kahn wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in Britain, America or Sweden,” he said.

What will give New Zealand journalists the courage to cover politicians dodgy sexually practices?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is finding out all too closely the difference between the US and France when it comes to rooting politicians.

If anyone was in any doubt about the enormous gulf that exists between how the French and American republics conduct their politics, then they need look no further than the harrowing image of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF chief  and putative presidential candidate, being led away in handcuffs by a bunch of New York cops after being subjected to the indignity of a DNA test. In America this is called the “perp walk”, and it’s supposed to be humiliating.

This sort of thing simply doesn’t happen in France, where the sexual peccadilloes of its leading politicians are simply taken for granted. As my colleague Anne-Elisabeth Moutet wrote this morning, it was an open secret in France that Mr Strauss-Kahn had an eye for the ladies, and at one point tore off a young journalist’s bra when she took his fancy.  No one ever thought to contact the police because this is the type of behaviour everyone in France expects of their politicians.

Unbelievable behaviour….ripping off a journalists bra! And it is expected!

Any attempt by a French policeman to handcuff a prominent politician would be tantamount to committing an act of treason. In America it doesn’t matter whether you are OJ Simpson or an international statesman of the stature of Mr Strauss Kahn: if the cops believe you’ve broken the law, you’ll soon find yourself paraded in public in handcuffs before being thrown in the slammer.

Clearly, so far as New York’s cops are concerned, there is no such thing as the entente cordial.

Hmmm…could we be seeing a similar perp walk here soon?

Sometimes politicians don’t engage their brain before committing words to the interwebs. Most of the time some politicians are engaging their little brain. In this case, once again, it is the Mangrove, Stuart Nash. Looks like Little Stuie was engaged on this effort, freudian slips and all.

This will be a huge relief for all the husbands of attractive women the nation over, except for those in the Hawke’s Bay, to know now that The Mangrove’s roots are firmly only in the Hawke’s Bay. One thing is for sure though when a mistress becomes a wife, a position becomes vacant.

Perhaps readers might like to help The Mangrove re-write that sentence more appropriately.