Lyndon Hood: Things To Do About Winston Peters

With allegations, unanswered questions, not-exactly-misleading statements, evidence of technical wrongdoing and unsubstantiated smears™ swirling around New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters it can sometimes be difficult to sort out the most expedient response.

As a service to prognosticators and policymakers, I present the following as a complete list of feasible options:

• Ignore him and he'll go away. He's never done the latter, but that's just because nobody's ever sucessfully done the former.

• Well, he wanted a political journalist and a newpaper editor to resign if they were proved wrong, so since he was wrong about that very issue, the expected thing for him to do would be find something even more inflammatory to yell at them.

• Get your email stealers to steal some more of those stealy stolen emails. There's nothing Winston's detractors are more in favour of than stolen emails.
• Alternatively, just make some stuff up. Winston will respond the same either way.

• Say it's okay because he didn't know he'd got a donation from Owen Glenn. Oh wait - it's not about that now. It's about something somehow more complicated, sort of worse and also less interesting.

• Just generally let the matter cast a depressing pall over the entire political system.

• Fight all the way to the Supreme court to deterimine if it's really pecuniary interest if you don't know about it and whether it counts as cheating before you get caught.

• Reduce the nation's Winston footprint by including hot air in the Emissions Trading Scheme.

• Put him in front of the "all-powerful" Privileges Committee. I mean, are they really all-powerful? Like, what are they going to do, divide him by zero?
• And just for the record, the Privileges Committee is not 'all-knowing' or 'all-caring' either.
• Speaking of which, we could just forgive him. 'Cos that Jesus guy would be good for the job. He's probably forgiven things even worse than whatever it is Winston's done.

• Mythologise his ironically self-applicable condemnation of journalists by calling it 'hubris'. 'Hubris' sounds better than 'arrogance'.
• Then sacrifice him to ensure that Spring will return.
• Seriously, kill him. He's been written off as dead often enough he probably won't notice.
• Besides, he won't actually die but will return in his nation's hour of greatest need to rule again.

• Respond to his signs of weakness by turning on him and devouring him like a sort of pack of carnivorous sheep.

• Exile him. Let him throw himself on the mercy of a strange foreign country and see how he likes it.

• What to do with him? Vote for him! That'll show 'em, with their P imports and their high maths scores.

• Stand very still so he will not devour us. He can only see things that are moving.

• Allow the various relevant authorities to consider the evidence and make whatever response they think is just. Nah, kidding. Impose retrospective legislation.

• Tie a cage full of hungry rats to his face. It worked on that other Winston.
• Speaking of Big Brother: we could try putting him in a house with a bunch of other egomanics and see how many machiavellian schemes and personality clashes he can survive before he gets voted out. It hasn't got rid of him so far, but we can hope.

• Keep him on, but find some excuse to send him overseas for most of the next term of parliament.

• Somehow find out what it is that actually happened. React appropriately.

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