The Monday Quote - 22/6/2009

We feel a bit out of the loop after being away for much of the weekend, but we were struck by Phil Goff's obfuscation in his interview by Michelle Hewetson in the Herald. For the record, we (me, myself and I) are all of a "strikingly" similar age to Phil Goff, which we guess makes us too children of the 60's and 70's. So for the record, we state unequivocally that we have NEVER smoked cannabis, despite having had abundant opportunities. We don't need to obfuscate!, Anyway, back to Phil ...

In his youth (he has been called a communist and a right-winger) he was, I say, a long-haired hippy. "I was never a hippy. Ask my wife." A dope-smoking hippy. "I've never been into smoking per se." This might be a bit slippery. "I've been around long enough to know precisely how to see when I'm being set up with a question."

I'd asked a perfectly straightforward question: Was he a dope-smoking hippy? And the rest of his reply was: "I was a child of the 60s and 70s."

I said that of course the answer was "yes", and he said "I've given you the answer" and I said "yes", and so on. As I say, he wears you out. And he should have worked out that I really didn't care, one way or the other, but he does like to hammer a point.

He said, as though it might be a revelation, "I'm pretty conventional, actually." In truth, he's about the only politician about whom you could almost believe that the answer is: "But I never inhaled."