DeeKnow’s Grotto

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey, it is very Fucking hot in the Waikato today. I just had a look at the weather page on stuff.co.nz which indicates Hamilton is the hotest spot in the country right at the moment. Quite Bizarre

Apparently it got to 31 deg C which is pretty impressive round these parts. Thank god the humidity is way down. Its 6:30pm right now and I swear it feels just as hot as it did at midday today

Poor Kym is outside doing some gardening which she claims is relaxing, cant quite fathom that. This made me look bad so I thought I'd do something blokey and get the new rotisserie attachment sorted out on the Barbie and get the mighty roast of beef out of the fridge and see what magic I could conjur up for my hard working gardener.

Did I mention its hot?. Australians will of course be laughing at our pathetic high twenties and remind us that its proabably more like 40 where they are, but us Kiwis just aint used to this shit. At least it gives those folks that bitched about the crap weather we were having a couple of weeks ago something to do. No doubt now they will be feverishly complaining about how hot it is this week.

The most excellent thing (as Wayne and Garth might say) about all this great blue-skies weather is that I've been able to get out for a ride every day for the last 7 days running. Ripping up the sticky tarmac and trailing a hot smokey shower of gravel behind me everywhere I go. Traction certainly hasnt been too much of a problem until Thursday that is when I went out midday with poor Agent748 who didnt seem to like the potential tar damage on his poor Ducati.

6:41:34 PM  

Tommorow (NZ time) Iraqis will go to the polls. Christopher Allbritton who's been in Bagdad reporting on developments for some time wrote an excellent article on his blog yesterday describing some of the political and security issues:

The security situation is unreal. No cars tomorrow—except those with special passes... Insurgent pamphlets are being distributed that anyone walking to a polling center is a target... The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list will get 30-35 percent, with the Kurdish list and Allawi's list battling for second place. Allawi is polling much more strongly than I expected... many Shi'a are suspicious of the UIA list, which is dominated by Shi'ites who spent time in Iran... the percentage of the vote a single list gets determines the percentage of seats in Parliament...

Chris goes on to predict:

I think Allawi will keep his job. The UIA list is a hodgepodge of Shi'a parties, both secular and religious. It's a coalition for getting elected, but not for governing. Allawi's list is more unified, with his Iraqi National Alliance party at the core... I think once in Parliament, the UIA coalition will break, allowing Allawi to form a working coalition with the Kurds, al-Yawer and secular Shi'a parties from the UIA

And then there's the issue of the likely non-vote by Sunnis and the possibility Arab nations will then write the election process off:

If the Sunnis don't turn out, the Parliament will be heavily weighted toward the Shi'ites and the Kurds. The Sunnis, already feeling the the tumbling feeling of falling from the seat of power they've occupied for centuries, will have less of a reason to back down and work at ending the insurgency, which is still a Sunni-dominated phenomenon.

Be interesting to see how accurate he is, and note this:

Only five polling stations in Baghdad will allow cameras or other electronic gear, so bear that in mind when you look at photographs of the election

Go on, read the article

10:45:31 AM