Just recently, I heard about another podcast from CBC. It’s an excerpt from the program C’est la vie, called Word of the Week. The short piece, mostly in english, discusses the use of a french in francophone culture, including several phrases provided by people being interviewed on the street.

I’ve listened to 5 of the recent episodes and I’m very impressed. The examples make learning new words and phrases very easy and can often be a bit quirky, which is like crazy glue for the mind. Quirky things tend to stick to the brain. Some of the speakers talk very fast or have rough accents, but I’m not opposed to listening a few times to catch everything they have to say. That’s the beauty of educational podcasts; you can rewind if you didn’t catch it the first time.

The news going around is that the National Party left some unpaid bills during the most recent election. The problem is that if they repay the amount owed, over $100,000, they violate the election spending limitations. To work around the problem, a bill was introduced to provide a one-off exemption to the political party, forgiving the violation. The bill was halted immediately by members of several of the small parties.

In a press release issued by the New Zealand First Party, Winston Peters suggests that the only right thing to do is to:

pay those they owe money and to then face the consequences of their actions in relation to the Broadcasting Act.

In a subsequent press release, Dr. Brasch attacked the comment:

This is quite extraordinary: a Minister of the Crown explicitly advocating breaking the law. As a matter of principle, National doesn’t deliberately break any law.

I think the issue is quite clear. The National Party has already broken the law by overspending. They just haven’t paid the bills yet. Given that they’re seeking to change the laws to make their actions legal, it is hard to deny that they are well aware of this fact.