The Seas Around us

Talking about foreigners there are about 4 billion of them out there and all in all they've got things in a bit of a mess. Mainly, the two big powers can't seem to stop themselves building nuclear weapons and submarines and sending troops into places like Viet Nam and Ethiopia to prop up advanced type Muldoonist regimes. In fact, given what they're doing now they'll probably end up using New Zealand for practice once they've tired of causing trouble in these more exotic countries.

And we've already had nuclear warships and ANZUS involving us in sweltering under a tatty US nuclear umbrella . . . there's a saying that if you put up an umbrella on a fine day it's sure to rain—and it has.

The people who told Czechoslovakia to take a couple of detentes before meals to make their problems go away are stepping up trade links, fishing rip-offs and military activity. Just recently they sent a research ship all the way to New Zealand to find out what our weather is like so they can tell the folks back home that it's nice and sunny out here. Perhaps they can't pick up Tina on TVI back there in tall story land.