Basil

Et tu Gammalite? The denial rot has certainly spread far and wide...

Are you kidding? The golden rule on BOAY when it comes to dodgy trainer-driver behaviour is see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. A former BOAY contributor (driven out by the nonsense) has vividly described this stance on another forum: "But, for some, there is no corruption in harness. Alford was innocent. Kerr was innocent. Jones is innocent, INCA is a witch hunt, all those associated are innocent. It is all the RIB's fault. How dare anyone call into question the integrity of harness racing. For those out there who are concerned with who informs The Star of details I suggest you be more concerned who is bringing harness racing into disrepute." Hear hear is the only sane response. But according to BOAY's Chief Denier, no trainer or driver has ever done anything worse than drop an injudicious fart or two, and anybody who claims otherwise is malicious or misguided. Coming at it from a different angle is, of course, Brodie, who sees wrongdoing everywhere except where it actually occurs. And both are enthusiastically backed up by a posse of me-tooers. None seems to have realised the sun has set on the 20th century. Perceived enemies of harness racing are ubiquitous on BOAY, but the real ones are in the mirror.

Mathematically impossible.

Straw man. The covid vaccine was only ever tested against reducing the severity of symptoms conditional on being infected, not against reducing the likelihood of infection.

1992 slightly more than half in nominal terms, corresponding to roughly the same real. So not exactly on the money, but, surprisingly, not completely off it either.

Exactly. The one rule that will remove all ambiguity is to ban the whip altogether.

All the horse bashers still out in force, I see. One doesn't need to look far to see why harness is in trouble. Hear no evil, see no evil...

Well, the horse is dead and the woman, although undoubtedly traumatised, is alive and well. Personally, if it came down to a choice between the firing squad and a bit of a kicking, I'd opt for the latter. Still, this could reflect my white male privilege, so I asked the uber-feminist Lady Basil for her view and, bugger me, she agreed. The problem with your 'contrary opinion' is that, while reasonable in itself, it just confirms to outsiders their view that horse and dog racing insiders view their animals as disposable commodities.

So some old guy (in this case CJ) is having trouble adapting to the new way of the world, a new way that, incidentally, was agreed to by his peers. I'm not sure why you think that would be "driving punters away from harness". If anything, it's more likely to attract new ones. The sad fact in this case is that CJ is both a serial and serious offender, regardless of how he likes to spin it. A few months back, I posted the full stats (to that date) on implementation of the new whip law — the ratio of fines and suspensions to warnings was tiny, i.e., to get fined or suspended, you have to stand out. In any event, as I've pointed out so many times, there is a very simple solution to whip rule confusion — just get rid of the whip altogether. (Cue massive squawks from Brodie and Hunter the Halfwit!)

Yes, I saw this article and thought "good on them". It's also one of several positive articles I've seen on harness recently, which is a bit surprising — isn't it universally agreed on BOAY that all journalists are dirty, lying, biased scum who have only negative things to say about harness racing?

I'd describe it as realistic rather than bitter. Sometimes one has to be cruel to be kind.

How do you know he's shown no remorse? And I wouldn't have thought working was evidence of dubious character. Just to clarify, I'm not attempting to defend Anderson, but what Alford did was far worse, imho. Others are perfectly entitled to their own contrary opinion. I have no evidence that JC's demise was a direct result of the injection, but if not it seems highly likely it was an indirect result (not a racing proposition without further injections). And yes, anybody else, including vets, caught behaving in the same way should receive the same merciless treatment. Imho.

To be fair to Brodie, he doesn't lie in the conventional sense of the word. He just doesn't think...

Although one wonders what the dosages were in these studies compared to that used by Alford. The one study that looked at this issue was hardly sanguine: "Infusion of higher doses of formaldehyde resulted in adverse effects including muscle fasciculations, tachycardia, tachypnea, serous ocular and nasal discharge, agitation, and restlessness." Which is consistent with what happened to Jimmy Cannon. Bottom line: I have some sympathy for Matt Anderson's situation (even though he 100% brought it on himself), but no penalty is too harsh for Alford.

I agree. While it may not be HRNZ's intention, it very much looks like a case of trying to silence the messenger. Not exactly confidence-inspiring...

Well, that's not exactly true — my eldest son, along with his entire flat, went down with it last xmas. Admittedly, that was in London and they all had minor or no symptoms, but only those who think the moon landings were faked could deny that covid has been pretty serious for a pretty serious number of people in many countries round the world (just not in island nations like NZ thanks to geographical good fortune). Brodie's hand-wringing about widespread sheep-like behaviour also seems a bit off the money, at least in Chch. Basil does not take the bus (except on pub crawls), but another son reports that the (supposedly compulsory) wearing of masks on Chch buses is pretty much non-existent, including among the drivers! There are certainly a few paranoid exceptions (Lady Basil amongst them), but most people seem able to rationally assess the risks and behave accordingly.

As he proved again last night. There have been quite a few very good NZ trotters since Lyell Creek — Monbet, Stig, Icandoosit and Take A Moment come immediately to mind — but Sundee's Son would have to be right up there with them.

OMG, now Brodie knows more about price index construction than the Chief Statistician! Is there no end to his talents? First he claims that stakes are lower than they were 30 years ago. When this is shown to be demonstrably false, he switches to claiming he meant inflation-adjusted stakes. When this is shown to be marginal, he insists the official inflation adjustment is wrong. Nobody else is going to win this argument...😄 And yes Brodie, the Food Price Index has risen by 80.3% between Jan 1991 and Jan 2021. Not that there's much connection between this and the costs faced by horse owners — most horses aren't fed milk, cheese and steak.

Only Brodie could confuse solutions with problems.😄 Thereby confirming, if unwittingly, the accuracy of his doom prediction.

Yep, as usual Brodie is confusing cause and effect. Any specific TAB restrictions on harness betting are the result of a poor reputation for integrity and dodgy behaviour, not the other way round. The only thing I'd add is that if it's indeed the case that Aussies are betting more on NZ's dog and gallop races, that almost certainly reflects their own experience with a scandal-plagued harness industry — it just surfaced 20 years earlier in their case. And yes Hunter old halfwit, please go ahead and give this your obligatory down vote. But you know, in that little walnut that passes for a brain, that I'm right; you comprehend, albeit very dimly in your case, that defending the indefensible is just enabling behaviour; you understand, if only vaguely, that people like you are pushing harness on a road to self-destruction.

Oh come on, this is just victim-blaming. Any system, no matter how robust, can be rorted. The only person at fault here is Kerr and it's time to stop the excuses and blame-shifting.

As regards the former, are you referring to the Dunedin racecourse or BOAY's resident lunatic?

I laughed at this from Gary Woodham: "I expect all participants to act with integrity and honesty.” That seems a trifle optimistic, to say the least.

Indeed yes, Hunter old chap. It should get me into the village idiot's tent so that I can meet up with you.

Good indeed, but some discerning judges of horseflesh (i.e., not me!) would undoubtedly argue that, at least at distances of 2600m or less, Christian Cullen would head them all off. I imagine plenty of Aussies would opt for Popular Alm.