Campaign finance reform
Without which bought-and-paid-for government swamps democracy
stv-electing first Mayor of Mahurangi
Some dots can take longer to connect. And the more obvious the dot, the longer it seems to take for it to be connected. Since the announcement of the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, the Mahurangi Magazine has…
stv bicentennial extraordinary town-hall talk
Ideally, the bicentennial of stv should be held where the Birmingham Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement held the world’s first election with it. But even if that ultimate location was the epicentre of a global celebration, two other, antipodean, countries…
Crude reminder of royally half-cocked commission
First-past-the-post, 200 years after the first single transferable vote election, deserves to be a very distant memory. But, thanks to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance stvsingle-transferable-vote-ignoramuses, the region is about to elect its fourth mayor with the…
Bay where no ships has been 60 years with no name
It was almost certainly a good thing, that 60 years ago the name of the Auckland region’s first European settlement slid unnoticed into the next bay north. Had the bay been known by a descriptive name, such as Spar Station Cove, or by any name…
hmss Buffalo arrives at Mr Browne’s establishment
His putative youngest brother was Charles Dickens’ friend and illustrator, Hablot Knight Browne, aka Phiz. Putative, because Hablot was in fact the nephew of the founder of the Auckland region’s first European settlement, Gordon Davis Browne…
Fourth Thursdays 3rd time lucky after 20 June
The clash wasn’t discovered until after 20 June was locked in for the Mahurangi Coastal Trail Taking Shapely town-hall talk. Having cheerfully ceded their second-Wednesdays slot to bpw Warkworth, the town-hall talks have found that…
Mahurangi Coastal Path taking shapely
Most of the Mahurangi Coastal Path is already in use, and has been for decades. This, thanks to the entire coastline from Waiwera to the Mahurangi Harbour becoming regional park between 1965 and 1973. Within that time, built by park staff…
ipcc-understates-threat understatement
Bulletins proclaiming that the ipcc 1.5° report understates climate threat are literally understatements of epochal proportions. Self-reinforcing climate feedbacks already irreversibly underway signal civilization’s ever-growing greenhouse gas…
On the unspeakable ephemerality of beaches
Relying on economics to salvage a survivable climate is the 21st century equivalent of a standing down an army and leaving defence of the realm to wizardry. With the United States Senate summarily scuttling the Green New Deal, it might seem…
Ceding second-Wednesdays for fourth-Thursdays
As of midnight last Monday, dredging the town basin and river downstream became the most urgent Mahurangi project. Up until that deadline, feedback on the structure plan that will shape development of Mahurangi’s tidehead town for…
Strikingly unfit for fossil-fuel-free future
Anthropogenic climate disruption is not just another issue. It is the issue that will bedevil generation after generation for at least hundreds of years. Just how hard and how fast global warming will impact cannot be accurately quantified, given that…
Seriously steeling the green network backbone
Whether the green network proposed in the Draft Warkworth Structure Plan is fit-for-purpose for this week’s climate-striking school students, for their next 30 years, must be the question. And given that streets, once surveyed, tend to endure, the…
Seriously serial structure plan submission
There is much to applaud and support in Warkworth’s draft structure plan. Submissions are invited, as is statutorily required, prior to the final stages, labelled “Changes to Structure Plan and Adoption” or, as the text explains, “Following consultation…
Warkworth watermills millraces and weirs
A more apposite topic for the next town-hall talk could scarcely be conceived. The fact that such a topic has already been conceived, is another story, hopefully for the following Warkworth Town Hall Talk. On Wednesday 13 March, the historian…
Mahurangi Regatta 2019 gallery
Just the beginnings of another mostly Bergquist beauteous gallery of Mahurangi Regatta images. Principal regatta photographer since 2006, Lyn Bergquist’s art positively pervades the Mahurangi Cruising Club Yearbook, looking at 20…
Valiant and virtuous volunteer regatta crew
Virtually ahead of every regatta, the need for volunteers is ventilated. But to avoid repeating this year’s last-minute scrabble to make up an apparent shortfall, several measures are being planned. The first is to augment the ‘This Saturday’s Mahurangi Regatta needs volunteers…
Mahurangi Regatta 2019 results
Results are ordered alphabetically by division, then by handicap place within each division. However, for those desiring an overall picture of the day’s racing, a combined-fleet list ordered by elapsed time is appended below the division placings…
Mahurangi Regatta 2019 lost and found
Given that more than a thousand people attended the prize giving and dance, that almost all the evenings detritus found its way into the dozen wheelie bins provided by Mahurangi Regatta principal sponsor Teak Construction is testament…
Livestreaming the prize giving and dance
For many, the Mahurangi Regatta beats Christmas. But not all of those devotees can attend every regatta prize giving and dance. Until tonight. Thanks to the wonderful people who did the Warkworth Town Hall proud doing Mahurangi Action the…
A little light for Saturday in the park
Light breezes are again the prospect for the Mahurangi Regatta. Nice for the picnickers, and dancers in the evening, but not what most of the sailors crave. Unfortunately, what is also a little light, so far, is the response of Mahurangi West…
Super Masonic solution to blank riverbank wall
Mahurangi Magazine has stuck its neck out by soliciting support for its suggested solution to the ugly butt of the Old Masonic Hall. The timing was poor. Six days before Christmas meant that most folk missed the email and, as of this morning, only…
2020 Mahurangi Regatta programme
Programme for the 2019 Mahurangi Regatta was unique in that it included the first Up the Mahu! parade to Warkworth. Tides prevented a repeat in 2020, and indeed will only really favourable twice between now and the end of the decade…
‘Up the Mahu!’ day-after-the-regatta flotilla
There could only be one flagship for the ‘Up the Mahu!’ day-after-the-regatta demonstration. The Jane Gifford scow, aside from being the face of the Mahurangi Regatta since 2010, following her heroic restoration, epitomises the necessity of…
Time for town hall to take it to city hall
Warkworth Town Hall, inescapably, is where the community should assemble to make decisions for itself. Not the Auckland Town Hall, with its region-wide responsibilities for a city of 1.7 million. In a slightly less imperfect world, Mahurangi…
Drop-in drops solution to Old Masonic derriere dilemma
Its arse-end is one of Warkworth’s worst features, despite robust heritage architecture being about striving to keep public buildings relevant to their communities. Nothing about the blank back wall of the Old Masonic Hall commends it to be considered…
Whitebait deserve layer too Waiwera – Waipū
When a Warkworth Town Hall Talk catalysed the Mahurangi-based green-lipped mussel reef restoration research project, it triggered a veritable chain reaction. The immediate impact was to shock the community into taking responsibility for a ‘Mahurangi…
Millrace to the rescue of whitebait and weir
Millennia before human habitation, the natural sandstone weir at the Mahurangi River tidehead would have formed a formidable barrier to īnanga in their imperative to migrate from the sea to freshwater reaches. Then, over about the last 6000 years, towards…
Arising from ashes of the Phoenix
Better connecting its tidehead town to its river has been a Mahurangi Action goal, since the organisation was formed 44 years and a fortnight ago. Understandably, for a forward-looking town, Warkworth was built with its back to the river that represented…
Phase 3 of action plan to connect the dots
Billed as a district and regional council initiative—in reality, all the running had been made by the Auckland Regional Council—the goal of Mahurangi Action Plan, launched in 2004, was to kickstart the fencing and planting of riparian margins, and…
Warkworth Town Hall Talks are all action
Wednesday night’s wonderful, wonderfully well-attended town-hall talk wasn’t supposed to happen and wouldn’t have, had Auckland Council not hired Adrian and Alex Hayward to promote the use of the Warkworth Town Hall. The same day Adrian…
Near-certainty of 66-metre sea-level rise
Permanent ice sheets are a misnomer. Ages involving alternating glacial and interglacial periods are ephemeral, occupying only a small percentage of geological time. Humankind’s greatest—although certainly not in any laudatory…
Mahurangi mussels in to save the planet
Green-lipped-mussel-reef establishment might seem an unlikely choice for a climate-change tour-de-force by the organisation that revived the Mahurangi Regatta 42 years ago this summer. But Mahurangi Action believes that the beauty of the…
Support Mahurangi mussel action
These six quick check-the-box questions will help Mahurangi Action plan the five-year green-lipped mussel reef restoration research project. With your even modest support, by greatly leveraging other funding sources this Mahurangi-based…
Mahurangi Action 44th annual report
Global Warming of 1.5°C will forever define 2018, the year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finally published a report that refrained from kicking the climate-action can ever-further down the road. Since that report, as is the…
2018–2019 committee nominations to hand
Ahead of the 14 November annual general meeting, the following nominations have been received for Mahurangi Action Incorporated’s 2018–2019 committee: Tessa Berger (as president, incumbent) entrepreneur, Rodney Local…
Interim river-mouth scow and mussel restoration research
At first blush the roles would appear to be impossibly disparate. One role is as a testbed for a Pūhoi River Mouth reaction ferry. The other, is as Mahurangi Action’s all-purpose scow, for everything from mussel-reef restoration research to…
agm tagged to 14 November town-hall talk
To save dragging some of the same folk out twice in one month, Mahurangi Action is tagging its annual general meeting to next month’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk. This is not to suggest that the society is permanently abandoning its salubrious tradition of meeting at…
Town-hall talks back with Professor Bill McKay
As befits the stellar success of the last town-hall talk, before finances forced a two-month hiatus, the series is back to stay. August’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk, by Dr Andrew Jeffs, has spawned a five-year, potentially $1 million, research project aimed at…
Mahurangi Cruising Club website refit
Mahurangi Cruising Club’s website is offline, pending reconstruction. Meantime, the Mahurangi Magazine, as it has since 2007, has available the programme for the upcoming Mahurangi Regatta: 2019 Mahurangi Regatta Programme
Wasting storms of the grandparents
When Dr James Hansen published Storms of My Grandchildren nine years ago this December, he lambasted governments for greenwashing while doing nothing meaningful to curtail fossil-fuel use. But despite, by that time, having already seen his…
With every fibre and electrified-transit solution
Aucklanders once took an average of more than 400 public-transport trips per year. In 1945, with a sixth of the population, Aucklanders were taking nearly 120 million trips, compared to today’s paltry 90 million boardings. Not that all Aucklanders should be…
Future Mahurangi transport network feedback
Mahurangi Action’s feedback pro forma on Warkworth’s future transport network is good to go. Members, and readers generally, are warmly encouraged to use the pro forma as-is or as a starting point for their own feedback, and to put their oars in…
This might have been one more for the roads
September’s town-hall talk is now cancelled, and possibly the balance of this year’s. The September slot was pencilled in for the topic of paedophilia awareness—apparently paedophile networks operate locally—but no subsequent response was…
One billion trees and bugger the science
In 2004, $3 million over 5 years sounded like all Mahurangi’s Christmases had come at once. But a back-of-a-seed-packet calculation strongly suggested that the $3 million the former Auckland Regional Council had budgeted would barely touch the sides, when it…
Second time science mussels into the Mahurangi
The first time science brought its muscle to bear was in 2004. After ten years of studies aimed at baselining selected catchments ahead of urban development impacts, the scientists involved persuaded the former Auckland Regional Council that…
World-famous weekends in Warkworth
Weekend number one, would be the all-important, we’ve-only-got-one-shot-at-this, World-Famous Weekend in Warkworth. Ideally, the inaugural weekend would feature three world-famous names. Say, Angela Lansbury, Sir Bob Geldof, and, for the Sunday…
Faith in the 1% and fighting the 80
Photovoltaics have a huge future and have grown enormously, to about 1% of global energy use. Banking heavily upon it, Germany has plunged it’s poor into energy poverty, by shuttering nuclear, not because of the risk or impact on health, but to pander…
Forlorn futility of faith-based climate action
One person’s demagogue is another person’s saviour, and, for many, the Elon Musk credibility needle will have finally flicked from where it has been firmly stuck on f, to e. For most students, in this age of social-media-supercharged celebrity, learning…
Proposed zero-carbon bill submission
Comment on the proposed zero-carbon bill closes at 5 pm on 19 July. The following pro forma is provided by the Mahurangi Magazine in the earnest hope that the resultant legislation is exponentially more substantive than a zero-carbon-by-2050-target…
Proposed carbon bill zero-action
Generation Zero is ecstatic. But over a proposed zero-carbon bill that clings cravenly to the ineffectual, at best, emissions-trading-scheme approach. To be fair, Generation Zero’s enthusiasm is primarily for having succeeded in selling, to the new…
Thirty years later, what needs to change
Thirty years ago, while the Midwest withered in massive drought and East Coast temperatures exceeded 100°F, I testified to the Senate as a senior nasa scientist about climate change. I said that ongoing global warming was outside the range of natural…
stv supercity shake-up, then Wellington
Mayor Goff was elected by barely 18% of registered voters. Len Brown at least, won 47.8% of votes cast, but only because voters were then still in the dark about his grubby use of Auckland Council property. But the bigger crime of both men, and of the Royal…
Visiting Aotearoa for all the right reasons
Neither of New Zealand’s two main industries is currently sustainable. Its once-vaunted agricultural industry, a proud part of the green revolution, is now a climate delinquent, due to the white gold-rush. Tourism, which continues to outdistance dairy as…
You say you want a constitution and less democracy
What’s good for doctors of medicine, it would appear, doesn’t apply to doctors of law. The imperative to first do no harm is being violated in the latest proposal by Dr Andrew Butler and Sir Geoffrey Palmer qc, for a codified constitution for Aotearoa. In their second book together…
Last rangatira of Mahurangi and his hapū
The death of the rangatira Te Hemara Tauhia in 1891 marked the end of the tribal history of Mahurangi. His birth date is unknown, but it seems likely that he was born in about 1815, and that he would have been just a lad in 1821, when Hongi Hika made…
Hobsonville-pointing satellite growth centre
While it was all about density, it said more about the limitations of developer-led planning. Presenting this month’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk, Mark Fraser, precinct manager for hlc, detailed the lengths necessary to dissuade builders from building…
Nothing stopping Labour unequivocally claiming climate
His frustration was palpable. Following his party’s first electoral foray, when more than 98% of the populace proved to be impervious, the Rodney candidate declared: “What we need is a decent nuclear accident, then they’ll vote Values.” Sadly, the statement…
Reimagining the roads of Mahurangi
Roads, historically, were not about cars. They were not even about private vehicles, until the last 100 of human civilisation’s 5500-year existence. So perhaps the Labour Party’s pandering to Penlink is understandable, as it seeks to wrest more of the...
Topic-paper feedback as submitted
With the input of members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, Mahurangi Action has submitted feedback on the structure plan topic papers to Auckland Council. In order that the preparation of the be totally transparent…
Topic-paper feedback closes – Keep calm and carry on
Mahurangi Action has frantically prepared feedback to enable members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, to quickly email a comprehensive submission to Auckland Council. This is a work in progress, but the target was to…
Structure plan topic-paper switchboard
In an ideal world, everybody interested would have time to read the Warkworth Structure Plan consultation documents. But those just issued run to a total of 623 topic pages and maps. Between the first call for feedback and the 23 April deadline…
Boatbuilding begins in the Mahurangi
Some of the first vessels to be built in the Mahurangi may well have gone unrecorded, since registration was a little haphazard in those times. But it is clear that the first shipwrights established themselves after the Mahurangi Purchase of 1841 and…
Climate-reaction rubber meets the road
New Zealanders have just demonstrated the perfect problem, perfectly. After three decades of denial and procrastination, including nine years of Clark-led Labour government inaction, Jacinda Ardern has announced transport policy timidly…
Canadian Maritimers to New Zealanders
Sheltered coves and good timber were prerequisites for shipbuilding. These the Mahurangi coast had in abundance, but the third ingredient was shipwrights. Outstanding among the pioneers of the industry here were the Scottish immigrants from the Maritimes…
Art of the chartmakers Cudlip Pudsey-Dawson et al
During his voyages of 1833, Henry Williams records scrambling to the south end of Kawau “to take bearings of the various islands points etc. around us…” and climbing Motutapu to take similar bearings around the Waitematā. We are reminded that the charts we…
Cutter calm before the storming scow
Although Mahurangi settlers were not far from Auckland, the journey overland was arduous and to be avoided. By water, it is only 26 nautical miles to the Waitematā, via the semi-sheltered waters of the Hauraki Gulf. From the 1850s till the 1930s, sail was the settlers’…
Extraordinary Mahurangi rowers
Importance of good rowing boats to the settlers is emphasised in the previous chapter. A number of rowing stories survive which deserve inclusion here. In these days when most boatmen appear to need an outboard to get from the beach to their…
As mate of the Jane Gifford
When I was on Jane Gifford with my brother Reg, we would leave Warkworth if the tide was favourable at 3.30 am. Reg would go down to the Collins’ home by the Masonic Hall, bang on the door to waken me, then return to the boat and heat up…
Kauri logger to back aboard
Tudor’s apprenticeship on the Kasper scows came to an end during the First World War. He went into camp at Trentham and had sailed for the front when the troopship was turned around by the armistice. Tudor went back to the family home in…
Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice
As if its bureaucrats needed any encouragement. Trump’s America now has its Environmental Protection Authority peddling the equivalent of Lisa Simpson’s Ignorital©. The agency requires its officials to lace their public utterances with phrases contrived to…
Strategic significance of river restoration
As submitted by Mahurangi Action Incorporated 28 March 2018: Mahurangi Action supports the urgent funding of the consented dredging of sediment from the Mahurangi River, to restore the navigability of the river up to and including the Warkworth…
Life aboard the Kasper scows
I left school at 14, having passed standard sixthe ‘proficiency exam’, then the culmination of schooling at year eight, and went to work for Warnock Brothers, the big soap people at Grey Lynn, wrapping up sandsoap. I stuck it out for about four months and then joined my brother Jim at Donald Brothers fellmongery. This meant…
Memoirs of a scowman
New Zealand’s scows are a colourful part of the history of the Auckland Province, and have an enduring fascination for latter-day sailors. The hardy scowmen were seldom given to literary expression, and most of their stories died with them. We must be grateful to the few…
Now the commission wants to explore
At least Ōrewa is equally inconvenient for all Rodney residents. In its case for twin local board areas, the Mahurangi Magazine pointed out: So disparate are the areas, that meetings of the Rodney Local Board are held in Ōrewa, which is in neither half. Now…
Exploring a plan-b Pūhoi Rivermouth ferry
With a long-term solution calculated to cost $2 million, it is time to consider a plan b. This not to suggest that $2 million is too rich to realise the magnificent potential of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail. It is too much, however, given the…
Triggering automatic change to green
Most Warkworthians are unhappy that their town is now a satellite growth centre. Had a concerted campaign been waged against it, and unlimited funds spent fighting it, Auckland Council may have been forced to rethink. But that would not have…
On the coastal trail to the Mahurangi Regatta
For 45 years, the Mahurangi coastline between Waiwera and Ōpahi has been in public ownership, begging to host a nine-kilometre coastal trail, linking 900-hectares of regional parkland. But while the potential of the trail has existed since the 1973…
Mahurangi Regatta 2018 gallery
Just some of the fine photographs kindly provided by Lyn Bergquist and Bryce Taylor. a rich collection of regatta images is also available in the internationally admired Mahurangi Cruising Club Yearbook, of which Lyn Bergquist, since 2008, has been the…
Mahurangi Regatta 2018 results
Results are ordered alphabetically by division, then by handicap place within each division. However, for those desiring an overall picture of the day’s racing, a combined-fleet list ordered by elapsed time is appended below the division placings…
Prize-giving dance salvaged by stonemason
Since the Mahurangi Regatta Ball, in 2004, it has been the dream to have salubrious toilets. To be unabashedly sexist, where the women can chat and check their makeup, amidst nicely arranged cut flowers, and the men can patronise a collegial and sanitary…
Short-handed shuttle and last Scotts ferry
As regular readers of the Mahurangi Magazine well know, this writer won’t be content until a cross-harbour ferry is instituted. This would benefit locals, Mahurangi Coastal Trail walkers, and be an absolute boon and delight generally, but particularly…
2019 Mahurangi Regatta programme
Celebrating the 42nd anniversary of the regatta revival by Mahurangi Action, the 29th with the Mahurangi Cruising Club as race organiser, and the 4th with Teak Construction as principal sponsor. It will also celebrate the commencement of two…
Morning-after no-dogs breakfast
Incredibly, only two do it: Panmure Yacht and Boating Club, and Richmond. Even the race organiser, the Mahurangi Cruising Club, misses out on the best thing after the Mahurangi Regatta. It started small, with the organising clubs sharing…
Signs of great and sustainable regatta
The Mahurangi Regatta is the wondrous, joyous outcome of many, occasionally disparate, plans and agendas of volunteer, council, and commercial entities, of which the most prominent, after this year’s event, will probably be Boating New Zealand…
Commodore Penchev’s charming regatta newsletter
Dear secret admirers, friends and members of the Mahurangi Cruising Club, best wishes for a happy New Year on the water and elsewhere. Many of you provided positive and constructive, and also critical, feedback from the 2017 Mahurangi Regatta…
Tidal-river power and grid electricity
Most public transport in Aotearoa is fossil-fuel powered. But that would not excuse the key component of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail, the ferry, being fossil-fuelled. Fortuitously, as described in Minimum Impact 100% River-Powered, a fossil-fuel-free…
Mahurangi Action president’s report
The planned fivefold increase in population of its tidehead town is critical to the future of the Mahurangi watershed. If, within a couple of decades, a town of more than 20 000 has an attractive, swimmable river as the hero element of a broad linear…
Minimum impact 100% river-powered
In one respect, it could not be easier. Build a coastal trail linking three regional parks, all on publicly owned land. However, if it had in fact been easy, it would have happened soon after Mahurangi Action first suggested it, three decades ago. The first big hurdle—convincing senior…
Region survives serial secessionism
Serial attempts to turn the clock back six decades have failed, and deservedly. For without regional governance, Aucklanders would be much the poorer, for example, 27 sublime regional parks poorer. It would also lack a cohesive planning mechanism to cope with…
Founder of Mahurangi tidehead town
Warkworth, Aotearoa, had its beginnings in a water-powered sawmill, the first in the Mahurangi. Its proprietor, John Anderson Brown, thus became successor in the local timber industry to his near namesake, Gordon Browne. Unlike his predecessor he was no transient; there…
Democratise coalitions and lists now
Half voted for change, and half for the status quo. The 44.4% who voted for the New Zealand National Party, and the 0.5% who voted for what remains of ex-Labour-finance-minister Roger Douglas’ rebel act party, are now represented by 57 opposition…
Single super-coalition shot for democracy
If New Zealanders elected their prime minister, there would now be a clear winner. And, unless it was under the old deeply undemocratic first-past-the-post system, that winner would be Winston Peters. Because, while Jacinda Ardern and Bill…
Warkworth, the watershed, and the whitebait
Mahurangi was always going to need all the help it could get. When, in 2004, the then Auckland Regional Council announced a $3 million, 5-year kickstart to address the harbour’s elevated sediment accumulation rate, Mahurangi Action was advised…
Let’s do this, and deliver unperverted democracy
It would be hard to contrive a more effective means of turning youth off. After being lectured for months on the importance of enrolling and voting, young people are now told nothing. Not only are they not told how young people voted, they are not even told…
Just when Jacinda needed Germany most
When Jacinda Ardern stepped up, Labour was on 24% and National was at 47%. Once the special votes are counted, which include whatever youthquake or youth-tremor has occurred, the New Zealand National Party share will be lucky to be 45%…
Mahu youth has National munted
If the local Kids Voting result is any indication, New Zealand’s youthquake is going to visit most damage on National. Mahurangi College students, their Kids Voting coordinator has reported, gave the Labour Party a clear majority: 35% versus the National…
Failure to fix mmp could cost Labour
Gareth Morgan’s failure to crash last Friday’s leaders debate drew attention to the inescapable. His briefly promising political initiative hasn’t come close to breaking the 5%-threshold barrier to tyro parties, and will not make it into Parliament…
Unlocking the magic of Warkworth
Warkworth’s population of 4000 is estimated to reach 27 000 in the next 30 years. Without relentless optimism, on the strength of international experience Warkworth-as-a-satellite-growth-centre is a recipe for a sprawling, Geography of Nowhere…
Jacindaquake and Kids Voting curtain-raiser
There’s no reason to imagine Aotearoa will be spared its youthquake. In the United Kingdom, it was a 68-year-old Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who triggered the tremor. The quake unleashed by the youth-adjacent Jacinda Ardern, who has just rocked…
No Dunne deal – directly elect coalitions
As with the America’s Cup, coming second place in party politics generally equates with losing. Until recently, it had been looking as though the hospital pass Bill English received from the charismatic, if unchivalrous, Sir John Key might not prove fatal…