IN keeping with all the other enactments being, well, enacted for some big sporting event in September next year, New Zealand-born press photographer Scott Barbour has given the sporting powers-that-be a golden opportunity.
According to sources close to the aforementioned ‘powers-that-be’, the Government is about to push through a series of laws designed to stop any “unpatriotic” behavior before, during, and after sporting events.
“That bloody photographer distributed the photos of Graham Henry’s defensive strategy without thinking of the social, economic, and civil implications.  Bastard,” said Colonel Dieter Throat, head of the newly-created Patriotism Police.
“I want all press photographers to submit their photos to the NZRFU Censorship Board for approval from now on.”
When asked about tight deadlines, he dismissed that with a wave and continued his rant.
“Then some nancy reporter wrote that Murray McCully had spent $3,000 on lunch for Rugby World Cup fish heads – I mean leaders.  That was bloody un-Kiwi as well.  A Kiwi patriot doesn’t shy away from showing Johnny Foreigner that we’re as sophisticated as the next country, even if that country is Australia.”
Colonel Throat, a former Army parking warden, was planning a raft of measures that extended beyond 2011.
“The Rugby World Cup is just one event where we have to be on the watch for unpatriots,” he said.  “There’s all those people who don’t stand for the national anthem at league games, pigs who don’t applaud a Kiwi batsman when he hits a ton, people who boo Daniel Carter if he misses a few, those other 20,000 scum who don’t take their shirts off at Phoenix games…they must be stamped out!  From time to time the tree of freedom must be refreshed with the blood of unpatriots!”
Dangerously red in the face, Colonel Throat took a moment to compose himself.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and so when the chance arose thanks to that bloody un-Kiwi Kiwi photographer, I jumped at it.  I’ll be patrolling the sidelines at Lancaster Park next week looking for any Getty photographers so I can give them a lesson in what it means to be a proud nationalist!
He said the Government had taken on board his package of new laws for next year.  
“The ‘no drinking any poofy weak overseas beer’ has had to be put on the backburner, because the official beer is a poofy weak overseas one, but banning anyone who isn’t wearing black from All Black Tests has been accepted.  Every household will be issued with a New Zealand flag and pole to put in their front yard, and apartment dwellers will get one to hang from their frontage.  Of their apartment, that is.”
“Anyone caught watching anything other than sport when a national team is playing will have their TV confiscated.”
The media will be especially targeted.
“Any adverse news stories will see the media responsible banned from anything to do with any national team, and any dodgy photos that slip through our censor net will earn the photographer in question time behind bars.”
A government spokesperson said Colonel Throat’s more outrageous ideas, such as re-establishing the Red Squad to deal with visiting fans, were still subject to Cabinet sign-off.
“We’re thinking more along the lines of water cannons and cul de sacs, rather than his request for mustard gas and shotguns, but we’ll see.”
Colonel Throat is undeterred.
“We’re a nation of 4 million fans.  Or with the assistance of some rubber hoses, we all will be, by God.”