Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Welcome to the midwinter Rogers Rabbits madness.

Warning, this column contains offensive language, adult themes, and the odd rude word. Do not read beyond this point if you are easily offended or prone to dawkwardness.

This week we celebrate the shortest day, June 21. Well not exactly celebrate, since most of us can't wait for it to be gone and for the days to get longer again. We can try to get some decent doses of Vitamin Sun to ward off the craziness of short, gloomy days. Although I see for some, it's too late.

Such as the drivers at the roundabouts, who instead of celebrating the winter solstice are marking ‘indicator-free week'. Which in some cases, is every day. There are even some who are marking ‘completely wrong indicator week' which means they're flicking left coming onto a roundabout, even though they're going straight ahead or turning right; and flashing right to leave the roundabout even though they're going straight ahead or leaving it to the left.

I know it's challenging to do several things at once. Like, breathe. Keep your eyes open. Turn the wheel. Think. But surely we can also figure out the correct way to push the funny little stick?

This has been an issue for millennia, and even the old druids or whoever invented the most famous roundabout, Stonehenge, in an effort to educate drivers on correct solstice roundabout behaviour, failed. Monumentally.

Reader survey

Reading through hundreds of responses to the Sun Reader Survey. The fantastic response shows how passionate you are about your locally-owned paper.

We'll be treating all your feedback seriously, even those couple of commie left-wing socialists amongst you who proclaimed Rogers right wing and unbalanced.

Then we had some right-wingers complaining the editor favoured the left, because the Sun has more columns from that side.

Well you can't all be right. Truth is, it doesn't matter which way the personal politics lean, if, in fact, they lean at all.

Rogers considers himself a centre centre, (although I did play left wing for Otumoetai) but of course that's not how it appears when you're looking at the picture from one extreme wing or the other.

Regardless of personal leanings, the paper is not. And that's an important difference.
Rogers does not pretend to be unbiased. Any journalist who tells you they sit on the fence and don't have an opinion is dishonest.

No reasonable-thinking person can be involved in the news business with no opinion of their own.

It's whether they operate media impartially that counts, and the Sun is completely impartial. We give plenty of airtime to both sides.

You can rest assured, in fact you can see it on our pages, everyone gets fair and balanced opportunity to air their views.

Even if, in the personal opinion of the editor/owner, some of you are complete crackpots.

Staple yourself

In other gems gleaned from the survey results, one keen reader suggests we staple the pages. She even drew a diagram of where the staples should be placed. Lovely. A nice idea, but unfortunately cost prohibitive. We already provide a free, fat, news-filled publication into all homes of every resident in the Western Bay of Plenty – there's only so far the budget will stretch.

Feel free to staple your own, on arrival at your place. Call us if you'd like to know where to put the staples; we have excellent diagrams.

Another survey respondent suggests some content in this column is offensive, highlighting a paragraph from a week or so back, in which we said the Queen had been gifted stallion semen. We point out this actually happened. It's not something we made up. Don't shoot the messenger. The survey finishes Monday. It's been enlightening, entertaining and I'm sure will lead to us continuing to make our paper better. every week

Thanks for your ideas.

Mental macrons

Macrons hit the headlines in the Sun last week, with our revelations subversive moves are afoot to have them infiltrate our lives.

For those still confused, macrons are silly little symbols some people believe need adding to language to aid pronunciation. We have a word for this. Piffle. (That's pronounced while almost spitting in disgust).

We will stave off the Invasion of the Macrons for as long as possible, to avoid our readers from having your already-complicated lives further compromised by more dots, dashes, erections, party hats or other obtuse abhorrences.

In case we fail to vanquish the viniculums, here's a plan:

On the basis of 'if you can't beat em, join em” we've announced a macron breeding programme.

Following a reader's announcement of a new macron, the arselet, (see the letters pages this week), the RR research team has developed more new macrons.

Here they are. We invite you to design the symbols.

The Dawk: Add to any words you wish you'd not uttered.

A Cunliffe: denotes hypocrisy (created this week).

The Rolf: used to indicate inappropriate action.

Horan: signifies a word that has been annexed from its sentence. It becomes an independent word.

Fixt: Cricket term, often shows a game shortened against run of play. (An ‘i' with a dollar sign in it).

Lorde: A symbol that signifies a word is pronounced with a weird twitch.

Boobs: Figure used to draw teenage boy, well any male really, attention to a word.

Minnit: Denotes a measure of phonetic time.

Nek: used in conjunction with a minnit.

Pist: word is pronounced with a slur.

Send us suggestions, diagrams, photos, stapling points – they'll be gratefully accepted.

Thanks for your feedback and remember, we're always interested in improving the paper and enjoy interacting with our wonderful readers. But keep your offensive horse semen to yourselves.

Parting shot:

Ears of the Week Award: goes to the English rugby coach.