Here in the beautiful Bay of Plenty, spring is finally warming us from the clutches of a particularly mean winter.

Along with the daffodils and the balmy evenings, has come a healthy dose of sea lettuce. Naturally occurring, despite the bleatings of some equally barmy conspiracy theorists, the sea lettuce has been around for centuries and comes along with the El Nino weather patterns. We've had it easy for a couple of years, with La Nina and a corresponding apparent reduction of sea lettuce.
It's good news to see that Environment BOP is stumping up with some cash to help remove sea lettuce from our beaches.
Until now, EBOP has been primarily involved in monitoring. This council is very good at monitoring. They spend of lot of time and our money monitoring. Not a lot of doing, in many cases. They're really good at telling us what we already know.
What we need is more action and the $30,000 contribution to help the city and Western Bay councils actually clean up the stinking mess is a good start.
Wouldn't it be useful some other sectors of the community also did their part to help clean up sea lettuce? A great option for the unemployed, I say.
There are people with a lot of time on their hands and they're already paid – here's a chance to chip in for the society that supports them. I won't hold my breath on this, but if anyone on the dole had a shred of community spirit, this would be one easy way to show it. A few hands for a few hours around our popular beaches would make a big impact.
And it need not stop at sea lettuce. There's plenty of gorse, wild ginger and woolly nightshade that could be dealt with by those fit and healthy, with plenty of spare time in their day and firmly affixed to nanny state's sumptuous tit – the society payroll.
Here's an invitation to anyone interested in being part of a volunteer clean up group – drop me a line brian@thesun.co.nz or phone 578 0030 and we'll get something sorted with the councils.

Pick on Hamilton
This week is ‘stand up for Hamilton' week.
We'd like to refute all of what the nasty Springboks have been saying about our neighbour city. We'd like to paint a vibrant, action-packed, scintillating picture of this fine Waikato centre.
We'd like to. Unfortunately we can't. Because they're right. It's true, there is nothing to do there.
Here's an idea for a new city motto: 'Hamilton. Because it's good to have someone to pick on.”
Moving right along, then. Let's have a crack at … Canterbury University.
One of our readers reckons it should be renamed Canterbury Kindergarten and the Undie 500 could be called the Kindy 500.
Meanwhile the Labour Party has accepted it lost the plot and is looking for a new way forward. The only bright idea to come out of the Labour party supposed re-invention of itself is to give away free condoms. This would be great news for rioting students, as they'd have a free source of water bombs.

Terribly funny?
Feedback continues to roll in after the rabbits of two weeks ago, on terrorists.
More than a 100 messages, phone calls and comments have been received, some saying it's the funniest column ever. There are too many to publish all, but here's some comments. A couple of callers have asked if the photographs were real terrorists; yes, they are, from the world's most wanted (or unwanted) list.
Dennis Perkins (regular reader) phoned to say how he loved Rogers Rabbits - roared with laughter the whole way through it. Reader Diane phoned to say how much she enjoys Rogers Rabbits every week, but this week she thought was the BEST ever! Thanks to the many, many others who have chipped in, too many to print.
The archived columns are available on the website, www.sunlive.co.nz if you missed the original.
There were another couple of letters, lone voices in the wilderness, essentially complaining that the column was racist and mean to people with foreign-sounding names.
Diddums, the poor wee terry-werries, with big bad Brian making mockery of them… we are talking about mass-murdering, deranged lunatics here. I don't think a bit of mockery in this paper is going to push them to extremes. What are they going to do? Blow themselves up in a crowded plane/train station/ hotel lobby? They're planning that anyway!

City under seige
And speaking of terrorists, Tauranga has been under siege this week from protesters who some call terrorists. Greenpeace's occupation of a ship, which they attempted to stop entering the Port of Tauranga, is either a brave stand against deforestation; or foolhardy, time-wasting civil disruption.
SunLive.co.nz had the exclusive coverage as the events unfolded off the coast, and back in port as gallant police and fire crews risked their own lives to cut the protesters cables, where they'd hung like fruit bats from the rigging all day. Check out the archived stories, photos and video from our boat on the scene.
Whatever your views on the palm kernel importation debate, there's no doubt the protest action was hugely disruptive to the Western Bay and has left many wondering why the people of this lovely city have effectively been targeted.
Imagine if those protester, police, fire crew, crane and engineering resources had been available for constructive use somewhere else.
Crikey, with that level of expert input, we could have had all the sea lettuce cleaned up in a day.
brian@thesun.co.nz