Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

After a record wet spring, it would be great to see some sunny days stretching in front of us. It seems to have been a particularly harsh winter, or is it all in our minds?

I asked Doctor Stephen Wilce if it's normal for everyone to be a little down in the dumps with all the wet weather. Dr Wilce, a world authority on this and many other things, assured me that it is merely Seasonal Affective Disorder and that all we need is a good laugh and decent dose of vitamin D. The vitamin we should get in the next fine weekend. (Due in 2016) For a good laugh, he handed me a copy of his latest CV.
You see, Dr Wilce who was the first man to bicycle to Mars, explained that the Martians have similar issues on their planet in the cooler season. He knows this, because he coached the Combined Galaxy Synchronised Swim team.
He's a very clever man. He also was the first scientist in the world to split the bits of the atom that were left over from the last guy who split the atom. In his spare time he trains the little men who turn on the lights in refrigerators.
He should turn his hand to writing novels, because he's very, very good at stringing together a believable plot.
Mind you, his latest role, advising our defence forces, would need quite a bit of rampant imagination, because most people struggle trying to imagine that our under-resourced defence force exists at all.
'Was that a Skyhawk overhead, or a figment of my imagination?”

Island holidays
Another way of cheering us up in the midst of this atrocious weather is to take a trip to a sunny Pacific Island. ACT MP David Garrett can help. He recommends that for added excitement, it's best to hold the phoney passport of a dead baby and take a trip to Tonga to hang out with the swinging locals.

A good night?
Meanwhile, if you've ever driven south along the Waikareao expressway and noticed a lot of stuff along the road verge – such as mattresses and bedding, like me you've probably wondered how so many people could lose their load while shifting house.
How could so many mattresses end up on the roadside? Do people not know how to tie knots on their trailer ropes?
Well wonder no more, good travellers. Because a reliable source informs me that the bedding, clothes, furniture and assorted items in fact do not come from traffic.
Apparently this stuff comes from homeless lags who live in the shrubbery along the expressway. They are regularly given bedding and clothes from well-meaning folk such as the nearby Salvation Army. The homeless live rough in the bush on these donated mattresses, until it rains. When the bedding and their clothes are wet, they simply abandon them, trot back to the Sallies or wherever and score a heap more dry, free stuff.
Their discarded bedding and clothing then becomes an issue for the mowing contractors, who throw it over the fence for collection. It sits on the roadside as a source of bewilderment and potential safety hazard for days sometimes, till the rubbish truck drives along the motorway to pick it up.
Which is all fine and dandy, except for a three niggling points.
A. It makes our otherwise tidy city, which most of us strive to keep nice, look a tad shabby.
B. The rest of us are paying for the collection of this material which is unnecessarily going to waste.
C. Genuine caring people who have donated bedding, clothing, appliances and expect it will be re-used in a good home, will be shocked to learn it is not being appreciated but treated as a throw-away resource for scumbags who are already sucking the taxpayer dry via a benefit to blow on booze - and can't be bothered living properly.
We live in (and pay for) a welfare state that provides more than sufficient benefits and other support so that no-one has an excuse to live on the street. It's time this scourge on the city was cleaned up. A simple cut back of the accommodation allowance for those who don't actually pay for it would be a good start. And when benefits are clearly being abused for the purpose of binge drinking, not food or living expenses, we should stop paying.

Sign of the times
The local body elections start this week, in case you hadn't noticed. The barrage of obnoxious advertising signs assaulting the eyeballs around town provides a bit of a clue.
So far the election is far from extra-ordinary, in that it is quite ordinary.
No real issues and no particularly outstanding characters.
One glimmer of colour, Jill Parry, has dropped out under mysterious circumstances, and the only wild card is Hori BOP who really, after the last election, has done his dash.
The Hori Tunnels campaign was always going to be a hard act to follow.
So really it's now down to the same old (yawn) possibilities, more like 'Battle of the Bland” than anything to inspire a voting frenzy, especially among the younger, less motivated members of society.
If you want to know more about who to vote for, I suggest looking a little deeper than relying on the inane roadside hoardings.
Check out the information in this edition of the Sun and on Sunlive.co.nz