National's decision - very much John Key's decision - to bite the bullet and set a 2020 start for building the $2.9 billion Auckland City Rail Link is a political masterstroke.
They are a bunch of ''bozos''; Winston Peters' attacks on Chinese tourists are ''madness''; and Labour's promotion of a capital gains tax is a ''dog'' of a policy.
What were they thinking?
As a gesture to the allergic and the asthmatic - a gesture which was inevitably interpreted by opponents as yet another tribute to the Gods of Political Correctness - last weekend's Greens' conference was officially ''fragrance-free''.
It was bad news enough for Labour this week that two major opinion polls registered morale-sapping widening of the gulf in the party's support compared with National's rating - a gap which had begun to close in previous months.
You do not have to burrow too deeply into the annual government accounts to uncover the untold story of last week's Budget.
One of the reasons why governments slowly decay and die is that the longer they are in office the more prone they become to ugly pragmatism and compromise of principle.
Does anyone outside the Wellington beltway really give a toss about Aaron Gilmore, a parliamentary nobody who beyond fulfilling his duties as backbench lobby fodder is an utter and complete irrelevance when it comes to matters of real political import?
In the week or so since it revealed its hugely controversial plan to slash power prices, Labour has bared its teeth in venomous fashion at anyone questioning the wisdom of breaking up the wholesale electricity market just as it is showing signs of functioning as intended.
The latest annual report of the Inspector-general of Intelligence and Security is not going to weigh down the briefcase of your average pie-eating, Penthouse-consuming spook.
For the past two weeks John Key has been under the cosh from National's opponents to a degree not witnessed previously during his four year-plus stint as prime minister.
Like every good public servant inculcated with the bureaucracy's ethos of caution and restraint, Iain Rennie chooses his words very, very carefully.
Why has National remained so incredibly popular for so long despite suffering continuing calamities, embarrassments and unwanted distractions, many of them self-inflicted?
When it comes to dealing with Labour's enemies - or as he would prefer to say - dealing to them, Clayton Cosgrove displays all the sympathy and mercy of a knuckleduster-carrying Rottweiler.
What on earth does the management at Mighty River Power think it was doing, with its blanket refusal to answer questions posed by the very parliamentary committee to which those running the power generator are supposedly accountable?
The public may well question the value of the $1 million-plus, taxpayer-funded advertising campaign to drum up interest in buying shares in Mighty River Power, writes John Armstrong.
Although it takes some swallowing, the prime minister's insistence there was no plan B had the Supreme Court blocked the part-sale of Mighty River Power has to be taken at face value.
Mr Fix-it has become Mr Fudge-it. It was National's good fortune this week that the Minister of Economic Development also happens to be National's unofficial Minister of Damage Control.
The ratings for TVNZ's Seven Sharp may be going through the floor with (older) viewers finding little sustenance in the show's anaemic diet which mixes social media-heavy with current affairs lite.
''Moments away; a world apart.'' So coos the sugar-encrusted but hollow-sounding real estate-speak intent on seducing home buyers and hard-headed investors into succumbing to the charms of life at Hobsonville Point.
