Curiously enough, flabbergastation describes the state in which I've found myself over the last week or two, a state in which I feel as though I must see both sides (or more), of every current argument. It's difficult to be appropriately opinionated when your perspective is stereoscopic.

So when I set out to write about New Zealanders' joy and elation over the America's Cup win, (which I heard on the radio while snivelling with a cold), I'm held back by other concerns as to why we're getting so excited.

We have more people turn out to shout and throw bits of shredded paper than ever appeared at the original VE celebrations we've just been remembering, yet the "victory" we're celebrating isn't anywhere near as historic. I have everybody telling me that it's going to set NZ on its feet financially, yet I suspect the trickle-down effect we'll see here will be about equal to the sweat trickling off Russell Coutt's nose as he sits in a becalmed Black Magic on a windless day.

So I don't know how to try and de-flabbergast myself on that subject. Even worse is the way my mind has been swayed by how/whether/when we settle the issues raised by the Treaty of Waitangi.

I mean, I thought I had it all sussed. I'd finally got hold of the fact that we white New Zealanders are SOOOHH guilty of everything that we should just admit defeat and start leaping into the sea like a pack of lunatic lemmings. I understood that we had no culture, no history, no understanding, no sensitivity, no mana - and hardly any womana - to speak of. I was prepared to believe all the articles I read that told me I was the one having to do the apologising and repenting.

And then, blow me down, along comes this fellow, Stuart C Scott, who at the age of 74 is prepared to put his money where his mouth is, pay to publish his own non-pc book, The Travesty of Waitangi, and say everybody's got it wrong. The Maori have been conning us, he says, and we shouldn't pay them another penny.

That's another subject I no longer know how to de-flabbergast myself on.

Nor on this. The police finally decide to target persistent drink-driving offenders by a surveillance operation which may stop these drivers going out and slaughtering innocent victims. I think to myself, now that's good.

And then I read that the civil liberties people disagree. "I would be opposed in principle to any method of policing which targets individuals not on the basis of what they're doing at the time but on what they've done in the past or might do in the future," says Dr Rodney Harrison.

Well, yes, we must, (mustn't we?), protect crims as much as non-crims - I think...I mean I wouldn't put any security systems round my house, no sir! I mean if one driver has 24 convictions, (and killed someone through his drunken driving), I wouldn't want to stand in the way of his individual rights - would I?

And lastly, most flabbergastating of all, thousands of innocent NZ users of the Internet have the spectre of censorship hanging over them. These people, whom MP Trevor Rogers calls, "nerds and wallies and some people who wanna stick their faces in custard," are just the sort to find out how to blow up schools, or build bombs, or spend their days looking at trite pornographic pictures and reading uninspiring sexual graffiti. None of them can be trusted, you know!

On the other hand, do I want innocent children being propositioned by perverts and paedophiles?

Flabbergastation all the way.....