Watching the notorious cringe-making clip of David Cunliffe's stump speech I felt sorry for him. There are so many rituals one must observe to be safe from media slaughter as a politician. One must ooze caring. Unctuous cliches help. There is so much pretense that over time politicians lose their internal sensitivity to humbug. The internal compass that tells you when you've crossed the line loses calibration.

David's bro-speak is on that continuum, just a little further along from Helen Clark's special Labour party meeting whining kiwi accent, that she never had in State Dinner speeches with foreigners, for example.

I could not do most of that.  The ritual pieties of politics stuck in my throat. I respect words. I despise myself when I find myself using them carelessly, even if they are just empty social exahanges, like "hows it going?" when I have little desire to know.

Even as a politician I was never able to use  pieties – the florid ums and ahs of convention – like "drive safely" or "have a good day" or "how's your day been" or  "god willing" or "thank God". I'd have made a poor Muslim if "Allah be praised" had to be on the tape.

And so I could never bring myself to to iinvoke the sanctified "kiwi mums and dads" or "kiwi families" or "kiwi battlers" or "mum and dad investors" or any of the other horrible cliched terms that make politicians so easy to parody.