The alarm bells always ring in broadcasting journalists’ heads, whenever a politician starts calling them by their first name. The studios and newsrooms of the BBC are littered with the metaphorical corpses of evasive and ingratiating ministers and MPs who tried to call the likes of Robin Day and latterly the fearsome interviewer Jeremy Paxman by their Christian names.

We have our own version of the feisty interviewer, in the form of Kathryn Ryan, who runs the eclectic and always entertaining Nine to Noon programme on Radio New Zealand National. Kathryn knows the wily ways of politicians, having observed them at close quarters in their hive for some years.

And this week, you could almost feel the hairs on Kathyrn’s neck rising in fury, as she repeatedly tried to extract straight answers from oleaginous Education Minister Chris Carter about school funding. Apparently, a number of school principals are getting fed up with financial shortfalls – particularly now that parents are really starting to feel the pinch and are less willing to fork out for school essentials.

Try as she might, Kathryn could not get the slippery Carter to answer a plain and simple question about school funding. All the while, he dodged and weaved, spouting on about his total commitment to education, Kathryn, and the billions spent by Labour, Kathryn, and how State funding for school operating costs had been constantly 1 percent ahead of the rate of inflation, Kathryn.

All the while, he kept saying “Kathryn, this” and “Kathryn, that” – almost to the point where you imagined poor Kathryn was perilously close to hand-bagging him.

An increase of one percent ahead of inflation, Kathryn, he argued, would make any housewife happy. This left most listeners entirely baffled, and wondering what would happen if their house maintenance budget increased by one percent ahead of inflation each year. The most likely result would be water pouring through the roof before very long.

Which leads us to our unhappy conclusion, because Carter then went on to stress that all the schools in his electorate, Kathryn, had undergone “major building projects” under Labour. We all know that under his predecessor, the infamous Mallard, many rural schools were unilaterally closed and now lie rotting – fit only for taggers and arsonists – and nothing has been done to either demolish them, re-use them for something else, or sell the land for affordable housing.

It is quite possible that what Carter calls “major building projects, Kathryn” is what the rest of us would call essential maintenance.

Meanwhile, back in the classroom, Teacher says that not enough government money is coming in to keep pace with increasing costs. Teacher is working on the front line, and Carter is hopelessly out of touch. We’ll put our hand up, and suggest that Teacher knows best, Carter deserves a detention and Kathryn has earned a gold star for her dogged patience when trying to handle Chris, who is a obviously a “special needs” student in the areas of literacy, numeracy and interpersonal communication skills development.

VG, and 10 out of 10, Kathryn.