By: Larry Williams | Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:55 PM

TVNZ7

A petition to save TVNZ7 has been presented to Parliament today as the channel gets set to close down at the weekend.

There will be a funeral march in Auckland on Saturday.

A funeral march - oh how very juvenile.

I have no issue with TVNZ7, they have some quite good programmes even if few watch them, but the closing of TVNZ7 has been on the agenda for a very long time.

Labour only gave it funding for a limited time. National have never had any intention of throwing more money at it.

It was never going to work. TVNZ operating as a commercial and public broadcaster was always impossible.

The viewing numbers put up by the "save TVNZ7 crowd" are debatable. They are cumulative figures. They are inflated. They do not give you a picture of actual eyes watching individual programmes. The number of viewers of individual programmes is low.

The future for these programmes is on other mainstream channels.

If NZ on Air can fund quite ridiculous reality programmes then I'm sure they can fund public broadcasting programmes on a channel where they will actually be watched.

Boat People

Another boat carrying asylum seekers is heading for Australia and is reportedly in trouble.

For the Australians this is a mess. It won't stop until they again put deterrents in place.

Since the Howard's Nauru solution was stopped there has been a surge in boat people attempting to get to Australia.

People smugglers won't have clients if they are turned away from Australia and processed elsewhere.

Our Government is looking to amend the Immigration Act to deter asylum seekers and there are some who are cautioning this. They appear to want to grant unlimited access to asylum seekers. They claim it’s about human rights. They are deluded.

90 Day Law

Four out of five companies which used a controversial 90-day trial for new workers retained the staff member once the period was over, a study has found.

A Department of Labour survey found that 60 percent of employers had used the trial system, and 40 percent would not have hired a new person without it.

The claims that the 90 day trial period would mean employees being sacked just before the trial period expired have not eventuated.

The horror stories were being claimed by the unions and their close affiliate the Labour Party. There was never any substance to the claims. It was wildly inaccurate. It was anti-business.

Employers don't employ people to fire them.

It was always nonsense.

What the law has done is to encourage employers to hire staff - so much for the knockers.

Tennis Grunt-o-Meter

Tennis umpires could be equipped with grunt-o-meters so that they can dock points from female players who distract opponents with loud shrieks, according to the Women's Tennis Association.

The plan to drive out the grunting associated with players such as Maria Sharapova are in their infancy but the association has said that off-putting wails emanating from the court can no longer be tolerated.

They want to get excessive grunting out of the game. This is a good thing, and they can start with Sharapova.

She has been recorded at 105 decibels – which is as loud as standing by a chainsaw.

Clearly the grunting has got out of control and become a turnoff for fans.

It’s excessive and there's no need for it.