Who would ever have thought it. Luigi Peters is now like Casper the Friendly Ghost? Although to many he's a bit like a bad smell. Certainly for National given the first word he uttered in his triumphant return to Parliament's bear pit was "Boo."

He's risen from the constituent ashes after losing his Tauranga seat ten years ago. He's back in his new found home in Northland and is already making life difficult for the Tories.

It's all over the pork barrel they rolled out during their desperate attempt to keep the seat that they'd comfortably claimed as their own for decades, the ten single lane bridges they promised to cater for two way traffic.

One of the bridges, probably with a name than doesn't really fit the bill, is going to present them with some difficulty to widen. Named the Darby and Joan bridge, which denotes a happily married couple, content to live the quiet life of mutual devotion, may have to face divorce.

The name depicts two 500 year old Kauri trees as the devoted couple that sit beside each other, snuggling up to the bridge. Their new local MP is upset at the prospect that one will have to be cut down if the bridge is widened.

The bridge was only built 20 years ago and even won an environmental award for how sensitive the engineers were to Darby and Joan. Luigi says National was so focused on vote buying they obviously failed check the feasibility of widening the bridge. On the face of it, he has a point.

Luigi sought and got an assurance from the Prime Minister that the two protected trees won't be cut down to make way for the bigger bridge.

If they do take the chainsaws to the trees it's somehow hard to envisage Luigi's double breasted pinstripe scaling the branches in protest though.

And as for Teflon John Key, well he'd probably never heard of the Darby and Joan bridge before it was bought to his attention. And anyway the promise to build the bridges spans a six year period so it can be put on the back burner until he's no longer in the top job.

Given his confusion this week over whether our troops were training in Australia in preparation for deployment to Iraq, he's no doubt finding it all a bit tiresome anyway.

Teflon John now says he confused the direct question about Australia, with Iraq when wrongly denying they were offshore. But then to most of us Australia and Iraq are as distinct as Darby and Joan!