For all of you who were thinking of temporarily emigrating to New Zealand this winter to escape the daily 20-hour blackouts, let me sound the all clear. No need to press the panic button, folks, get on with whatever you were doing. The reason is that our PhD prime minister has met the energy czars and come up with a cunning plan which is top secret and is only published here if you promise not to tell anyone. It is a 10-point strategy that will eliminate load-shedding completely for the unforeseeable future:

1. The prime minister will get the fratricidal organisations belonging to his kranti-curry party to go on indefinite nationwide strike and bring all the country's industries to a grinding halt after Dasain. This will cut peak hour electricity demand by half.
2. The grubberment will declare four-day weekends this winter.
3. Nepal's population will be reduced by 3 million in the coming fiscal year by giving people free passports and paying for one-way tickets to the Gulf.
4. Cable and satellite channels will be banned with immediate effect so people will stop watching tv thereby eliminating a major source of power consumption.
5. Crack down on hookers. Not rounding up street walkers, but dismantling the wires hooked to transmission lines that are responsible for one third of the power loss in this country. (This, for once, is a deadly serious suggestion.)
6. There are 5,000 treadmills in Nepal, installing dynamos in all of them will turn gyms into generators and add another 10 megawatts to the grid.
7. About mid-January ask every loyal citizen of this country to go take a leak in the Kulekhani Reservoir in order to augment its generation capacity.
8. Ask the Japanese to donate us one of their decommissioned nuclear power plants.
9. Put Nepal Airlines' two 757s out of their misery and permanently ground them to rig up their four jet engines as powerplants to generate 20 megawatts.
10. Use hot air emitted during meetings of top leaders to generate steam to power turbines as a source of limitless geo-thermal energy.

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PKD fooled UNMIN into thinking he had 35,000 gorillas. Six years later, there are only 1,400 who have passed their written exams to get into the army. We don't yet know how many will flunk their physicals. Anyway, whole timers who were deemed not to be real fighters trooped into the National Human Rights Commission the other day to complain that their fundamental human rights had been violated by categorising them as 'unqualified' and they demanded compensation. Let me get this straight: people who pulverised the shin bones of class enemies by crushing them with rocks, or chopped off the hands of teachers suddenly want their human rights protected?

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If BRB is so squeaky clean as everyone is led to believe then how come his prot�g�s Bal Krishna Dhungel and Sujit BK who have been accused of murder are still walking free, and are going to be pardoned by none other than the attorney general (himself a prime ministerial appointee)? The truncated TRC hasn't even been passed and pardons for war crimes are already coming in thick and fast. Then there is the mysterious case of Shri Jha. Remember him? He is the chap who was caught in flagrante bribing the family in Birganj who was bumped off by Bhattarai's sidekick, Sri Prabhu Sah. Anyway, guess what, Jha is promoted to head the juicy property mapping office, this time probably not to give bribes but to take them.

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In other news: when he was prime minister, Awesum got his Miscommunication Minister Mahara-Jadhiraj to award crony communist Sue-Margie a lucrative telecom licence for next to nothing. And now he has sold off his shares to a Cyprus-registered holding company for a cool 70 million smackeroos or so, and of course everyone gets his cut. Why would anyone in their right mind bother to be corrupt and take piddly kickbacks in this country when they can rake in deals like that?

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Finally, it's unofficially official: the dead CA will not resurrect itself. For BRB this is a victory over PKD who wanted to revive the CA, and he expects haggling over interim govt to drag on beyond Dasain. The netas had already slipped into election gear with Upadro Kamred secretly dating Thakurji for several months now. The TMLP boss is thrilled with the idea, not just because he would get the big chunk of the Yadav vote, but also because he has finally found a way to shut the Gutch up. He knows Upadro is hoping to clean up his image, but politics is all about you-scratch-my-backside-I-scratch-yours. Never underestimate the crafty Gutch, who after he got whiff of Thakur and Upadro playing footsie, called up kinsman Lux-man and firmed up the Tharu vote. The Homely Minister also got back at BRB this week for sabotaging his candidate for top cop by leaking to the press that the PM's candidate is actually a war criminal.