Ben Hana, aka Blanket Man, and the inaug­ur­al Wel­ling­tonista Wel­ling­to­ni­an of the Year, has been ordered to stay out of bus lanes, after com­plaints that he was sit­ting in the middle of Dix­on St, for­cing buses to steer around him.

Blanket Man remains adam­ant he will not obey the court order, claim­ing that the bus lanes and adjoin­ing gut­ters (where he also spends a fair amount of time) are part of Aotearoa, and that, to quote him: “I rep­res­ent the whanau of Aotearoa”.

This case fol­lows anoth­er brush with the law in Septem­ber, when Ben was cited for drink-driv­ing. His defense that time was equally invent­ive, this time claim­ing that the vehicle he was driv­ing was not a car but a “waka”, and thus he was not bound by nor­mal road rules. Not sur­pris­ingly he lost the case, but not the war, as his pun­ish­ment of com­munity ser­vice was unable to be enforced, as he had no suit­able foot­wear to com­plete the work in.

[hat-tip: some­where along the way…]