Probably it’s all the conspiracy-thriller excitement of bungling spooks at the GCSB, and a general paranoic sleeplessness on my part, but I’m getting worried.

Under no circumstances is the prime minister to be allowed to travel to Los Angeles this week with the title deed to the country in his luggage.

For it wasn’t that long ago – in May, indeed, that John Key chirped:

If you were really going to go out and buy a country, why wouldn’t you want to buy New Zealand?

And now it looks like the trader is going to market, if this headline, ahead of his Hollywood trip, from the 3 News website, is to be believed:

At the very least, we demand a treaty.