Belated #3 of dalai lama letter to the editor (as published by ODT)

I suppose one oughta be ever thankful to be printed by our esteemed daily here in the Scottish capital of the Southern Hemisphere, whether - as ever - (fairly) abridged or not...but anyhow, here's what was printed:

I wasn't always a big fan of former mayor Sukhi Turner, but have to say she was "on the money", I mean morally, when it came to meeting the Dalai Lama - unlike the current mayor. Sure, the Dalai Lama may well be "the representative of a minority religious 'faith' ", but as another ex-politician has put it well: "some things matter more than money" - like the reason we recently commemorated our "men in khaki" giving their lives sacrificially overseas, for 'freedom', religious liberty and all that sort of thing.

So why does what the ODT published irk, peeve, brass me off (not to put to fine a point on it)? Aside from my own self-disgust, quite apart from wholly missing my own self-appointed deadline to publish this 3rd blogpost upon said subject, but moreover of (seemingly semi-permanently) misplacing my original scribbled draft of this blogposting - so what I now write is not as I would have wished:

They essentially defanged it of all its oomph. Leaving aside the (more than) odd bit of tweeking here, there and everywhere, replacing nouns like 'morality' for adjectives such as 'morally', which admittedly offends pedants like me who no doubt inwardly pride ourselves upon proper English grammar and sense - and the frequent omission of various (even entire strings of sense-giving) words for space -  I'd have preferred they left in the initial punchy 'but at least she (i.e. Sukhi Turner) has balls, if you'll excuse my French', as it well conveys the strength of my sentiment. But even more meaningful, and well concluding the thrust of my piece, were the following words:

But returning to reality and the 'realpolitik' of today's 'leaders' in society, I suppose bowing and scraping and curtseying and kowtowing will be next on our 'progressive' Mayor's agenda?

But hey, the press (and their sub-editors) always know best and what's right in each and every - literary - situation, don't they? And seeing as my brother said my piece showed I was now 'one of the movers and shakers in Dunedin' in that my letter was published alongside a couple of others contemporaneous with a public and civic leader response to Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull's much-criticized approach to the Dalai lama that led to the mayor's hasty backtracking and apologizing, I probably have reason to be thankful. But don't feel so, principally as the essence of what I felt I meant to say was thus distorted and rearranged to suit the paper's preferences. So tomorrow - I promise - I'll print the essence of what I was wanting to convey, and show how that essentially differs, and substantially, from what other mayoral critics evidently took out of the situation and Mayor Cull's aboutface upon the whole scenario.

Clear as the proverbial mud and grime? Now even I'm confused! But hopefully tomorrow all will be duly cleared up and clarified, made plain and pertinent - and moreover, to the point. Enough - for now.