Sir Bob Jones
nopunchespulled.com
Surely it’s way long overdue for legislation to prescribe the role of local government. Currently, it’s seemingly carte blanche as reflected by a recent extraordinary action by the Wellington City Council. Specifically, it (or some of its Councillors) decided to become involved in international politics.
They want the Council to formally recognise the state of Palestine, to light up the Town Hall in the colours of Palestine on its anniversary day and set up a bullshit sister city relationship with the Palestinian capital, all of this contrary to the very strong and wise advice from the Council’s staff to desist.
All of this illustrates the greatest problem of democracy, namely participation is left to totally non-descript folk, capable people being fully engaged in commerce and the professions etc. There are some exceptions, reflected by candidates who constantly get re-elected, but the vast majority come from obscurity and duly return there.
Since Kerry Prendergast’s mayoralty a dozen years back, the capital has had four totally no-hoper one term mayors, each worse than their predecessor.
The current incumbent, Tory Whanau is certainly history. I’d heard lots of negative stories about her arrogance, but she certainly committed political suicide with her recent drunken episode in a restaurant, committing the ultimate sin of “Do you know who I am?” to a waiter and walking out without paying.
This is a global problem, never better illustrated by the world’s largest economy offering Biden and Trump as leadership options. And so, sadly the lights are going out everywhere with democracies and their replacement by authoritarian governments to varying degrees.
Enoch Powell certainly got it right with his famous “All political careers ultimately end in failure” adage.
In the interim, we can hopefully look forward to more pronouncements from Tory such as ordering an immediate cease-fire in the Ukraine. She’s reminiscent of the wonderful editorial in early 1914 by a tiny West Coast newspaper, in which it issued a final warning to the Kaiser. Sadly, he chose to ignore it.
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