It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry

I have just come back from the supermarket, in a South Island town that never had a single case of COVID the first time around, let alone now. This is my first trip since the second phase of the new normal started on Wednesday. There was no queuing outside. There were no Nazis in the entrance. And there was no flour. The place had completely sold out of flour.

What is it about flour? People tell me that it is a primeval reaction generated by fear. But if flour is the answer, what exactly is the question? Did cavemen spot a mastodon and immediately start baking bread? Margaret Thatcher said Britain was a nation of shopkeepers; New Zealand is obviously a nation of surreptitious bakers.

You must forgive me for finding aspects of this whole thing ridiculous, but I just can’t help it. It started on Wednesday night when watching the TV1 news. This was Paul Hobbes, reporting on the virus.

I watched as the mask bobbed up and down as he spoke. It was ridiculous. He looked like a duck. It is an image I cannot now unsee. That image will appear on the next TV Bloopers Show sometime soon.

Thursday was an improvement, I suppose, if you could call it that…

...except, of course for the fact that he is addressing a camera and is almost certainly a good 2 metres away from the nearest person. Is all this virtue signalling really necessary?

The journalists who are actually trying to keep the government honest are having a field day. Back in June, we found out that people in quarantine were not being tested for the disease. Jacinda’s answer was to look tough and send the army in. When Mike Hosking asked Ashley Bloomfield yesterday why those with the virus were not being “rounded up” and put into quarantine, Bloomfield’s rather smug reply was that, in this country, we do not round up people, “we round up sheep”. We all knew what Mike Hosking meant, but clearly so did Ashley Bloomfield, as he announced later that day that all confirmed cases would now be taken into quarantine after all. I used to like Ashley Bloomfield, but he has obviously spent too much time around politicians recently. Now he is supercilious and dismissive, just like most of them.

Now it turns out that border workers are not being tested. Never were. Those who actually work with people who have the virus have not been tested throughout. Hosking held Chris Hipkins’ feet to the fire over this. Yes, they were being tested now, but not before. Why not? Well, because some of them were reluctant to undergo a test. Really? Those most at risk of causing community spread of the virus were allowed to refuse the test? Of course, the truth is that nobody had thought of it. Just like forcing people with the disease into quarantine, nobody had thought to test those working with COVID sufferers.

To the government’s further embarrassment, RNZ found someone who works at the border who was prepared to tell them (anonymously, of course) that border workers had been asking to be tested for some time; that there was no PPE, no testing regime… nothing. They could all be taking COVID home to the family every night, and no one would ever know.

If you feel that this is a government that is constantly scrambling to get things right, then you are not far from the truth. But what I can’t understand is why exactly things that are obvious to most of us, including Mike Hosking, never seem to occur to this government? No one asked whether or not those who work at the border are being tested regularly. We assume these things are happening, because obviously they should… but it turns out, they aren’t. Over and over again, it turns out they aren’t.

Yesterday there was confusion over whether or not there was a case at Pakuranga College. Bloomfield announced on Friday that there was a confirmed case at the college but it turns out that there is not.

Just imagine the panic and pandemonium caused by that announcement, which they can’t even get right. What a bunch of hapless fools they are. As I said, Ashley Bloomfield has been around these clowns too long. He is as superior and inaccurate as the rest of them now.

Mike Hosking says this government couldn’t organise “a piss-up in a brewery”. But as we already knew that, how did we seriously expect them to keep us safe from the pandemic? Here they are again, scrambling around like Keystone cops, getting caught with their pants down time after time. If it wasn’t so potentially serious, it would be funny. Actually, it is funny, even though it is also extremely serious.

But we all know the answer. The answer is flour. The answer to life, the universe and everything, is flour. Don’t ask me why it is… it just is.

If you were wondering about the reference to the Bob Dylan song in the title, the song tells us that life for the most part is truly sad and not much about it creates joy. If the current situation doesn’t bear that out, then nothing does. It takes a lot to laugh… but boy, there are some stupid things going on at the moment. And let’s face it… if you didn’t laugh at what is going on, you would definitely cry.

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