Right from the outset Labour’s approach to the Covid pandemic has been laboured and divisive. Jacinda Ardern has adopted the philosophy of divide and rule, black against white, the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, area against area. I can only assume the rationale is that it’s better to have people fighting against each other than fighting the government. To a degree, it’s working. The problem is it’s working to the detriment of her make-believe team of five million and we are all paying the price. A price that will go close to bankrupting the country.
This government is naive in the extreme. They have a mindset that is totally beholden to their ideology. Add Covid to the mix and you have something akin to the children’s story concerning King Alfred and the cakes. Told to watch the cakes baking by the fire King Alfred was distracted by bigger things and let the cakes burn. Let’s assume the cakes are the economy and Covid is the distraction. The ideology of this government is totally at odds with what is needed to lift us out of the situation we find ourselves in.
Marxist ideology, proven to be an abject failure in good times, is certainly not the panacea in bad times. It is at these times that we should be thankful we live in a country that upholds the principles of capitalism. It is the only pathway out of the economic mess this government has got the country in. Socialism is all about control. If you think about what the Government has implemented so far, just about all of it is centred around control. Three Waters is a good example.
Ardern portrays all the attributes of a control freak. It is obvious at every television stand up. She comes across as someone who has an inflated sense of her own importance, of having a deep need for attention and admiration.
Let’s take a look at what Grant Robertson (King Alfred) has done with the economy (his cakes). Like the cakes, Robertson is burning a hole in the economy. Instituting his brand of socialist economic ideology simply won’t work. It might give him some breathing space, which he’s currently using to say how well the economy is doing, but it will prove to be disastrous in the longer term. Like King Alfred’s fire eventually running out of oxygen, Robertson’s economy will eventually do the same in the form of running out of other people’s money to borrow.
This is the problem with this government. I don’t know what problem solving discussions they have around the cabinet table but if what they release into the public domain is anything to go by, anything resembling a level of intelligence is sorely lacking. With the tourism, hospitality and retail sectors shut in Auckland, the country’s domestic economy is far from healthy. Handing out money to gangs, Maori and people on welfare is not the answer. Nor is buying off the media. Where is the plan and the pathway out?
That’s what we were hoping for last Friday, and all we got was a set of traffic lights. Traffic lights, as we know them, are devices to ensure a smooth flow of traffic and prevent accidents. The government ones appear designed to do just the opposite. They are complex, with their accompanying rules and regulations, and invite confusion and division amongst the population. Currently, people who are vaccinated can’t have a green light while the unvaccinated keep us stuck on red.
The unvaccinated should in no way be held to blame. We live (just) in a democracy. It is the right of everyone to decide whether or not to get the vaccine. Forcing people to have it, in my view, contravenes the Bill of Rights – at least until this government removes that from the statute books.
As Dave Dobbyn said, Covid is not about us and them. If it is, the common flu should be also. If the hopelessly run-down hospital system can’t cope with Covid how the hell does it cope with 500 flu deaths a year and hundreds of hospitalisations? How did it cope when it was swamped with the virus we had when hundreds of children were hospitalised?
I ask the government to get out of the trance they have been in since last year and do something positive. It’s a futile question, of course, because this lot rather resemble bedbugs, those insects that come and feed on our blood (this government does it in the form of taxes), and bedbugs are not known for their mental capabilities. I say get rid of the idiotic health academics and modellers and for once, do what you were elected to do and GOVERN. Make some decisions off your own bat, look like you’re in charge. Again, I realise I’m asking the impossible.
Auckland needs a plan and the country needs a plan. We need to stop the endless borrowing which will only lead to more financial waste. We need to join the rest of the world and open up.
I think we are being conned by these so-called experts because Covid at the end of the day is a virus that so far has killed fewer than 30 people. Eight died on the roads in three days over Labour Weekend, for goodness sake. As far as I can see we are a long way off the annual flu numbers in deaths and hospitalisations. As with the flu, the large majority will recover.
This country is now reaching a tipping point. The nonsense cannot go on. The anger is now palpable. There seems to be no recognition from anyone that new strains are still appearing and the vaccine has a short life when it comes to effectiveness. What then? At the very least we need the booster jab. Where is it? When it finally arrives we can’t go through the 90% rigmarole again. The government needs to get real about Covid and face some unpalatable facts. Numbers in the UK are rising again for precisely these reasons, vaccines wearing off and new strains appearing.
The only long term answer is to have in place a means whereby we can live with Covid and get on with our lives. Right now this country and its people are being bankrupted by a government that is bankrupt of ideas itself bar the old failed socialist and Marxist dogma. This will not get us out of the predicament we are in. It will only exacerbate the situation.
Thursday’s announcements by Chris Hipkins re MIQ etc were nothing more than another raft of rules and regulations. Is anyone else hearing Robert David Muldoon chortling from his grave?
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