Ex-journo
The oafish behaviour of Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard in his treatment of protesters at parliamentary grounds should not be a surprise.
Turning on sprinklers and booming out crass music are just two of the latest examples in his long history of being a pompous ass.
Before being appointed Speaker of the House, because of his boorish behaviour, he had been booted out of Parliament more times than anyone else in the entire history of parliament stretching back to the 19th century.
Such is the mediocrity of our political leaders, the kid expelled from school ended up becoming the Principal!
The photo of him looking down on the protesters, “plebs,” from the safety of the parliamentary fortress with his cohorts of uniformed flunkies nearby, conjured images of corrupt, overfed politicians from ancient Rome.
“Don’t engage, treat them with contempt, marginalise them, say they are not representative of the country, call them the rabble that they are, alienate the country against them” – such is Mallard’s approach and that of the wretched Ardern government.
What would have happened last week if Ardern, a politician still bizarrely feted overseas, showed she was a leader with a spine possessing a fissure of integrity, by speaking to the protesters?
The situation would have been heated, but she would have been listened to. People might even have commented that she had “guts.” There could even have been some respect shown.
And as a master of “spin” she could have pulled it off, perhaps stating how she felt for them and how hard the mandates were, but how they had to be done for “the team of five million,” and how they would eventually be lifted,” blah blah.
But she didn’t.
Like the feeble National Party leader Luxon, ACT’s Seymour, the Greens’ co-leaders (where have they gone? Are they preparing to bombard us with more climate change catastrophic propaganda?), she cowered, knees knocking, within the walls of the Beehive.
Winston Peters, no longer in parliament, has seized the chance to make a political comeback by making noises sympathetic to the protesters, but they are opportunistic and have come too late to have the ring of being genuine.
Had Ardern had the guts to speak, to engage, this protest would probably be over.
But after more than a week the protesters are still there, a testament to her and her fellow incompetents who are running this country into the ground.
What can ordinary New Zealanders take from all this?
Increased contempt for politicians and less respect for the police and medical profession.
Televised images of police pulling people out of the crowd, pushing them to the ground, handcuffing them and leading them away will linger.
Many New Zealanders are perplexed and cannot understand why people are so anti vaccines and mandates.
Being unvaccinated, for example, means this writer got sacked, I cannot get a haircut, go to the library, attend a sports meeting, go to a restaurant, a bar, a coffee shop, or to church on Sunday for a pandemic that over two years has cost New Zealand around 50 lives of whom probably most had other underlying health issues.
Why are the protesters angry?
Because the government scared the daylights out of them with their patently ridiculous modelling predicting thousands of deaths, the government’s increasingly ludicrous claim that the vaccine would keep everyone safe (though it will take boosters, perhaps for years according to some of the quacks), the government’s clampdown and rubbishing of alternative treatments (ivermectin, see later) and most importantly the government’s trampling underfoot basic human rights.
Vital legislation and laws to protect what we call a civilised democracy have proven utterly pointless. The New Zealand Bill of Rights is meaningless, the Nuremberg code is treated as though it is something belonging to “ancient times,” and irrelevant.
The woeful handling of the pandemic by the media here and globally has fuelled contempt for our politicians and “establishment.”
Drinking from the government’s trough, propped up financially by taxpayers’ dollars, they are not going to bite the hand that feeds them.
Reports published in mainstream media on the protest give the impression of immature reporters skirting the protesters, treating these people as “them,” oddballs who won’t face the “real” facts. The media, like many in the medical profession, have become an arm of the government ignoring and repressing information and shovelling out sickening propaganda.
The latest example of repression came in Christchurch last Saturday. Another anti-vaccine march was held from Cranmer Square to the central city. One had been held from the square to Merivale two weeks before with probably 3000 to 4000 in it. This protest went unreported in the city’s main newspaper The Press.
Last weekend’s protest had 5000 in it. Again, I have been told, The Press considered it a non-event and did not report it.
Other examples of the media’s propagandising has been the downplaying of vaccine risks and condemnation of ivermectin as a possible added treatment chirping to the same song sheet as “Saint” Ashley Bloomfield saying it is used to treat horses etc.
Interestingly Oxford University in England has been conducting a study on ivermectin as a home-use remedy (strangely now on hold due to inconsistency of supply even though globally ivermectin is easily available.)
The great problem is that ivermectin is off-patent and big Pharma cannot make money from it. People can buy ivermectin for only a few cents per tablet. But not in New Zealand.
Our media and Bloomfield said ivermectin is unsafe and so it is unavailable in New Zealand.
In his study, the head of the study at Oxford University Professor Chris Butler stated ivermectin “has been in wide use for many other infectious conditions, so it’s a well known medicine with a good safety record and because of the early promising results in some countries it is already being widely used to treat Covid-19 in several countries.”
The story of ivermectin and its criminal repression in New Zealand and elsewhere will be one of the big stories that will come out of Covid-19 when it finally passes.
But there will be many other stories that will emerge revealing just how safe or unsafe the vaccines are and also showing how we have been duped and misled by politicians, like the oafish Mallard, the “establishment” and Big Pharma.
