Mr Gormsby We Need You!

I own the complete set of Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby”. I watch the episodes every time I start to lose faith in New Zealand.

That series restores my sense of humour and makes me smile at the idiocy that is overwhelming us. Those 7 periods with Mr Gormsby are an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come in 14 years and how far we have fallen.

The first time I met Mr Gormsby, I saw in him a teacher I once had, a man I once knew and a relative. He was someone we all knew, all shuddered at and all sat starstruck by, as he weaved his web of dark humour and drew us into his lair of satire.

Like the students at Tepapawai College, I shared the shock and horror of first meeting this extraordinary, controversial and rather, well, scary personality. I felt the pain and embarrassment of the teachers.

But within 5 minutes into the first episode, I was head over heels in love with his quirky and exaggerated New Zealand persona. I first watched it in Australia. I was visiting some friends and they sat, mouths open, blank-faced and aghast. I was suddenly back home and they? Well, they were dumbstruck.

After that first fateful encounter with Mr Gormsby, people were divided. Some were outraged. He had trodden on every taboo even back in the transitional year of 2005. Imagine, 14 years ago people were already horrified that Mr Gormsby was not only broadcast but allowed to be made? Others were laughing with great amusement.

Their mixed reactions amazed me. The same programme and two completely different reactions.

Today, I suspect Mr Gormsby would be hailed by sane New Zealanders when he said:

You won?t get any namby-pamby-human-relationship-mumbo-lezzie-jumbo-mummy-didn?t-breast-feed-me-until-I-was-seven nonsense from Gormsby.

You see, I suspect that most Kiwis still feel quite able to decide what is right for them and their children. I doubt that they feel the need for Nurse Nice Day Cindy to come in and censor their internet, their speech and their opinions because SHE feels that we are too timid, too naive or too ignorant to make up OUR OWN MINDS.

At the end of the day, Mr Gormsby needs to come back to school – really quickly.  After all, how often do you laugh anymore? How often do you smile?  Or are you afraid to, for fear that the Nurse might come and give you something to “help you sleep”.

For myself, I do not wish to live in a censored world where Mr Gormsby and his ilk are considered bad form; where taking the mickey is politically incorrect or where life is tranquilled down to a state whereby we do not live, but merely exist.

I suspect that our kids need him too.

What strikes me is that we do need rules, just like the kids at Tepapawai  High did. They admired and respected Gormsby for his rules. But his rules were NOT unjust, NOT unfair or unreasonable.

This is where Nurse Nice Day Cindy is getting it wrong.

She is imposing rules that demean us and treat us like infants. She is trying to subject us to her will without allowing us to have a FREE will.

Mr Gormsby encouraged his students to THINK. It seems to me that Nurse Cindy wants us to stop thinking and let her do our thinking for us. I personally find that insulting and dangerous.

Winston Peters has become a jelly of a man who, like the Principal of Tepapawai High, poor Roger, will do anything to save his job and to hell with the consequences to his self-respect and his reputation. He only ever wanted to get out of Tepapawai and move on to a cushy job at a better school, and, if it took sleeping with the infamous Ms Patterson, then, by gosh, he would do it.

New Zealand does not have a Mr Gormsby. We don’t have a Hohepa. We don’t have the School secretary the voice of common sense.

All we have right now are all the members of staff, the lost students, the ineffective leaders and a whole load of drones from the beehive who have never gathered any honey.

I suggest that we should be allowed to get on with doing what we have done for hundreds of years: making up our own minds and being allowed to THINK