Crikey. Stone the crows. Have you ever heard such bloody nonsense?
Yesterday’s editorial in Pravda The Sunday Star Times was a real doozy in the art of uninformed twaddle-peddling; yes, it was that bad.
Editor and ‘senior’ political writer Tracy Watkins, ostensibly supporting our governing cluster-clot’s new ban on tiny plastic thingies, tried to say something positive, which, after all, is the solemn and sworn duty of every common or garden variety journo pigeon. Possessing but one wing – a left – the press pigeon-flock’s job is to divert attention from the utter incompetence of their mistresses and masters at party HQ, a role Watkins fills spectacularly if ignominiously: squawking, flapping about hopelessly in her left-wing self-contained knowledge-orbit as she plummets from her ivory tower to planet earth with an inglorious thud.
Trying to defend the stupid and ridiculous, piffle-esque, plastic proposals, Watkins warns of moves by opposition to (quite rightly) profit by treating the move with the scorn it richly deserves. She attempts to head that particular move off at the pass with a rhetorical straw-man caricature implying only a meanie would poke the borax at such a fine gesture, drawing upon the ghost of arch-meanie Muldoon in a dramatically stupid piece of revisionist history so bent out of shape and unworthy that, were it a motor vehicle, Watkins’ piece would resemble a Trekka after being (quite justifiably) pushed from a high cliff.
Here it is, with the necessary health warning – do not attempt to digest Watkins’ words with food or drink simultaneously – you will choke, or lose it all over your screen:
These arguments are useful fodder for a hungry Opposition; they are sorts of debates that can make a government look preoccupied with trivia.
It’s what’s known as the ‘cats in dairies’ syndrome. Rob Muldoon’s campaign against Labour’s attempt to ban cats from dairies on health and safety grounds is widely credited with winning him the 1975 election.
And there you have it, have you stopped laughing yet? “Widely credited”? Good grief; Tracy. What a lot of tosh.
Labour was crushed by utter incompetence when facing distress. It was turmoil. Labour’s charismatic, likeable but incompetent champion died in office having achieved only a single, and highly unpopular, leadership moment in cancelling a widely-anticipated rugby contest. He was replaced by a fellow who was simply no match for the moment or his coming opponent; a man in the Blue corner fresh from a leadership struggle within National that left blood on the floor, an accountant who upended the old order and became a pugilistic soap-box Machiavelli ready and willing to take Labour down.
1975 was about contested social engineering: the introduction of the Domestic Purposes Benefit, which was widely (and correctly) believed to act as an incentive for fatherless families with resultant social ruin. It was about the introduction of no-fault accident insurance removing legal rights to sue for injury, along with the extremely prickly subject of compulsory superannuation payments deducted from wage-packets already ravaged by very high median-income earner taxation. It was about Rob’s canny calculation he could bribe voters back to National using the taxpayers’ own money, returning their contributions. It was about high-inflation and resultant industrial unrest led by outright hard-left socialist union leaders. It was all ‘Reds under beds’ and ‘dancing Cossacks’ but definitely not ‘cats in dairies’.
It was about a no-clue government deserted by Mother Britain – ‘Toodle-Pip’, we’re off to the EEC – and angry Arab nations deliberately harming Israel’s supporters. It was about the price of oil quadrupling in just two years and leading to our tills being emptied in paying for the slippery goo. ‘Balance of payments deficits’ entered the vernacular, charts demonstrating our financial predicament were masterfully employed across the country by the upstart little Sergeant.
Labour was hurt by an extremely shabby assembly of our ‘betters’; academics and other assembled nongs, a couple of naïve heroes and ex-Nats with hurty-feelings, running a disastrous and hugely resented “Citizens for Rowling’ campaign urging us to ‘do the right thing’ at the ballot box, as if we couldn’t think for ourselves.
But, as far as the editor of one of this country’s largest weekly newspapers is concerned: it was about dirty little tactics and mean stuff, like cats in dairies. It was never about the utter incompetence of left-wing governments. It’s the same old ‘we-wuz-robbed’ lament played on the same old dissonant fiddle employed every single time a socialist control-economy burns to the ground.
Tracy: 1975 had nothing – whatsoever – to do with cats in dairies. Labour’s downfall was due to utter uselessness from no-idea, underperforming, un-rodeo-worthy clowns – just like your mates that make up the current mob. Please try harder.