Seven o’clock on a Sunday night and there she was, Jacinda, looking suitably frowny faced and dressed in black. Always an ominous sign. She had had to forego one of the highlights of her year – the Big Gay Out.
Three people, all from the same family, had been found to have caught a sniffle which in turn required an emergency trip to Wellington to be briefed by her close ally Ashley. Why this couldn’t have been done over the phone was a bit puzzling. I suppose that’s not quite the same as being centre stage.
Having got the words of wisdom from her brother in arms, she had a round table with her highly inefficient and not terribly bright Cabinet. The decisions they came to went a long way to demonstrating that. The three people involved travelled from Auckland to Taranaki on Waitangi weekend. Any one with a modicum of intelligence could have worked out that, whatever level you chose, it should be the same for both areas. But no, this was beyond the grasp of our so called top politicians in Government.
So at seven o’clock Jacinda duly appeared, working overtime for no extra money to ensure the safety of her team of five million. She was looking very funereal and her facial expression exhibited an appropriate level of concern, even worry. What followed was political theatre at its best. She opened with some comments where she could have put us all out of our misery and announced the dopey decisions her less than illustrious Cabinet had reached. But no, we were going to be made to wait.
Instead, she handed over to the equivalent of her running mate to spiel off a whole lot of information we already knew. He kept going for as long as possible before handing back to the main act. Incidentally, while this nonsense was going on we were missing the best and longest-running programme on television – Country Calendar. Our four-legged friends on that programme would have made more sense than what we were having to put up with. Anyway, back to the main act. I imagine it was not without some element of hidden glee that she was able to confine most of Auckland back to barracks and allow the rest of the country to just escape the same fate.
We have subsequently been told that this strain is the British one and therefore highly contagious. Presumably this somehow justifies her lustful desire to control at every opportunity. The irony is we are finding out that none of the close contacts of the mother and the daughter have so far tested positive. So there is a lesson here but it’s unlikely she will heed it. How about taking your foot off the control pedal for once and get all the close contacts of anyone testing positive tested too before you close down the whole of the largest population base in the country.
Jacinda needs to think twice before she pulls this stunt again. She is once again displaying her utter ignorance when it comes to the ramifications of these actions for business. According to the NZ Herald, patrons at Auckland restaurants left immediately after they got the warning on their phones and staff at some left in tears. Kindness, also at its best. Restaurants were fully booked with Valentines Day diners and were receiving a much needed financial boost. CBD restaurants are struggling after a 70 per cent summer downturn. Not that that would have occurred to the dim light bulbs plonked around the Cabinet table.
If Jacinda thinks this is the game we are prepared to play in the long term, she needs to think again. A truck and trailer unit spent over two hours getting through the checkpoint at Mercer. This is totally unacceptable. Businesses want to open and workers want to work, not rely on Government subsidies funded by the taxpayer or by unacceptable levels of borrowing. Hopefully, some of those who voted Labour at the last election are now having second thoughts. They jolly well need to.
Please share this BFD article so others can discover The BFD.