Dear Editor
I cannot understand why we the people are forced to stop doing something we enjoy. If smoking is bad for us and could shorten our miserable lives, why not encourage us to smoke more? Then we’d be dead at an earlier age and not collecting the pension we useless eaters are so begrudged by our dear leaders.
Instead, throughout our lives, we are harassed by do-gooders. We are told what to eat by dieticians, how much exercise to do by physical instructors, to buckle up when we are in a car, to wear life vests when on – or in – the water, helmets when riding a bicycle, safety glasses, steel-capped boots, knee guards, elbow guards and hi-vis vests when working, when to rest, how much sleep we need, to regularly check fire alarms, and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseam. All with the sanctified ideal of living a long, healthy and incredibly boring life.
Then when we finally get to pension age as healthy, rosy-cheeked, half marathon runners with possibly another thirty active years of life, we become a financial burden on the state and are abused for owning a house now judged too big for us to live in, constantly under the jealous supervision of children and grandchildren who see us sitting on a small fortune which would be so much more useful in their hands, criticised for swanning around enjoying ourselves at the expense of the bentbacked and bitter taxpayers and even vilified for voting in a conservative fashion which gives no thought to an overheated, overpopulated planet – for which we, somehow, are responsible.
But oh goody goody somebody has thought this all out and now we have a space-ship shaped capsule we can pop ourselves into to be shot ‘painlessly’ (they say) into eternity. I don’t even think there is a minimum age use.
It’s optional just now but could become mandatory whenever Larry Bloomfield, Curly Hipkins or Moe Ardern decide to make it so. Urging us to Take One for the Team. For the planet.
To live to be over seventy now is considered inconsiderate but we probably wouldn’t have reached this age if we had been allowed to smoke ourselves silly, drink ourselves into oblivion at least once a week, party cheaply and on a regular basis or just go out and do stuff without being dressed like an armadillo.
In return for having this fun life taken from us, we will probably live forever in our two million dollar house which we built for four thousand, pottering each day in our garden, meeting our coffee club and book discussion groups, sleeping in deeply and soundly and very late each morning, and generally doing nothing in a very big way every day for the rest of our lives.
Oh, except perhaps taking out a reverse mortgage to spend on a yearly cruise to some lovely part of the world.
Ssh – don’t tell the kids.
J M White
Send your letters to the Editor to sb at thebfd.co.nz
Please put Letter to the Editor in the subject line.
Share this letter so others can discover The BFD.