At a local school recently I saw the honours board for the student demonstrating the most “Sportsmanship and Resilience”.
The wording is relevant in the time of a prime minister who continues to refer to us as a team. She has, it seems, little comprehension or understanding of team or sportsmanship, or resilience, that quality of keeping going through difficult times and bouncing back.
Our population is struggling to recover from the successive life-changing blows the Ardern Government administers with monotonous regularity. It is very easy to feel defeated and lose resilience. Yet the protesters, as their vehicles gathered in Wellington this week, demonstrated their resilience; a team at the end of their patience with mandates and the bought-off mainstream media.
On the sidelines, the supporters – the mums and dads and brothers and sisters – cheered them on as they went to meet the opposing team. A show of sportsmanship.
“They are demanding an end to all mandates and COVID-19 restrictions, and what they see is media censorship of their views.
“Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Ardern told Morning Report she wouldn’t be meeting protesters at Parliament.
“The protest came at a time when the government was changing the way it was doing things because of the extra protection vaccines provided, she said.”
newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/02/convoy-protesters-arrive-at-parliament-motorists-warned-of-congestion-jacinda-ardern-won-t-engage.
The PM has simply ignored these people who gave time, energy and money to make their way to the pitch for the away match.
But there was no match: just a no-show by an arrogant, evil ‘captain’ who uses her position of power to threaten, mandate and wreck this beautiful country.
Vaccines provide no “extra protection”. Indeed, there are more and more reports of terrible harm caused by them. Yet she continues to trumpet their effectiveness despite the reality that they are a failing and dangerous medical initiative, imposed on the reluctant and the concerned. Time will judge this inhumane injustice wrought upon the citizens of the world.
Chris Luxon has failed to read the room and continues to support the vaccine and mandates. He too chose not to meet protesters. This is a big mistake that will cost Luxon support at a time that he needs to not only rebuild National’s brand but also garner support from those who abandoned the National Party at the last election. His lack of political will to meet and discuss concerns and fears is reprehensible.
Many of us have lost our allegiance to the New Zealand we knew and loved. Many of us too have lost our ability to bounce back from the losses that have been inflicted on a once-proud, now hopelessly divided population.
The protests of this week reveal that our spirit has not yet been broken, although it is severely stressed. To all those who protested in or alongside vehicles – well done.
And the PM’s key players, what about them?
A highly-paid ring-in, Shaun Hendy takes some numbers and makes just what the PM wants him to make of them. Thousands of bodies piled up in the streets? No, it was never about that. It is a political manipulation, not a health issue. He has not been within a bull’s roar of a correct model from the word go and still has no idea. He should be sin-binned. He doesn’t learn from past experience and keeps playing a losing game.
Michael Baker, another ring-in, pops up with monotonous regularity, always with the same approach, never an original move to make the other team think twice. A predictable and easily avoided player.
Siouxsie Wiles, yet another enlisted ‘expert’, is the know-it-all back who wants the wider team to do as she says, not as she does. She can and does get away with doing everything she tells the team not to do. She mistakenly thinks it is her place to advise on all rules and is an untrustworthy team member, often late for practice, and frequently arrives on her bike with muddy boots and grimy shoelaces from taking an off-side paddle.
Andrew Little, ostensibly the left-wing, lurks around the edges of the field. He pops up when it looks as though he just may be worthwhile, but this is an illusion gone as swiftly as are all chimaeras. He never hits the ball accurately.
The forwards, Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson, are not fleet of foot; they are ponderous. They run about without a structured approach and that seldom ends well. Hipkins once forgot his kit, and his mum had to cover for him while he fetched it. They make random hits and odd moves.
The Director-General of Health is a player who cannot be trusted.
“Today the Ministry of Health admitted that the requisitioned tests included private orders that had already arrived in New Zealand.”
Bloomfield Must Apologise For RAT Misinformation | Scoop News.
It seems that the captain and the player Dr Ashley Bloomfield have problems with the truth, as does the Ministry of Health.
“The Prime Minister is denying the Government is taking rapid antigen tests (RaTs) from the private sector. That’s despite the Ministry of Health admitting officials did in fact get hold of some tests that were already in the country – after Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said they didn’t. However, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Three’s new morning show AM it’s “factually incorrect” that the Government pinched RaTs, because the Ministry of Health got their order for tests in first.”
“The assertion that we have taken orders from other companies – that is just not correct,” she said. “The Ministry of Health obviously made their orders earlier than others.”
PM responds after Health Ministry confirms it did obtain rapid antigen tests already in NZ (msn.com)
Poto Williams is wrongly included in the team. She is now ‘floating’ the idea of rent controls to sort out the housing debacle. This despite ample evidence that it is a policy tried and failed in other countries. She has made lapdogs of the Police and a mess of every Kainga Ora manoeuvre she has attempted. She has neither the skills nor experience required to play at this level.
Megan Woods has been permanently sidelined.
Nanaia Mahuta takes the oranges for half-time, cuts them into unequal pieces and hands the largest pieces to her cronies. She withholds water from most of the team.
And the Captain keeps on ignoring advice and outcomes from around the world, especially those where a hands-off policy now prevails and life returns to normal, living with the lesser variants’ effects.
“Our plan for managing Omicron cases in the early stage remains the same as Delta, where we will rapidly test, contact trace and isolate cases and contacts in order to slow the spread.”
New Zealand’s PM postpones wedding as she introduces tougher Covid rules – Independent.ie
But Omicron is not Delta. She must eventually accept that her flawed ‘stamp it out’ game-plan was an arrogant fallacy.
And, still, she considers her loyal subjects to be a team.
Many of us do not want to be part of her team. We never have been part of it, and we never will be. She deludes herself, thinking that all is well and that we are putting on our gear and polishing our boots in readiness for the next game. But we are not. We refuse to neatly tie our shoelaces and wear numbers on our backs.
The person deserving of the award for sportsmanship and resilience is the long-suffering Kiwi facing yet more mandates, more loss and less freedom. Congratulations.