Arthur
On the MSN news yesterday there is an article about the cost of living crisis. Of course, like everything from the MSM these days, it is hyped with panic-inducing language. The road toll is carnage, a storm is a ‘weather bomb’ etc., and of course, the latest fashionable hype du jour is to make as many things as possible “a crisis”.
It starts out well enough,
Households across the country are bracing themselves as the cost of rent, food and petrol goes up and up, but is there more to what Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has called the “wicked perfect storm” than meets the eye?
We know the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic are driving up the cost of living, but there are some other developments on the other side of the world that are also, perhaps surprisingly, to blame.
The Detail looks at Germany’s shutdown of coal and nuclear power stations and China’s strict Covid-19 lockdowns and what they have to do with our painfully high rent, food and petrol costs.
On top of that is the global flood of cash, the pandemic-induced money-printing campaigns designed to stimulate economies.
Then out of the woodwork crawls the MSM’s favourite pet so-called ‘expert’ on things economic, Bernard Hickey. You know from that point some irrational outburst is about to come. Usually he trots out some pet anti-Boomer hate speech if he has nothing else to say of note, which is often. However, not today. He has a new act: enviro commie.
“All that printed money has gathered together into a big pile and Covid and the war have effectively torched that pile and really got some heat into it,” says Bernard Hickey, a political and economic journalist and editor of The Kaka.
Hickey explains how the high prices hurt poorer people more than others.
OK, Bernard, all well and good so far. A patina of rationality exists. But then we get to the fuel tax drop and Bernard gets his inner enviro commie out for a stroll with the other Green barking seals shrieking about climate hogwash. He has a new thing to rant about.
But on Monday, she announced the Government would temporarily cut fuel taxes by 25 cents a litre to ease some of the pain at the petrol pump and halve public transport fares.
Critics say the fuel tax cuts are simply a knee-jerk reaction and do nothing to tackle another major crisis: climate change.
Note the typical weaselly MSM tactic by the reporter. The mysterious and nebulous unnamed ‘critics’ who may or may not exist and what you read is likely the reporter’s opinion. Whatever the case, Bernard leaps on board.
Hickey argues the Government could do a lot more to wean people off fossil fuels and out of their cars and on to bikes, e-scooters and other more sustainable transport options.
Note the vague ‘other sustainable transport options’. Nothing specific of course because like all enviro commies he has no real practical options to offer but implies they exist. I’m also still trying to imagine my early nineties mother in law on a bicycle or an e-scooter when she can hardly walk. I also cannot envisage people on e-scooters or bikes doing a 15-kilometre journey in the rain and wind. As someone who walks to work rain or shine, I can assure you bike riders thin out rapidly in the bad weather, as do scooters.
However, Bernard’s inner enviro commie will not be deterred. Especially his obsession with control and manipulation.
And now’s the time, he says.
“It’s amazing how much you can achieve in wartime. You’re using a crisis to get people to change their behaviour.”
There it is folks: “using a crisis to get people to change their behaviour”. There in a nutshell is the tactic of grotty little commies everywhere including dear Bernard.
Manufacture a crisis and manipulate and scare the populace into submission and an accepting state of socialist doctrine.
This is of course why global warming had to morph into climate change: it had poor traction and the planet did not cooperate. Then because climate change was still not enough of a weapon, the ‘Climate Crisis’ had to be invented. There is no climate crisis, of course, and even the IPCC stated so a few years back when hardcore enviro commie zealots like Extinction Rebellion began shrieking about it.
But hey, facts have never held a good commie zealot back and certainly not dear Bernard.