The Emperor’s new clothes and other naked truths

I’m sure you can all recall The Emperor’s New Clothes; written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837 where two cunning weavers who actually might have been the first spin doctors (geddit) made a suit of clothes for their tragically vain Emperor.

These smart fellows realised their regent was a mirror-gazing tosspot with a hugely over-inflated sense of his own significance. So, probably to inflate the price of their work, they told him the suit they would make him would be made of special fabric that is invisible to idiots and incompetents and can only be seen by smart or important folks. Of course the self-obsessed Emperor bought their line (of garments) hook, clothesline and sinker.

When the time came for the Emperor to model his new suit (or nude suit) nobody in the court wanted to appear stupid so they all went with the ridiculous notion. All that is apart from one small boy who had not yet been indoctrinated by all the state bullshit and who yelled out that he could see the King’s willy or words to that effect. Emboldened by his childish outburst the remainder of the King’s subjects begin to admit they had thought he was stark bollocky naked as well.

Despite the fact this story is extremely old and earlier versions have been found that pre-date Andersen’s by at least five hundred years, we still have a lot of people in the 21^st Century who will accept that black is white if someone possessing apparent authority which they automatically mistake for credibility, tells them so.

An example of this can be found in the Government’s policy to sell us state assets. Whether you agree with the sale of these assets or not doesn’t matter too much because there is a major disconnect involved with this. We already own these assets; they don’t belong to the Government. Somebody must have forgotten to explain to them they are in the positions they are in ostensibly to be kaitiaki. They own neither the country nor the assets. They each own about one four millionth of them just like the rest of us. Their job is to manage them on our behalf.

Why in the name of God would we want to buy something we already owned? If the Government wants to borrow money off us, why don’t they just say so instead of trying to sell us stuff we already own.

Meanwhile all the Government PR people are busy telling us what good investments these assets are, which to a smart person raises the question of why we would want to sell them anyway.

However the PR machine has indoctrinated many with the mantra that we are in debt big-time and T.I.N.A. But of course there is always an alternative and in this instance ACC is sitting on a surplus of $3.5B, which by my reckoning is about half the amount Jianqi reckons we’ll get for the part sale of these assets. Incidentally part sale is a nonsense it’s like being partly pregnant. The correct term should be sale of a limited share release, but I don’t suppose that fits too well in a snappy headline. Alternatively they could just be honest and call it conversion.

So just to keep this in perspective; imagine if you will, the Minister for State Owned Assets streaking across your garden. Not a pretty sight.

Question: What do we call people who take possessions away from their owners and then sell them?

Answer: Thieves.

Question: What do we call people who buy these possessions?

Answer: Fences or dealers in stolen goods.

Question: What do we call people who buy back their own possessions from those who stole them?

Answer: Mugs.

And while we are on the subject of conversion, look at what the Government is doing with our free-to-air television. Before this week is out they will have dumped TVNZ7, one of the brightest hopes on our screens for a very long time. It leaves you wondering why the Government bothered plugging digital TV at all considering how few channels they will be presenting.

Furthermore this was a gigantic con-job from the beginning. When Freeview first became available just five years ago we were given a list of channels and they included TV One, TV2, TVNZ6, TVNZ7 Parliament TV TVNZ Sport and half a dozen private channels.

TVNZ Sport dropped out of sight very early in the piece and without any fanfare, TVNZ6 was changed and now TVNZ7 is to go. Therefore after promising us six TVNZ free-to-air channels the Government is now only giving us four (plus a delayed repeat of TV One).

Question: What do you call someone who sells us a product with one set of specifications, then quietly changes those specifications and continues to market the product as the original?

Answer: A fraudster.

What makes this so much worse (and this is where the conversion comes in); is that during their 50^th Anniversary celebrations last year TVNZ gave us all a preview of their fantastic new digital channel Heartland TV that would be a repository for all those wonderful dramas and programmes we have funded over the years initially through licence fees and more latterly through New Zealand On Air. It would be a fantastic idea were it not for one thing; the bastards have leased the channel to Sky so anyone who wants to see these programmes has to subscribe to a Sky package to get them.

So once again something we own has been stolen by the government and sold to the highest bidder who happens to be an overseas company. We must pay money to an overseas company to watch programmes we used to own until the Government stole them and sold them.

So at the moment we are being governed by a gang who are stealing from us and then trying to sell the booty back to us, passing off an inferior product as an earlier and superior one, and selling of our archival treasures that we paid for to an overseas company and then charging us if we want to watch them.

One or two of my friends would say this is simply business as usual under our current political system. Personally I’m still a little wary of chucking out the bathwater in case there actually is a viable baby in there. My hope is that the excesses of Jianqi and co become their undoing and the nation’s awakening all at the same time, because it is Governments such as this that offer us the opportunity to see where the shortcomings really are in our system.

But we make our politicians more accountable. And by ‘we’ I mean all of us; especially the media.  

Just because we currently hold the Rugby World Cup it doesn’t mean we have to be a nation of mugs.

Campaign launch a bit of a fizzer

The campaign is supposedly under way for the 2011 General Election. But so far it seems this election is going to need some agriva or garvia or whatever other anagram they are using this week because it has had a dreadfully limp start.

I see Granny Herald is referring to the debate on TV1 on Monday night in far more glowing terms than it deserves. Leaders' debate's fiery exchange was the breathless headline on the Herald website on Tuesday morning. I’ve seen more fire in a dead matchstick.

Yes there were some tetchy exchanges, but overall the show was an enormous waste of time. Almost no policy was laid out aside from the short sound-bite type stuff they have been trotting out for the last couple of days anyway. There wasn’t a shred of solid policy from either of the two wastes of space who were extraordinarily given this platform to themselves.

TVNZ needs a thrashing for putting up such a pathetic excuse for an election debate. Guyon Espiner tried his best, under what I believe were circumstances beyond his control. Whoever decided in their ‘wisdom’ we needed a debate between these two no-hopers on their own needs shooting. Where have these idiots been since 1996? We have had MMP for 15 years now and the whole idea of the system is that we recognise the existence of and the need for more than two parties. It may also have escaped their notice, but every single government since that first MMP election has needed to be formed from a coalition of the biggest polling party plus one or more other smaller ones. Given that scenario I would have thought the views of those minor parties are every bit as important as those of the two largest ones because elements of them will have to be agreed to by the Government of the day in order to secure a working majority in Parliament.

Like many Kiwis, I hadn’t thought too much about the general elimption over the last couple of months (while the really serious business was going on). As a result I had no advance warning of the mighty election campaign coverage planned by TV1. So you can imagine my surprise when after picking myself up off the floor from realising TV1’s opener was a debate between Jiangqi and Phil Goshisthatthetime, I began to find out what other treats they had in store.

Well maybe like me, you haven’t got around to checking yet. But I can save you the time, because there appears to be nothing. At least nothing further this week. So the entire TVNZ contribution to the first week of the election campaign is one pathetic debate between the two twits who think they should be Prime Minister, neither of whom will be able to govern without the support of one or more other parties?

I’ve actually found the coverage on maori TV much better, but then they are only covering the Maori electorates, so it is a little limited in that way. You will notice I am not mentioning any election type programmes that might crop up on TV7 because there is still a sizeable number of people who can’t get that and an even larger number who won’t for much longer if Jiangqi and his motley crew have their way.

So what about the thing billed as a debate? Well the only worthwhile thing to come out of it was that Phil Goshisthatthetime (quite rightly) called Jiangqi a liar. I see that as worthwhile because the incumbent PM's response was worth seeing. “I am not a liar,” he squeaked, tears welling up in his little piggy eyes. “I don’t call you a liar and that’s actually because I respect the office of the leader of the opposition,” he blubbed. From which I can conclude it is all about respecting offices rather than the truth. As PG pointed out, Little Johnny told the nation before the last election he would not raise GST and then he did. Jianqi of course tried to be semantically pedantic insisting that he had said in 2008 he would not raise GST to try and balance the books. He then argued he had not done this because with the tax cuts his GST rise had been ‘fiscally neutral’. This of course immediately raises the question of why one would do it if it was to be of no effect. Labour has raised this before with him, but I don’t ever remember hearing an answer that made any sense.

I notice the fallout from the ‘debate’ (it was more like a mass one if you ask me), is all about little Johnny blubbing about Goshisthatthetime calling him a liar. And this from the man who lied to Parliament about Standard & Poors’ plans only a couple of weeks ago and got caught out in a fabulous press conference which you can view at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DjHJb1DB42rg%26feature%3Dshare&h=-AQFveKizAQEZB0BufjtIvqO3cYiVXJ1poTBAu7oOtMAafQ

It should be shared with as many people as possible because they need to see the body language and enjoy the thrashing about of a man caught out big time in a big lie. A lie – lest we forget, that was designed to win votes from frightened voters who might have been tempted to believe him.

Meanwhile the other six or more parties who actually have a chance of being part of the next government are left to have to make programmes of their own on the Internet as the Greens did. And worthy attempt though that one was; it doesn’t really do a lot when it is simply a platform for the leaders of the party to get some policy out there via some sympathetic questioning from Finlay McDonald. They needed to be having a debate with the other party leaders to do much of a service to the NZ voter.

I think it is time we had some major reforms in our parliamentary system. Too much is left to the whims of those in power to decide. Election dates should be set in stone. Big stones that are too heavy for politicians to turn over (or crawl out from under). Likewise at least one leaders’ debate per week should be should be mandatory for the last three or four weeks of the campaign. Participation in these should be mandatory for every leader of a party that has an MP or who polled close to the threshold at the last election. Any wimps, prima donnas, or pussies who don’t want to debate with the other leaders get no other airtime at all. It’s time to make these bastards accountable. Who do they think they are to tell US who they will and won’t debate with? WE pay their over-inflated wages, even if we don’t have any control over how over-inflated they are.

Now if we were to move the election forward three weeks................we’d certainly have a good choice of ‘Guys’.