Ben Vidgen

I have to say I really miss Judith Collins – sigh.

It is so much easier when a villain looks like a villain and so much more fun. Back in the day you could poke holes in Judith and the gang with ease: Petty Paula, Honest John, Who ate all the pies Gerry and Slimey Steve. They just gagged to be ripped a new one.

Sigh.

Yup those where the days when it really took very little to convince New Zealand, or at less my social circle that corporates were assholes. Big pharma was not your mate and we should all be bloody worried about tech gods and mass surveillance.

Folks just had to look at the bunch of flying monkey hovering out side the 9th floor to get that TPPA was up to no good in your neighbourhood.

Yup when John went and borrowed 20 billion, spent it on war toys, we all took one look at Crusher and we shivered. We knew that those two combinations were not good for us.

When Gerry started passing emergency laws after Christchurch, so his mates could all have more pie, we clicked pretty quick. And when Steve signed up to Huawei’s music we collectively shook our heads and said that is just wong.

Problem is we now have an equally scurvy crew of pro TPPA post colonial pirates.

Some of whom a few of us Gen X’s recall vaguely belonged to the ghost of Rogernomic – Michael Cut your Throat Cullen, Trevor ‘you ain’t being fucked till you being with a duck’ Mallard, to name a few from the old days of the Jolly Roger.

Yet sadly we build wider foot path to assist so were told with social distancing. Yet are not suspicious when were told simultaneously these wide foot paths are so push bikes and scooters (built from rare minerals mined from ecologically sensitive ocean) can also be allowed on the foot path. Which is it.

We pay no attention to this inconsistency a story with different versions, which smacks of spin and agenda.

No attention to the silent sell off of public forestry land, the warmed up sales of ports, the sale of land for billionaire bunkers wanting some Lord of the Ring’s action,

Were put our hands over our eyes when confronted with ‘Third Way’ controlled pharmac takeover of the health sector and the destruction of small businesses.

We choose to remain deaf to the ramping up of more and more mass surveillance and more civil liberty destroying dictates ( I won’t call them laws).

Such is our hypnotised marketed enamour with the manufactured cult of persa-ba-naility of Cindarella the fairest witch in the land (and before that the smiling assassin who used the same tactics of sound bytes spin and meaningless slogans).

These days I am such a social pariah among my old left wing buddies.

I no longer get invited to drink $14.00 craft beers with socially progressive hipsters wearing $400 biker tattoos and $75.00 hipster haircuts. Middle class muggles who mutter about neoliberalism and their vinyl record collection as they confuse obscurity with originality and packaging with substance.

I have being banished from the kool kids table and must sit drinking Speights with anti vaxers (though in fact I like vaccines, if administrated properly and not made with dangerous additives to cut cost corners), the crazy 5G caused corona-virus conspiracy theorists*

* Which whether true or not holds the core truth that the virus outbreak,what ever the cause, will bring about the age of technocracy and the extermination of the middle class.

I must hang with those who think free speech allows them to be reactionary gun nuts. It does not. Yet an absence of due process and unconstitutional laws do make for tyranny certainly.

I am stuck with the Lion who on occasion I think takes the bible or his crystals far too literally.

I am benched with the tin man, whose obsession about 1080 is tempered by my realisation that 1080 come from the same bag of grand corporate fuckery that gave us toxic waste dumps, nitrate poisoning, 245T shitty rivers and a long line of cancer causing cocktails. All of which no doubt add to a New Zealand growing cancer rate that is rapidly approaching 1:2 or 50% of our population.

As for that Trump loving strawman. If he mention Q one more time and mixes up his use of the word communism with neoliberalism (the third way combination of socialism and capitalism which technically equals fascism) I shall probably use my zippo on him myself.

However the scarecrow is right about one thing.

Trump, or as I like to call Big Red Racoon One, did not screw Bernie. The DNC and their corporate tech and big pharma buddies did that all by themselves.

Genuinely, with out satire, this trio are not much fun as my old mates. Worse their taste in music sucks. There no place like home and I guess we are not in Kansas any more Toto.

Nope they are unsophisticated bunch.

Not much class at times. They don’t always cross their T’s or dot their I’s when formulating their ideas. Yet they do seem to know when they are being pissed on.

And they and know its not raining. Despite what the Emerald City might be broadcasting.

Perhaps ugly folk doing hard time just see through spin better than the beautiful people living in comfortable homes.

Come back Judith it was only a fever.

Sigh.