Offensively disproportionate as is NZ First’s influence on power in the Hallowed Halls, Winston has had and does have, the power to put a handbrake on economic asphyxiation which looms as a more debilitating plague, than COVID-19.
I did mention the inevitability of economic meltdown, in an earlier blog.
I also ‘came out’ on this blog as a social liberal but, where the economy is concerned! I’m a hard-core capitalist roadster.
In my view, private sector commercial activity has been and will be, the source of taxes paid which provides salaries for government bureaucrats; essential funds for Health Education & Welfare and bailing Fletchers.
My income is your income. That’s how the economy works. Taxation M8.
Fast forward. For a while there, Winston sounded the warning siren: A ray of hope glimmered in the darkness.
Meanwhile, Jacinda leaps from leading Labour out the back door, to an unassailable lead in the race to re-election 2020. Good on her. She took some hard calls. But the wheels will fall off her chariot – sooner than she thinks.
As I’ve also said afore on this blog: Voters have short memories; they forget the good and vote according to the pain of the day. Pain is on the way.
If I was a Labour Party strategist; I’d go for an early election. At the moment, Labour would waltz in – no need for Greens and no need for NZ First.
Which brings me back to, why Labour is on a roll: Paranoid propaganda by Health Bureaucrats and Jacinda rides a white horse. But even the medical miracle is beginning to be challenged – let alone the economic melt-down.
Hey! Our death rate per head of population is less than 0.05%. Meanwhile, the casualty is economics: shut down and die.
Enter Simon Bridges – I’m not sure what he said – listening to his elocution trash the English lexicon is too much – but the drift seemed to be to assist the small businesses which provide the majority of jobs. Remember! My income is your income. That’s how the economy works. Taxation M8.
Bridges took a stand for business and he was pilloried.
National party diehard Mathew Hooton even turned on him. With friends like the bloke doesn’t need enemies.
But back to Winston. He who loomed as a saviour of business (after all: he has some good mates in business ) appears to have, gone fishing?
Where is Winston’s call for balance between medical and economic salvation: the key to the country’s economic survival?
Having tested, which way the wind blows, maybe Winston puts his survival ahead of the survival of the private sector?
I’m not a fan of Bridges. But at least he had the balls to stand up against this nauseating wave of paranoia – media driven – and driving NZ into a police state.
Ross Meurant; a former high-ranking police officer, former Member of Parliament, formerly with commercial interests in Syria and Iran and currently Honorary Consul for an African state.
It would seem to me, Mr. Meurant, that ‘the experts’ really don’t have a good grip on the virus, at all.
For example, take the following cut&pastes from various sources as at yesterday: these responses do suggest that the virus kill rate is low and that the reality of need for commercial resurgence, is gradually winging the pendulum toward economic considerations – and as BILL CLINTON said when asked, what wins elections? He said: “the economy, stupid.’
VIRUS TRACK
Without a tried-and-tested action plan for how to pull countries out of coronavirus lockdown, the world is seeing a patchwork of approaches. Schools reopen in one country, stay closed in others; face masks are mandatory in some places, a recommendation elsewhere.
Australia has recorded 6675 confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 2982 in New South Wales, 1343 in Victoria, 1026 in Queensland, 438 in South Australia, 548 in Western Australia, 207 in Tasmania, 105 in the Australian Capital Territory and 27 in the Northern Territory. Seventy nine people have died of the disease, but thousands have recovered, ensuring the nation is not just flattening the curve but crushing it.
However, responses around the globe, vary as dramatically as do methodologies for testing and for calculate COVID 110 deaths viz underlying issues.
Kids still attend soccer practice in Sweden while they are not even allowed outside in Spain. As governments and scientists struggle with so many unknowns, individuals are being left to take potentially life-affecting decisions.
Italy, where the strict stay-at-home order has been credited with finally getting that nation’s crisis under some semblance of control, authorities are now warning that home has become a dangerous place for many Italians.
Italian households represent “the biggest reservoir of infections,” said Massimo Galli, the director of the infectious diseases department at Luigi Sacco University Hospital in Milan. He called the cases “the possible restarting point of the epidemic in case of a reopening
In Georgia (USA), David Huynh had 60 clients booked for appointments at his nail salon in Savannah, but a clothing store, jewellery shop and chocolatier that share a street corner with his downtown business, Envy Nail Bar, remained closed.
Germany allowed smaller retailers of under 800sq m to re-open, as long as they abided by social distancing and hygiene measures.
In France, the government is leaving families to decide whether to keep children at home or send them back to class when the nationwide lockdown, in place since March 17, starts to be lifted on May 11.
In Spain, parents face a similarly knotty decision: whether to let kids get their first fresh air in weeks when the country starts Sunday to ease the total ban on letting them outside.
I’m not sure the problem was what Bridges said, it was the timing. His facebook entry was posted before the PM’s media conference had finished. He rushed to put something out in public to give the 6 o’clock headlines something to use. It was usual opposition fare, and would be in step with numerous political commentators.
The problem was the public, not media, backlash on his facebook post. And it was this backlash that led the media to report on Bridges’ performance and leadership. Without that backlash, would the media be talking about rumblings of Bridges getting rolled?
DX5
I acknowledge: You identify a contributing factor.
Subsequent death threats however; (not from media)- a bit over the top.
“Our death rate per head of population is less than 0.05%. Meanwhile, the casualty is economics: shut down and die.”
Yes, and in New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 10 per 100,000. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.
…If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.
Did we know this before or after lockdown? Hindsight is great, but at the time someone has to make the call. Most of us are free of that responsibility. The PM is not.
New Zealand is under siege from a puny little virus with a puny little 2% death rate and the government hadn’t even provisioned for 4 weeks of level 4 lockdown let alone the months and probably years it will take to pull ourselves out of this. You do still know a little something about sieg warfare do you know, Mr Ross?
Maybe Simon should of stated:
“Collateral damage is a phrase that will probably become more familiar before this is over. Economic shutdowns have been presented by some as a trade-off between “money versus lives.” But what is becoming increasingly apparent is they, in fact, pit “lives versus lives.”
There’s the whole National Party fandom, there’s John Key fans and there’s Simon Bridges fans and I’m not going to get into who’s best because I’m a lefty, I think right wing environmental policy has to reach out further to me than left wing policy does to grab my attention but I do respect power.
So I think that what John Key presented to New Zealand politics and his willingness to guard the economy in those crunch times and his willingness to look down the barrel and lie, and live with the criticism and his willingness to never join another team which a lot of politicians will sell out for their own career development. Yknow Jenny Shipley sold out hard to China and destroyed Mainzeal. And for Simon Bridges to pick all this up and keep it going because Amy Adams wanted nothing to do with it she left early on in Bridges leadership and she could have been Finance Minister (could have been) and I like how National does that.
Yknow if Jacinda wins number 2 Yknow shit is going to get real and I think that’s the reason why John Key is name dropping so John Key is already thinking okay Jacinda is going to win a second term so he’s going to get political and I’m not going to say that Iv lost respect for John Key but the whole undermining Simon Bridges because he thinks Jacinda is going to win is pressure. My thing is pressure acknowledges pressure and Simon Bridges kind of acknowledges the pressure and I don’t think John Key is acknowledging the pressure rather than an opportunity to play. Yknow instead of doing subliminal things Yknow just come out and do a first take interview and be like yup I hear them footsteps.
Pendulums swing like pendulums do.
Jacinda’s swing is at its apex.
‘Dangerous’ political vacuum forming
https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-opinion/opinion-dangerous-political-vacuum-forming
Based on the hard data in the above link; even the most devoted follower of Jacinda (and of course; Democratic process!), must feel some alarm at her capture by faceless bureaucrats subject to no restraints under the licence Labour has extended.
Even Bomber raised this concern.
Um, the author of the article is a Dr Muriel Newman, “a former member of the New Zealand Parliament for the right-wing ACT New Zealand party and a former deputy leader of the party.”
Guess which side of the people vs economy debate she would take.
Communist Police State Indeed, no criticism tolerated, no liberty left untrammeled, no civil or economic rights at all.
Ask a black South African what a Dom pass is.
Then get ready to apply for your Digital Health Certificate and tracking app, you can Shadow Bann me all you want, ill still speak Truth to Power and expose lies and Hippocrates and Corrupt State and Media Players for the bribe taking, freedom trampling lairs that they are, We dont Forget, We dont forgive and We are always Watching YOU Watching Us.
Because WWG1WGA
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