CONSIDERABLE ANGST has been expressed by those of a sensitive disposition at the recent eruption of irrationality in Sydney. “How can people be so reckless and uncaring?” They cry. “How can people be so ignorant?” They Add. “It’s as though they live on another planet!” They surmise. And, they’re right – a great many of those Covid-19 deniers and anti-vaxxers do come across as aliens. When was the last time you saw anyone punch a policeman’s horse on the nose?
So, it’s forgivable, this angst. And the questions it prompts among the sensitive and susceptible do deserve some answers.
At the core of all the Covid craziness lies a disconcerting absence of trust. There is a surprisingly large number of people out there who simply do not trust the authorities. Should we be surprised, though? After all, there are a whole host of very good reasons why some citizens might refuse to believe anything the Powers-That-Be tell them.
Consider the victims of the Catholic clergy: the boys and girls whose lives were scarred forever by the abuse they suffered at the hands of people trusted by pretty much the whole community. Those who found the courage to report the abuse were all-too-often told that they were wicked liars: that it never happened. Nor were these egregious breaches of trust confined to the Church. Evidence presented to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care suggests that the State, too, has a lot to answer for.
How are we supposed to offer a rational explanation for the fact that the leading physician at a state health facility deliberately tortured children by running electrical current through their bodies? How are we to account for the fact that a great many people knew that this was happening, and yet did nothing? Or, the way Crown Law frustrated the efforts of the victims of state abuse to receive justice – for decades?
Remember, these are just the examples of appalling institutional abuse that we know about. How many people out there exist in their own private hell of hidden injury, humiliation and derision? Victims of persons in authority who inflicted pain casually and continuously, confident that they would never be held to account. School principals, police officers, petty bureaucrats of all kinds: for how much hurt are they responsible? How many people have been damaged by official cruelty?
For those blessed with happy lives, trust is easy. For the unacknowledged victims of unacknowledged abuse, it’s a cruel joke.
And, what about all the lies? The Baby Boomer generation grew up to The Who’s prayer that “we don’t get fooled again”. After the publication of The Pentagon Papers, that voluminous catalogue of all the lies told to the American People by the American Government in relation to the war in Vietnam, surely only a fool would trust their political masters? After the release of Nixon’s White House Tapes, which proved that the US President was, indeed, “a crook”, a lack of trust in authority generally denoted someone who really did know “what’s goin’ on.”
For the generation coming along behind the Boomers, there were the non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” that the United States Government swore blind were at the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s command, and which only a full-scale (and illegal) invasion could neutralise. For the generation after them, of course, there was President Donald Trump’s insistence that the mainstream news media were guilty of purveying “fake news”, and that Americans should rely, instead, on his much more exciting “alternative facts”.
Trusting the authorities turned out to be a lot harder than it looked. At some point in their lives, most Boomers would have encountered at least one “Thalidomide Victim”. In the early months of their pregnancies, the victims’ mothers had been prescribed a brand new drug to ease their morning sickness, and trusting the medical authorities implicitly, they had taken it. Their severely disabled progeny bore testimony to the fact that, sometimes, medical science and the pharmaceutical industry get things totally, terribly, tragically, wrong.
For the young people growing up in Twenty-First Century America, the proof of “Big Pharma’s” perfidy was another “helpful” drug, Oxycontin. As addictive as Heroin because, well, it sort of was Heroin re-branded, “Oxy” swept through the suburbs of the United States like Hell in a blister-pack. And the doctors? Oh, the doctors prescribed Oxycontin like it was going out of style, which, once people twigged to the fact that it was turning pain-afflicted Americans into helpless opioid addicts, it did.
Trust the science? That’s not what it says on the Internet!
Ah yes, the Internet, and its irrepressible love-child, Social Media. A wonderful resource, providing you come to it with a bountiful helping of what used to be called “general knowledge”. Those who approach the Internet with a pretty good grasp of basic science and history will have little difficulty in distinguishing shit from cheese. For those who don’t read more than 140 characters at a time, watch documentaries, or listen to the news, however, the Internet is a field full of rabbit holes. Easy to fall into, hard to get out of.
Too many people out there don’t know what they don’t know. Team them up with the Internet, and the problem is not that they will trust too little, but that they will trust too much.
None of this is, of course, any excuse for punching a policeman’s horse in the nose. It just might be enough, however, to quell the rising panic of the sensitive and the susceptible. The Powers-That-Be of the past 70 years have hardly proved themselves to be the most trustworthy of masters, and the society and economy they have presided over has hardly been conducive to producing a population of uniform sanity and resilience.
Those of us who have, mostly through sheer good fortune, escaped the pits and the pendulums of life in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, have learned to live in the light. We have no reason to doubt, because we have been given every reason to trust, those in authority over us. For those who dwell in the dark, however: fearful, angry, untrusting; those who praise the light will always be the enemy.
You know not to trust any authority figure when 25 top virologists pen a letter that was published in the most esteemed science journals in the world, The Lancet and Nature, assuring us that the virus couldn’t possibly have originated in a lab in Wuhan.
The fact of the matter is that most science today is funded by government and the scientists have become the playthings of politicians and bureaucrats. They can only research what government will fund and too often the results have to comply with the narrative preferred by the government.
Having digested this, do you still thinks there is a climate “emergency”? 😉
Er, yes, actually.
No Andrew, I don’t believe any more
To put the perfect icing on your literary cake here Mr Trotter, the photo of the guy “punching” the horse looks quite misleading when you see the video where he is jostling and appears to shove its head away.
Cant trust the media to tell a balanced story it seems.
You’d have an argument if it weren’t for all the mature/very mature people mixed up in this. It’s more likely the excrement stirrers of QAnon that have seduced the gullible.
Smoking, asbestos, DDT, agent orange, driving a jeep on the moon at crazy speeds, electricity reforms to provide cheap power- hahahahaha
The main reason for doubt however is genetic. I have observed both ends of the bell shaped curve. We need those who believe vaccination should be mandatory but also those who question if the earth is actually round.
Its part of the tapestry of life but also a protection mechanism for survival of the species.
Ahh yes! The dichotomy that is human existence!
I support young people in most regards. But the level of distrust from young people towards authority is quite alarming. Heaven knows our politicians past and present haven’t covered themselves in glory with Neo Liberalism entrenched in most policy which causes some much damage to society. I would guess that most young people don’t know anything about Neo Liberal economics and get all there information off facebook and the like. Which is full of conspiracy plots by the state and the elites to control everybody. As you say, without watching or reading real news, this becomes their news. Little wonder everything looks like a conspiracy if all your watching is facebook. And worse still is that they may be very close to the truth. After all with so many terrible policies coming out combined with all this inaction on inequality and housing and climate change, just to name a few, it is quite logical that young people see the world as they do and don’t trust our Govt or the Police etc.
I think you will find it is more than young people who have distrust from authority.
Also many people are disgusted with the low levels of skill shown in many industries. AKA Oranga Tamariki. Many public and private managers just want a bum on a seat for the lowest cost for employees in many sectors now, and the low quality of work and the disastrous effects of it, are apparent too many.
Staff at Waikato DHB ‘extremely distressed’ by Oranga Tamariki’s treatment of child
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/staff-at-waikato-dhb-extremely-distressed-by-oranga-tamarikis-treatment-of-child/2XE7ELXTYTR37RSHESC2MFIVFQ/
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys,
NZ has underpaid skilled and professional workers in this country for over 30 years.
And underskilled workers are truly fucked.
A tertiary education is no longer a guarantee of employment nor is trade.
As for permanent employment future training or long term planning of any kind forget it.
Things are now falling apart and it is going to get much much worse as we have a government of self servers who take their orders from China and who do not give a rats arse about working people.
It’s all about their careers and keeping up appearances.
2 years tops and the wheels will have fallen off never to go back on.
NZ is grinding to a halt all becasue of neo liberalism and there is no going forward just survival of the fittest.
“NZ has underpaid skilled and professional workers in this country for over 30 years.” Yes, thanks to the “employment contracts act” sponsored by the owners of the then minister of energy, Bill Birch..
This, more than anything else, drove our best tradespeople out of the country in numbers not seen before… By the late nineties, with apprenticeships abolished, the need to import tradespeople had become critical to getting anything done.. Very little that the Clarke government did, or the current govt has done has brought our skills base back to where it needs to be.. Nothing short of removing the private “training” firms from the public teat, and reinstating the proper government apprenticeship program will re establish NZ’s production of world class tradespeople.. One of the “benefits” for the nats in destroying our rail network in favor of their owners in the trucking companies was the utter destruction of the best training facility in NZ.. A win win for the colonial descendants…
I’m an older X gen and all the blatant lies and mistruths spoken on all sides of government throughout COVID-19 have caused me to lose my trust completely.
A counterpoint to the suggestion that this is all due to social media is that the institutional narratives are being broken and light shone upon them because of the internet. The traditional power brokers are fighting a rearguard action to try and maintain control. Look at how Twitter and YouTube censor wrong think.
A question, What happens to trust in the powers that be if the efficacious of Ivermectin is shown to be real against COVID as is being argued by a much maligned minority? There’s a massive effort to shut this down despite increasing evidence that it could be highly effective (even the Wall Street Journal is writing about it now). If it is and it does look that way then all politicians, their media mouthpieces and the like will have prevented the saving of millions of lives.
Add to the above the shambles around masks and the origins of the Wuhan flu.
Well said Chris 🙂
Agree.
Well said.
I knew a lady who had an episode of shock treatment back in the day. Her diagnosis of mental instability I now think looking back was probably based on her having an affair with a younger man. I was about 10 at the time.
But shock therapy at that time was not some secret fiendish torture device invented by psychopaths at a children’s institution; it was a mainstream wonder-drug type revolutionary treatment that was curing incurable insanity and psychological problems. It was in fact very much the same sort of acclaimed medical innovation, as we have now being promoted to fight off a seasonal virus that has killed no more people than the flu.
The voices struggling to be heard that seek to caution against the experimental gene therapy being forcefully advocated and pressed onto the community, especially children, are not those of normal dissidents or nut cases. They are mostly renowned specialists in the field of epidemiology horrified at what their profession
is going along with.
They explain the “science” that is in force here in great detail to those that are interested to help their reader to understand the risks that concern them. The proponents of the widespread vaccination programme who seek to defend their case on the other hand, while claiming the “science” do not address it. They provide no more science than does this present piece from Chris, they just routinely ridicule the voices of concern, not daring to try to point out where the critics of the “vaccine” are in error. Just like this they claim the science but will not discuss it. We are supposed to be ignorant and accept that they know better.
That is not a strategy for inspiring confidence .
At the beginning of the outbreak when the WHO first called a pandemic our reaction was correct and well implemented , well explained. Everyone could see the sense in what our government did and co operated. It was a new pathogen of unknown lethality and highly contagious . Since then the evidence has been that the virus is not more dangerous to the vast majority of the population than the flu.
For our government though, put yourself in their shoes. They have the World Health Organisation forcefully advocating the vaccination of everyone while evidence is mounting that it isn’t making much difference to the spread of the virus anyway , far from being a silver bullet that is going to allow us to go back to normal , the US authorities are now recommending that the vacced where masks and social distance as before.
I don’t criticise our government for their stance. With the WHO and the CDC and UK’s authority taking the position they have it is too much to expect our politicians who are not scientists or doctors to call “bullshit”. But every individual and esp every parent needs to consider what the qualified experts on the negative side of this debate are saying before accepting this injection, and please God before having their children jabbed.
D J S
Stuff’s mis-named “Health Correspondent” Hannah Martin published an article just the other day lauding the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine. In it she claimed 98% effectiveness and linked to a study – Pfizer’s own study from 18 months ago!
This was days after the Israeli Government had announced that the Pfizer vaccine had been effective in only 39% of cases.
The article has now disappeared.
The “expert” argument doesn’t work for me. For every Michael Baker or Siouxie Wiles in our captive press there are two, better qualified, professionals in the field who oppose the establishment p.o.v. but get no exposure in the popular press.
When the top people from Oxford, Harvard and Stanford put out the “Great Barrington Declaration” there was what can only be described as a news boycott. It seems no alternative argument will be brooked.
Here are some names of eminent persons whose voices should be part of debate:
Mike Yeadon, former Chief Scientist at Pfizer.
Peter McCullough, Vice Chief of Internal Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas and Senior Professor of Internal Medicine at the Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center, editor-in-chief of the journals Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine and Cardiorenal Medicine.
Sucharit Bhakdi, post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg and at The Protein Laboratory in Copenhagen – Germany’s most quoted scientist in this field.
Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University.
Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine and statistics at Stanford University.
Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine and biostatistician at Harvard University .
John Ioannides, Professor of Medicine, Health Research and Policy, and of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA process.
These are not loony anti-vaxxers and neither am I.
Thanks for all the references Brewer.People should do their own looking though I think, then they will be more likely to seriously consider what they find out. A favourite technique is to ridicule the source of the inconvenient information ; then the information itself doesn’t need to be discussed . If people find it for themselves they have already evaluated the source.
D J S
“Since then the evidence has been that the virus is not more dangerous to the vast majority of the population than the flu.”
When did we last have an influenza outbreak that killed over 4 million people in less than 2 years? David Stone?https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/
Where is your data on “long covid?”https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00299-6/fulltext
Which so far appears to disproportionately affect younger people especially women under 50 years?
These sufferers are too weak and exhausted to work up to some 9 months after infection?
But anyhow this is my favourite anti vax Covid story for this week . I reckon this guy deserves a Darwin award.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid-19-coronavirus-vocal-us-anti-vaxxer-dies-after-terrifying-month-long-battle-with-virus/XLY6IQKXWID5DHZRSVHLVPZKRU/?fbclid=IwAR04q1J6k8cr04uVptmjZ7VR50WVcWrb6JcZ_WglqvGStUctZ9re4pjnM98
When did a someone die in a motorcycle accident or from being shot in the head get listed as a flu victim Shona? The catagorisation of cause of death as from covid if it can be detected at all is a complete departure from what has been the practice ever before. Even here the last lady who is on our statistics of death from covid before the two subsequent small outbreaks had been listed as “recovered” and she had. She died of other causes associated with being over 90 yrs.
The only way to get a balanced view of covid’s impact is to compare deaths from all causes with previous years. There is no anomaly except in New Zealand we had no flu or covid last year and fewer deaths than usual.
D J S
D J S
“we had no flu or covid last year ” ???? Yes we did!
We had a pandemic last year!
Hence the lock down . Guess you missed that ?
NZ deaths from Covid total 26
And yes they did happen. No bullshit .
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/
And so the world’s leading university for epidemiology ( Johns Hopkins ) is completely wrong and telling lies and you’re not delusional?
FFS! There are none so blind etc etc etc
1000 or so cases, so what. If it is so deadly and there are no effective treatments (according to TPTB, hence the emergency use of the vaccines) how is it that people turn up on our shores on a daily basis almost, covid positive? Not one of these people since I think August last year has died. They just miraculously get better?
It pays to remember that seasonal ‘flu is known to cause about half a million deaths annually (290 000-650 000 influenza-associated deaths from respiratory causes alone https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/ ). According to Covid stats, these have virtually disappeared. It is a fair assumption that they have been attributed to Covid.
There is a big problem with the estimates of Covid-attributable deaths due to the use of the PCR test which is wildly inaccurate at high cycle rates – can produce up to 90% false positives at cycles above 15. 35 cycles have been commonly used during this pandemic. At that level, the test will detect the merest fragment of Corona (not necessarily Covid-19) and the policy has been to then label the deceased a Covid death. Consider that, in Britain, the average age of a Covid-attributed death is 82. The average British life-span is 80. In the recent NSW panic, the four or five deaths were all people in their late 80s and 90s.
Could it be that many many of the Covid death stats are the result of a category mistake?
A simple cross-check can be performed by comparing all-cause mortality in recent years. Dr Denis Rancourt has done this in Canada. He found that all-cause mortality during this pandemic is consistent with previous years despite a short spike among the elderly initially. This he analysed as directly attributable to mis-management by health authorities – sending the elderly to rest homes just as the Swedes did and later admitted was a bad mistake.
All-cause mortality stats are usually not available for a year or two but euromomo (the E.U. site) is fairly current. You can see them here:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
– they are not alarmingly elevated during the last couple of winters. There is a school of thought that alleges excess deaths may well be attributed to the response (lockdowns) which has taken a considerable toll. In New York City, when excess deaths between March 11 (the first recorded Covid-19 death) and May 2 were examined, only 57 percent had laboratory-confirmed Covid-19.
It is a very complex situation and I try to keep an open mind. What I can say with certainty is that there is a range of opinion and analysis by eminently qualified people out there that is not being discussed in the MSM and therefore to rely solely on the popular press for information is a mistake. It is also a mistake to gloat over the unfortunate “denier” who died. His death does not prove anything at all. Whilst his remarks may have been ill-considered, the 12,000 reported deaths due to the vaccine in the U.S. are, I consider, reasonable grounds for hesitancy.
Maybe not millions but many thousands of Maori got nailed by influenza, the Spanish flu in the early 1915-1918 period.
A jab or too isn’t gonna kill ya.
The Lancet are a joke. They published lies about HCQ then retracted it a few days later.
Yes, well said Chris. Once a society can no longer trust its leaders it is on a road to self destruction.
‘The Powers-That-Be of the past 70 years have hardly proved themselves to be the most trustworthy of masters, ‘
Dismal, isn’t it Chris!
Never have so many been so egregiously lied to by so few.
And now we are reaping the dire consequences of 70 years of the mendacity of TPTB -a collapsing economy, a collapsing environment (both global and local) and collapsing infrastructure.
Around here there is ‘no money’ for repair of pavements, ‘no money’ for repair of failing water systems, ‘no money to rectify poor drainage, not money even to maintain the roads. But the sociopaths at the top of the financial pyramid have never been richer.
Stupidity reigns in NZ.
We bend over backwards to accept the new NZ residents with fake jobs, love interests, aged parents and fraudsters, the mentality ill, criminally inclined and drugs smugglers into NZ, but apparently the immigration process has become so overloaded with these types of ‘critical’ immigration applications the ‘real’ professionals without expensive middlemen or advocates pushing through the fake paperwork, suing the immigration minister or so forth, get drowned out. Contracting out NZ visa processing to China and India, countries not known for their lack of corruption, does not help.
Weird how we get so many new migrant exploiters running petrol stations while doctors with real jobs and skills can’t seem to be differentiated as ‘critical skills’.
Covid 19 coronavirus: Young regional GP with 1300 patients leaves New Zealand following residency limbo
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-young-regional-gp-with-1300-patients-leaves-new-zealand-following-residency-limbo/PB7I2SWONUF6ZHOJUZF7HYQLKQ/
You can’t even blame immigration as whenever they try and process the higher skills jobs over $100k first, the woke cry ‘racism’, which in itself seems pretty racist from the woke to only expect those on higher salaries to be a certain colour.
While foreign doctors are in limbo in NZ, rapists and exploiters are fine to become NZ citizens and Permanent residents! Sarcasm.
Child abuser wins right to stay in New Zealand for humanitarian reasons
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/84891031/child-abuser-wins-right-to-stay-in-new-zealand-for-humanitarian-reasons
Child abuse dad avoids deportation on humanitarian grounds to stay with family
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/76059417/
Iain Lees-Galloway chose ‘lazy’ option granting residency to drink-driver – Simon Bridges
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/10/iain-lees-galloway-chose-lazy-option-granting-residency-to-drink-driver-simon-bridges.html
New resident convicted of sex offending twice, won’t be deported
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11837608
Judge’s difficult sentencing of a former refugee who won’t stop offending
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/111480343/judges-difficult-sentencing-of-a-refugee-who-wont-stop-offending
Rapist wins case to be allowed to stay in NZ
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/327784/rapist-wins-case-to-be-allowed-to-stay-in-nz
Rich building boss guilty of immigration fraud after residency granted, loses court battle with Herald
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12171615
Meanwhile those getting into the few places of medical training in NZ, can be overseas citizens or dual residents who don’t necessarily generally call NZ home, or in the case of the doctor who murdered the teenager – questions should be asked how they managed to get through such an extensive and supposedly rigorous course with questionable behaviour before the murder.
It is well past time that the Minister of Immigration fronted with some ‘real’ answers about skilled workers families; what appears to be going on is well past cruel, it is inhumane. This has been an issue for too long and one that the PM must deal with urgently.
Government need to work out that real skills tend to come at the higher price tag, aka $100 – $200k + salaries should be the absolute minimum for a NZ visa.
OZ lollipop workers get paid $180k and OZ IT graduates can get paid $225k https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/125488176/it-students-are-being-offered-up-to-215000-straight-out-of-university
So NZ is starting to look like the land of the unemployable and exploiters because you can often earn triple in OZ for the same job. Funny enough there’s plenty of money at the top in NZ aka 5 million dollar mansions flying off the auctions in AK, huge profits for supermarket owners, but a lack of sharing of wealth to their workers who they endless replace with migrants, seems to be driving down wages and useful skills and workers brain drain to OZ…
Meanwhile in NZ more than half of all NZ immigration visa’s do not involve any sort of work, they are dependants to another person (love interest, children, aged parents etc) so more than 50% of the visas being processed are nothing to do with work and clogging up the system so that migrant Doctors don’t get their visas processed because there are 200,000 ‘critical’ waiting, chefs and labouring staff needed. (not sure what happened to the 1 million low skilled that has already got residency in NZ but at a guess gone on to OZ to work and dependants left in NZ).
Apparently waiting staff are more critical in NZ than doctors because our despicable visa Ponzi led by the MSM braying every week, clogs up the NZ visa system as there are so many exploiters getting free money from paying back the wages and lump sums for each new visa on the low end of the labour pool.
While OZ remains attractive to employees due to better wages such as $180k for a lollipop worker and $215k for an IT graduate, NZ tends to think that they can just keep importing in more people to make sure that NZ wages remain on $60k forever – just like construction which pays $25 p/h the same as 20 years ago…. which is why nothing works in NZ anymore, people are paid poorly and the worker level often reflects the abuse and the experienced leave NZ.
NZ dinosaur attitude which is why NZ productivity is so low compared to other countries and we have one of the worst brain drains in the world!
Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Michael Barnett
“Australian recruiters were now active in Auckland and, particularly in the tech and construction sectors, with offers of $30,000 more in wages plus relocation and expenses, he said.
Barnett said he didn’t accept the view that a tight labour market would drive up wages and improve productivity.
“If you are adding skills, you’re growing your sector and growing your competitiveness and innovation,” he said.
“You stop doing all of those things when you are in this environment”.
Simply raising wages was not boosting skills, he said.
“As an example in technology, the person on $60,000 who went up to $80,000, then went up to $100,000 knows no more than when they were on $60,000.
So you’re not improving productivity, all you are doing is raising the cost of doing business.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/6000-workers-needed-survey-reveals-severity-of-auckland-labour-shortages/2MSGKFKY4ZVMQBRCSJ4URG672M/
Have yet to see any NZ employers try to match OZ salaries and recruit ‘normal’ workers back to NZ as a way to beat their labour shortage. NZ business can’t and won’t pay OZ wages due to their gross lack of productivity which gets lower each year! Let the market decide and hopefully the less Dino businesses with more experts will finally get the contracts again, instead of the poorly paid illegal labour subcontractors everywhere!
You also have to wonder how poorly NZ businesses are run in NZ when they pay 1/3 of the wages of OZ but are less productive and profitable than OZ normally with 1/3 less of a wage bill!
Though the person who goes from $60k to $80k does so by changing employers rather waiting 20 years for the incremental <2% pay rises to get them there. If that persons’ skill set was important to your business, then you either replace them at the new market rate or find someone who says they have the same skills but for some reason will take the job for $60k. You’ll then discover that they exaggerated their abilities or they just used you to get into a specific industry & will leave you for more money 6 months down the track. Neither is good for your business as you’ll have to wear the costs of hiring & training someone, whilst suffering from reduced productivity during that period.
Oh & the person who went from $60k to $120k moved to Australia & has probably removed their skills & income from NZ permanently, only to return to retire here.
Looking back through history and how Maori have been treated its a wonder they trust anything any government says and now we can add Auckland academics and scientists to that mix
Reality is composed of opposing forces; protons and electrons, male and female, good and evil, there’s two sides to every story. Nothing makes me trust someone less than an unshakeable, unreasonable insistence in one side of the story. Our media and political landscape is a partisan cess pit; who can trust them?
Stuff, for example, insist they’re a trusted, balanced, news source. They’re not. They’re nothing like what Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
Or, to quote John Stuart Mill:
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
You’ll generally find there if you apply a binary black/white train of thought, you will also be wrong. There is an awful lot of grey out there & most situations/things are actually very complex. Explanations get simplified (to the point of being largely wrong) so most people can get at least some understanding (and journalists are notorious for not understanding things at all and often end up writing stories where people are quoted as saying the opposite of what they actually said).
Take your “protons & electrons” model to CERN and you’ll be laughed out of the building. Nothing is simply, least of all the truth.
I trust ‘Authority’. As long as they’re transparent and open.
So I guess that is where people come to the point and decide whether they sit on the fence and say to themselves, they’re a lying bunch of bastards when the politicians get found out and which has been happening for generations.
Democracy is killing itself I guess. Youthanising itself I guess you could call it.
My dearest protestor,
I hide you away because only I know how to protect you. I hurt you to keep you from hurting yourself. I beat you because I love you unconditionally.
Your love forever,
The State.
Ah but Chris, we get told (almost daily at 1pm) that you should only get your information from the “single source of truth”, and if that doesn’t scare you then nothing will.
Especially after the repeated lies form the “podium of truth” in the past 18 months, and then a govt (any govt) trots out that line is of major concern to democracy. Notwithstanding, if someone was to tell you how much the media has been given in govt funding.
Doctors for Covid Ethics Symposium hosted by the UK Column News:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/live
Ah, yes. A once, apparently, proudly “anti-establishment” commenter who used to distrust those at the top of the power structure, goes on to give some excellent and pertinent cases of well-documented and confirmed blatant lies that were willingly and strategically told by agents of said power structure over just the last few decades, then concludes that we should trust those in authority – in essence –”just because.”
It should be noted that, in contrast to what you suggest above, the Big Tech run social media platforms bend over backwards in a panic and do everything in their power to suppress talk of, say, election fraud and the obvious authoritarian motives behind the so-called pandemic. Chris, you would be absolutely stunned how widespread the popular scepticism towards the pronouncements of our oligarchy/technocratic over lords has become. Their House of Cards is looking very shaky. Frankly, if you don’t entertain the idea of “conspiracy theories” you are not a serious person.
Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. His research interests include modern propaganda, history and tactics of advertising, American film, and media ownership. He is the author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV; Seeing Through Movies; Mad Scientists: The Secret History of Modern Propaganda; Spectacle: Operation Desert Storm and the Triumph of Illusion; and The Bush Dyslexicon.
The Interviewer: John Kirby is the director of FOUR DIED TRYING, a feature documentary and series on the major assassinations of the 1960’s and their calamitous impact on the country. To join the struggle for justice for Dr. King, Malcolm X, and John and Robert Kennedy.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/07/26/watch-perspectives-on-the-pandemic-17/
And don’t forget workplace bullying. 40% of workers have experienced it, according to a PSA survey, NZ 2nd worst in the world for this problem, an issue caused by the ‘authorities’ in the hierarchical punitive power structures in the workplace that belie the freedom of the individual and our rights as citizens.
And as for some commenting here that the media is captured to spread the trust in the authorities, how do you account for Mike Hosking, the guy who single-handedly destroys the credibility of that well known rag, the NZ Herald.
“Ah yes, the Internet, and its irrepressible love-child, Social Media. A wonderful resource, providing you come to it with a bountiful helping of what used to be called “general knowledge”. Those who approach the Internet with a pretty good grasp of basic science and history will have little difficulty in distinguishing shit from cheese. For those who don’t read more than 140 characters at a time, watch documentaries, or listen to the news, however, the Internet is a field full of rabbit holes. Easy to fall into, hard to get out of.”
Does this constitute shit or cheese Chris?
https://doctors4covidethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Pfizer-pharmacokinetics-and-toxicity.pdf
D J S
Doctors for Covid Ethics Symposium (second day)
https://www.ukcolumn.org/live
Seems like we have stumbled down the same rabbit hole. I don’t see anyone coming back out of it do you? Those already vaxed are probably better to keep away.
D J S
I think that these people make a mistake, even if their worst suspicions of the devious plots of the Davos crowd are true, in theorising that these people have control of the world’s governments.
If you place yourself in Jacinda’s shoes : she is not a scientist or a doctor, how can she go against the strong advice of the WHO? This dilemma must apply to all world leaders at the moment, even if they have doubts. It is unlikely that they have time to do the research we are doing. They are trapped. If there is a deliberate evil scheme afoot it doesn’t need to involve many people. Just the tops of the WHO and the CDC. Who seem to be the same people who have been involved in gain of function research on caronaviruses as well as being in control of the CDC and advisers to the WHO. I think it is more likely that there has been a massive “shit oh dear” and the whole mess is an arse covering exercise by the culprits.
The US leadership is contradicting itself as to what precautions have to be enforced several times a week with one hand not knowing what the other is doing of saying . They are in chaos as to how to deal with it and what stories to tell about the breakthrough cases and the death toll from the vaccine. It doesn’t look like a well planned project and I think the medical and scientific experts we are watching weaken their message by straying into trying to explain why the principles they thought their fraternity lived by are being so grievously abused. They should stick to their area of expertise.
D J S
Yes. I concur.
To be clear, I don’t buy into any “conspiracy” type theory. I have lived long enough to realise that they are unnecessary. Most are the application of extraneous entities on top of what is patently obvious – a confluence of interest.
Here is how it could work, in my opinion.
Big Pharma devise a marketing strategy for their latest ‘flu vaccine employing applied psychology – ramping up the fear factor.
Other interested groups (including the Davos crew) buy in for their own reasons – they recognise an opportunity to further their agenda.
Law enforcement/authoritarians see a chance to increase surveillance.
Media thrive on sensation and the windfall of Government spending on communication (the British Government is now the largest customer for British media).
Security firms experience unprecedented demand for their services.
Many individuals and organisations join in for perfectly sincere reasons – they buy the hype.
Political operators welcome a single issue that provides an opportunity to sweep all other problems under the carpet.
An entire new industry is created.
Pretty soon the thing has grown like topsy – I think you get the idea.
Some facts that would seem to support this scenario:
1. All research upon which the “pandemic” originated in Big Pharma’s own research. None of it was peer reviewed.
2. A pandemic was declared long before actual data was collected. It was all based on computer modelling, now known to be massively flawed and emanating from Pharma-supported institutions such as Imperial College London.
3. Leading epidemiologists such as John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, Sucharit Bhakdi, Wolfgang Wodarg, our own Simon Thornely and many others consistently pointed out that the virus had an IFR of between 0.11 and 0.15 % – insufficient to qualify as a pandemic. Industry voices shouted them down. It is now officially recognised that they were correct.
4. mRNA technology had been on the back burner for some years. According to Pfizer’s former chief scientist, Mike Yeadon, the side-effects were known and considered problematic. Big Pharma sought and gained both emergency permission to market it and immunity from liability – unprecedented.
5. Prominent spokespeople in the public sector in the U.S. and Britain including Fauci, members of SAGE etc are known to have substantial investments in mRNA.
6. The fallibility of the PCR test was a known yet it was used to overstate the IFR until the vaccine roll-out. Now it is being discarded since its false positives are a bad look for the “vaccine”.
All a bit of a witches brew I know but sufficient for caution in my view.
What an insightful article! And the issue of trust is indeed one which runs deep through the echelons of power in Australia and New Zealand. I believe one should do their own research first as well as listen to the television and radio debates.
Bringing military into Sydney to assist in the lockdown is going to work against them in terms of trust.
Big mistake, but not quite as big as focusing on vaccination/heard immunity as the only solution which will we realise a few months from now.
Well said. Heightened media and betrayals.
I caught up the thread of social democracy in its last days and it’s seen me right to this day. Along with the evolutionary biology of Desmond Morris’s ‘The Naked Ape’.
We ought not confuse authority with expertise. Expertise confers authority but not always vice versa.
Part of our current problem is distrust of expertise.
I believe the term science is abused in these arguments, Chris’s included. For example, science never urged trust in thalidomide, pharmaceutical companies did, and scientific cautions and warnings at the time were over ridden by industry lobbying and marketing. That is not a failure of scientific method or endeavour but a failure to properly regulate or police
profit seeking business.
“We have no reason to doubt…” complete bullshit. Anyone, anywhere has reason to doubt and question anytime they fucking feel like it. And what do we get now? Censorship and lies.
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