Don’t mock Judith’s tears – that would be a terrible political blunder

By
Martyn Bradbury
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86
3076

I know what you are going to say.

I know what you are going to say.

“Fuck Judith’s crocodile tears, she has been more than happy to race bait over Maori, tub thump the tough on crime bullshit and has shown the kind of ethics that your average drug cartel would be embarrassed by.”

Sure, all true.

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I don’t think Judith was playing politics, I think that was a rare moment of honesty. The Small Business Auckland electorate she represents are freaking the fuck out and classifying their fear as racist by the Woke and the wider Left would be as politically damaging as Hillary calling all Trump supporters ‘deplorable’.

These smal business owners have done all they have been asked, they have double vaxxed up the ying yang, have called for faster tests and are begging for vaccination passports.

They’ve done what has been called of them and yet they still face total ruin over the next few months.

The increase in funds to help business by the Government is an acknowledgment of that pain, but it needs to go further.

The truth is these small business owners are people who for the first time in their lives feel economically vulnerable. They have haemorrhaged cash because of the lockdown and are on the verge of collapse. They are ripe for radicalization.

To mock Judith’s articulation of their pain is to mock them.

Now, I don’t think for one second Judith has any alternative better than the one outlined. All she is promising to do is kill more people than Labour will by opening earlier and to do it with far less competence.

So the solutions to the pain she is articulating are bullshit, but her articulation of the pain is legitimate.

Small Business is really hurting and their pain needs to be respected if we want the same compassion for workers, beneficiaries and the poor.

Kindness means being kind to those you dislike immensely, that’s why kindness isn’t for wimps.

We are all in this together.

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86 COMMENTS

    • Rubbish. The easiest thing to do would be throw the doors open of businesses. And life would seem good for a while. But when cases skyrocket and hospitals fill up, are you going to put your hand up and say you were wrong and we should have stayed locked down until we hit 90%? Or are you just going to blame the government. Look at today’s Herald. Singapore has 85% fully vaccinated population. They opened up. They had 18 deaths Wednesday – their highest single daily covid death toll. Their population is of a similar size to ours. They reintroduced restrictions where employees worked from home, and social gatherings of only 2 people were allowed (sound familiar, Auckland?). Who’s actually showing the most empathy? Jacinda or Judith? I know who I will pick.

      • Absolutely spot on Brad. Sucked in badly Martyn by that old crocodile Judith Collins. There is raging pandemic and our behaviour needs to change as it is evolving rapidly and could get much much worse. The government was doing so great for NZ until the bubble opened to Oz, under the same kind of pressure to open Auckland now. So stupid, so shortsighted.

    • Judith’s tears look insincere when you remember it was she and her supporters who howled for the trans-Tasman bubble which is how we got into this particular predicament.

      Had National been in govt. last year, it’s debateable whether those same small businesses would have survived the first round of Covid-19. Doing business in the covid environment would have been dicey even without getting sick themselves. Their customer numbers would have dropped considerably even if they themselves had not sickened and died.

      If you supported and/or used the trans-Tasman bubble then you were part of the problem.
      Instead of always looking to blame someone else, how about accepting your own part in causing the problem.

      • Spot on joybell.

        The Trans-Tasman bubble was doomed to fail. I was against it when it was being mooted.

        It was a knee-jerk reaction to the Nat’s pressure to open up, the tourist industry, and entitled tourists who were desperate to be allowed to travel overseas. Why do they have to go overseas? 3.5m tourists came here each year because it’s an ace place to visit.

        Support your own tourism industry; don’t import your tourism.

        Yes, if the Nats had had control over our Covid response, we would be way over 28 deaths, and the few thousand business deaths.

      • Well said joybell.
        The virus does not play a business model. Those that think business will return to the old normal ehen we open-up haven’t been watching what is happening overseas.

  4. As I said previously the stand up of her political career. The best part was the head kick to tone deaf Wellington Jacinda fangirl Jenny Lynch.

    The building problem for the left is the smug treatment of Auckland from the Wellington elite. They are treating us up here as ‘beyond the wall’ therefore our views as not important savage speak. Unbelievably right now they are working out between themselves whether the treaty was breached with this plan – talk about the Titanic’s band playing on!

    Without Auckland economically the rest of the country is fucked. Its like a 3year old repeatedly punching a pitbull. At some stage the pitbull will bite back and it won’t be pretty. If we had a mayor with a backbone I believe you would have already had the response by now.

    The PM’s traffic light plan is something that you would have seen out of Blackadder goes forth and there is a narcissistic element to it. A smug I’m going to have the best vaccination rates in the OECD snigger without realistically evaluating whether it will work or not.

    There should be a lesson in what happened to Alec Baldwin yesterday. Karma hunts out and deals with smug most of the time.

    • “There should be a lesson in what happened to Alec Baldwin yesterday. Karma hunts out and deals with smug most of the time.”

      Given that appalling comment Frankie, that must means, yours will be coming soon.

  5. Are the landlords and the Banks in this as well (and Councils) ,or is it all on the tax payer to support all those who despise paying their taxes? If we are all in this together it would be great to see the hardened Capitalists give some leeway for a pandemic.

    • Lockdowns have got nothing to do with ‘Maori’ as Collins asserts, this tyranny belongs to Ardern and her white knights alone. It’s funny how the narrative can swing from saving the indigenous population to blaming them for all of life’s ills. I guess that is what you get from a leader and party on life support.

  7. Well articulated Martyn.

    I was thinking about the 90% double jab target that the govt has set. That is going to be effing hard to reach in some of regional dhbs. I was chewing over whether it would be better to lower the 2nd dose target. Eg 90/80. So that in Auckland you could open up slightly earlier with vax cert restrictions. I wondered whether this would help crank up the vax numbers faster. It would allow businesses to open a couple of weeks earlier. As long as the border situation remains unchanged I can’t see how it increases risk much.

  8. Businesses big and small feel pain regularly. But none worse than Aucklands current catatonic state that is never ending.

    Businesses employ workers, workers lives and their families and futures are intrinsically linked to businesses. As is the greater economy. All stating the bloody obvious.

    That is why still furiously trying to run a ellimination strategy for this country with a hybrid suppression model in the economies biggest component, Auckland, cannot possibly succeed. Jacinda does not want to accept that. Her head and most of her being is buried in the sand. It’s like trying to back up the Titanic after it hit the iceberg because of bad decisions made months ago.

    Rather than the constant kicking the can down the road that our indecisive PM likes to do, this government are ultimately going to have to face facts, we are one country. Anything else will implode Aucklands economy and by virtue, New Zealand’s.

    I do not think a number of Aucklands businesses can last another 6 weeks, let alone the Christmas retail season hoping the government realises the futility what they are doing.

  10. Lockdowns have got nothing to do with ‘Maori’ as Collins asserts, this tyranny belongs to Ardern and her white knights alone. It’s funny how the narrative can swing from saving the indigenous population to blaming them for all of life’s ills. I guess that is what you get from a leader and party on life support.

  11. Well said Marytn. The courts now need to reflect in punishments handed out to rule breakers the harm they are inflicting on us all, financially and emotionally.

    • Waiting with bated breath when the gangs members who have broken border restrictions plus covid assembly rules at Tangi’s, will be hauled before the courts. Should be fun.

      Somehow think that Ardern and Coster will find that getting gang members charged and prosecuted will be in the too hard basket.

      Low hanging fruit consisting of a couple of lawyers going to Wanaka or Tamaki having a picnic in the park is easy. Who will put on the big boys pants and tackle the rule flaunting gang members?

    • Don’t be ridiculous. There is no point in having it ready until areas are 90% vaccinated. Waste of time and resources before then.

  13. It seems a slightly cynical move to pass the vaccine target chase onto beleaguered (underfunded, understaffed, burnt out and disengaged) DHBs to coordinate and then hound their “populations” so as to hit the number.
    Vaccine drives at the grassroots level under guidance of public health have been successful in the past, but the head of that organisation wasn’t even at the traffic light announcement…
    I wonder who the buck will stop with…
    I did think assuming the mantle of leadership for directing the covid response and all communications would stay with those who received a mandate to lead from us New Zealanders, but maybe it’s politically disadvantageous to be on that boat.

  14. Yes, there is little point in putting the slipper into Mrs Collins yet again–she said herself “watch the eyebrows”, and now it seems, the tear ducts.

    Regarding members of the NZ petit bourgeoisie however, hopefully this COVID public health emergency may have been educational. “Be your own boss”, “aspirational” vision, “self employed and proud”, “heartland service economy”, SMEs in hock to finance capital in the form of Australian Banks–all amounts to people on the edge taking a punt and believing in the dream.

    While Martyn is not wrong in recommending letting these people of the hook gently–I have heard too many of them speak with venom of those displaced initially in the 80s and 90s by Roger and Ruth, and their descendants, as filthy bennies and bludgers to let this slide. The middle classes got a higher second tier COVID benefit which even allowed partners to be working–try that on a job seeker allowance!

    So lets have a rebalancing–small business operators do not glow in the dark, or deserve eternal special pleading while working class are largely ignored, they are just like the rest of us and need to accept it.

  15. I heard an economist explain the good economy like this. Imaging Bunnings closed their store then gave all the staff a $1000 dollar gift from a pool of money they had borrowed then told them to spend it at another Bunnings the result would look great for Bunnings for a short while until they had to find the money to pay back the loan plus interest.

  16. Politics aside, small businesses that can’t trade via the internet must be really suffering big time. There must be a lot of worry and anxiety about their uncertain future. I feel for them. Small businesses make up a huge part of the economy and actually I think most small business owners work dam hard

  17. You are starting to sound inspired
    “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
    But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;”

  18. Judith as per usual is desperate for relevance. Her tears are about as authentic and contrived as her kneeling to pray in a church during the 2020 election campaign. No doubt her chief adviser Cameron Slater thought she would gain some traction. If Brian Tamaki can convince a % of people that he’s a decent person and earthquakes really are caused by homosexuality then perhaps Judith can still hoodwink a few to believe she cares more about other people than her own political ambitions.

  19. NZ would have been a Basket Case if National & ACT had been in power during this COVID outbreak over the past few years, even Labour have managed to F%ck U* the handling of this COVID by opening up the borders too quickly.

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