MEDIAWATCH: Verity Johnson is right – Jacinda won the Covid war but lost the Covid peace
While Damien Grant is embarrassingly attempting to be relevant by inserting the word ‘woke’ into a column title, Verity Johnson continues to be the best columnist on Stuff…
Verity Johnson: Jacinda Ardern is our Winston Churchill
Far out, brussels sprouts. We’ve had an angry few weeks, haven’t we?
Sir Ian Taylor wrote one letter to Stuff about Dame Jacinda Ardern two weeks ago and the whole country starts ideologically spewing like it’s Crate Day.
One half of us publicly threatens Ardern with disembowelment, tarring and feathering. The other half violently defends her honour, calling this a sexist, blasphemous witch hunt. Flags are raised, drums are banged, and it gets positively medieval up in Middle Earth.
Which, given that Ardern hasn’t been in power for ages, is fascinating. It’s been two and a half years, but we’re still as fired up about her as if she resigned last Saturday.
Sure, the period she presided over was, ah, unprecedented, but still, that’s a long time to have such a big bug up our butt.
…Verity has already brilliantly written that we collectively had our hearts broken by Jacinda and turned to National in what amounted to a grudge fuck against Labour.
Jacinda won the Covid Battle, but she lost the Covid Peace, just like Winston Churchill won World War 2, but lost the next general election to rebuild.
When New Zealanders (especially Aucklanders who suffered and sacrificed to ensure vaccination rates around the country were high enough to end the lockdown) looked at what Labour offered us – GST off our fresh fruit and vegetables – we were collectively furious!
After all we had sacrificed, that was all they were prepared to give us, it felt like Labour didn’t understand our pain of they thought GST off fruit and vegetables was a solution.
Labour’s incrementalism rather than big policy ideas after we trusted Jacinda with an unprecedented MMP Majority burnt so many of us who believed in her and the hope of what Labour could do.
A lot of Labour voters didn’t vote at all or voted Greens.
Labour has to win us back.
Here’s last weeks interview with Chippy…
…we deserve better than this hard right Government, a Government led by Chippy must step up and offer us something different.
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Wondering if Labour caused the construction failures by shutting the country down coz someone got a cold, and also doing nothing about the basket case housing market when they had a chance.
At least houses were being built when Labour was in charge; if you took any notice of world news, you would have noticed that the shutdown was a bit more widespread than our few islands. I think that they wanted to do something with the housing market, but those milking it for excessive financial return decided not to cooperate, and fools like you blame Labour when National has shut the country down.
Wow another conspiracy!
I think it was more than a cold and lock down was done World wide. Mistakes were made and perhaps the long Auckland lock down was one of them .
what a stupid thing to say 50000 homes were built each year after covid lockdowns which on average lasted 3 months .While there were longer ones in some parts because of the failure to get vaccinated the rest of NZ was still going hard .Since national got elected they have shut the construction industry down to lock down status .
Since we’re comparing NZ’s Covid response to war now, what happened to “Lest we forget”? Isn’t that what we tell ourselves every ANZAC Day since forever? You know, so we never let it happen again?
It’s an appealing comparison, but Churchill had more than a few flaws fatal to a peacetime politician.
Ardern not so much – she was the focus of sociopathic hatred from elites disempowered by her approach, from Putin, whose brand of murderous authoritarianism wanted no inspiring alternatives (The posts were traced to Russian troll farms. Until this point, disinformation had largely remained on the fringes of New Zealand politics https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-did-new-zealand-turn-on-jacinda-ardern), from the shock jock styled political reporters who found themselves increasingly irrelevant, and from tired old political hacks like Winston Peters who found in Ardern a damning critique of his whole corrupt and wasted life in NZ politics.
These forces fed the nutbars, the antivaxxers, the counterspinners and the clownvoy, knowing that they have nothing whatsoever to offer a populace systematically impoverished by their failed economic policies since Roger Douglas sold out New Zealand working people and his corrupt colleagues, Palmer, Prebble, Lange et al went along with it.
I think you are too hard Stuart. What Lange said and how he tried to hold Labour together against the right who have shown how divisive and uncaring about the country they are, didn’t work for him. He wasn’t given a knighthood, just French taunting.
What names in Labour are behind the keeping of Chippy. Are the powers at the top of Labour’s tree divided into two camps and stale-mated? If so I suggest they go on a hunting weekend in some remote area. Tell everyone that its a goat hunting cull. And make sure that there are real ready bullets in the guns and everyone wears the same browny balaclava with fun ears on it. Just to add some randomness and uncertainty to the doings.
That will get them used to doing things differently than some rule book that was left over after Margaret Thatcher’s demise. And will possibly create some vacancies in Labour ranks; people who won’t be missed from the coterie of vacant minds or worse, many scheming and ruthless in their resolve to stay in power. Labour being ruthless, and National now Ruth less but with Nick Will, is an unfortunate outcome; our own Charge of the light brigade.
But they are closer to being matched now, Ruth was special and not to be duplicated, she was an afreet apparently.
Dictionary https://www.dictionary.com › browse › afreet
AFREET Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
The common Egyptian spellings are afreet, in the singular, and afaareet in the plural, for spiritual beings, who are usually described by percipients as of pygmy stature, but as being able to assume various sizes and shapes.
Jacinda won two battles ,which NZ should thank her for .
FIRST MICO PLASMA BOVIS ,how good would the dairy and beef industry be if she had just left them to their own devices ?I would think they would not be doing very well right now because the herds would be nearly wiped out and other countries would not be taking what little we could produce .Say thank you all you guttless farmers .
Second of course is Covid where she adopted the same plan eliminate if possable or if not contain .
On both accounts she saved lives and incomes but got no thanks only abuse because the selfish and greedy bunches want everything no matter the cost .