And As For New Zealand's 'Punching Above Its Weight' On the World Stage Under the Globally-Acclaimed, Youthful and Charismatic Leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern...How Come No-One Has Bothered to Inform Folks Overseas That New Zealand Inc Is No Longer (Even Amongst) the Global Covid-Beater/s...Just Look at Our (Now Regularly) Horrendous Death Stats These Days...Yet (I'll Also Readily Concede) You'd Be Equally Hard-Pressed Finding Even One Major Media Outlet Commenting Critically Thereupon...

Yet As to That Rerun of An All Too Familiar Script, I.e. the On-Again, Off-Again 'Massacre of the Innocents' in the Good 'Ole U S of A, It's Deja Vu All Over Again the Umpteenth Time...PLEASE - PLEASE - PLEASE - At Long Last LEARN! No, Not From Aotearoa-New Zealand's (Unimpressive, & Anyhow, Incomparable), Record Thereabouts, But, Rather, As That Bastion of Left-Wing Political/Social/Cultural Commentary, the 'Democracy Now' Broadcast Out of New York City, Readily Concedes, From ENTIRELY ANOTHER Australasian Nation, (New Zealand's Next-Door Neighbour) the Land of Oz Itself...In the Aftermath of/Fallout from the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania...& By One of Australia's Longest-Serving & Most Respected, Yet Deeply Conservative Leaders No Less, John Howard...

But Hurrah to P M Ardern's (One-Time) Religious Fellow-Traveller, Former Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney...From One (Former Mormon) Politician to Another Mormon Politician, As It Were...In, Once Again, Standing Out - Usually Almost Entirely Alone - From the (*Republican Party) Crowd...In Offering (At Least Some Tentative) Constructive Ideas/Suggestions Regarding How to - At Long Last (But Who's Realistically Maintaining Any Hope Any More?) - Deal To/With America's Ongoing, Seemingly Never-Ending Horrendous Incidence of Gun-Fuelled Mass Shootings...

*An organisation which renowned linguist/scholar/political commentator Noam Chomsky has labelled "the most dangerous institution in the history of humanity"... 

"Disinformation"? What Searing Shortsightedness/ Incredible Irony (to be Generous) - Stupefying Spin/ Disingenuous Dissembling (to be Way Less So)...

Whilst gun-toting criminals run amuck as gang-fuelled crime quite literally goes berserk in her home city of Auckland, Aotearoa-New Zealand's internationally-extolled leader struts the world stage championing our post-mosque massacre gun buyback 'success', when - if said legislative changes adopted post-March 15th 2019 say anything - they reinforce the very point then (numerically inconsequential) opponents made at the time...

I.e. in thus, effectively emptying out the guns in circulation amongst the law-abiding citizenry/community, the Government was thereby, ipso facto, leaving them in the hands of the criminal fraternity, who, one could rest assured, would indeed not hesitate even one moment employing whenever and however they saw fit...

And meanwhile Prime Minister Ardern preaches to the (global) converted about the dire dangers of this day of disinformation...

Talk about disingenuous disinformation! 

As For That Other Boris - No, Not THAT BORIS (Yeltsin) Who Inadvertently & With the Best of Intentions Helped Install His Nefarious & Wicked Successor - i.e. the Former Russian Diplomat in Geneva) Boris Bondarev - What A Brave & Rare Act of Civil Disobedience, One Sadly Likely to Evoke the Deadliest Response Possible...

But As For (the Lovable Rogue Who Is) Boris Johnson (To Those Who Have Responsibility in These Matters, I.e. Johnson's Parliamentary Colleagues in the British Conservative Party): Be Done With Him Once & For All...Seeing As Eyewitnesses Present Have Verified That the (Covid-19-Defying) Downing Street Parties (One & All) Were Routine (Affairs): Hey, What Remains to Be Understood? - Seems Pretty Much a Slam Dunk to Me (& Surely to Any Other Disinterested Observer)

I find I cannot get past comments of Newstalk ZB's bi-weekly correspondent Rob Little to Mike Hosking the other day...

"Boris Johnson's, in UKspeak/speech, "I take responsibility" "(i.e. for whatever occurred under the now notorious 'Partygate' affair), "means, in New Zealandspeak/speech, I take no responsibility whatsoever!"

Incidentally, "[Labour leader] Keir Starmer didn't even do anything (in the ballpark of what Johnson did). But he made the mistake of calling on Johnson to resign [if he was found to have been in contravention of covid rules]...(and so had no alternative but to (hypothetically) offer his own resignation were he found to be in breach of the same).

Anyhow, surely the true 'smell test' - for PM Johnson, if for no-one else - is *WWCD, i.e. 'what would (Winston) Churchill do? And anyone having to take the time to even consider that question is unfamiliar with that larger-than-life persona, for honour and integrity were central to Churchill's very person, making such a question rather rhetorical and redundant... 

*A bespoke variation upon the classic WWJD, i.e. 'what would Jesus do?'

No, we're not considering mere trivialities of a casual drink or several here, it's a matter of principle and integrity, for people across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom were unable to attend the final moments of dying relatives under the strict (if **understandable) covid protocols instituted by Johnson's Government...  

No, hypocrisy under these rules and regulations - i.e. expecting the common plebs to 'do as we say, not as we do' - is without excuse, and worthy of the direst consequences politically; end of story.

Having said that, however, I would myself be willing to break such a law - and face the inevitable repercussions - were my Mum say to be in her dying days...

...but, just so there's no misunderstanding, like Martin Luther King I would be prepared to face the legal consequences, however unjust, of doing what I considered the right and proper, dutiful and loving thing upon such an occasion...for some laws are just so (i.e. unworthy of dutiful obedience); however one must ever and always be willing to suffer (however unjustly) for what one believes and knows deep down to be the right thing to do...

Labour's Eschewed Its Working-Class Roots (in New Zealand as in the U K) In Favour of the Socially 'Enlightened'/Progressive Middle-Class Professional Set: So You're Asking Why Such (WC) Voters Are Deserting Them In Droves in Both Jurisdictions (for the Conservative Party in Great Britain, and for (their ideological bedfellows) the National Party in New Zealand)?

For a good all round backgrounder on the situation - vis-a-vis the New Zealand context, that is - you could hardly do worse than consult the insightful musings, reflections and research of long-time left-wing political activist and commentator Chris Trotter, who once presented a public lecture here in Dunedin, NZ in which he graphically detailed and explained the mass exodus of party members from NZ Labour in the 1980s, once like its opposite number the NZ National Party a mass membership political party...

...and all essentially because a once socially conservative and economically leftist party embraced the very opposite: laissez-faire economics a la Reaganomics & Thatcherism and social liberalism/radicalism... 

Aged Care/Home Support Carers/Workers: Aussie Labo(u)r (Government-Elect) Embraces 'Em, Kiwi Labour (Government) Increasingly Alienates Them: So You're Seriously Asking Why the Selfsame Are Busily Exiting 'God's Own' En Masse?

Yes, I exaggerate, but I hope you get my point... 

Upon This My 666th Blogpost Herein, How Very Appropriate That It Coincided With the Speaker of the Parliament of Aotearoa-New Zealand's Apparent Assumption of Papal Powers...

As he himself disclosed to a no longer aghast House of Parliament today, in response to some pithy repartee from the ever quick on his feet, off the mark and on point Act leader David Seymour, that

- no, I just have to quote Speaker Mallard word-for-word -

"The member [i.e. David Seymour] knows my rights in here [Parliament's Chamber] are pretty much absolute."

Nuff Said. Yes, Mallard's assumption of papal prerogatives, privileges and powers is now well-nigh absolute!

Awaiting the Announcement - of a Decision Evidently Already Made - of the U S Supreme Court Upon the Last Half-Century's Culture Wars-Inciting Roe Vs Wade Legal Precedent Upon Abortion...

But how come mainstream media rarely inform us - here in God's Own, anyhow - that far from outlawing the practice, said long-awaited decision is simply to turn the ever-contentious matter over, (hopefully) once and for all time, to the jurisdiction of America's fifty-some individual states...

...for their own respective individual determinations thereupon...

But What Rank & All Too Typical Shamefaced, Shameless & Shameful, Thoroughly Reprehensible Hypocrisy of Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Raymer, Affecting Some Sort of (Typically Femi-Nazi) "Oh poor me!" Pose When She Herself Acted Shamefully and Shamelessly - In the Feminine Equivalent, So to Speak, of Mr Parish - But, Far More Worryingly & Seriously (& Light Years Removed From His Own Self-Inflicted 'Crime' Only Really Injuring Himself & His Own Soul) As An Agent Provocateur of Sorts to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson In Work Time In Those Selfsame (Un)Hallowed Chambers of Parliament...

Methinks Neil Parish, M.P. - Nabbed for the High Crime & Misdemeanour of, Wait for It - (No, Not Even) Surreptitiously (Apparently) Viewing Pornography During Work Time - Was/Is a Relative Innocent in the Overall Scheme of Things (British Politics & the Like), But Will Serve As An All too Convenient Fall Guy for Great Britain's Ruling Conservative Party, & Its Leader in Particular

Disclaimer: 

Pornography is and ever has been an utter scourge upon all and sundry in Western society, though admittedly I too was an innocent childhood (teenage) victim of the same, as myself and a sibling surreptitiously removed/replaced various (of our father's) intriguing copies of Playboy and Penthouse out of/back into their respective possies from time to time...