Big fat hammers bad, strong team plus Gerry good
Diary of the last 12 hours
6.15amFelix is in Pretoria wondering how I could disrespect Mungo Jerry. As Aotearoa wakes up, other More Than a Feilding readers have the some question.
Here’s the thing: In The Summertime is a stone cold pop classic. Ray Dorset? A real talent. I just flinch a bit to hear that particular song because the world and his dog thrashed that tune within an inch of its life. I would also suggest that Alright Alright Alright was their best work.
Will there be more of this today for music lovers? Count on it.
7.25am
Judith Collins is on the phone wondering how the Prime Minister could disrespect her by not jolly well giving her a briefing.
This is to do with China appearing to have compiled lists of citizens of Aotearoa who are connected to politicians of Aotearoa and this connection may be by dint of calling them Mum, or Dad, or being a journo, or being Max Key.
Professor Anne-Marie Brady was on the radio just before, suggesting the plan might be to cultivate friendships and thereby open doors to influence.
Scary, actually; you can drift into these things more easily than one might imagine. One minute you’re in China on official business, the next you’re going 30km in the wrong direction for a cup of tea on the way to the airport.
So we need to be vigilant and Judith Collins wants to know why she hasn't been kept in the loop. We now await a perfectly simple/utterly confounding explanation from the Prime Minister/TyrannicalAutocrat running this country.
Meanwhile Corin would like to know what the pop-up leader of the opposition would do if she were running the show. Well Corin, she would keep the leader of the opposition in the loop. Yes, but what would she do? Well Corin, she would make sure the opposition were advised… Yeah, yeah, but let’s pretend you’re back in office and building 12 lane motorways and underfunding everything else, what wouldja do?
Now this gets quite interesting because now we are presented with an elegant the purpose of which is to let us know, without being quite so blunt, that the thing that matters most is …. trade.
This is a principle as hallowed now as it was when James K Baxter was writing A Bucket of Blood for a Dollar. But my word, haven’t there been some changes? Communist China was just a couple of dominoes up from South Vietnam, and well, now we have a trade agreement with them and stand back, the pirouette is about to go full twirl: here it comes: New Zealand is independent in the world, Corin. There you go: the same position staked out by notorious socialist Norman Kirk, now orthodoxy in our international relations and well, just see how useful it is here.
You don’t have to say out loud: it’s a question of trade, you say, it’s a question of independence and bat away the awkwardness. Thus do you get to slightly raise your eyebrows at whatever China might be up to but also go on selling them milk powder and not fall out with Gilead.
9.14am
For the last two hours rabid leftie Twitter, where my friends are, has been all Judith Collins on TV1 OMG the state of her.
With no great eagerness I roll the tape.
She says, and it would appear she means this not to be taken as extravagant and wildly misleading politicking:
I think the Government panicked around Covid-19
She says, and it would appear she means us to accept this as thoughtful analysis:
you’ve got New South Wales, you’ve got Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia with actually really good results without destroying their economy.
She says, and it would appear she expects the coming PREFU numbers to back her up on this:
What we’ve seen in New Zealand is a big fat hammer of the state coming down and frightening people, and we’ve had panic essentially, and a panicked Government has caused enormous harm to the economy.
Gosh, how awful. Do we have some kind of data to paint a picture of this dreadful hammer? Why yes.
Boy look at us there being all crushed and suppressed with, er, a whole lot less stringency.
But still, did that big fat hammer come down too hard? You didn't have to be an expert or a bank economist to work out what was gong to happen on the day the borders were closed. Who will this affect? you might have asked out loud. Well, I suppose that would be: tourism and tourism-related hospitality.
So what would she have done differently? Keep the borders open? Because if that would have been the non-big-fat-hammer plan, how would she square that with all the staunch declarations about being all rigorous at the border?
And while we have some level of community transmission at large, in say Levels 2 and 3, what would she propose to do differently there? Let larger gatherings get stuck into the drinks? And party on? One has ones doubts.
Woven through the whole skit, as ever, are expressions of due reverence for the sacred: the Kiwi Business. Everyone in New Zealand matters, but the hard working Mums and Dads who run a business matter most, clearly. She is aggrieved to see them being them made vulnerable by these actions that have been taken to, er, protect, er, the nation that those businesses are a part of and depend upon to operate. Never mind that, big fat hammers bad, strong team plus Gerry good.
9.52am
Excellent cartoon response to yesterday’s newsletter thanks!
That election is an enduring memory, for the Tour, for the division, for the speeches by Muldoon about rain falling from the sky, filling the dams we would make, and powering our mighty nation with electricity.
That year I had a part time job running errands for an ad agency. We were on level 5 of an 8 storey building called the National Party Centre.
On the top floor was the National Party HQ, on the floors below us was a PR firm called Fenwick, Allen, McCully, and you may recognise some of those names from later adventures in politics.
Once or twice the lift doors would open and Muldoon himself would be there, glowering. Once or twice or maybe half a dozen times there would be a protest outside. Sometimes I would be on my way to my motorbike when it happened and that is how I became perhaps the only person in the middle of TV tour protest footage in a bike helmet, taking artwork to Griffins.
Often the lift doors would open and Brad Fischer would be standing there. He was the creative director for the other ad agency in the building, the one with all the government advertising business, and the one running the National Party advertising campaign.
Brad was born on an Aussie sheep station, went into the Royal Australian Air Force, came out of the Royal Australian Air Force, ended up in LA, became a hot shot in advertising, acquired a drawling American accent and a stetson hat, and arrived here to be the creative director for the agency in the floor above our one.
So he was in charge of the campaign for Think Big, only the line he put on everything was National for Growth.
They won that election, and you could never shut him up about how National for Growth was what won it. I don’t think that was it though.
10.33am
More Than a Feilding reader Jo, who went to school with More Than a Feilding readers Michèle and Jackie, has issues with my music lover opinions and is texting to say so.
I loved Pinocchio, I still know all the words
I tell her
that song was 3 minutes 25 of awful 😊
Jo:
no it's not just searching Spotify now
David:
Looking forward to your message five minutes after you manage to track down a copy saying omg u r right Dave it’s awful what was i thinking
Jo:
I'll get back to before you start dissing 8 year old Jo
Jo:
Ok I've just listen to it, it would make an incredible Trump parody, please please listen to it again in a new way
David:
Okay, I’ve got to 1’30 and JFC. It’s a brass band thing as well, Fuck Me Bob.
But yes With that poor wooden part that you call a heart is top Trump content.
Jo:
I know... better still did I make you listen to it again
David:
Well yes u did but we can still be friends x
11.00am
In Levin the marvellous Phil Wallington is being farewelled by the very many people who loved him. This is undeniably the streaming age now, and for a man who lived so much in the broadcast ether, a service over the internet, for everyone who can’t be there, feels entirely right.
His wife of 49 years Carol has beautiful stories of their meeting and marrying inside three weeks and all the marvellous accomplishments and adventures of their lives. Family and friends are all wonderful and Jose Barbosa has some words from Simon Pound: he had the grumpy outside shell of the hard bitten Aussie journo, but that wasn't the real Phil. Phil loved everybody.
God he was a magnificent yarner, god he was great company.
Vale Phil.
1.00pm
Dr Ashley has reassuring news. Let’s hope those numbers stay good.
2.15pm
The Treasury has reassuring numbers, relatively comparatively speaking. Let’s hope those numbers stay good.
If you’d like an informed point of view on jobs numbers, as opposed to Judith Collins scaremongering or Hosking data illiteracy, I recommend you turn to Economissive.
3.35pm
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