DON’T PANIC

Metro obit. Rhys Jones, Auckland, April 1, 2055

The man New Zealanders knew as Generalissimo has died, aged 94.  Field Marshal Rhys Jones had been trapped for 10 days inside his car with only a packet of pineapple lumps.

Perhaps the country’s most unusual soldier, Jones’ military life began at age 18. He joined the army and plunged immediately into higher learning at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, graduating BA with a major in politics.

Though he did not serve in any conflict, he rose through the ranks and in 2010 became head of the Defence Force. Jones was, the Government realised, a man who might be prevailed on to accept spending cuts below the minimum necessary for a country to be able to return fire.

The Lieutenant General would soon find himself drawing deeply on the knowledge he had acquired at Duntroon and, occasionally, military expertise.

When a nitpicking journalist took it upon himself to write stories about New Zealand soldiers breaching the Geneva Convention in Afghanistan, the matter ended up in court – and Jones appeared to undercut himself quite spectacularly when he admitted some of the things he had said publicly about the nitpicker were wrong. His political masters were untroubled.

When it later emerged the Defence Force had identified “certain investigative journalists” as “subversive” and the nitpicker was having his phone records snooped on, the government was delighted.

Prime Minister John Key recalled in his memoirs: “Jones was doing what we all wanted to do. We stood for individual freedom but, you know, there’s the odd times when a few people look like they just don’t deserve it. So we started putting a few more jobs his way.”

Jones’ first task was to address the 17th Fonterra food contamination scandal. He acted decisively, declaring there would be no more dirty pipes because “from today we are banning pipes”.

Dairy factories and farmers across the nation were converted to an elaborate scheme involving Tupperware containers and empty Coke bottles. Output fell by about 98 per cent and export markets dried up,but as Jones reminded the country: “That was the last dirty pipe we ever had.”

Next up was the Novopay problem, which evaporated after Jones implemented the NoPay system declaring: “If teachers don't want to teach the kiddies for the love of it alone, do we really want them in our classrooms?”

It was Jones who proposed the popular replacement of Seven Sharpwith reruns of Dad’s Army, and he was also behind Key’s last decision as Prime Minister, to move the capital to Palmerston North. “The Generalissimo was dead right,” said Key. “It’s only people who care about politics who deserve to live in a place like that.”

Jones’ power and influence grew steadily through a succession of prime ministers: Collins, Brownlee, Bridges and especially Paula Bennett, whom he counselled into the spectacularly ill-conceived invasion of Tasmania.

Through tears, she wailed, “It was all the Generalissimo’s idea!” But Jones issued a statement that the Prime Minister had “invented the whole meeting” and that she had not even been in the country at the time. She threatened to sue him for defamation, but when it became clear no jury would support a disreputable politician over a brave soldier, even if he had never been to war, she withdrew. Jones’authority was never seriously challenged again.

Mike Hosking enthused endlessly on his radio programme about the benefits of the military command economy. “This morning,” he often liked to declare, “I saw the editor of Metro out there again on the motorway scrubbing the rumble strips with a toothbrush. Life is perfect.”

Jones’ Chief of Staff has been inconsolable at the news of her boss’ demise. “If only he’d looked in his other pocket,” she said last night: “the keys were there the whole time.”