Wednesday, 18 June 2025 12:25

Sorry, not sorry

Written by The Hound

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OPINION: Did former PM Jacinda Ardern get fawning reviews for her book?

Not so much. One local reviewer quips the book “is written with the American market in mind… and aimed at a particular kind of young, liberal, educated American idiot eager to drink the Kool-Aid that Ardern goes around dispensing in her various meaningless roles in the US as an ambassador of kindness”. Ouch!

Did she admit mistakes around Covid? Not according to reviewer #2: “The closest thing I found is on page 309, where she admits that she made ‘imperfect decisions’, but that’s really underselling the massive balls-up that was our Covid response.”

One Ardern anecdote suggests some self-awareness though.

One lady approached her one day. ‘I just wanted to say thank you,’ she said. There was a beat before she added, ‘Thanks for ruining the country.’

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M.I.A.

OPINION: The previous government spent too much during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite warnings from officials, according to a briefing released by the Treasury.

Wrong focus

OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.

Burn the village

OPINION: There's an infamous term coined by a US general during the Vietnam war, specifically in reference to the battle of Ben Tre: "We had to burn the village to save it."

Purist problem

OPINION: The sudden departure of Jim Ward, manager of Molesworth Station for 24 years, highlighted some major dysfunction in the way conservation estate is managed in this country - the biggest problem, as the Hound sees it, being idealogues who harp on about "taonga" and use all means possible to block sensible commercial operations on conservation land.

Drill baby, drill!

OPINION: While the destruction of NZ's oil and gas industry by Jacinda Ardern's band of merry vandals was virtue signalling on a heroic scale - producing no environmental benefit whatsoever - the politician vowing to make that industry whole again, Shane Jones, is not above a bit of virtue signalling of his own.

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