Wednesday, 14 August 2024 15:25

Sticks and stones

Written by The Hound

font size decrease font size increase font size

OPINION: If you're wondering where the extreme rhetoric of the Maori Party, with tacit approval from our chinless media, leads us to, the Hound reckons New Plymouth councillor Murray Chong could probably give you a clue.

His longstanding, consistent opposition to the introduction of Maori wards was well known, and it was his democratic right as an elected representative of citizens in his region to abstain on a recent vote about whether or not the council should retain its Maori ward.

Some idiot, no doubt emboldened by the Maori Party’s divisive ‘genocide’ rhetoric, which media give a free pass to, didn’t think he had that right and shot at this car, outside his home.

Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will never hurt us? An air rifle will though.

More like this

Dreams aren't plans

OPINION: Milking It reckons if you're National, looking at recent polls, the dream scenario is that the elusive economic recovery finally roars to life.

If voters see some growth and wages rising faster than prices, the government could say they've "fixed" things as they ride into the next election.

Back here on Earth though, the economy they inherited is a basket case, and the long-term headwinds are fierce.

Political commentator Liam Hehir says, "dreams are not plans" and if the turnaround doesn't come in time, National may have no choice but to go negative.

"Everybody wants to fight on the economy if they can. But when neither side has a compelling story, the contest shifts to other issues. That's not new. In fact, it's the stuff of politics everywhere, always."

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.