The VC

When I was a lad I got the Victor comic delivered every week to the typical white middle class home in the depths of London suburban sprawl in which I lived. I really wanted the Beano but Dad thought this was a bit low brow and I had to sneak surreptitious glances at Dick Cox's copy. Before you could get to read the latest exploits of Alf Tupper (the Tough of the Track) who won Olympic gold medals in the one mile every week fueled by a training diet of fish and chips you had to get past the front cover. Featured on the front of the Victor every week we had a war story and this was usually of a bloke who had won the VC. Don't forget that WW2 was only just over a decade completed and all this was still pretty topical. I used to be absolutely gobsmacked at what these blokes would do and initially could never understand why. However slowly a few ideas and ideals dawned on me. Ideas of courage, patriotism, selfessness - all that sort of very non trendy stuff. I had a fascination for these chaps and especially for the blokes who got their awards posthumously. This was especially so when I understood what posthumous meant. The thing that struck me most was the high regard I felt for these men (and the overwhelming majority were men) and the fact this regard was heightened in me and the rest of the country when they died doing what they did. The idea that, however indirectly, they were doing what they did for me was one of the very first public spirited thoughts I can remember having.

All these thoughts and emotions flooded back yesterday when all of a sudden Corporal Apiata flew into our consciousness from the East Cape. I am not a Kiwi by birth but hold a blue passport and all the feelings I last felt in South London in the late 1950's came flooding back. There are only 13 of these blokes alive in the whole world for Pete's sake. Willy is a shoe in for the front cover of the Victor anytime he likes.

I then started to feel sick. In the midst of all the proper military seriousness and the chronicalling of his deeds of unbelievable courage the screen was filled with bloody Helen Clark. I rarely swear at home and I quickly apologised to my wife for shouting 'F*** off' at the TV.

The hypocrisy of this woman has reached new depths. Here was the woman who sold the airforce, who buys car ferries, paints them grey and calls them warships reading out a VC citation. Here was the bloody peacenik from hell lauding the bravest man in the land. Here was the woman who heads up the government that runs OSH reading about acts carried out without regard to personal safety. She unashamedly sticks her odious unwanted presence into an arena where she has no place. She grabs a bloody photo opportunity on the back of an action I'm sure she personally finds deeply repugnant. She is lauding the actions of a member of a military unit she does not want and has spent the last few years trying to down play and even deny the existence of. I don't know where Cpl Apiata is going to go to get his medal proper but I sincerely hope he is flown to London to recieve it from the Queen and not be fobbed off by getting it from the GG here in NZ where Helen can grab another photo opportunity.

Any remaining grain of respect I had for our Prime Minister evaporated yesterday and I am closer to hating her than I am to hating anything on this planet.

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