That this country is run by people that are stupid is as plain as a pikestaff - well it is to me anyway. We touched upon this current safety blitz to stop Armageddon at school crossings yesterday. The ads on the radio have been cranked up a notch - a child asking his dad (lucky bugger to have one in this crazy country) whether dying hurts had me regurgitating the Marmite soldiers all over A4 - and there is a piece in the Herald telling us that the new 40km zones will be bought into being with a high profile performance by Annette King later in the month. This wondrous news is a side bar to an article about a school's confusion as to what speed limits really do apply around its gates - 54kmh (not the carnage producing 55) or 40kmh. Apparently they have signs all over the show that give conflicting messages. Off to the council who say that the confusion is OK as all the signs are correctly positioned 'according to policy'. We then have a little insight into this policy which I foolishly tried to a)read and b) understand. a) was only marginally easier than b) which came in at impossible. It all has to do with whether 15% of traffic traversing a nominated piece of road do, or might, travel in excess of 50kmh over a period (undefined) as to whether that piece of tarmac gets a 50 or 40 billing. I think. The people who write this cobblers are stupid but not nearly so as the people who blindly try and enforce it or those who admit to thinking it is all a good idea.
Right that's stupid people at the council level. Now let's get serious and move down to Wellington. Phil Goff has put pen to paper this morning to enlighten us, the great unwashed, about carbon miles, carbon footprints and Tescos. Leaving aside that fact that he is talking a load of bollocks about the biggest scam ever foisted on the western world the piece is worth reading just to wonder at the dreadful sentence construction, poor development of a theme and repetition. Phil Goof is either stupid, poorly educated or both. I am inclined to think it is both. I have just looked him up on Google and thought I would go for the most biased rose spectacled view of him I could find and read his official parliamentary bio.
He has done nothing with his life except leave school to read politics at Auckland University, enter Parliament, lose his seat (this before the safety net of the MMP List), tread water for a couple of years (you guessed it, lecturing in politics) before re-entering Parliament where he has remained. Only stupid people would do this with their allotted three score years and ten. And Parliament is full of such useless people with no experience of the real world.
As an aside here is a list of Phil's Portfolios. His expertise in international affairs sees him hold the portfolios of Minister of Defence, Minister of Trade, Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control, and Associate Minister of Trade Negotiations. He continues as Minister of Pacific Island Affairs and is also an Associate Minister of Finance.
Let's go through this. His expertise in international affairs. Eh? Where does that come from? Two years lecturing politics at AUT in the early 1990s? Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control. Again, eh? If this portfolio is inward looking then he has done a brilliant job as New Zealand is completely disarmed but how does that sit with what he does after lunch as Defence Minister. If it is outward looking to the rest of the world then the rest of the world could easily deal with it with a quick 'Sod off, you insignificant pratt'. Minister of Trade, and Associate Minister of Trade Negotiations. Another eh? Why do we need both? If he is Associate Minister at the second mob's place I assume there is also a real Minister and likewise he has an Associate at the big house. East Ham. We see he is also an Associate Minister of Finance. Note the 'an' implying there is more than one. The full Barking. From what is proferred in his biography he is qualified to do none of these jobs let alone all six at the same time.
He is not alone in being stupid. The people who set up the structures that allow him to lead his useless existence are stupid and it could be argued that we are even more stupid for allowing it to continue. The governance of this country needs a good seeing to with a chainsaw.
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