Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 01/11/2000
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Wednesday November 1, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down!]
It's called "poetic justice" - fitting retribution. It's just happened to Ruth Dyson. Few figures in our current regime embody its Nanny State features more scarily than Ruth Dyson - its penchant for hectoring us about our behaviour & legislating to bring us into line. There she was the other day lecturing Wellington captain Norm Hewitt for continuing to play in the NPC rugby final against Canterbury with an injured arm ... as if it were any of her business. Norm's decision to play on, she said, was "foolish & short-sighted." He was "not being a good role model for children by putting himself at risk." Then, lo & behold, the self-same Ruth Dyson was stopped by police in the early hours of yesterday morning for drink-driving, her blood alcohol levels twice the legal limit - a level at which, it might well be argued, she was putting OTHERS at risk. Ms Dyson, to her credit, did the decent thing later in the morning & resigned her portfolios. One down, twenty to go!
This weekend the Labour caucus is due to go into retreat for some touchie-feelie "team-building." It's going to reflect on its performance in government one year on. It would do well to treat this episode as a "snapshot" of everything that's wrong with itself. I don't begrudge Ms Dyson her glasses of wine, aside from the fact that I'm paying for them. I DO begrudge her government's relentless efforts to mould our behaviour according to standards they're not prepared to observe themselves. I would begrudge those efforts even if government ministers DID adhere to their own dicta. If they were all non-smoking teetotallers who walked off the field the second they got hurt, I would still begrudge them their bossybooted interference in matters which are none of their business.
The message Labour should take from this episode is, "Pull your heads in." Your Kremlin-like meddling has sent an already-dysfunctional economy into a tailspin. You have tried to fix it with more of what was wrong with it - taxes & regulations. You have seen to it that success is now punished more severely than before. You have made it more dangerous than before for employers to take on workers. You have pandered to ignorant xenophobia & scared off foreign investors. You have ignored the pleas of talented youngsters to reverse your policies, & driven them away. You have acquiesced to the apartheid-mongers in your midst, those promoting special privileges based on race. You have nagged us about our cigarette-smoking but enriched yourselves with a higher-than-ever tobacco tax. Now you want us to register our guns, just in case we should ever take it into our heads to throw off your yoke by force of arms.
Well, stop & think. We've had a year's Hard Labour, & we can't take it any more. Let the Dyson debacle trigger an epiphany for you. Start treating us as adults who can live our lives without your enforced guidance. Give us our money & our lives back - you'd be astonished how well we could manage without you. If you can't bring yourselves to do that, at least have the decency to acknowledge that you've done quite enough damage already. Follow Ms Dyson's lead & resign, so that we may get you off our backs forthwith.
I'll raise my blood-alcohol levels to that!
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