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Monday, January 31, 2011

Frank Newman: The State of the Universe Address

For politicians there is never a bad time to make promises about the future, after all making promises about the future is much more palatable than defending past and present failings. Labour and National have given their state of the nation addresses, and the Greens have delivered a state of the planet eulogy. Not to be outdone, I thought I would go one better and present an inaugural State of the Universe address. The speech notes go something like this:

Taxation
1. Tax people more and they will work less.
2. Like unwelcome relatives, once you allow politicians into your life they don’t leave until the fridge is bare.

The environment
3. The planet will continue to do its own thing regardless of what we humans do. It will get warmer and cooler when it wants to and we modern day humans will have to adapt, just as our ancient ancestors did.

Democracy
4. Democracy is a wonderful thing; if for the only reason that we can correct the mistake we the voters made three years earlier, without resorting to violence once every thirty years as is the case in countries like Egypt.
5. Governments consume wealth, they don’t create it. That’s why we should have less of it not more.
6. About 45% of everything we earn goes to the government (local and central), and that’s too much.
7. Most governments are self-serving, it’s just we kiwi’s are a little naive about this sort of thing. We like to think our politicians have our best interests in mind, which is what they want us to think.

The economy
8. Our economy is buggered, because politicians keep buggering it up for us.

Local government
9. The super city will be a super failure, but it will take at least 30 years to reverse the decision because those responsible do not want to be seen with scrambled egg on their face and the second rule in politics is to never admit your mistakes. (The first rule is to say whatever you need to say to get elected.)
10. Local government is run by bureaucrats who live in your home town. Central government is run by bureaucrats who live in Wellington.
11. The council staff who make the decision about whether you can or can’t cut down the tree that you planted in your back yard, vote for the Green Party.
12. The staff who decide on whether your development goes ahead or not have never worked for themselves and think property developers make too much money anyway.
13. Most local councillors are busy-bodies who think giving away your money will make them popular, and think making decisions about the type of flowers planted in a traffic island is important.
14. The only way to bring the local back into local government is to make it smaller, not bigger.

Law and order
15. Politicians pass laws because we have to be forced to do the things they want us to do.
16. We need a police force to keep us safe in our homes and give us tickets for doing 4 km an hour over the 100km speed limit on a deserted road on a fine day.

MPs
17. Most MPs in parliament have their toes firmly planted on the party line, are neither seen nor heard, and cost about $1 million a year each to pay, accommodate, go on overseas trips with their partner, watch dirty videos in motel rooms, and fly around the country going to meetings which are designed to achieve nothing or go to photo opportunities that will put them on page three of the community newspaper.
18. List MPs like Chris Finlayson are appointed not elected, lack the appeal to win a constituency, and are accountable only to their party leader.
19. The only MPs able to achieve anything are those in cabinet, and they only do what they want, not what we want.
20. The only other MPs able to achieve anything are those in the Maori Party because John Key was silly enough to invite them into the coalition and he is happy to send them off to New York to sign up to silly treaties dreamt up by left-wing radicals working for the United Nations, and give away 1 in every 10 kilometres of our beaches to keep in sweet with them so he can be Prime Minister for another three years.

In conclusion, I look forward to another prosperous year.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great speech Frank - couldn't agree more.

You get my vote!

Anonymous said...

Dead right Frank. It seems that all our democracy means is that every three years we have the chance to throw out a group of self serving politicians who don't listen to us and replace them with another group of self serving politicians who won't listen to us either.

The constituency MPs who were voted in by the locals immediately become captive voices of the Party Bosses so they trot out the Party Line irrespective of the facts of the case or the wishes of their constituents.

I say throw out the lot of them and elect Independent MPs committed to truly represent the people.

We are in this mess because voters have been too compliant. The people we send to Parliament are supposed to be represnting the people but instead have become expensive self serving cliques. Shades of East Germany! I suppose the only difference is that Frank and I will not be taken away in the night by men in black cars. It's not much comfort though given the state of our country.
Maic.

Anonymous said...

So what you're saying is that PMs are the most expensive beneficiaries in the country?

I think I'd like a career in politics, you spend other peoples money, you can lie to get what you want instead of earning money, and are all care and no responsibility.

Sweet!

Anonymous said...

Very perceptive Yo forgot about the co2 and the most snow in US living memory

Anonymous said...

Nice one Frank,
I too hate waist.
Must mention I am grateful there are people like you and Muriel "out there pouring concrete"

Anonymous said...

Heard this stuff for over 30 years now, the question is whats to be done? Seems to me that eternal complaining isn't achieving much but do we want to go down Egypts road to achieve what we think is right?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it's time more people started moaning instead of sitting on the couch and taking more interest in Coro' Street than their own street.