Derek Mackie: Prince Harry's Woke Travel Tips

You’ve got to hand it to Prince Harry. He could easily have settled for a cushy, but coma-inducing life as a major Royal, being paid an extortionate amount to smile, wave and open public events. 

But no! He’s decided to be his own man - if that’s not an offensive term these days - and go forge a new existence with his actress wife in a $20 million (NZ) dollar mansion in California, close to the woke elites he reveres. 

 Discarding all the trappings and perks of his royal heritage, apart from his title, which can open many a-door in Hollywood - as Prince Andrew demonstrated and now wishes that he had chosen not to knock on - Harry has forged a new identity for himself…as a sustainable travel guru. 

 The Duke of Suckeggs is spearheading Travalyst, a “sustainability” scoring system to impart his “state the bleeding obvious” wisdom and encourage more of us to become sustainable travellers. 

And to promote his new venture he has made a video in which New Zealand, but mostly Maori in particular, are singled out as sustainability pioneers. 

According to Harry, “Maori culture inherently understands sustainable practices and how to take better care of our life-giving land” 

 Tell that to the moa…or the haast eagle…or quite a few other unfortunates who were hunted to extinction by Maori or the polynesian rats that came with them.  Sounds like Harry has been reading He Puapua, the revised NZ History Curriculum and the Three Waters draft legislation all rolled into one. 

Presumably, he also believes that the haka was a welcoming ceremony to make neighbouring iwi feel at home when they were invited for dinner - as guests, not as the main course. 

Probably far too busy and important to do his own research, he is happy to swallow the current government’s propaganda which would have us all believe that pre-European NZ was an idyllic paradise of man (I’m living dangerously again) and nature coexisting perfectly in harmony. A veritable Heaven on Earth. 

But that’s what we’ve come to expect in our new “progressive” society, which has eagerly embraced a fairytale false narrative concerning native minorities while flagellating the rest of us over our own history. 

And Harry is no different. Desperate to be part of the elite club, he’ll do and say whatever it takes to belong….after falling out with his Royal Family.

 Don’t get me wrong - I’ve got nothing against behaving responsibly on holiday. When I travel to other parts of the world I try to be a good global citizen. I don’t drop litter or write graffiti on walls. I’m polite and respectful of other cultures and try to be open minded to different cuisines and customs. That’s what makes travel so interesting. 

But I do expect to enjoy myself and do things that are out of the ordinary and a bit indulgent. It wouldn’t be much of a holiday otherwise. 

 So, I was desperately hoping Harry’s new Travalyst system would enhance my holiday experience while ensuring the planet doesn’t suffer too much in the process. 

By answering just five simple questions you are scored sustainably and given advice on how to improve. But it soon becomes clear that Travalyst is just another woke tool to castigate us for our “unacceptable” vacational behaviour. 

Much of the advice sounds straight out of the Green Party handbook, such as “find accommodation that is self-sufficient or grows its own produce, like campgrounds that have community gardens”. 

How practical…when visiting New York, or any city for that matter. 

 Your rating drops if you plan to travel to a number of places on each holiday. To reduce your environmental footprint, Travalyst expects you to remain in one location, twiddling your thumbs and bored to tears. 

Having a good time partying, drinking and eating is also frowned on and loses you more sustainable points. You should be respecting the culture by learning as much about it as possible. The perfect holiday for librarians!

And on returning home, you are downrated and scolded for planning your next holiday. 

 But you do earn points for only using one towel per trip (whew-stinky!), buying local produce - at special tourist prices no doubt, and turning the tap off when cleaning your teeth. Game-changing stuff….it ain’t!! 

Rather, Travalyst falls smack bang into the puerile tosh basket and assumes its target market has the intellectual thought capacity of a seven year-old. Perhaps a reflection on its celebrity promoter’s own mental abilities.

 Predictably, this is just the latest piece of over-hyped, fatuous drivel in a long line of woke nonsense that Harry and all the other mega-rich elites promote to make us all feel bad while they carry on spending their obscene amounts of money doing all the things most of us would like to, if only we could afford it. 

Travalyst is the perfect tool for the discerning….condescending, patronising, superior, virtue-signalling, elite traveller who revels in lecturing us on how to ruin our own holiday and make us feel guilty in the process. 

 My advice - ignore Travalyst, behave like any normal person and just have a good time, before our “progressive” government drives up inflation and the cost of living even further, making that longed-for holiday completely unsustainable. 

Derek Mackie is a geologist with a keen interest in current affairs.