As I’ve written before, this blog is a fun exercise which I don’t promote. Equally, I leave it as an open forum.
However, I do resent re my criticisms of the government’s reaction, being accused of being wise after the event.
Someone called Mark Armstrong, labelling himself with perfect accuracy as “Markscreaminggoosearmstrong” accused me “again” of “working with the benefit of hindsight”.
He wrote, “In February you predicted CV19 would cause economic difficulties”.
I’d have thought that item headed Recession or Depression? did a great deal more than that.
Furthermore, I did not make my observations because of the virus which wasn’t a consideration then as a factor, but solely because of the coming collapse of our major export earner, tourism. I predicted the direct and indirect effect of that alone would see 200,000 unemployed. In fact it will be a great deal higher. Mark says I “fell way short of suggesting lockdown was a bad idea”. Well, screaming goose, there was a bloody good reason for that, namely it wasn’t even contemplated back then.
He then tells us re the virus that Australia “has the advantage of a better climate and an even more spread out population base than in NZ”. What extraordinary nonsense! Australia is an immensely more urbanised nation than us and has two large cities with populations similar to NZ.
Finally, to put the seal on his spectacular ignorance he quotes Ghandi’s, “A nation’s greatness is measured how it treats its weakest members”. What the hell that has to do with the issue is a mystery. That said, Ghandi was a figurehead for the Independents movement but was sensibly pushed aside once independence was achieved. He never lived to see his ideal socio-economic order attempted, as it was three decades after his murder, in Cambodia and we all know how that worked out.
Finally, he predicts because we’re “a great nation our economy will recover quickly”. Words fail me. But as said he got one thing 100% right, namely his self-label of screaming goose.