Mike’s MORONS make me nervous.
Or … Vance Vanquishes the “ MOST TRANSPARENT” quote for good.
Or … What on earth is the point of a Vaccine?
The brilliant and brutally honest Mike King spoke the TRUTH to NZ’s true power base last week … the bureaucrats. Invisible, unaccountable, living in rooms padded on the outside to stop real humans with real needs getting to them.
“This is how out of touch these morons down at the Ministry of Health are – and they’re morons.”
“King has previously criticised Health Minister Andrew Little and the Ministry of Health for their “incompetence”.
“I’m not finished [with fighting for mental health care]. I saw Jacinda’s condescending response to me: ‘Oh it’s just Mike, we all know what Mike’s like’,” he says.
Andrea Vance has also woken up to this sort of nonsense.
“In her first formal speech to Parliament [Ardern] pledged: “This government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.”
Since then the numbers of faceless communications specialists have skyrocketed. The Government’s iron grip on the control of information has tightened.
And it is now harder than ever to get information.
In my 20-year plus time as a journalist, this Government is one of the most thin-skinned and secretive I have experienced. Many of my colleagues say the same.
Even squeezing basic facts out of an agency is a frustrating, torturous and often futile exercise.”
In a recent post Don Brash asked the silliest question I have ever read:
“DO WE NEED SO MANY BUREAUCRATS?”
“On 30 June 2017, close to the end of the nine years of the Key-English Government, people employed in the public service numbered 47,252. Just three years later, by which time the total New Zealand labour force had increased by 6.7%, numbers in the public service had increased to 57,149, an increase of 20.9%, more than three times the increase in the total labour force.”
In my field, education, those directly employed by the Ministry of Education (not counting consultants) has skyrocketed.
- 2017 2,632
- 2018 2,904
- 2019 3,253
- 2020 3,486
What on earth do they do? Our education is in a mess – less than 60% of students fully attend. There are 10,300 school age children not even enrolled. Our stats have us as the world’s worst English-speaking country.
So … why am I nervous? Because we are asked to take so much on trust and many of these people pump themselves up as experts. My wife, Karen, is about to directly experience the provisions of the Ministry of Health/MBIE in MIQ (she is in the air as I write). This is despite having been vaccinated in the USA (with documentation), having been in a low risk part of NY State (where she travelled to support someone who had experienced a significant health issue), living with people who have been vaccinated, being willing to self-isolate and undergo 2, and 5 days tests. Why the push to get people vaccinated if our own Ministry of health don’t recognise the efficacy? She will be far more at risk in MIQ than in her own home.
By the way – many people have asked me how she had been getting on in the USA – given the “terrible” situation. She says that could not be further from the truth … life where she has been is “much more normal than NZ with people just getting on with things.”
I know and trust Mike King and don’t doubt his judgement on the people in the health bureaucracy. Are we being taken for fools?