The irony is strong in this one. Quite apart from the prospect of talking about "Colin Craig's Conservative Party" ("CCCP" seems an eerily appropriate acronym, for this instinctively statist social-conservative), there's the fact that he's breaking the law in order to campaign for tougher sentences.
This story should be funny. It's certainly embraced as funny by the big New Zealand bloggers.
But for me, the humour is overshadowed by sadness. Colin Craig sums up everything that is wrong with New Zealand. He's "a businessman" who made his money, not by making anything or providing any useful service (like a taxi driver or a hairdresser), but by renting apartments - in other words, by owning land and taxing people who do earn an honest living for the use of it. He's insular (proud of the fact that he never travels) and has no idea of what he really wants (his party platform is self-evidently incoherent). And he honestly believes, simultaneously, that he's better than the great rabble who aren't millionaires, and just as good as people who have comprehensively beaten him whenever they've contested.
On the back of these qualifications, this moron runs for office and sulks when he loses.
How will New Zealand ever drag itself into the modern world, if this is the calibre of our grassroots activism?
2 comments:
Sounds like a fine tradition exported from the mother country.
Once upon a time we were ruled by real aristocracy, whose rents were the natural successor to mediaeval fealty. As our government became notionally more egalitarian, people admitted to its ranks would receive public funds to start a property empire - if they didn't have one to start with.
No wonder they were cheerleaders for a property bubble, and for crippling bailouts when it burst!
Yeah, only it's More So here. An unbelievable number of ordinary Kiwis see property as the golden ticket to long-term prosperity. It's not just the upper middle classes, there are working schlobs by the tens of thousands whose dream is to earn enough to buy a little "investment property" (read: shithole that in any civilised country you wouldn't be allowed to raise pigs in).
Other ways of raising money, e.g. starting a company that does something useful - are much rarer. My employer is one of alarmingly few.
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