Bob McCoskrie: comfortable with the wooden spoon

Kenny Rodger - NZ Herald

Larry Baldock: even smacks his grandchildren

Photo: Mike Knott

 Garth McVicar: tent prisons and chain gangs

Now here’s my take on Western democracy. Once every three, four or five years, according to where you live, you get to vote for the political party you’d  like to run the country. Unless you’re a closed-minded bigot, it’s likely that you won’t approve of absolutely everything the party you voted for believes or intends to do, but you’ve got the good sense to understand that it’s a package you’re buying and not everything in it is going to please you. So you live with it and if, after those three, four or five years, you feel they’ve let you down, you vote for the other lot.

Meanwhile, a significant proportion of the voting public is lumbered with a government they didn’t want at all. But they live with that  too and start working to get their lot back in three, four or five years time. They don’t go around bitching that it wasn’t fair and if somebody doesn’t hold another election right away they’re going to hold their breath till they turn blue. Read the rest of this entry »