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Treacherous

Disloyal 

Ruthlessly Ambitious 

A ‘perk-buster’ enjoying the perks, a Law and Order spokesman with a conviction for assault who steals the identity of a dead infant to falsely obtain a passport, a party spokesperson who keeps an 82-page dossier vilifying the party leader, but kisses and makes up anyway,  a political fossil whom no-one takes seriously anymore…  In another party all this would be incredible. But it is curiously unsurprising for ACT, a collection of intellectual thugs led by a man whom I once described as ‘venomous and gutless’. That was after Rodney Hide had defamed my wife, Judy Callingham, then Deputy Chair of New Zealand on Air, by implying  in parliament that she had used improper influence to get me a talk show on TVNZ. Challenged by me to repeat the allegation without the protection of parliamentary privilege, he naturally declined. He had his facts wrong.

But what offends me most, given these latest revelations,  is the hypocrisy of ACT, a vigilante  rabble whose uninformed, unintelligent, 12^th century views on crime and punishment would see us return to the brutality of the chain gang and ultimately the obscenity that is capital punishment.

Intellectual thugs. The word comes from the Hindi meaning a thief or scoundrel. Well, we are to be rid of them at last. They are, as Guyon Espiner observed on One News last night,  ’a party now in tatters with no credibility whatsoever’.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

 Rodney Hide, leader of ACT,  the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, has apologised for bilking the very people his party purports to represent – taxpayers.

Photo: Mark Mitchell

Hone Harawira has reportedly sent an email to the Maori Party apologising ‘unreservedly’ for any harm he had done to it in his ‘choice of words’ to  former Waitangi Tribunal director Buddy Mikaere. The ‘choice of words’ included ‘white man bullshit’  and ‘white motherfuckers’.

I was reminded by these events of my Northern Irish Protestant mother’s uncharitable interpretation of confession in the Roman Catholic church - that you could sin on Monday, confess on Tuesday, commit the same sin on Wednesday and so ad infinitum.

Confession of that sort would be worthless since it would not be motivated by genuine remorse or real intention to change one’s ways, but would  simply be a device to get oneself off the hook.  

Hide and Harawira’s ‘apologies’ strike me as equally worthless. Read the rest of this entry »