A Tea Ceremony
Friday, November 11, 2011
Hat-tip to the Listener Live Blog
[JOHN 1 and JOHN 2 enter a cafe, bow to each other, and sit in facing seats at a cafe table.]
WAITER: Can I help you?
JOHN 1: I would like a Symbolic Cup Of Tea.
JOHN 2: I too would like a Symbolic Cup Of Tea.
[Waiter bows. Waiter opens a cupboard and removes a Key Ring. Waiter unlocks a Safe which contains a small Gong. Waiter places Gong beside Espresso Machine and Strikes the Gong once.]
[Camera flash.]
J1: It is an Auspicious Day.
J2: It is Two-Weeks-From-The-Election Eve.
J1: Any policy released after this day is officially We Don't Want The Voters To Think Too Hard About This.
J2: It is nice to Take A Break From Campaigning Out Of The Sun.
J1: Yes. It is Very Shady Here In Epsom.
J2: Epsom is symbolic of Scared White People.
J1: Your Name is symbolic of Stopping Things Leaking Out The Side.
J2: Your Name is symbolic of A Potential Opening.
W: I have brought you Your Tea.
[Camera flash.]
W: Tea Sounds Like T.
J1: T stands for Treason.
J2: T stands for Train Wreck.
W: Because it is a Symbolic Cup Of Tea it does not have to Actually Be Tea.
J1: I am having a Flat White.
J2: I am having a Corned Beef Smoothie. I have Been Told They Are Nice Here.
W: The Credibility Of John Banks Drinking A Corned Beef Smoothie is symbolic of The Credibility Of John Banks Representing The ACT Party's Principles.
[J1 & J2 sniff the Tea.]
J1 & J2: Mmm Lovely.
J2: My Mum always said If You Can See The Bottom It's Not A Proper Cup Of Tea.
J1: I Cannot See The Bottom Twenty Per Cent.
J2: The only bottom I can see is the Bottom Of The Barrel.
J1&J2: It is a Proper Cup Of Tea.
[J1 & J2 theatrically indicate the extreme heat of the Tea.]
W: The Tea is Very Hot because You Might Both Get Burned.
J1: The Tea is Very Hot because If You Cannot Stand The Heat Get Out Of The Kitchen.
W: That is the Metaphorical Kitchen not the Symbolic Kitchen. In the Symbolic Kitchen, Out The Back, A Lot Of People Work Hard For Not Much in Horrible Conditions and Fell Lucky For What They Can Get. For the purposes of this Symbolic Cup Of Tea we will Ignore The People In The Kitchen.
W: Too Hot is also symbolic of Baby Bear's Porridge.
[Camera flash.]
[A Starving Sparrow lands on the Table.]
J1: The Sparrow is hoping for Crumbs.
J2: If You Feed Them It Only Encourages Them.
J1 & J2: Get away from our Table, Sparrow.
[The Sparrow dies of Shame.]
W: I have brought you Your Little Spoons.
J1: The Little Spoon is symbolic of a Long Spoon.
J2: The Little Spoon is symbolic of a Bent Spoon.
W: I have brought you Your Sugar. It is not Fair Trade.
J1: The grains of the Sugar and symbolic of Crushed Hopes For Less Authoritarian Politics.
J2: This Spoon Of Sugar is symbolic of My Personal Election Year Lolly Scramble.
W: I have brought you Your Milk. It is not Organic.
J1: The Saucer Catching The Drips As I Pour The Milk is symbolic of ACT's Stability As A Helpful Coalition Partner.
J2: The Motion Of Poured Milk In The Tea is symbolic of ACT's Stability In Every Other Way.
J2: I will Stir the Tea.
J1: I will Spin the Tea.
[Camera flash.]
J1: This Milk has Curdled.
W: The Curdled Milk is symbolic of We May Have Got This Water Out Of A New Zealand River.
J2: This Milk has Split.
W: The Split Milk is symbolic of a Split Vote.
J2: I Do Not Like this Milk.
J1 & J2: We will Drink The Tea And Pretend We Enjoy It.
[Camera flash.]
W: The Pinky Finger Extended Forwards is symbolic of Pointing To The Person You Are Supporting In This Election.
J1: The Pinky Finger is also symbolic of the Shaft I am giving to My Party's Candidate.
W: The Difficulty Swallowing is symbolic of Economic Projections.
[Camera flash.]
J1: This Tea has left a Bitter Taste In My Mouth.
J2: I Quite Liked It.
W: Will there be Anything Else?
J1: You Don't Know The Half Of It.
[J1 and J2 stand. They shake hands.]
[Camera flash.]
W: If that were Don Brash it would be Symbolic of Death And The Maiden.
J2: I Do Not Know anyone called Don Brash.
W: Here is Your Bill. The Bill is symbolic of Hoping To Come Out Ahead But Paying A Steep Price For It.
[J2 theatrically pats his pockets.]
J2: Oh Dear.
J1: Do you not have your Credit Card?
J2: I have Left My Wallet Somewhere.
W: The Wallet is symbolic of Credibility.
J1: Do Not Worry, I shall Get This One.
W: The National Party is assumed to be a Better Economic Manager.
J1 & J2: No Evidence Is Needed.
[J1 produces cash.]
[Camera flash.]
J1: I will Pay for My Tea with this Money.
[Waiter puts Hand out with a Bow. J1 touches the Money to the Hand then takes the Money back.]
J1: I will also Pay for His Tea with This Money.
W: You Cannot Spend The Same Money Twice.
J1: It is Money I will get from Floating State Owned Assets.
W: Oh. That is All Right Then.
J1: There is No Tip. We All Have To Make Sacrifices.
[Waiter Strikes the Gong, twice.]
W: You are my Best Customer.
[Camera flash.]
Labels: act party, epsom, john banks, john key, national party, nz politics, nzvotes, satire, symbolic cup of tea, tea
Lyndon Hood - friends in marine places, Wellington
Monday, April 11, 2011
Act vs the Foreshore Bill: A Tale Of 119 Whales
From March, because (just while I remember) Hilary Calvert does not know the history of marine mammals.
Image: ~koosh-llama on Deviantart (Part II)
Labels: act party, cetacea, fillibustering, foreshore and seabed, hilary calvert, things that are washed up
Climate Science: Act Doesn’t Feel The Heat
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Click to enlarge
The Act party, in their minority report on the recent review of the emissions trading scheme, have argued that man-made global warming should not be considered a threat. Because they know better.
Thanks to a memo we found stuck to our shoe after leaving the Parliament toilet block, Scoop can now reveal some other policies that Act plans based on this attitude to mainstream science.
ITEM: Disestablish crown research institutes like GNS Science and AgResearch; have Rodney date rocks and sequence cow genomes using his common sense.
ITEM: Unequivocally condemn fire-bombing the offices of one’s enemies. People you disagree with should be burned at the stake.
ITEM: Nuclear power plants + massive deregulation → radioactive waste everywhere → we all get awesome superpowers.
ITEM: “Teach the controversy” on John B’s perpetual motion machine.
ITEM: Establish PPP project to build a tunnel through the Earth’s crust, so we can exploit the resource-rich realms of its hollow interior.
ITEM: Do we really need more policies? Because at this rate every one of our Parliamentary Questions until the election will be about ‘a light smack for the purpose of correction’.
ITEM: Increase productivity by having everyone leave saucers of milk out at night.
• will promote the dairy industry.
• will free up labour by encouraging elves to do the housework.
ITEM: Except we won’t have a dairy industry, because we’ll have swapped all our cows for magic beans.
ITEM: Get everyone magnetic underlays instead.
ITEM: Any demonstrated warming of climate can be mitigated by the cooling fan-effect of everyone face-palming when Act makes pronouncements about climate science.
Labels: act party, climate change, nz politics, pseudoscience, satire
Lyndon Hood - bored and malicious, Wellington
Friday, March 20, 2009
Separated at birth?
ACT MP and outspoken opponent of human rights David Garrett (left), not to be confused with Oswald Mosley, founder of the British fascist party (left).
ACT MP and outspoken opponent of human rights David Garrett (left), not to be confused with Oswald Mosley, founder of the British fascist party (left).
Labels: act party, david garrett, human rights, nz politics
Lyndon Hood - corrector, Lower Hutt
Monday, November 03, 2008
[Update 26/11/08: Is not actually that bad]
DNA First, Questions Later
If there's one thing that actually give me a warm feeling to know I'm not voting for National, it's in their law and order policies.
A National government will as a matter of "as a matter of priority", add DNA samples from everyone charged with an imprisonable offense to the police database.
Charged. Plenty of these people will be found not guilty. Plenty of them are not guilty. In some cases, there won't even have been a crime. And in every case, they have to be treated by the law as innocent until proven guilty or we may as well give up the whole 'justice' thing now.
National intends to force innocent people to give a DNA sample, and then to keep that in their database forever.
I actually put it in a headline on the Scoop front page: "National Will Begin DNA-Testing Innocent People As Soon As Possible". We have a tendency to be flippant, but we do also try for accuracy. So I hope people realise it's not a joke.
Look on the bright side: at least they're not raiding everyone's medical samples.
Anyway - firstly: It is wrong.
Secondly: It is wrong.
Thirdly: It makes me wonder how someone could suggest it in the first place.
Talking to Nine to Noon, John Key mentioned his faith in his own judgment. That no doubt served him will in foreign exchange (where I get the impression you have to be decisive and mostly right) and overall seems to be doing quite well now. But I think in running a country you're only as good as your worst mistake.
I mention this because I'm reminded of the not-exactly boot camps: Involuntary programmes for off-the-rails kids based on an arbitrary combination of voluntary programmes for at-risk or not-at-risk kids. I've twice heard John Key call this his scheme - like he made it up and just expects it to work. People practising in the area hate it, mostly because they don't think it will.
In a similar case, Dim found the parole policy ill-advised. Or rather, igonore-advised.
Come to think of it, Don Brash demonstrably made up his own policy at least once; but he was worse at keeping his spokepeople - the one's whose job it is to actually understand the portfolio - in line when he did.
Don Brash also produced (and then finance spokesman John Key defended) a budget where the numbers for corrections seemed rather too small. In the apparent absence of an actual shadow budget this year, I have an issue with the parole policy costing - they estimate 512 extra prisoners and one more prison. Lord knows that's not every cost, but I'm thinking of one particular trap for new players.
While it's normal to project forwards to the third year, in the case of the three-strikes-and-no-parole scheme this approach is useless. Hardly anyone would be serving that extra time by the third year. By, say, the tenth, it will be much, much bigger and it will presumably continue to increase until their lifetime prisoners start dying.
I digress.
Perhaps the impression of personal interference is just the price Key pays for fronting a crime plan full of random hard lines. But to me it all makes it look like he's not as clever as he thinks he is.
And that an honest opponent of nanny state has more to fear than they might think from a change of government.
Elsewhere
I note the ACT TV ad, apparently courting the 'people who hate the Greens' vote.
I wasn't looking at the TV on Saturday night, so I missed that they had actually just ripped off the Greens' image. I have professional reasons for agreeing with Mr Price that this sort of thing should be allowed (though sometimes decried). OTOH as things stand it is flouting the law. And it's amusing to see ACT abuse some's property rights, even though "intellectual property" isn't a very sensible phrase.
And I can't take Rodney Hide's environmental position very seriously. Mostly because, in terms of what actually comes up in Parliament, his solution to every environmental problem is to do nothing.
But what struck me, as a marketing thing, was the bit that encouraged people to be a real green, not a "watermelon green".
Why put that in an ad?
I mean, if you want to sound like you have nothing better to do than attack other parties and are maybe a little psycho, sure.
But my point is, how big can the target audience for that phrase be? Surely everyone who understands it ('Green on the oudside, red in the middle! Ha! Take that!') already knows who they want to vote for.
Elsewhere Elswhere
Just a theory on Labour's me-tooism on special welfare for fired people.
It's not that having the same plan as another part is really unusual. For example, I half expect National to complain that Labour has stolen its policy-stealing policy. And I suspect parties who aren't leading the government tend to call for thing as early as possible, and then by the time the actual policy work is done and government can announce it, they can claim it was their idea.
But what I'm thinking of is the "we've been developing this for ages" thing (rather than the "we promise not to announce new spending" thing). One time before when this happened National got the relevant cabinet papers and found that, yes, there had been work done one this, and cabinet had turned it down. The implication being, it suddenly became a good idea when the opposition announced it.
After nine years I imagine they must have, in that sense, been working on just about every policy position there is.
Personally, while I can sort of see the extra hardship in being fired as opposed to not having a job in the first place, I can't help thinking it would be simpler if we just had a proper unemployment benefit.
DNA First, Questions Later
If there's one thing that actually give me a warm feeling to know I'm not voting for National, it's in their law and order policies.
A National government will as a matter of "as a matter of priority", add DNA samples from everyone charged with an imprisonable offense to the police database.
Charged. Plenty of these people will be found not guilty. Plenty of them are not guilty. In some cases, there won't even have been a crime. And in every case, they have to be treated by the law as innocent until proven guilty or we may as well give up the whole 'justice' thing now.
National intends to force innocent people to give a DNA sample, and then to keep that in their database forever.
I actually put it in a headline on the Scoop front page: "National Will Begin DNA-Testing Innocent People As Soon As Possible". We have a tendency to be flippant, but we do also try for accuracy. So I hope people realise it's not a joke.
Look on the bright side: at least they're not raiding everyone's medical samples.
Anyway - firstly: It is wrong.
Secondly: It is wrong.
Thirdly: It makes me wonder how someone could suggest it in the first place.
Talking to Nine to Noon, John Key mentioned his faith in his own judgment. That no doubt served him will in foreign exchange (where I get the impression you have to be decisive and mostly right) and overall seems to be doing quite well now. But I think in running a country you're only as good as your worst mistake.
I mention this because I'm reminded of the not-exactly boot camps: Involuntary programmes for off-the-rails kids based on an arbitrary combination of voluntary programmes for at-risk or not-at-risk kids. I've twice heard John Key call this his scheme - like he made it up and just expects it to work. People practising in the area hate it, mostly because they don't think it will.
In a similar case, Dim found the parole policy ill-advised. Or rather, igonore-advised.
Come to think of it, Don Brash demonstrably made up his own policy at least once; but he was worse at keeping his spokepeople - the one's whose job it is to actually understand the portfolio - in line when he did.
Don Brash also produced (and then finance spokesman John Key defended) a budget where the numbers for corrections seemed rather too small. In the apparent absence of an actual shadow budget this year, I have an issue with the parole policy costing - they estimate 512 extra prisoners and one more prison. Lord knows that's not every cost, but I'm thinking of one particular trap for new players.
While it's normal to project forwards to the third year, in the case of the three-strikes-and-no-parole scheme this approach is useless. Hardly anyone would be serving that extra time by the third year. By, say, the tenth, it will be much, much bigger and it will presumably continue to increase until their lifetime prisoners start dying.
I digress.
Perhaps the impression of personal interference is just the price Key pays for fronting a crime plan full of random hard lines. But to me it all makes it look like he's not as clever as he thinks he is.
And that an honest opponent of nanny state has more to fear than they might think from a change of government.
Elsewhere
I note the ACT TV ad, apparently courting the 'people who hate the Greens' vote.
I wasn't looking at the TV on Saturday night, so I missed that they had actually just ripped off the Greens' image. I have professional reasons for agreeing with Mr Price that this sort of thing should be allowed (though sometimes decried). OTOH as things stand it is flouting the law. And it's amusing to see ACT abuse some's property rights, even though "intellectual property" isn't a very sensible phrase.
And I can't take Rodney Hide's environmental position very seriously. Mostly because, in terms of what actually comes up in Parliament, his solution to every environmental problem is to do nothing.
But what struck me, as a marketing thing, was the bit that encouraged people to be a real green, not a "watermelon green".
Why put that in an ad?
I mean, if you want to sound like you have nothing better to do than attack other parties and are maybe a little psycho, sure.
But my point is, how big can the target audience for that phrase be? Surely everyone who understands it ('Green on the oudside, red in the middle! Ha! Take that!') already knows who they want to vote for.
Elsewhere Elswhere
Just a theory on Labour's me-tooism on special welfare for fired people.
It's not that having the same plan as another part is really unusual. For example, I half expect National to complain that Labour has stolen its policy-stealing policy. And I suspect parties who aren't leading the government tend to call for thing as early as possible, and then by the time the actual policy work is done and government can announce it, they can claim it was their idea.
But what I'm thinking of is the "we've been developing this for ages" thing (rather than the "we promise not to announce new spending" thing). One time before when this happened National got the relevant cabinet papers and found that, yes, there had been work done one this, and cabinet had turned it down. The implication being, it suddenly became a good idea when the opposition announced it.
After nine years I imagine they must have, in that sense, been working on just about every policy position there is.
Personally, while I can sort of see the extra hardship in being fired as opposed to not having a job in the first place, I can't help thinking it would be simpler if we just had a proper unemployment benefit.
Labels: act party, crime, irony, john key, justice, media, nz politics, prisons
