To Hell with John Tamihere.
I’m not normally a very political person. My political views are .. centrist, I guess.
I’m no right-wing nutjob, there are a bunch of things that I think the government should do, and a bunch of services that I think the government should offer freely and fund well enough to do a really good job at. Health, Education, and Law Enforcement being three. Despite the fact that I am well-paid, and aiming for “affluent”, I don’t even mind forking out considerable tax dollars to see these things done. (As to how well they are currently BEING done, that’s another story.)
I’m no filthy leftie nutjob, either. There are various things that the government is involved with, and which it does, which BOGGLE THE FUCKING MIND. Various arts projects (NZ on Air, NZ Film Commission) and suchlike .. man, I don’t have ANY IDEA why the government would even begin to feel that it should be running these things.
Anyway, as such, I typically pay zero attention to which of the major political parties is in power. The current lot (Labour) has been doing a mostly acceptable job of late, and are (based on polls) generally well thought of.
However, they have in their midst one Mr John Tamihere, MP for Tamaki Makaurau. The “Honourable” Mr Tamihere recently got spanked by his Caucus for giving his honest opinion about his fellow party members, his party, and (bizarrely) Jews and the holocaust to a journalist in an interview that he claims he thought was “off the record”. The journalist in question then printed them for all to see.
Which is, of course, merely funny. That shit doesn’t make me angry. Personality politics that doesn’t actually cause harm, is all bullshit. NZ politicans, if you’ve ever seen a meeting of the house, is full of painful, adolescent points-scoring bollocks which, when viewed by adults, is merely wince-worthly and embarassing. The only time you should really be ANGRY at a government is when it does something like causes tens-of-thousands of civilian deaths for reasons which turn out to be cold-blooded premeditated lies. You know. Just as an example. Not thinking of any current US administration in particular.
But I am angry at John Tamihere, and for a totally non-political reason. It turns out that when he moved out of a house in Henderson (near where I used to live) he left his two cats behind, to fend for themselves. The SPCA found them, without food or water, eleven days later, after a neighbour alerted them.
I don’t care strongly about politics. You can not vote, or vote for the other guy, or start a new political party, or rise up and overthrow the damn state, depending on how strongly you feel and what kind of people you’re fighting. Politics is a consensual illusion created by people, and people can look after themselves.
But to deliberately abandon your fucking cats to maybe starve to death, or go feral, or whatever … that is beyond cold.
To hell with you, Tamihere.