https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/dave-witherow-retrospect
-
Recent Posts
- More DCC car restrictions in favour of yet another underused cycleway
- Councillors Walker, Garey, & Ong oppose pay parity and my Co-Chair Finance and Performance and Portfolio Lead for Council Controlled Organisations
- Finally, I get some useful positions on Council.
- A decade too late, we have long needed to be free of the ORC, but better late that never! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/579884/serious-shake-up-of-local-government-imminent
- Today’s ODT has a comprehensive article on Mayor Barker’s new DCC Governance model.
Links
Meta
Lee Vandervis - lee@vandervision.co.nz 
What Dave Witherow wrote is true enough with hindsight and spirited. But I find your comment confusing. Hard to tell at first whether you agree with Witherow or not. Irony needs context which hasn’t been created yet in a headline..
This is a good article… thanks, will forward it to others.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Tend to agree to this comment to the article:
Octavian Augustus 2 days ago
Great article, Dave. An excellent summary of what must surely be the most bizarre time humans are known to have had the misfortune of living through. Most astute people intuited that something was deeply wrong when the first murmurs of locking down whole nations began. When that insane policy was adopted here, according to the common pre-written script that was sold to us as strictly grounded in scientific rationality, the meek and the credulous seemed to just accept it as if that sort of thing is just normal policy, while those of us attuned to the reality independent of the constant propagandising and mind and emotion manipulation had to begin the mental exercise of steeling ourselves for what inevitably was coming down the pipe.
Many complain that the co-governance agenda is a dire threat to democracy. Well, I’ve got news for you: if we didn’t know already, Covidmania didn’t damage democracy, but instead proved beyond all doubt that “democracy” in any meaningful sense no longer exists, and hasn’t done for decades or more. And that’s if it ever did exist, if we take “democracy” to mean the determination of policy by the free will of the people, and the dutiful implementation of that will by those we elect to carry it out.
The reality is that we are ruled by a small clique of stupendously wealthy puppet masters who, preferring to stay in the shadows lest they get the blame for the shit storm they preside over but profit from, make their marionettes dance before a docile and distracted public who mostly cannot see, or maybe don’t want to see, the strings attached that are evident to anyone who pays attention for an extended period. These puppet masters spend an awful lot of time and money and effort on a slick production called “freedom and democracy” while the dupes queue up for one sequel after another in the ongoing blockbuster franchise. The difference between a “liberal democracy” and a so-called “authoritarian regime” is that the latter doesn’t have the advertising and marketing budget of the former, where at least you know who’s in charge and that they are one of your own kind.
The defining characteristic of our system is that no one is ever held accountable – the opaque puppet masters just swap one marionette out for another one when it looks like the masses are tiring of the current dummy. Whatever happened to our former Marionette in Chief Ardern anyway? She just slipped out the back door when nobody was looking, having presided over a total cluster fuck, and now there’s a new muppet in her place, soon to be “voted out” and replaced by yet another marionette but with a better suit and no hair.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Reina sorry but you never lived in authoritarian country with a dictator who is “one of your own kind”. Unfortunately I had.
Obviously in NZ big businesses and wealthy non-public figures have influence on the government policies, but this is nowhere near the extent when a self-proclaimed supreme leader and his clique also control all the national assets, collect and spend your taxes with zero transparency, and beat the shit the shit out of those who dare to protest or criticize them publicly. This setup kills country’s present and future a lot faster than Labours managed to do in their two terms (although their effort to do so is “impressive” too)