Trotter continues to channel dead spirits from a parallel universe as he reflects on Dr Cullen's poetic "we won, you lost, eat that" reversal of fortune.
I fisk as best able, given that Trotter is quite clearly mad.
And given that the NZ education system seems to be "Et tu Brutus" on William Shakespeare leaving some wondering if Shakespeare is to be or not to be, I've asked the Great Bard himself to fisk Trotter. He has kindly added his own comments, which may well confuse any future NCEA students that come across this post in the course of their studies on blogs and bloggers. [Yes, he blogs. Is this not evidence you see before thee?]
Trotter in bold, WS and ZT in italics:
Well, the grinding and the clanking of the stage machinery has finally come to an end, and the curtain has gone up on a new play.
WS: "The worst is not, So long as we can say, 'This is the worst.'" - King Lear (Act IV, Scene I)
ZT: Trotter hasn't yet found out the clanking of the country's education stage machinery has dropped the curtain on Shakespeare. He can be forgiven for his imagery.
After nine years of left-wing government, New Zealanders by the narrowest of margins have elected a government of the Right.
WS: "For you and I are past our dancing days." - Romeo and Juliet (Act I, Scene V)
ZT: Labour was severely punished, NZ First booted out and the role of the Maori Party will impact greatly on the political scene. To paraphrase Dickens: It was the narrowest of margins, it was the widest of margins. Trotter would have it history record it as the narrowest of margins. Trotter is a great believer in recording his story as history. [Note to any NCEA students - Dickens was, like Shakespeare, also well known blog author. Check his archives out]
Quite what would have happened had they failed to follow the stage directions written for them by the impresarios of conservatism is an interesting point to ponder.
WS: "Nothing will come of nothing." - King Lear (Act I, Scene I)
ZT: Trotter thinks the people are sheeple; the Labour party the noble shepherds; the National party the wolves. You get that when the wool is over your eyes.
Because the 2008 election campaign really began the night the 2005 general election ended; the night when New Zealanders courageously refused to stick to the Right's carefully crafted and lavishly funded script and returned Helen Clark's government to office.
WS: "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind". - Merchant of Venice (Act I, scene III)
ZT: The only lavishly funded script was the Labour's $800,000 in over-spending, something Trotter described as 'courageous corruption'. The Exclusive Brethren had long been outed for daring to spend half a million dollars of their own money on election advertising - and consequently did more damage than good, such was the moral outrage layered on thick and fast by the left and a compliant media. Oh, and the left got in by the most narrowest of margins back then too.
In the intervening three years, the angry drumming of the Right's multi- faceted campaign has never ceased to assail our ears.
WS:"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." - Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene II)
ZT: Labour then spend three years upsetting the public on one miscalculated policy after another. Angry drumming? Just freedom of speech Chris. Courageous, isn't it?
Talkback radio: hard-right from one end of the dial to the other. The daily press: partisanship on a scale not seen by New Zealanders in more than 30 years. Television: dumb and dumber.
WS: "But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit." - Merchant of Venice (Act II, scene VI)
ZT: Any time the left are criticised, it must be "the hard right"; "the far right"; "the extreme right" and the typically left wing media suddenly go partisan because the government passes laws curtailing free speech. All the clues are there that Labour have done wrong. Trotter's conclusion? The peasants are revolting.
Right-wing lobby groups: the Sensible Sentencing Trust, Family First, the Free Speech Coalition quoted, feted and funded as if their reactionary gobbets of fear and rage were the products of sage and sober reflection.
WS: "if you prick us, do we not bleed? .. if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" - Merchant of Venice (Act III, scene I).
ZT: Interestingly, lobby groups spring up to articulate their opinion in our winter of discontent. Back then, criticism of the Electoral Finance Bill was according to Chris, a "gobbet of fear". Today, Phil Goff, new leader of old Labour is agreeing that it was indeed a crappy piece of legislation. The Sensible Sentencing Trust? Two words: Graeme Burton. Family First? Maybe Bradford and Clark should not have equated child abuse with smacking? Trotter stands mystified that Labour's actions should gain reactions.
Labour's politicians, up on the stage, felt the grinding and the clanking of scene-shifting machinery more acutely than anyone else. It is what led them to make the many strategic and tactical errors that ultimately led to their downfall.
WS: "As he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him." - Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene II)
ZT: This would be the popular and competent and trustworthy and experienced government that was "forced" into making tactical errors? Muppet.
The "overspending" in 2005 had to be paid back, essentially requiring the governing party to fund the equivalent of two and a half election campaigns in just three years.
WS: "A very ancient and fish-like smell." - The Tempest (Act II, scene. II)
Zen: Trotter, you don't need quotation marks on overspending. It was a fact. The fact was backed up by law changes post 2004 to crack down on this misbehaviour. Are you upset because Labour were caught, or because they forget they passed those laws, or that their entitlements had to be protected by retrospective legislation, leaving the debt but escaping an embarrassing high court case?
And cry no tears for "poor" Labour. They have 20 million dollars in registered property. They rent the property to their ministers, and the rent is paid by the tax payer. This poor Labour party received a $100,000 donation from the Vela family a week before the election, on the same day they received $60,000 from the EMPU. They have money, a lot more than they left in the tax payer's coffers for the incoming National Government.
The Electoral Finance Act, intended to shove a great big spanner in the right-wing works, fell victim to the law of unintended consequences. Denied the opportunity to lobby in the traditional fashion, Labour's enemies were forced to press the one institution which the EFA did not regulate – the news media – into their service.
WS: "This above all: to thine own self be true". - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).
Zen: Yep, own goal. They EFA, intended solely to attack what they perceived as National's unfair advantage, caught themselves and New Zealand First more often than not. Bad law making and exposing the public to the fact that big money floated to the left as much as the right upset many who felt betrayed by the left's hypocrisy.
It was the news media that dubbed Sue Bradford's attempt to confer upon children the same protections against assault and battery that adults enjoy "the anti-smacking bill", faithfully reproducing Family First's public relations talking-points.
WS: Do I believe Bradford? "My salad days, when I was green in judgment." - Antony and Cleopatra (Act I, Scene V)
ZT: Is that because children already were protected from assault? Was it because the excuse of preventing assault was revealed to be a social engineering exercise where Bradford admitted her purpose was to ban smacking? Was it because the information presented as justification was often exaggerated or based on lies? Was it because the government of the day was proving time and again they could not be trusted?
More than any other factor, it was this misrepresentation of Ms Bradford's bill as an attack on parents' rights that soured so many of Labour's traditional supporters, especially in its crucial working-class heartland. The drop of eight percentage points in Labour's share of the party vote in Auckland represents a huge victory for a resurgent Christian Right.
WS: "To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on". - Othello (Act I, Scene III).
ZT: It's not a misrepresentation though Chris. Bradford does indeed want smacking banned. Until we, as a society can draft a law that allows for light smacking in discipline without being hauled off by the Police, and yet clearly draws the line against unreasonable force, the government will remain mistrusted. And so it should. We don't establish a democracy with the words "trust us", we enshrine our rights, and the governments limits in a constitution. Fix this law, it's what Ministers are supposed to do, then go catch the child abusers.
It was the news media, too, which characterised the EFA, Labour's attempt to drive a wedge between wealth and influence, as an attack upon democracy. Poorly drafted, and introduced without bipartisan support, the act proved to be a sitting duck for the shotguns of the Right.
WS: "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't." - Macbeth (Act I, Scene V).
ZT: Poorly drafted? Whose fault was that? No bipartisan support? Whose fault was that? Rushed through? Whose fault was that? Advice ignored from the Electoral Commission, the Law Society and the Auditor-General to fix it? Whose fault was that? A single opportunity for submissions? Whose fault was that? Treating the EFB protesters with derision? Who fault was that? A wedge crafted to attack any lobby group, striking at the heart of democracy? Whose fault was that? I'll give you a clue Chris: Helen Clark and Labour. A sitting duck only because Labour made it so. "Governments that bad do not deserve the privilege of governing." You can quote me on that.
Denied all knowledge of the real reasons behind the Labour Government's fears, the electorate misinterpreted its attempts to protect itself as arrogance and high-handedness. Its desperate rearguard battles against an enemy the public could not see (and were never shown) increasingly came to resemble the crazed flailing-about of a government well beyond its use-by date.
WS: "Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer." - King Henry VI. Part III (Act V, scene VI)
ZT: An interesting claim by Trotter. He is supposedly aware of information vindicating the government for all of it's very public mistakes. Retrospective legislation is hard to refute. The detailed analysis and record number of submissions on the EFA is very hard to refute. The public statements by Bradford admitting to wanting to ban smacking are very hard to refute. So now we have to believe "reasons never shown". I thought Ian Wishart published all of those reasons, surely that was the trouble - too much information became public? Tamihere, Benson-Pope (twice), the Setchell affair, the unmaking of Claire Curan, Dover Samuels, the defection of Turia, the immigration scandals, the Doone affair and the Prime Minister's office implicated in deliberate media leaks, and many others.
The contrast with the young, fresh and dynamic John Key could hardly have been more telling. Sticking religiously to the script prepared for him by those arch-massagers of public opinion, Crosby-Textor, Mr Key experienced the same dream run to victory as the Australian political consultancy's other great success story of 2008, London's new mayor, Boris Johnson.
WS: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Sc. II)
ZT: John Key proved himself young, fresh, and dynamic on three head to head TV debates against a predictable Clark, including her brief moments of bitterness and arrogance. As for Crosby-Textor, I thought their advice rather useless. It was lucky their influence was far less than last election.
The dark side of the Right's campaign was, of course, the unprecedented political assault upon Winston Peters and NZ First. Brilliantly conceived and ruthlessly executed, the attacks upon Mr Peters removed from the stage the one individual, and the one party, which could have prevented the Right from assuming power. The NZ First leader has paid a heavy price for spurning the advances of Don Brash in 2005.
WS: On Winston - "Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings". - Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II).
ZT: For goodness sake! What part of "own goal, yet again" does Trotter not understand? Does he think NZ First was talked into accepting $250,000 (that we know about) in donations that he failed to declare? How does that work when the left spend all their time screaming "secret donations" at National? Does Trotter blame National that Winston Peters had the brilliant strategy of claiming to donate $158,000 to worthy charities rather than pay the tax payer's money back to the government? Was it National that set up these charities as trust funds managed by his good friend and lawyer who was laundering the money coming in from big donors like Owen Glenn and Robert Jones? Winston paid a heavy price, but he was the one who made the bid.
Encouraged to see their government as arrogant, high-handed and fatally out of sync with their most cherished moral values, the hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters who simply stayed home on Saturday have also paid a heavy price.
WS: "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." - Measure for Measure (Act II, Scene I)
Zen: Yes indeed, such is the price of integrity. To abstain from voting for a party that had lost it's way, that had treated the people with disdain, that had acted with courageous corruption, because they foolishly believe the ends justifies the means was the best course of action. For imagine your words, Trotter, following a Labour victory. Vindication of such behaviour would have been assumed. Righteous justification of the indefensible would have burned itself onto the pages of history, and the opportunity to re-learn humility, to listen to the voice of the people, to remember who is servant and who is master - all that would have been lost. Your epiphany would never have come, and the soul of the Labour party would be that much blacker.
In Helen Clark they have lost the most accomplished political player of her generation. Returned in an election in which just 77 per cent of enrolled voters cast a ballot, National takes the stage on the second-lowest turnout in a century.
WS:"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." - Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).
ZT: A final withering blast from Trotter, who would like to have us believe National has no mandate to govern, even though Labour had less. This last roll of the dice reminds us of his previous post, where democracy is worth respect only when the left win.
I think, as Shakespeare too walks off the stage of the education system in NZ, let us ponder one more quote from the immortal bard that addresses both Trotter and Clark as they were at the end of the 2008 election:
"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Macbeth Quote (Act V, Scene V).
--ZenTiger
Related Link: Shakespeare To Be or Not To Be?
Related Link: Trotter Worn Down By A Campaign That Began In 2005
I fisk as best able, given that Trotter is quite clearly mad.
And given that the NZ education system seems to be "Et tu Brutus" on William Shakespeare leaving some wondering if Shakespeare is to be or not to be, I've asked the Great Bard himself to fisk Trotter. He has kindly added his own comments, which may well confuse any future NCEA students that come across this post in the course of their studies on blogs and bloggers. [Yes, he blogs. Is this not evidence you see before thee?]
Trotter in bold, WS and ZT in italics:
Well, the grinding and the clanking of the stage machinery has finally come to an end, and the curtain has gone up on a new play.
WS: "The worst is not, So long as we can say, 'This is the worst.'" - King Lear (Act IV, Scene I)
ZT: Trotter hasn't yet found out the clanking of the country's education stage machinery has dropped the curtain on Shakespeare. He can be forgiven for his imagery.
After nine years of left-wing government, New Zealanders by the narrowest of margins have elected a government of the Right.
WS: "For you and I are past our dancing days." - Romeo and Juliet (Act I, Scene V)
ZT: Labour was severely punished, NZ First booted out and the role of the Maori Party will impact greatly on the political scene. To paraphrase Dickens: It was the narrowest of margins, it was the widest of margins. Trotter would have it history record it as the narrowest of margins. Trotter is a great believer in recording his story as history. [Note to any NCEA students - Dickens was, like Shakespeare, also well known blog author. Check his archives out]
Quite what would have happened had they failed to follow the stage directions written for them by the impresarios of conservatism is an interesting point to ponder.
WS: "Nothing will come of nothing." - King Lear (Act I, Scene I)
ZT: Trotter thinks the people are sheeple; the Labour party the noble shepherds; the National party the wolves. You get that when the wool is over your eyes.
Because the 2008 election campaign really began the night the 2005 general election ended; the night when New Zealanders courageously refused to stick to the Right's carefully crafted and lavishly funded script and returned Helen Clark's government to office.
WS: "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind". - Merchant of Venice (Act I, scene III)
ZT: The only lavishly funded script was the Labour's $800,000 in over-spending, something Trotter described as 'courageous corruption'. The Exclusive Brethren had long been outed for daring to spend half a million dollars of their own money on election advertising - and consequently did more damage than good, such was the moral outrage layered on thick and fast by the left and a compliant media. Oh, and the left got in by the most narrowest of margins back then too.
In the intervening three years, the angry drumming of the Right's multi- faceted campaign has never ceased to assail our ears.
WS:"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." - Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene II)
ZT: Labour then spend three years upsetting the public on one miscalculated policy after another. Angry drumming? Just freedom of speech Chris. Courageous, isn't it?
Talkback radio: hard-right from one end of the dial to the other. The daily press: partisanship on a scale not seen by New Zealanders in more than 30 years. Television: dumb and dumber.
WS: "But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit." - Merchant of Venice (Act II, scene VI)
ZT: Any time the left are criticised, it must be "the hard right"; "the far right"; "the extreme right" and the typically left wing media suddenly go partisan because the government passes laws curtailing free speech. All the clues are there that Labour have done wrong. Trotter's conclusion? The peasants are revolting.
Right-wing lobby groups: the Sensible Sentencing Trust, Family First, the Free Speech Coalition quoted, feted and funded as if their reactionary gobbets of fear and rage were the products of sage and sober reflection.
WS: "if you prick us, do we not bleed? .. if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" - Merchant of Venice (Act III, scene I).
ZT: Interestingly, lobby groups spring up to articulate their opinion in our winter of discontent. Back then, criticism of the Electoral Finance Bill was according to Chris, a "gobbet of fear". Today, Phil Goff, new leader of old Labour is agreeing that it was indeed a crappy piece of legislation. The Sensible Sentencing Trust? Two words: Graeme Burton. Family First? Maybe Bradford and Clark should not have equated child abuse with smacking? Trotter stands mystified that Labour's actions should gain reactions.
Labour's politicians, up on the stage, felt the grinding and the clanking of scene-shifting machinery more acutely than anyone else. It is what led them to make the many strategic and tactical errors that ultimately led to their downfall.
WS: "As he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him." - Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene II)
ZT: This would be the popular and competent and trustworthy and experienced government that was "forced" into making tactical errors? Muppet.
The "overspending" in 2005 had to be paid back, essentially requiring the governing party to fund the equivalent of two and a half election campaigns in just three years.
WS: "A very ancient and fish-like smell." - The Tempest (Act II, scene. II)
Zen: Trotter, you don't need quotation marks on overspending. It was a fact. The fact was backed up by law changes post 2004 to crack down on this misbehaviour. Are you upset because Labour were caught, or because they forget they passed those laws, or that their entitlements had to be protected by retrospective legislation, leaving the debt but escaping an embarrassing high court case?
And cry no tears for "poor" Labour. They have 20 million dollars in registered property. They rent the property to their ministers, and the rent is paid by the tax payer. This poor Labour party received a $100,000 donation from the Vela family a week before the election, on the same day they received $60,000 from the EMPU. They have money, a lot more than they left in the tax payer's coffers for the incoming National Government.
The Electoral Finance Act, intended to shove a great big spanner in the right-wing works, fell victim to the law of unintended consequences. Denied the opportunity to lobby in the traditional fashion, Labour's enemies were forced to press the one institution which the EFA did not regulate – the news media – into their service.
WS: "This above all: to thine own self be true". - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).
Zen: Yep, own goal. They EFA, intended solely to attack what they perceived as National's unfair advantage, caught themselves and New Zealand First more often than not. Bad law making and exposing the public to the fact that big money floated to the left as much as the right upset many who felt betrayed by the left's hypocrisy.
It was the news media that dubbed Sue Bradford's attempt to confer upon children the same protections against assault and battery that adults enjoy "the anti-smacking bill", faithfully reproducing Family First's public relations talking-points.
WS: Do I believe Bradford? "My salad days, when I was green in judgment." - Antony and Cleopatra (Act I, Scene V)
ZT: Is that because children already were protected from assault? Was it because the excuse of preventing assault was revealed to be a social engineering exercise where Bradford admitted her purpose was to ban smacking? Was it because the information presented as justification was often exaggerated or based on lies? Was it because the government of the day was proving time and again they could not be trusted?
More than any other factor, it was this misrepresentation of Ms Bradford's bill as an attack on parents' rights that soured so many of Labour's traditional supporters, especially in its crucial working-class heartland. The drop of eight percentage points in Labour's share of the party vote in Auckland represents a huge victory for a resurgent Christian Right.
WS: "To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on". - Othello (Act I, Scene III).
ZT: It's not a misrepresentation though Chris. Bradford does indeed want smacking banned. Until we, as a society can draft a law that allows for light smacking in discipline without being hauled off by the Police, and yet clearly draws the line against unreasonable force, the government will remain mistrusted. And so it should. We don't establish a democracy with the words "trust us", we enshrine our rights, and the governments limits in a constitution. Fix this law, it's what Ministers are supposed to do, then go catch the child abusers.
It was the news media, too, which characterised the EFA, Labour's attempt to drive a wedge between wealth and influence, as an attack upon democracy. Poorly drafted, and introduced without bipartisan support, the act proved to be a sitting duck for the shotguns of the Right.
WS: "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't." - Macbeth (Act I, Scene V).
ZT: Poorly drafted? Whose fault was that? No bipartisan support? Whose fault was that? Rushed through? Whose fault was that? Advice ignored from the Electoral Commission, the Law Society and the Auditor-General to fix it? Whose fault was that? A single opportunity for submissions? Whose fault was that? Treating the EFB protesters with derision? Who fault was that? A wedge crafted to attack any lobby group, striking at the heart of democracy? Whose fault was that? I'll give you a clue Chris: Helen Clark and Labour. A sitting duck only because Labour made it so. "Governments that bad do not deserve the privilege of governing." You can quote me on that.
Denied all knowledge of the real reasons behind the Labour Government's fears, the electorate misinterpreted its attempts to protect itself as arrogance and high-handedness. Its desperate rearguard battles against an enemy the public could not see (and were never shown) increasingly came to resemble the crazed flailing-about of a government well beyond its use-by date.
WS: "Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer." - King Henry VI. Part III (Act V, scene VI)
ZT: An interesting claim by Trotter. He is supposedly aware of information vindicating the government for all of it's very public mistakes. Retrospective legislation is hard to refute. The detailed analysis and record number of submissions on the EFA is very hard to refute. The public statements by Bradford admitting to wanting to ban smacking are very hard to refute. So now we have to believe "reasons never shown". I thought Ian Wishart published all of those reasons, surely that was the trouble - too much information became public? Tamihere, Benson-Pope (twice), the Setchell affair, the unmaking of Claire Curan, Dover Samuels, the defection of Turia, the immigration scandals, the Doone affair and the Prime Minister's office implicated in deliberate media leaks, and many others.
The contrast with the young, fresh and dynamic John Key could hardly have been more telling. Sticking religiously to the script prepared for him by those arch-massagers of public opinion, Crosby-Textor, Mr Key experienced the same dream run to victory as the Australian political consultancy's other great success story of 2008, London's new mayor, Boris Johnson.
WS: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Sc. II)
ZT: John Key proved himself young, fresh, and dynamic on three head to head TV debates against a predictable Clark, including her brief moments of bitterness and arrogance. As for Crosby-Textor, I thought their advice rather useless. It was lucky their influence was far less than last election.
The dark side of the Right's campaign was, of course, the unprecedented political assault upon Winston Peters and NZ First. Brilliantly conceived and ruthlessly executed, the attacks upon Mr Peters removed from the stage the one individual, and the one party, which could have prevented the Right from assuming power. The NZ First leader has paid a heavy price for spurning the advances of Don Brash in 2005.
WS: On Winston - "Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings". - Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II).
ZT: For goodness sake! What part of "own goal, yet again" does Trotter not understand? Does he think NZ First was talked into accepting $250,000 (that we know about) in donations that he failed to declare? How does that work when the left spend all their time screaming "secret donations" at National? Does Trotter blame National that Winston Peters had the brilliant strategy of claiming to donate $158,000 to worthy charities rather than pay the tax payer's money back to the government? Was it National that set up these charities as trust funds managed by his good friend and lawyer who was laundering the money coming in from big donors like Owen Glenn and Robert Jones? Winston paid a heavy price, but he was the one who made the bid.
Encouraged to see their government as arrogant, high-handed and fatally out of sync with their most cherished moral values, the hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters who simply stayed home on Saturday have also paid a heavy price.
WS: "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." - Measure for Measure (Act II, Scene I)
Zen: Yes indeed, such is the price of integrity. To abstain from voting for a party that had lost it's way, that had treated the people with disdain, that had acted with courageous corruption, because they foolishly believe the ends justifies the means was the best course of action. For imagine your words, Trotter, following a Labour victory. Vindication of such behaviour would have been assumed. Righteous justification of the indefensible would have burned itself onto the pages of history, and the opportunity to re-learn humility, to listen to the voice of the people, to remember who is servant and who is master - all that would have been lost. Your epiphany would never have come, and the soul of the Labour party would be that much blacker.
In Helen Clark they have lost the most accomplished political player of her generation. Returned in an election in which just 77 per cent of enrolled voters cast a ballot, National takes the stage on the second-lowest turnout in a century.
WS:"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." - Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).
ZT: A final withering blast from Trotter, who would like to have us believe National has no mandate to govern, even though Labour had less. This last roll of the dice reminds us of his previous post, where democracy is worth respect only when the left win.
I think, as Shakespeare too walks off the stage of the education system in NZ, let us ponder one more quote from the immortal bard that addresses both Trotter and Clark as they were at the end of the 2008 election:
"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Macbeth Quote (Act V, Scene V).
--ZenTiger
Related Link: Shakespeare To Be or Not To Be?
Related Link: Trotter Worn Down By A Campaign That Began In 2005
Lovely! That's one great fisking. I've linked to it.
ReplyDeleteAs a general rule of thumb, make sure the left are always screaming and ranting angrily. If they're making approving noise, you're not doing something right. If they're really quiet, get real worried, fast.
ReplyDeleteYup.
ReplyDeleteI am minded of Lear, talking of Goneril
ReplyDeleteHow sharper than serpent's tooth
With Trotter as Lear descending into madness and the electorate as the ungrateful daughter
Good read-
ReplyDelete"Orwell's Children"
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/orwells_children.html
Brilliant! Thanks for that link Redbaiter--it'd make a good post. I especially liked this:
ReplyDelete"Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984: "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians." (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.) Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth"
Technicians!!!
ReplyDeleteIf I ever met a left-leaning tech- it was because he had passed out in that position!