Minister of Health found lacking in satchelcarrying department
Dear Uncle Norm,
The Third Secretary has directed me to explain the prolonged unnecessity of the Minister of Health during much of the Covid 19 crisis. When a national health emergency is declared, many responsibilities are confiscated from the politician (the minister) and placed in the hands of the somewhat more knowledgeable civilian (the directorgeneral, Dr Bloomfield).
The minister’s key task then becomes carrying Dr Bloomfield’s briefcase from meeting to meeting. On review, it was decided that while the minister’s verbosity is excellent, his skill sets aren’t quite there for the satchel job. Further inquiries may be sent to, and stonewalled by, his new Ministry for Bicycling.
Bertram Bland 4th Secretary (Acting)
Ministry for Health Thanks Bertie. It is a relief to know bicycling policy will now be pedalled by a safe pair of feet.
Dear Uncle Norm,
The lockdown gave us the chance to understand deep things we’d not appreciated. Take my dog, Ernest. I now see why Ernest gets so excited when someone approaches the front door. Why he climbs the coat stand for his leash when he thinks its walk time. And bounds joyously to the car the moment I pick up the garage door whizzer. Have you been similarly enlightened?
Wilma Opoho Not really. However, on Thursday I did catch myself barking at the cat.
Dear Uncle Norm,
Presuming there’s no new southern case reported over the weekend, Dunedin has now had 15 Covidfree days. It is dead easy to isolate the whole South via roadblocks. So why can’t the Government take a regional approach, and immediately move the “Safe South” into Level 2? Instead we endure a further week of our business comeback strangled by the Government’s “onesize fits all” approach.
The Mayor of (town obscured) The fast lockdown was made possible by quickly centralising power — which gets measles once a more regional approach becomes desirable. You’d hope southern MPs are on our case. The city is not helped by having the members for both Dunedin North and South, Clark and Curran, now in the Naughty Corner. And all their own work.
Dear Uncle Norm,
Why did we let Maori groups erect and police Covid19 roadblocks? These provocative barriers were clearly illegal, and some of the usual suspects of race politics were involved. If Pakehas blockaded the road into a wealthy suburb like Queenstown’s Kelvin Heights, they’d be in jail come lunchtime, then declined bail by dinner. It’s inverse racism. Why do we tolerate it?
E. G. W. Green
(by email) Turning a blind eye is one of life’s smarter tools. Ask Horatio Nelson about the tactical merits of simply not noticing. Britain’s craftiest admiral stuck his telescope to his sightless eye, so that he could play dumb to orders that would lose the Battle of Copenhagen. Hence the “blind eye” aphorism.
If police had shut illegal barriers, some hothead resistance was likely. Followed by furious public debate and gormless white and brown racial posturing all when we needed Joe and Josephine Public to focus on washing their hands.
Who made the “blind eye” decision? We can’t be certain, but that woman deserves a DB.
Dear Uncle Norm,
Why have you allowed your Agony Aunt column to become a vehicle for racists, ratbags, sexists, and other deplorables with unsound opinions? Too many of your “letters” put extremist viewpoints that are disgraceful. They’d be banned if this country had thoughtful media censorship.
Outraged North Dunedin We are generally in favour of ratbags — this is in my minister’s son blood — but do try to give all sides of idiocy equal representation. Actually, the “extremists” you’d like to suppress are well worth their space. Extremists give debate its polar opposites. Unshackled from balance or common sense, they offer a certain purity of viewpoint — and thus they get you thinking. (We can then machinegun them with our worst jokes, grunts Uncle Norm).
You too are an extremist — of the “rabidly correct” variety. Thank you for your excellent job reminding us of censorship’s perils.