Mass murder in Manchester
Philip Matthews reviews a week of bleak news.
The Manchester bombing
After the bombing at the Manchester Arena, there were 22 dead and 116 injured. This is the worst kind of horror, the targeting of children who are entirely blameless inheritors of the West’s war on terror. Why this show, an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, and not another? Did the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, know that the dead would be as young as 8 years old and that parents would be separated from their terrified children by the explosion and the panic that followed? It is a new level of cruelty.
Communism by Steve
The first Budget by Finance Minister Steven Joyce was inoffensive, cautious, steady. No one was too upset and no one was too excited. Labour tried to call it the dollar bill budget, as some workers will be only $1 better off, but that did not catch on. Can we suggest the gold coin budget? Or the spare change budget? Or the bus fare budget? Or the down the back of the couch budget? Or the ‘‘I have a cardboard sign that says I’m hungry and struggling’’ budget? Act leader David Seymour was so alarmed by Joyce’s centrism that he had visions of hammers and sickles. Yes, we have gone from the ‘‘communism by stealth’’ that National warned about to communism by Steve. Good news, though, that RNZ finally got a much-needed funding boost.
Hero of the week
This was hugely impressive. Northland doctor Lance O’Sullivan, who was New Zealander of the Year in 2014 and should be again, jumped on stage at a screening in Kaitaia of the controversial anti-vaccination film Vaxxed and said, ’’I come here with a lot of anger ... and that’s because I am adamantly opposed to this because this position, this idea of anti-immunisation has killed children around the world and actually will continue to kill children’’. The anti-vaccine line is not just a fanciful conspiracy theory – it has real world effects. Good work, Lance.
Religious news
Religious news? Suddenly there is a lot of it about. Blasphemy is officially still a crime in New Zealand after National and the Maori Party combined to stop the repeal of a law that has been redundant for close to a century, since the long defunct Maoriland Worker newspaper published a Siegfried Sassoon poem in 1921. Fast forward 96 years and Press readers were given a lesson in theology by Anglican Bishop of Christchurch Victoria Matthews who wondered, in an opinion piece responding to the growing political frustration at the decrepit state of the Christ Church Cathedral, what matters more, buildings or people. ’’One of my favourite questions to ponder is ‘What do people mean when they say our Cathedral in the Square is an icon?’ Another question I ask is whether the hurting city of Christchurch will be better helped by fixing this broken building or by attending to the pain of the people who are still suffering.’’ Finally, US President Donald Trump met Pope Francis at the Vatican and left with a copy of the Pope’s publication Laudato Si, which quotes New Zealand Catholic bishops on the need to protect the environment. Will he read it?