A Familiar Diatribe

Mike Hosking in today’s Herald treats us to yet another re-run of his familiar anti-government bile and vitriol. No surprise there, you may say, but we may nevertheless marvel that his rant is unsupported by any evidence. The evidence, if he were to care to consult it, shows conclusively that our government has produced a response to the pandemic that is the envy of the rest of the world.

There is not a sniff of a recognition in the Hosking diatribe that we have achieved levels of infections, hospitalisations, and deaths that are – on a per-population basis – better than those of any other country, and that our economy is in a remarkably strong and buoyant state. Our government must have done something right – and that is the message shown by the polls – and particularly by the most important poll of all, the vaccination totals.

Even Hosking’s “politician of the year” has lost his gloss. Freed from any responsibility to actually do anything other than criticise, David Seymour has now been relegated to his true status as irritant and gadfly – able to pick and choose when and on what issue to snipe on the sidelines, but never called to account for any actual consequences of the advice he so readily offers.

Times must be tough for the Herald, Hosking and Seymour when they can offer nothing more than running around on their tired old treadmill. The real world must be for them such an annoying place!