Give Us A Break!

When the Herald has exhausted even its ample resources of in-house journalists and columnists who can be relied on to represent the National party interest, it is seemingly able to call on a selection of guest contributors to carry the banner.

The latest of these appears in today’s edition. As with all his predecessors, Andrew Barnes is described as a “businessman” which is offered as an apparently all-purpose qualification to comment on whatever aspect of government policy attracts his attention. The Herald no doubt sees a pleasing opportunity, given that the new leader of the National party is or was a businessman, to try to point up a correlation of some sort between business experience and political expertise.

Readers of the Herald, however, might well plead “Give us a break!’