Congratulations: you win. A triumph for democracy

When I spoke to my mother on the phone the other day I mentioned that I was aware they had recently had an election, and that they had returned the incumbent. I stopped myself from describing him as the plutocratic bastard that had systematically robbed the public treasury and funnelled the embezzled money into companies that he had controlling shares in, and then offshore. ‘How are those claims against the compulsory government earthquake fund going? The one that was found to be empty because the funds had gone?,’ was another question I did not ask.

‘Yes’, she beamed. ‘He seemed nice. His wife is nice. She’s from Wales you know. Her name is Bronagh. They make a nice couple. She’s from Wales.

From what I can tell from the wiki entry, Bronagh is about as Welsh as my mother is Scots, but this does not stop my mother from buying the imported nostalgic magazines about Scotland designed for retirees who remember with pride the traditions represented in those mouldering castles. She has, of course, never even been to the UK, but I have no doubt if asked would call it, ‘home’.

I waited, but there was no more forthcoming. That was the entire basis for her vote. A simple popularity contest on who looks like the nicer couple in a staged photograph. I have no statistics, but I be prepared to guess that this is the voting rationale for an awful lot of senior citizens, and an awful lot more besides…

Then I reconsidered. Wales. What was so significant in that point she emphasised? Then I worked it out. Welsh blood probably made her a descendant of King Arthur, and he was appointed by God himself by method of a strange lady distributing a sword in a farcical aquatic ceremony. If that does not make the Key government automatically good and destined to do the right thing by that bankrupt little nation then I’m buggered if I can figure out what does. Though I am sure that no such complete chain of thought intruded on her mind, I’d lay good money that the gut feeling was there, because if there is one thing my mother does know, it is the legends of a country on the other side of the world to which she has never been and from which there has been little interest in us.

A country always gets the government it deserves, and despite one of the more progressive voting systems, New Zealand still managed to steer a straight and clear course towards the brink. Good luck to them. I’m glad I don’t live there any more. Instead I have to deal with a government on the take from Japan (whaling) and one terrified of offending the ‘last superpower’.