An equestrian, a judge and a lawyer united the Team of Five Million, as Judith Collins doth projected too much. James Elliott has the news of the week.
About 70 percent of us have now had one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. About 35 percent of us have had both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. And 0.00000041 percent of us are William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley, aka the Wānaka Couple, aka the border busters, aka the busted border busters.
Probably more than 90 percent of us know who William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley are because William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley had their names, William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley, suppressed for the best part of a day having been busted for busting the Auckland border before calling in a QC to get a court order suppressing their names, William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley.
He’s an equestrian, his mother’s a judge, and she’s a lawyer. Add in a frisky widow, a drug-dealing vet, and a ripped young topless stable hand from the wrong side of the tracks trying to better himself tossing hay into the stalls, his corrugated torso glistening with the sheen of his sweat and someone else’s hand sanitizer, and you’ve got all the characters for the next Jilly Cooper novel, Lust Under Lockdown.
Back in the real world, William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley have apologised profusely for their “completely irresponsible and inexcusable decision”, no longer have any close contacts and have been self-isolated. The holiday home in Wānaka remains a place of interest.
You can’t be shown the door under Level 4, and you can’t be forced to flee under Level 3, but by the time we get to Level 1, Judith’s leadership will be over and done.
Another place of interest is South Auckland where a fleet of three buses have hit the streets as mobile vaccination centres. There are now multiple transport options to get a vaccine jab including walk-up clinics, the vaccine buses, and drive-thru vaccination centres. If you would rather have your vaccine made available via Labour’s long-promised but no longer talked about light rail, that option will be available just in time for Covid-24.
In the meantime 99.999,999 percent of Auckland’s population of 1,630,092 are desperately hoping we can join the rest of the country in Alert Level 2 soon. The 0.000001 percent holdout is Judith Collins. That’s because, according to Newshub’s Tova O’Brien, another leadership challenge is stirring in the National Party, but it can’t be put to a caucus vote until we’re under Alert Level 2. As Tova summarhymed it “You can’t coup until Level 2”.
In other words, you can’t be shown the door under Level 4, and you can’t be forced to flee under Level 3, but by the time we get to Level 1, Judith’s leadership will be over and done.
It was yet another suboptimal week for Judith Collins in what has been another suboptimal month in a suboptimal year, continuing a course that one of Tova O’Brien’s National Party insiders described as a “trajectory of horror”. You might think that “horror” is a bit of an exaggeration, but bear in mind that this week former National Party chief press secretary Janet Wilson likened her time working with National as akin to the dystopian world penned by war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.
And that was one of the milder things Janet Wilson said in her interview for The Spinoff. Consider this assessment of Judith’s leadership – “She prizes loyalty above all else. But then her ugly stepsister, paranoia, steps in, and she has these almost paranoid storms.” To be clear, Judith Collins doesn’t have an actual ugly stepsister named Paranoia, that description is a colloquialism. Just like how Judith insisted that her calling microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles “a big fat hypocrite” was a colloquialism for being very hypocritical. If we’re prepared to go along with that colloquial meaning, that Judith merely thinks Siouxsie Wiles is extremely hypocritical, then methinks the lady doth project too much.
If you don’t know who Boris Johnson and Nicki Minaj are then I envy you. One of them has said some preposterous things about the Covid-19 pandemic and the other is a Trinidadian-born rapper, singer and songwriter.
And it’s not only me who thinks that. Observing that Judith has stopped leaks but then goes on Twitter to attack people, Janet Wilson asks the question, “How can that be? I mean, that’s being a hypocrite at the highest order, is it not?”.
All of which distracts us from the things that matter like Covid-19 and vaccinations. So said Judith in her response to the Janet Wilson interview. Her inner ugly stepsister then chipped in saying “Nobody really cares about what somebody who worked here for a couple of months says about a party they’re no longer involved in.”
In fact this week’s biggest distraction from the things that matter like Covid-19 and vaccinations was the exchange between Boris Johnson and Nicki Minaj about Covid-19 and vaccinations. If you don’t know who Boris Johnson and Nicki Minaj are then I envy you. One of them has said some preposterous things about the Covid-19 pandemic and the other is a Trinidadian-born rapper, singer and songwriter. Only this week it was Nicki Minaj spouting the nonsense, claiming, falsely, that the Covid-19 vaccination causes swollen testicles and impotence. That left Boris Johnson saying that he wasn’t as familiar with the works of Nicki Minaj as he should be. And maybe he should be; these Nicki Minaj lyrics convey more empathy than most of what Boris has had to say about the pandemic:
Cherish these nights. Cherish these people.
Life is a movie but there’ll never be a sequel.
Have a peaceful weekend.
