Having been affected by the authoritarian and patently unjust vaccination mandates, my family and I were excited to hear about the convoy heading to Wellington and walked up to our local motorway overbridge to cheer them on as they went past on Sunday 6th February. We stood with other Kiwis waving our national flag and holding up a sign that said “No Mandates”. We figured that over a quarter of the cars driving under us tooted and waved in support of our message. What we didn’t realise initially was this was not even the convoy. When the convoy arrived we really knew about it. Vehicles decorated in flags and banners cruised through in one almost continuous stream for over half an hour. We could not believe the numbers.
The Sneering Elite and Deceitful Media
In the days that followed, we kept up with what was happening down in Wellington via Telegram channels and Facebook groups. As a family we were buoyed by the ordinary New Zealanders who were taking a stand for freedom. For too long, we have been dictated to by those who look down on us as lesser beings.
This sneering condescension became clear in the mainstream media’s coverage of the event as well as the unwillingness of any politician to come down and walk among the people they supposedly serve to hear their concerns and hurt. The protestors have been sidelined as non-citizens.
One requires skin in the game, being ostracised from the culture and genuine courage, while the other requires an updated Twitter profile and a hashtag.
Isn’t it easy to fight for freedom when you have no skin in the game and the fight is happening halfway around the world?
Last year, when our authoritarian government introduced a vaccine requirement for school teachers, I took a stand against this position by refusing to get vaccinated. I drew my line in the sand. Some, confused and bamboozled by government propaganda or perhaps a self-righteousness stemming from ‘having done the right thing’ immediately criticised this as an anti-vaccination position. I was knocked for demonstrating a reckless disregard for others. But these detractors were a minority. The callousness of some New Zealanders throughout the mandates has been mentioned by others, nevertheless, I want to focus on the positive. I received so much kind-hearted support that my family and I were blown away. There are some wonderful ordinary Kiwis out there who will never win New Zealander of the year, but who are true ‘salt of the earth’ people.
Some may be interested in how things have panned out for me, so I thought it was about time to give an update on my situation.
There is definitely a lot of misinformation and outright deceit about what is going on down in Wellington. The AM show interview with Ardern a couple of days ago was absolutely shameful on that front. If you want to know what’s going on, go to primary sources. People who are actually on the ground in Wellington. Watch the live feeds, hear from the people there. Do yourself a favour, watch both videos.
Part Two.
Boycie from the Backbencher Pub at Parliament. Watch to the end for a message to Jacinda Ardern. pic.twitter.com/rT3Qp0qtmW
And so it begins. A press release from Mr Seymour on Friday indicated that change was in the air. More came on Sunday’s press release. Then came a live video chat with Seymour on Sunday evening. There are few things as amusing as a politician doing an about-turn and trying to pretend it is not an about-turn.
Seymour uses the press release to put the boot into Jacinda Ardern and Trevor Mallard, as you would expect.
Several times I’ve heard people mention the law about wearing seatbelts as an analogous situation to vaccine mandates, almost like it’s some kind of precedent that’s been set. They say, “We accepted having to wear seatbelts and this is no different”. So I thought I’d list a few key ways in which this is an obviously false comparison.
1. Wearing a seatbelt does not inject something into your body; it’s more like putting on an item of clothing
2. You can choose not to wear a seat belt, at your own risk, and still drive a car
3. The consequence for not wearing a seat belt (apart from possible injury) is that you might get a fine or perhaps there might be some insurance implications. Choosing not to do so does not cost you your job and livelihood or affect your ability to get a new job.
4. Wearing a seatbelt is reversible – you can just take it off again! You cannot undo a vaccine. Whatever changes it makes to your body and its immune function are with you for life.
5. No one else goes around asking you whether you are wearing a seatbelt and denies you access to certain places if you refuse.
6. I haven’t seen scores of people posting photos on Facebook of themselves ‘making it click’ with holier-than-thou sayings such as “I’m wearing my seatbelt for my whanau”.
7. Your seatbelt doesn’t need updating every 6 months or an extra one put on.
8. There are no KFC bribes for wearing one.
9. To my knowledge, wearing a seat belt does not pose any risk to the wearer. Perhaps it may cause a little chafing or some injury in the event of an accident, but it doesn’t seem like people suffer injuries from merely wearing one. By contrast, the many stories and stats on covid-19 vaccine injuries cannot be ignored.
10. Seatbelts had been around for a long time before being mandated, unlike the COVID-19 vaccines. You can’t magically simulate long term safety data because the key ingredient is TIME.
So in conclusion, no, I don’t think mandatory vaccination is at all like mandatory seat belt wearing!
On Sunday I took my family to one of the motorway overbridges to take a look at the Convoy protestors passing by. I was pleased to see other happy Kiwis and their kids flying New Zealand flags, holding anti mandate and pro-freedom signs, laughing and having a good time while passers-by tooted support. The atmosphere was festive and jovial aside from the odd aggressive motorist who gestured how many brain cells they had or voiced their low opinion of freedom with profanities despite the obvious presence of young children.
Though the protest has been building as it has made its way down from the North and up from Bluff, little attention has been paid to it by the media. The attention that has been shown is designed to turn naive media consumers against the protestors. A short clip on TV showed some people flying Trump flags on one bridge – I have seen lots of footage of this event and this is the only bridge I saw Trump flags on. But because our completely neutral media has trained some segments of the population to go rabid when they even get a whiff of Trump much like Pavlov managed to get dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, those scenes were enough to turn a number against the protestors. Propaganda has a strong effect on the weak-minded.
As the convoy continued its way toward Wellington, more organisations began to mention them. Naturally numbers were played down. People were framed as crazies. Today we had this from the objective reporters sitting behind their keyboards and watching their Twitter feeds.
We have a convoy of vehicles. Apparently, it has attracted hundreds of people in up to 1000 vehicles. Yes..really. Not sure how that works.
Those out on the bridges, those who got stuck in the traffic, and those standing on the mainstreets of towns throughout the country cheering on the protestors know that this is big, even if our mainstream media are looking the other way. Tech is on our side. We can share our videos and information. We don’t need these clowns to frame the story for us.
And so, at a certain point, like now, as the protestors all arrive in Wellington, it becomes harder to lie to the people. So the article changes. Unless you happened to have a screenshot of the original wording, you might never know. It’s like the memory hole in 1984.
Now there are hundreds of cars, in fact up to 1000 vehicles and several thousand on Parliament’s lawn. Never mind all the thousands of people who have been out in support over the last few days in every town, suburb, and motorway bridge.
So what can they do now? Back to the old tactic of smearing these protestors. Karen, sorry Carol wound down her window to give the thumbs down to free choice and freedom and someone apparently threw a can to her side of the road which caused her to feel unsafe. The protest organisers have made it clear that the protest is to be peaceful, so this is not endorsed if it even happened. But Karen, dear Karen; we feel unsafe living among fascists like you who think it is perfectly acceptable for a government to force people like us to be vaccinated against our will.
Do we have anyone interviewed from the protest to give information about what they are protesting about? Don’t be silly, that would take effort and some semblance of objectivity. To be fair, a woman who saw the protest drive through was reported as saying it was huge and took 45 minutes to pass.
We are then told Ardern is too busy to come and talk to the protestors. Too busy to see the people to whom she supposedly ministers and whose lives she has destroyed with her policies over the past couple of years. Too busy? Too scared! That spineless jellyfish Luxon also is refusing to show. Not only that he has made it clear he does not want his MPs to attend either. Why? Because he is pro-vaccination and thinks the mandates are fine at this point in time. In other words, when enough the current finally moves to see them as wicked and evil, jellyfish Luxon will float that way too. Right now, there are thousands of unrepresented Kiwis looking for a leader. And Luxon, you’re not him.
The failure of the New Zealand church through the pandemic ought to be clear to all except the most blinded by now. I suspect that when we eventually get back to normal, the church won’t look like it did in 2020. Many individual churches have been weighed and found wanting. The rot that was already in some of the timber but painted over with nice glossy paint so that the average Christian didn’t notice it has been exposed for just about all to see. It turns out paint over dry rot counts for nothing when someone comes along and squeezes that timber hard. So what has happened to the flock?
Lately I’ve been thinking about how we get out of this mess. Sure Ardern is dropping in popularity – surprisingly slowly given her government’s incompetence and wickedness. I think part of the problem is that so many Kiwis have bought the “Health Issue” narrative, and because they have done everything they have been told, they are relatively unaffected. Unfortunately, many of these ordinary Kiwis think they are getting a balanced and fair representation of the state of things when they switch on the 6 o’clock news or read Stuff. Before scoffing at their naivety, which let’s admit it, would be cathartic, we should consider how to wake these Kiwis up. We don’t want a third consecutive year ruined by these authoritarian tyrants.
