The seriously unfunny Kiwi parliament

Kiwis have lost flight

It is a bird and it cannot fly, no, it does not have a big backside and it is not extinct like the dodo. It belongs to a distant group of islands that are fast losing their sense of humour that is if they ever had any humour at all. It is the land of the kiwi and the humanoid Kiwis are beginning to look like birds that cannot fly.

All that feet stamping and making funny faces when the players of their most popular sport meet with other nations leaves me almost ready to laugh but I am not impressed at all, the haka is no more a challenge and hardly a dare anymore.

Can't say this of politicians

Why are the kiwis at this end of a mild vituperation? Because their representatives, politicians who have become too much of themselves to be spoken about have promulgated a law that bans political satire - or rather politicians in parliament can no more be butts of jokes or elements in a satirical commentary.

As it stands, broadcasters or anyone else to cannot use footage of the chamber for "satire, ridicule or denigration", rather than get creative with satirising parliament, we must now watch a live feed on television of Kiwi members of parliament in ridiculous states of debate and appearance doing everything to denigrate themselves and abrogate whole free enterprise of democracy.

Democratic death throes

For a once lively democracy to arrogate to themselves the equivalent of lèse majesté laws beggars belief and it would definitely encourage despotic rulers pretending to lead democracies to enact even worse laws of sedition and stifle the freedom of the press. A democracy without satire might as well be an autocracy.

When men have lost the ability to laugh at themselves or cannot abide the occasional snigger and would be offended by a guffaw at their expense, they have definitely lost the will to enjoy life, if not the will to live.

Bad news from NZ

But New Zealand is now in the news and this new law is an excellent way of designating it a backwater in the middle of nowhere which probably is in the Southern Hemisphere.

Americans might know New Zealand for being the land where the Lord of the Rings was filmed, it is definitely now below middle-earth and the orcs have laid siege on parliament with tyranny - what can one say than for God to save the sheep from murderous laws.

tags: new zealand  kiwi  haka  lèse majesté  parliament  laws  satire  ridicule  denigrate  democracy  

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