Judith Collins would like her Cabinet position back, and John Key had better hurry up and get it done.
Collins will be acutely aware of the need to escape the back benches. She cannot hope to fulfil her destiny of becoming the greatest Prime Minister New Zealand has ever had, if she does not return soon to the Cabinet.
There will be no Antipodean Thatcher for us, unless John Key sees the error of his ways.
You could never accuse Judith Collins of lacking ambition. Or optimism. Or self-belief.
Collins will be hoping we have all forgotten about her role in Dirty Politics, or her central part in the Oravida scandal, and her hopes may well be justified. This is what happened when I began to type “Judith Collins” into Google. Not a mention of either.
She has been exonerated. Cleared! Her record is unblemished! And she dances too!
John Key should admit he got it wrong when he forced Judith Collins to resign. She didn’t do a single thing wrong. She was the victim of a vicious smear campaign conducted by the left, with the aid of her enemies in the National Party. They are all terrified of her tremendous talents.
They must be made to pay. To suffer. All of them.
It doesn’t matter what you think you read about Judith Collins, or what you thought you saw on television with your own eyes.
She did not pass on to a blogger personal details about a public servant. That public servant did not subsequently become the subject of online abuse and death threats.
Oravida? Nothing to do with her.
Cameron Slater? She barely knows the guy.
And this never happened.
We need Judith Collins in power. If she can make that many political scandals and disgraceful actions simply unhappen, imagine what she might be able to do to the budget deficit or child poverty.
Imperator Fish 
I will be reluctantly departing from the blogosphere for the next two or three months. So I thought I’d post (as an act of total personal arrogance) the links to a few of the most profoundly insightful blogs that I’ve read in the past year or so, in the hope that other “readers of blogs” might also find them insightful/useful/inspired/newsworthy or just plain worthwhile.
What they suggest is that we are all being treated as muppets/puppets by powerful external global forces. And by “we” I don’t just mean the ordinary people of NZ . . . . I include the various agencies of the Governments of NZ, Britain, Australia, most of Europe (though sometimes excluding France), Canada and, slightly differently, the USA (because they are currently “top dog”). But excluded are countries like Fiji, China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
And by “powerful external global forces” I mean something like the Multinationals/ Corporates/ Bilderberg-group-members of this world. Since these organizations are generally shrouded in self-imposed secrecy with respect to their global policies and their internal workings (I wonder why?) it is difficult to be clear about just exactly what they have been up to since the end of World War 2. But the people of the word most definitely do need to know. The papers listed below raise aspects of these important questions.
Near the top of the list is this commentary on the British election. It seems to suggest that the issues facing Great Britain today are pretty much identical to the issues currently facing New Zealand (not to mention, Australia, Canada, etc. etc. as listed above).
Is this mere co-incidence? I think not.
Rather it suggests the operation of the Machiavellian hand of the multinationals/corporates and their role in dictating government policy REGARDLESS of which particular parties happen to be fighting, and regardless of which particular parties happen to win a Government election.
By and large, I suppose, the political ends of the multinationals are achieved through the mechanisms for government subversion that are afforded by “lobby money”. We make it all too easy for the multinationals to exploit this, the weakest link in the chain, with respect to the external control of of western-style democracies. And the multinationals have learned, through experience, to exploit this weakest link to the hilt.
For example, the pan-Pacific “not about trade” agreement is a current manifestation of the multinational power grab that has been in operation since the end of World War 2.
The first of my top four or five blogs for the year to date is this contribution by Todhunter:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-2015-british-general-election-capitalisms-one-horse-race/5442040
To quote the final paragraph from this thoughtful discussion:
“No matter who wins on 7 May, the public is destined for more of the same. The real outcome of the election has already been decided by the interlocking directorate of think tanks, big business and its lobby groups and the higher echelons of the civil service. The election will be akin to rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship.”
Also important is this critique of “The current banking system” in Britain/New Zealand/The-rest-of-the-world-with-a-few-exceptions:
http://www.positivemoney.org/2012/06/banking-vs-democracy-how-power-has-shifted-from-parliament-to-the-banking-sector/
I found the following posting on British land-ownership interesting. It seems to indicate, not where NZ land ownership currently resides, but where it may be rapidly heading under current government policy. It states near the opening, and referring to the U.K., “In a country where 432 people own half the private rural land all change is Stalinism. . . .”
Where it comes to insight/perceptivity/brilliance of expression, this man (George Monbiot) is a genius.
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/12/02/breaking-the-silence/
And from an American perspective, this excellent article by Ellen Brown:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/06/how-america-became-oligarchy
To quote from the opening paragraph: “The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. . . . You have owners.” —George Carlin, “The American Dream”.
“According to a new study from Princeton University, American democracy no longer exists. . . . . . rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of – or even against – the will of the majority of voters. America’s political system has transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where power is wielded by wealthy elites.”
And finally, this quote from David Graeber:
http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/a-practical-utopians-guide-to-the-coming-collapse
“In most of the world, the last thirty years has come to be known as the age of neoliberalism—one dominated by a revival of the long-since-abandoned nineteenth-century creed that held that free markets and human freedom in general were ultimately the same thing. Neoliberalism has always been wracked by a central paradox. It declares that economic imperatives are to take priority over all others. Politics itself is just a matter of creating the conditions for growing the economy by allowing the magic of the marketplace to do its work. All other hopes and dreams—of equality, of security—are to be sacrificed for the primary goal of economic productivity. But global economic performance over the last thirty years has been decidedly mediocre. With one or two spectacular exceptions (notably China, which significantly ignored most neoliberal prescriptions), growth rates have been far below what they were in the days of the old-fashioned, state-directed, welfare-state-oriented capitalism of the fifties, sixties, and even seventies. By its own standards, then, the project was already a colossal failure even before the 2008 collapse.
If, on the other hand, we stop taking world leaders at their word and instead think of neoliberalism as a political project, it suddenly looks spectacularly effective. The politicians, CEOs, trade bureaucrats, and so forth who regularly meet at summits like Davos or the G20 may have done a miserable job in creating a world capitalist economy that meets the needs of a majority of the world’s inhabitants (let alone produces hope, happiness, security, or meaning), but they have succeeded magnificently in convincing the world that capitalism—and not just capitalism, but exactly the financialized, semifeudal capitalism we happen to have right now—is the only viable economic system. If you think about it, this is a remarkable accomplishment.”
I’ll be back, I hope, but I really, really, REALLY hope that, by the time I emerge from my underground hibernation towards the end of winter, JUDITH COLLINS WILL NOT BE PM OF NZ!