Friday 19 October 2018

A Quick Update. (Satire)

Well, all I know, REDACTED, is that you scare the hell out of me!

“OPERATION HOTSPUR”

EXEC-COM TELE-CONFERENCE REDACTED TRANSCRIPT

( ON THE CALL: REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED )


REDACTED: Are we all here? Good. I thought it would be useful to arrange a quick update on the progress to date of Operation Hotspur.

REDACTED: Before you do, REDACTED, Why Hotspur?

REDACTED: Oh, well, JLR reminds me so much of Harry Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One – the headstrong knight who refuses to be humiliated by the King and rises in rebellion against him.

REDACTED: Oh, right, very good. Sorry – go on.

REDACTED: Well, as REDACTED predicted, SB’s refusal to grant JLR everything he asked for back in February sent him into a black fury and made him extremely receptive to the idea of getting his own back. It really was very clever of you, REDACTED, to identify JLR’s acute sensitivity to even the slightest of slights. I’ve seldom encountered anyone more willing to allow their passion to over-rule their reason.

REDACTED: Yes, he really has proved to be the perfect patsy, hasn’t he?

REDACTED: However did you persuade him to tape his conversations with SB?

REDACTED: I simply told him it was necessary to prevent SB reneging on any more promises made to caucus colleagues and party members.

REDACTED: Your assessment of the recordings’ worth?

REDACTED: Oh, they’re dynamite. Not only in relation to SB, but to the whole party. If JLR is able to release even a handful of them before the by-election, then National’s going to be left looking pretty tawdry.

REDACTED: And, therefore, in even more need of a new, no-nonsense leader. Someone with the experience and the toughness to restore a sense of purpose – and discipline – to the Opposition.

REDACTED: Precisely, REDACTED. And exactly what Operation Hotspur was set up to achieve.

REDACTED: To expose and discredit the milksops and dunderheads who will never understand that “extremism in defence of liberty is no vice”.

REDACTED: Or that “moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue”.

REDACTED: Back to JLR’s recordings for a minute. What’s next?

REDACTED: The next conversation will really set the newshounds off. They’ll all be replaying All The President’s Men in their heads. All determined to “follow the money”.

REDACTED: Good. Good. It always pays to let the journos think they’ve uncovered the story all by themselves.

REDACTED: Like JLR’s victims. I don’t imagine Newsroom found them without a little help from their “friends”.

REDACTED: Quite a lot of help actually.

REDACTED: Remind me again why that was necessary. Their story left JLR looking like a complete arsehole.

REDACTED: My dear REDACTED, that was the whole point! After all, we don’t want him to win Botany, do we? His primary use to us is as a dirt-thrower: against SB; against the front bench; the caucus; the whole poisoned party. We want the public to be in the market for a very stiff new broom. Someone determined to sweep every last trace of muck out of the cowshed.

REDACTED: May I inquire as to what happens when JLR finally twigs to the fact that he’s been set up? That he’s been acting as REDACTED’s stalking-horse all along? If he lost it over SB’s “treachery” – how do you suppose he’ll react to ours?

REDACTED: Something tells me that by the time JLR realises what has happened to him he’ll be so discredited that no one will believe a word he says.

REDACTED: Dear God, REDACTED, that’s cold. Are you really willing to see the man disintegrate completely?

REDACTED: Yes, who knows what he might be driven to?

REDACTED: Honestly, who on this call would be all that upset if JLR did do something foolish?

REDACTED: Jesus! This is all getting a little too “House of Cards” for my liking. It’s REDACTED’s leadership we’re promoting here – not Frank Underwoods!

REDACTED: That’s enough! Of course we’ll look after JLR. No one who stands with me now – even unwittingly – will go unrewarded. This party is going to be lifted – by the scruff of its neck if necessary – out of the mire into which that mincing currency trader led it. If you only knew how much I hated all that “Labour-Lite” poison we were forced to swallow. National’s not here to be the executor of Labour’s will. It’s here to draw out the best, the brightest and the strongest from New Zealand society. You don’t achieve that by being soft – by being weak. You do that by being strong. By not surrendering to the nay-sayers and the nimbys and the bleeding hearts! What was it Machiavelli said: “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

REDACTED: He also said: “Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

REDACTED: Well, all I know, REDACTED, is that you scare the hell out of me!

This satire was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 19 October 2018.

5 comments:

peteswriteplace said...

Satire indeed!

Rob Miles said...

Rather than wade through this long piece of tripe written by someone clearly besotted the ugly unexciting and truly dismal supporter of the chinese peoples republic, one Judith Collins a noted mediocre undistinguished criminal lawyer and commercial lawyer, the essential prerequsite for NZ political and judicial office and various equally evil thing, I would note that if Jamie Lee Ross or even Bill English could actually be selected as candidates for the NZ National Party there was clearly no such thing as NZ National Party as it was constituted in 1936, 1949 or 1972. The National Party today largely believes that people should be equal not just in opportunity but in achievement or pay and if you are unemployed you are not working you are a criminal. Like Labour National today believes in economic growth directed by government and state planners and rejects conventional standards for power and rule by those who have inherited title and wealth or have been highly educated and been awarded real degrees for something more than basic presentational and secretarial standards of attendence, spelling,form filling, correct citation and timekeeping These are the official doctrine of Beijing and Shanghai in the era of the little red school book of Mao and John A Lee in 1938 & the basic principles that prevailed in Moscow between 1929 and 1990 not Wellington for the civilian party but were rejected even in Moscow and the United States in 1929 in relation to the officer class and educational matters

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Dear Rob. If you're going to call something tribe, you think you could make the rest of your diatribe comprehensible? Incidentally, those Maoists in China have enabled economic growth far greater than any traditionally capitalist society in the last 20 or 30 years. :)

greywarbler said...

Rob Miles
Your brick looks like one of those suspect google entries that seem to be made up of possible keywords that will drag in some credulous phish.

alwyn said...

I am getting someone else to post this.
I think my party leader has got out phones and computers tapped.

Where did you get this transcript of our meeting?
Winston has been shouting at everyone about it.
He says he is determined to track down the person who leaked it.
Do not, I beg you, go near the sixth floor of the State Insurance Building in Wellington.
Winston has been talking to the Ambassador about how to handle people who publish things that upset them I do not want to hear that you got involved in a fistfight after an argument with 15 trained men.
Signed. Shane.