Filthy disgusting toxic scum!

 Edited to include 110% more rant.

While Labour is locked into some aimless struggle with the Mana and Maori parties over the soul of Maoridom, or more correctly the Maori vote (because none of those three really seems to be committed to actually improving the lot of Maori (unless Maori equals the tribal elites or party members themselves)) and The Mt Albert by-election has turned into some weird political bonding session, National has been running silent and running deep, trying to stay out of the media spotlight and happy to let the other parties get all the attention.

Bill English seems to be operating with his MP's like my father did when he took me and my siblings on long Sunday drives when we were kids.

Pack two adults and four boys into a Morris Minor and then drive out into remote, rural Southland, follow random roads or drive out to a then existing meat-works to buy large bags of chicken pieces to stuff in the boot or check the local rivers for a good fishing spots and see how long it takes before boredom turns the cramped back seat into a battleground.

My father would tolerate about five minutes of assorted ruckus before turning round and bellowing, "Shut up and sit down!" in his loudest voice, stunning me and my brothers into silence for about five minutes before we would inevitably start up again and again get shouted at.

Rinse and repeat for an entire Sunday afternoon, except for brief punctuation for an ice-cream or, if Dad was feeling generous, a stop for fish and chips and cold cans of coke (perfect for helping the grease harden in ones stomach). Its one way of family bonding.

English seems to be operating a very similar strategy, keep out of sight on political back roads, surfacing only for a brief comfort stop before disappearing again into the countryside. Keep out of sight, play it safe and say or do nothing that will cause a commotion.

So when Bill and Co surfaced this week (like the monster from the black lagoon out to menace some helpless female (played this time by the environment) to unveil their new fresh water policy I had a funny feeling in my stomach, and it was not from swimming in one of my local, and polluted, rivers.

Neither it seems was I the only one to think so with a range of nothing but highly skeptical response in the usual suspects in the political media (no links this time as far too numerous) with only  the faithful over at Kiwiblog in agreement (nice try guys but this one was a bridge (over a toxic and dried up river) too far).

The reality is that, as predicted, English and co have nothing in the tank to take them into the election but a series of feel good but meaningless policy statements and the usual election year bribes to hand out, and it shows.

With Key gone the polls still show English as preferred PM but lets not get to caught up in that as English is not going to be able to front like his old master did when it comes to the hard questions or when the next scandal hits.

And lets pause for a moment to give John Key some praise on this, like the true speculator he was he was not looking at the market now but looking ahead and got out at the peak of the market, sold his shares and vanished from the collective memory, just like I predicted he would.

But so far English has been able to let the spotlight fall on the various other parties and their struggles as they try and grab a piece of the political pie but the latest poll results showed that while English is up National is down and its another seven months of likely downs before polling day, even at a modest one or two percent for even a few months leaves National totally beholden to NZ First and with a semi resurgent Labour angling to make as many deals as possible to get across the line ahead of them.

Poll degradation in an election year, like universal heat death, is inevitable and English knows this. He knows that the more exposure he gets the more the polls will go down so the evil little gremlins in Nationals spin cabal have identified a few critical issues and preempted the deal by sending gormless fools like Nick Smith and Judith Collins out to spread the "good news".

Only 23 years before rivers are safe to swim in, no mention of toxic dairy or how we got there; or Judith Collins saying that fuel companies better co-operate with the Government on its pricing inquiry but she wont be doing anything about it.

Yep that will keep our polling up.

Worse than that is which of the slimy and toxic beats which make up his cabinet can he let front for any period of time without saying something wrong (Jerry Brownlee must be on a very short leash by now given his propensity to bellow at all and sundry the moment the kaka hits the fan) because none of them have any public persona which people want to see.

Those on the right wing like to always see themselves as realists but the only realist over there packed his stuff up and bolted in early December. The rest like the true political scumbags they are, continue onward knowing (in their hard little hearts) that there is nothing else but this vile game they play, the charade they like to call politics.

I wonder how many of them desperately try and convince themselves that they are actually liked by the general populace or the voters in their electorate, or even their office staff (as both Paul Foster Bell and Todd Barclay well know) because if you can read the above linked article and look at of a photo of ruddy faced Nick Smith holding up a glass of water (knowing what he has done for the environment and not to mention DOC) and not feel your stomach turn then your one of the true believers (god help you).

The environment, that 100% clean green, marketing slogan we hold so cherished is now falling apart with 30% of rivers in a state less to swim in, yet its as much a tool of a greedy money hungry clique of soul sucking miscreants that they can go out and lie with a straight face about wanting to do anything about it.

2040, like that ridiculous target for being pest free is so far away in political terms I am surprised that they have not promised we will all be living on the moon by then with a mortgage free house  made of gold for all and a fair and just society abounding.

I mean why stop there, if you gonna lie go big, just tell a bald faced outright lie because if the water issue is going to be honestly tackled it will also involve tackling the dairy problem (yes it is a problem now) and the attendant farmers and Fontera, and National has no plans to do any of those.

And this is the poison that flows through the veins of National today. Labour might be stuck in its own toxic mire and unable to see the reality for the ideological blinkers it has on but National is nine years in power and leaving things demonstrably worse than when they came in so a sudden smattering of warm fuzzy policy announcements while English and a few select stuffed shirt line up on a river bank and try and look concerned is not going to wash (it was not even a public event, just the media scrum, the the third photo in the article knows)

Sadly Kiwi politics remains as doom struck as ever and the antics of National remains the perverse purview of atavistic avarice as the greedy hustlers which constitute the party simply enact another screen to deceive the public long enough to disconnect the growing concern about who exactly is running the country and where its actually going.

As I said in KP middle of last year, National is a dead man walking once Key goes and now that he is gone the Zombies are shuffling around, sniffing for brains and generally stinking the place up.

Don't make the mistake of thinking English and co know what they are doing or where they are going, even under Key it was questionable that there was any actual game plan beyond the next greasy hustle but now its clear that the party is in for a rough ride come this election.

At the very best they get back in due to NZ First and then find themselves hostage to Winston playing out his dying fantasy of being PM (don't laugh it could happen) and at worst its back to where they were in the mid 2000s, down where Labour are now but marked as the party that let the housing hernia get out of control, who helped to pollute the rivers, who saw value in co-opting the Maori elite while the rest of Maori got nothing and who drove home the no-liberal welfare state with such force that the shock and dislocation that echo through NZ will reverberate for decades if not longer.

Voters might think about voting National because looking at Labour gives them a bad feeling and I get that but if your looking at National and feeling anything but dread for the next three years then you need your head read, better to vote for Gareth Morgan and TOP and start all over again. Political Year Zero*.

Its a party of crooks, thieves and lairs, with corruption and nepotism as the icing on the crud cake. Its a party of out and out predators previously lead by the greatest huckster NZ politics has ever known but is now fronted by a shell of what was once human behind which stand the ranks of swollen and bloated, suit (or ghastly pant suit) wearing zombies which ooze seditiously from all orifices.

In a sick way it makes sense that toxic water would be the issue to bring these freaks out of their bolt hole long enough to cough up some phlegmy lie about wanting to make the water better rather than act as unchaste handmaidens for toxic farming and manufacturing. Sadly it is a lie and we all know it.

If your believing that National will actually do this then ask yourself why its set so far out and why now?

As I predicted at the start of the year the environment is going to be an election issue but its going to take more than some half assed spin from a bunch of past their prime (if ever they were) politicians to get people off the scent as water issues are far and wide a Kiwi thing; going to the river or the beach is a quintessential summer activity (not to mention going fishing, or to the lake, or camping by the river etc etc) and when its not safe to swim, drink or wade in then you have an issue which exposes them for all their rotten souls are worth and cuts across political lines like few things can.

National party members or not (and I have met a few recently) water, rivers and lakes is something which is a unifying issue, like rugby used to be and the lie of clean and green is wearing dangerously thin.

No stats or fact twisting will save them, no bitter half truths or alternate facts, no picture of criminals fronting the scene of the crime saying "we didn't do it" is going to make a difference. Just the last three months of front pages articles in the Christchurch Press about toxic rivers and ECAN blunders (along with more quake related scandals like CERA staff in major corruption probes) is enough to show that this is not a Labour or Greens based issue.

Truth is, its been nine years and the National brand was co-opted around 2008 and English might be thinking that Keys mana will stick to him long enough to sweep back into parliament but its looking less and less so as the critical mass of negativity that Key was holding back by sheer force of his necrotic will (which is why he made it plain he had "nothing left in the tank") is starting to tumble inwards onto the horrid play fort called National (a structure which appears to be built out of old carpets smelling of cat urine and criminal intent) with predictable consequences and a cloud of repellent odor billowing outwards.

In short, National stinks, whenever they open their mouth they stink, whenever they say something about anything they stink, they look stinky, they act like piss stained winos hassling passers by in the street for loose change when they front up next to a river and say with a straight face (and no trace of irony - but when you have no soul it seems unlikely that you would get what ironic is) that they care about the environment.

They stink, they smell, and they are stinking up parliament (and the country), like some foul smelling stain on the carpet of origin unknown.

Most of National has convinced itself that their high polling is due to them and not the fumbling performance of Labour of the last decade, or that Key was not the magic Ace in the hole that protected them from the just fate about to befall them.

And this is why English and National are running silent and surfacing only for grotesque and embarrassing policy moments like this one about water, they are hoping that if they stay out of sight no-one will attribute the smell to them, better to let the others get blamed (the political version of "who smelt it, dealt it").

My father, while a hard man, was also a rather wise man as well. His take on politics was that politicians and political parties were like turds floating in the toilet bowl. No matter who or what they were sooner or later you had to flush.

National without Key look (and smell) increasingly like something far worse than fecal matter and more like the very thing they are pretending to eradicate from our rivers.

Come September its time to flush.

*-And yes I get that reference, Pol Pot the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields.