BROADCASTS.com

b'

What\'s the line about history repeating itself?

What undid the Helen Clark Government was shower heads and water pressure. It wasn\\u2019t their only issue, by the time they had got to their third term they looked tired and, worse, they looked arrogant.

Fast forward 20-something years and history repeats.

For those who follow these things, or you\'re too young to remember, it was a nail-in-a-coffin moment. It was the moment it became clear they had lost touch with reality.

They had lost touch with ordinary, everyday middle New Zealand. Their perceived superiority had killed them.

So just what is it that has this current lot, a couple of decades later, talking to us about shower times?

When a Government tells you about your time in a shower, when a Government invades your personal space and starts using yet more of your money to tell you how to conduct your daily routines, far less your daily, intimate personal routines, it is time to get them the hell out of your lives.

Yes, it\'s helpful information and money saving tips, like turning the air conditioning off in the car, keeping the tyres inflated, recycling your waste, not throwing out old food or old clothes - it\'s always useful to offer personal tips to save money.

That actually isn\'t the Government\'s job.

The Government\'s job is to run the place properly.

But because they have failed so astonishingly and spectacularly in that, they are now reduced to offering you condescending advice as to how you might make ends meet, given you can\'t because they have buggered the cost-of-living so badly you are going slowly broke.

On an arrogance scale of 1 to 10, this is a 34. In an odd way, I am sort of surprised they haven\'t offered, along with their Winter Energy Payment, an "extended shower payment".

"Why should you have a short shower? Let us pay for it and soak up for as long as you want."

If you ever want an example of how bad things are economically, and how phenomenally out of touch the Government now is, take Megan Wood\'s advice and cut your shower time. Follow everything the Government says.

But at some point, even the most gormless will wake up, the way they did in term three of the Clark Government, and realise it\'s become beyond a joke. \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.