You know the thing about a shark, he’s … got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’… until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then…. Oh… then you hear that terrible, high-pitched screaming. The ocean turns red, and in spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ … they all come in… they rip ya to pieces.

As most readers know I’ve been pretty tough on National over the last few years, and I’ve got decades of political observation of them in government as reasons, because they’re always satisfied with the status quo established by Labour.

As a young man I found it funny to see them reacting to Rogernomics and the Fourth Labour government’s astounding turnabout on most of the things considered sacred, being the nationalisations and the ideology of the First Labour Government. The post-Muldoon National Party could only look on with stunned amazement as Labour proceeded to do what National had never even dreamed of doing during their Post-War dominance of NZ government. They really just had nothing to say.

But I’ll give them credit for coming up with this slogan, “Labour loves tax like a shark loves blood”.

Of course; all that State spending is going to have to be paid for sooner or later with tax revenue. When I voted for Helen Clark in 1999 I think our spending was about $33 billion per year. Now it’s $115 billion, a 350% increase. Our population has not increased by this amount (more like 35%). Our retired population has not increased by that amount and neither have their health care costs. And of course the terrible reality is that all this extra annual spending is happening in the face of public services that are actually growing worse; Health, Education, Social Welfare, Law and Order – you name it, it’s in trouble.

There is nothing to justify this insane increase in annual spending and I think even the Labour MP’s are astounded that it has not produced great things: I treated their 2017 slogan – “Nine Long Years Of Neglect” – as the political phlegm it was. But in hindsight it appears that these useless, incompetent morons actually believed their own bullshit. They actually thought that all they had to do was throw gobs of money into Public Health and Public Education and Public Whatever, and magical things would happen.

But even as they stare these failures in the face – those who are smart enough and honest enough in private that is – they’ll be satisfied that at least it means that future tax increases will be easier to argue for. It might even force National in that direction. After all in 2008 arch asshole Michael Cullen, knowing an election defeat for Labour was almost certain, boasted about how his budget has “left the cupboard bare” for National. I think he may have even used Rob Muldoon’s quip from 1972, that he’d “spent the lot” (Cullen always seemed to have been scarred by Muldoon, even though he only got to deal with the man’s last three years as PM).

I’ve put the whole Jaws clip in, because Quint’s soliloquy about the fate of the sailors of the USS Indianapolis is haunting in so many ways.