Memo from a muppet

Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, December 24th, 2009 - 43 comments
Categories: public services - Tags:

So John Key thinks I’m a Muppet.

“[when I’m in Hawaii on holiday] they’ll send me stuff … those Muppets in the background who send it all to me”*

Well f#ck you, John.

While you’re off in Hawaii with your DPS pouring you drinks, I’ll be working. The days I do get on ‘holiday’ I have to be online and on-call to respond to the government’s latest stuff up. Christmas morning, first thing I’ll have to do is check the wires for any news I need to respond to or send off to the minister (if I can get hold of him). And, yeah, then I will sing Snoopy’s bloody Christmas with the kids, and I’ll have an eye on the phone the whole time.

I don’t get to go to Hawaii. I don’t get six weeks holiday a year. I don’t get your wage. I don’t get to bribe journalists to like me with fancy bottles of wine paid for by my taxpayer salary (and, yeah, we got an inflation adjustment this year, whoo hoo). But I do the work because it needs to be done and I believe in it. I’m proud to work for the people of New Zealand, John. I don’t need your insults, you lazy, showboating, do-nothing, weak excuse for a Prime Minister.

I work ten hours free overtime a week for you, John. I shill for your policies even though I think they’re crap. I do those things because I believe in public service. I do it because I believe that any democratically-elected government, even a government with ministers as bad as mine, deserves a hardworking and loyal public service. And this is the thanks I, and my colleagues, get.

Yeah. Maybe I am a Muppet. Look at who I’m letting pull my strings.

Merry Christmas.

43 comments on “Memo from a muppet ”

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  1. mike 1
    24 December 2009 at 9:19 am

    didums..

  2. Deus ex Machina 2
    24 December 2009 at 9:38 am

    I once worked for the public service and if I’d been willing to swallow the crap, kowtow to lazy, incompetent bosses who only survived through the efforts of their underlings and turn a blind eye to the harm the orders I was carrying out was causing I’d probably now be swanning about, a level or two above my competence on a nice fat salary being carried by the poor, overworked muppets beneath me who put up with it because they’ve convinced themselves that the purity of their calling requires them to turn a blind eye to the lying, cheating, hypocrisy, incompetence, duplicity and deception of their elected masters.

    As it was I stood it for two years, then resigned while I still had some integrity left and obtained a real job in the private sector. And no-one took me for a muppet ever again.

    • Bored 2.1
      24 December 2009 at 10:10 am

      Never been a public servant, I suspect that the behavoir you describe is common to all beaurocracies, of which the government sector consists less than half of NZ beaurocracies. Corporate organisations where I have worked for 30 years until I got fed up and started charging them for my (and my employees expertise), are full of psychopathic heads of departments / CEOs etc. They are commonly very smart but generally ruthles when it comes to decision making. This for corporates is supposedly an admired and productive trait. When restructures happen you notice with monotonous regularity that the workers who actually do things get thinned out with more being demanded of the remaining troops. The top dogs on the other hand retain position….Merry Christmas

      • Draco T Bastard 2.1.1
        24 December 2009 at 11:33 am

        I suspect that the behavoir you describe is common to all beaurocracies,

        It is. The only time I’ve seen better is in small businesses but even there the majority of the people at the top shouldn’t be.

  3. Tigger 3
    24 December 2009 at 9:40 am

    Most of Key’s ‘sing-song’ performance was cringeworthy but this remark was plain offensive.

    Isn’t Key actually a ‘Muppet’ also? I thought he was there to serve also. But no, clearly he’s there to be served.

    This type of remark will play well in the rural pubs and, clearly, to the ‘mike’s of this world. But it goes to show you that he’s really not the nice Mr Key that the masses have been led to believe. He’s a bitch pretending to be a bloke pretending to be PM.

    • Craig Glen Eden 3.1
      24 December 2009 at 11:54 am

      “He’s a bitch pretending to be a bloke pretending to be PM.”

      That sums up Key totally Tigger except maybe one word missing.

      “He’s a bitch pretending to be a bloke pretending to be a relaxed PM”

  4. T 4
    24 December 2009 at 9:53 am

    Thanks for all your hard work, and the hard work of your colleagues in the public service.

    Merry Christmas, and Happy Newton’s Day.

  5. lukas 5
    24 December 2009 at 9:54 am

    hmmm, an anonymous post claiming to be a public servant. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

    Even if it is real, you signed up for it bud. I am working now too, that is my choice because I want to keep my clients happy.

    • Tigger 5.1
      24 December 2009 at 10:04 am

      Actually no, they didn’t sign up to be treated with disrespect.

    • Bright Red 5.2
      24 December 2009 at 10:04 am

      would be a brave public servant who publicly said anything against this vindicative government. You’re liable to have your personal details leaked to the media.

      lukas. can’t the johns bear a week without you?

  6. CJ 6
    24 December 2009 at 10:00 am

    Key’s performances in the House toward the end of the year showed that he’s getting smug, and the arrogance of the muppet comment only confirm that impression.

  7. Johnty Rhodes 7
    24 December 2009 at 10:05 am

    Go get a real job you whinging fuckwit.
    Oh, wait the real world will not employ me.
    Can always go on the dole for 1 year though.

    [lprent: I can see that you are speaking from experience? ]

    • Johnty Rhodes 7.1
      24 December 2009 at 10:24 am

      IP – I am paid by Indonesians currently & work in the private sector in petrochemicals (Co2 producing ones).
      I do not know what it is like to earn taxpayers money. I am too intelligent for the public service.

      Maybe Guest should go to seek.co.nz, might cheer him up to find a job that will make his teeth last longer.

      [lprent: You’d never realize the intelligence from your comments, which is why I have left you in auto-moderation for so long.

      Personally I’d never work for the public service, but I do respect the type of work that they do. From the policy wonks, teachers, police, firefighters, to the WINZ staff, they do a remarkable job under what I’d consider are unreasonably trying circumstances. Perhaps you should learn enough to understand why I have that opinion? But I suspect you lack the will to look further than your prejudices. ]

      • prism 7.1.1
        24 December 2009 at 12:16 pm

        jaunty rhodes, you remind me of the get up and go NZ who is working for the Japanese whaling lobby. It’s a comfort for some NZs that they will one day be of use to somebody.

      • Psycho Milt 7.1.2
        24 December 2009 at 1:30 pm

        I am too intelligent for the public service.

        And I’m too athletic for professional sport. Why is it that the world’s dim bulbs always imagine themselves superior intellects?

        • The PC Avenger 7.1.2.1
          24 December 2009 at 4:14 pm

          The DunningKruger effect of course, as described in the paper “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.

  8. bippity 8
    24 December 2009 at 10:10 am

    [deleted]

    [lprent: idiot-speak. ]

  9. expat 9
    24 December 2009 at 10:20 am

    You ARE a muppet.

    If you don’t like the job get a new one.

    • Tigger 9.1
      24 December 2009 at 10:42 am

      They never said they didn’t like the job. They just don’t like the boss slagging them off to make himself look like ‘one of the boys’. I’ve got staff. If I did this behind their backs they’d have every right to think I was a douchebag.

  10. Blue 10
    24 December 2009 at 10:47 am

    I’d never want to be a public servant. They get it in the neck from all sides. The politicians blame them when things go wrong, tell the public there’s too many of them and they need to be cut (while MP numbers never get cut or salaries reduced) and the public buy into it and whine about ‘bludging public servants getting huge salaries off the taxpayer’.

    Sheesh. Even if the work was the most rewarding job in the world, who’d want to put up with that?

  11. Barry Sanders 11
    24 December 2009 at 10:53 am

    I congratulate The Standard on a wonderful piece of imaginative writing.

    [lprent: interesting, this topic of civil servants pointing out the work that they do, appears to have driven the banned wingnuts into writing. I’m having to let a lot of comments through moderation. Of course the quality of their comments was got them banned in the first place. ]

    • Pascal's bookie 11.1
      24 December 2009 at 11:11 am

      Lynn, it’s a Pavlov thing.

      ‘s funny too, how whenever anyone comments that some employers might be bullying unappreciative shits, there is a deluge of nonsense about how that couldn’t possibly be true and employers are basically teh awesome with WIN carved into their souls, and anyone who hints that some of them might not be is just an envious ingrate. And such like.

      But here we have this, and a deluge of a different type.

      • lprent 11.1.1
        24 December 2009 at 11:24 am

        Yeah. I just did a scan of a link to us at kiwiblog. Predictable waffle about the post on John Key – lead singer.

        What is interesting is that the sewer seem to have given up on us “being run from the 9th floor”, and now they’re following Kate’s line of “being made redundant by Red Alert”. Don’t think so somehow. I’m looking forward to getting them at a similar level to us. Red Alert gives us more room to expand into areas outside of the house.

        David F wants us to get more relaxed over Xmas. I am, writing more posts than usual about how the real world works rather than the fantasy world that the sewer lives in. Somehow I don’t think that is what he means.

        Needless to say there was very little comment on what the post was about – the news media acting like trained poodles to PR releases and pushing it out as ‘news’.

        BTW: thanks for the links this morning.

  12. burt 12
    24 December 2009 at 11:07 am

    So Dr Cullen is doing guest posts for the standard now ?

  13. BLiP 13
    24 December 2009 at 11:47 am

    ♪ ♫ Christmas bells oh Christmas bells
    ringing through the land
    bringing peace to all the world
    and good will to m-a-a-an     ♪ ♫

    . . . unless you’re a public servant or on the doe, in which case: go get fucked, the Goober’s got your number!

  14. Craig Glen Eden 14
    24 December 2009 at 11:59 am

    One piece of advice to all public servants take a holiday kick back and send nothing to Key for the next month, then we will see who the muppet is!

  15. gitmo 15
    24 December 2009 at 12:06 pm

    On the -1st day of XMAS the Standard gave to me

    Twelve ranting pinkos
    Eleven climate change panic pieces
    Ten Trav conspiracy theories
    Nine right wing nut jobs
    Eight digs by Felix
    Seven idiocies by Timmy
    Six moderator bannings
    Five calls to class war
    Four Bennet bashings
    Three Double Diptons
    Two Phil Goff puff pieces
    And a smear job on the hated John Key

    Yuckita yuckita Merry Xmas

  16. John Dalley 16
    24 December 2009 at 1:06 pm

    What the Muppet master John Key will learn to his cost over the next couple of years is that the public service has ways to bite back that he has not experienced as yet. I am looking forward to next year as the smirking ponce that is John Key will experience the full wrath of the Muppet’s.

  17. Barnsley Bill 17
    24 December 2009 at 6:45 pm

    I do hope you are not one of those poor souls spending xmas answering alfred e hipkins 4000 pointless questions.

  18. bobo 18
    24 December 2009 at 9:32 pm

    Key looked tipsy for most of that radio show probably after one glass of his JK trademarked wine. No idea why he needs to trademark it I guess most people thinks its John Kirwins… Didn’t Duncan Garner say something about Key being a cheap drunk with loose lips before the election ? was easy to see there. Shame the radio hosts didn’t ask him what he really thinks of Bill English.

    John Key is Fozzie Bear with the bad standup lines and canned laughter with Joyce’s hand up his ass making him talk. “Wocka Wocka Wocka” just replace the W with F

  19. Dex 19
    24 December 2009 at 11:41 pm

    What the Wocka are you on about people, Key is not a muppet nor a muppet master.

    Key is “OG”, the “Obama Groupie”; the only reason he went to Copenhagen was that Obama wnet and key wanted to rub sholders and have his photo taken with him.

    Who wants to run a sweepstake to see: when he gets a hair peice, and when it slips off.

  20. Jenny 20
    25 December 2009 at 12:51 am

    Paula Bennet’s beneficiary bashing may be able to chisel a measly million or so from the social welfare budget to help pay off these rich fraudsters.

  21. infused 21
    28 December 2009 at 7:13 pm

    Cry me a fucking river… Don’t like it? Get a new job.

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