National’s culture problem

• mickysavage
• 2 years ago
• Categories: child discipline, Christopher Luxon, law, law and "order", national, politicans, same old national

I wrote a post with the same heading just over a year ago.

To be frank I could not believe our (lefties) luck.  National kept selecting these weird candidates, mostly male Alpha sorts who kept on screwing up badly.  Who can forget the following:

• Richard Worth and what was it that he did which so incensed the Malaysian Government;
• Pansy Wong who resigned after her husband was caught conducting business when accompanying her on a Ministerial trip to China;
• Mike Sabin whose activities Cameron Slater said were almost too horrible for words;
• Don’t you know who I am Aaron Gilmour who also had CV accuracy problems;
• Claudette Hauiti who used her parliamentary charge card for a Christmas trip to Australia and spent approximately $23,000 on MP’s expenses after she had announced she was standing down;
• John Key’s ponytail pulling fetish;
• The police investigation into Todd Barclay and his use of personal recording devices;
• Bill English’s mischaracterisation of the truth relating to his police statement;
• The complaints by four women about Jami-Lee Ross’s behaviour;
• Andrew Falloon’s resignation for depression caused by the drunken sending of inappropriate graphic material to a woman who was not his wife and was a teenager;
• Michelle Boag who stood down from all party positions because of the leaking to National MPs of confidential personal health information;
• Sarah Dowie who in her valedictory speech said that she would claw at the windows or walk across hot coals to get out of the National Caucus;
• Hamish Walker who was willing to trash the Country’s covid response for political advantage and who racistly claimed that Indians, Pakistanis and Koreans some infected with Covid were on their way to Queenstown while at the same time sending confidential medical information to the media;
• National’s Palmerston North candidate William Wood who had photos of himself on Social Media impersonating Hitler.

You would think that for a high profile by election and after repeated criticism of National’s selection processes they would make sure that their candidate would be absolutely squeaky clean.

Apparently not.

From the excellent Kirsty Johnson at Stuff:

The National Party’s newest MP, Sam Uffindell, was asked to leave his exclusive boarding school after viciously beating a younger student late at night.

Uffindell only offered the man an apology last year, 22 years after the attack, and nine months before he publicly announced his political aspirations.

He says the timing of his decision to say sorry is not linked to his decision to begin a career in politics, but that the incident had been “nagging” at him, and he wanted to atone.

“It was one of the silliest, stupidest things I’ve ever done. I really regretted it, I do really regret it still,” Uffindell said.

The victim, who was 13 years old at the time, was left with severe bruising and significant trauma.

Police were not involved. Instead, Uffindell was disciplined alongside three other teenagers who joined in on the beating, and asked to leave the school, Auckland’s King’s College. Uffindell was in Year 11, or fifth form, and aged 16 years old when he attacked the younger boy. He went on to finish his schooling at St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton.

There is a lot to unpick.

Uffindell was only 16 at the time and he has given an abject apology which according to him was not motivated by his desire to become a politician, even though it was offered a month after Uffindell’s local MP Todd Muller had announced his intention to resign as an MP.

And he has been beating the law and order drum really hard.  Law and order includes bullying Sam.

There are some glaring with emergency lights flashing elements about the incident:

1. I went to a boys only school 20 years before Uffindell and then there was bullying but not involving the level of violence complained of here.  And attacking younger students even then would have been considered totally unacceptable.
2. It appears that the incident only came to light because of the victim going public.  I can confidently say it has not emerged because of a desire by Uffindell to do a mea culpa.  Good on him for doing so but it really feels like this was a response to a story and not a desire to confess, something us Catholics can be quite good at.
3. It trashes National’s latest attacks on young people on jobseeker.  Huge resources have been spent on Uffindell and his ilk and if they fuck up then another private school is found for them.  Being tough on poor kids but providing cover for rich kids is typical but unacceptable.

My biggest rant is how this exemplifies our economic system.  Rich kids have this expectation that if they fuck up then remedial steps can be taken so they can then do other things and eventually become merchant bankers.  The physical brutality they engage in is then replaced by even worse economic brutality.  The results are comparable.  Their victims lead fucked up lives whereas if only they had shown more compassion as a 16 year old student or as a 40 year old merchant banker then things could have been better.

It is no coincidence that school bullies get attracted to being merchant bankers and then National Party MPs.  A properly functioning democratic system would make sure that they were kept well away from power.