Shadow Minister for Ridiculing Wayne Mapp

Bags me!

National has released it's cabinet line-up and declared Wayne Mapp Shadow Minister for Eradicating Political Correctness.

Apparently political correctness has run mad in this country (does anyone know why mad is the only way that political correctness ever runs? Why does it never go wild, or crazy, or just sedately walk its way through the dasies). What does this mean? They won't tell us of course, political correctness is much more useful if it isn't defined.

It's easy to laugh at Wayne Mapp, but there's a couple of reasons to make up a phenomena called political correctness, and neither of them are good for people:

1. You want to roll back a concrete gain people have made. The National reaction to bereavement leave was a classic example to this, they pretended that the Holidays Act changes gave some special category of leave to Maori people (which it didn't), and so could chalk up people getting to attend funerals of people they care about to 'political correctness'.

2. You want to distract and divide people from what is actually making their lives worse (usually capitalism).

Right now a three people on trial for ("allegedly") using their power as police officers to repeatedly rape a young woman, this woman has been struggling for two decades to get justice. The only politically correct ideologies that are damaging people living in Aotearoa are those that keep the power structures in place.