“On Air” the red light indicated as the man who had been the darling of the nation, the top rating commercial presenter in a morning radio slot, prepared to deliver his good morning message to his fellow inmates.
How far he had fallen, gone were the lifestyle block in Matakana, the trophy wife, and his full collection of Margaret Thatcher’s jackets – she always had just the right sized shoulder pads for him.
Now all he had was his celebrity and his car.
He had been allowed to keep one thing when he was transferred to the Gulag. He’d thought long and hard about Kate but her looks were beginning to fade and with the right protection from the sun the lustrous curves of the European sports car would be good for a few hundred thousand more kilometres.
Which is a lot of distance when the only trip you make is from the media dormitory to the broadcast centre and back – just a few hundred metres.
A few hundred metres – it made him think back nostalgically to when his friend Christopher, now known as “he who will not be remembered” had taken control of the party. His beloved party – and now they didn’t even exist. Outlawed along with all other parties barring the One True Party - even the Greens!
He steadied himself, nervously. How bad could it be it wasn’t like they had a gun to his wife’s head? Let alone his.
However they were holding a full vacuum cleaner bag used to clean the back seat of a socialist family sedan where three young children had eaten their state supplied snacks, over his driver’s seat and were threatening to empty it – the monsters.
He began his broadcast “Good morning fellow campers and welcome to another beautiful day, day 385 in the era of the Aotearoan Bolshevik Collective - where the sun always shines and things are always improving – it won’t happen over night but it will happen.
He had a memory, an image, of a young blonde woman washing her hair in a waterfall, shaking her long luscious mane so that the water and shampoo suds flew off into the river. She looked down the camera at him; it wasn’t Kate though it looked a bit like here when she was much, much, younger and almost as good-looking as he.
A solitary tear worked its way down his cheek as he thought back to the golden days before the Great Reset when things had looked so promising. His boy Christopher was odds on to become Prime Minister and life had been so good, he glanced wistfully at the Lamborghini outside and wondered, not for the first time, if he had made the right choice - especially after that ding.
He was pretty sure he had but he did worry about Kate – with only the state rationed allotment of dental floss, even though it was easily enough for two heads, how would she be coping?
He was pleased to hear there had been another escape attempt. Unfortunately like the previous 63 attempts this one involved Chris Bishop running head first into the solid concrete block wall without a helmet as his father always told him that safety equipment was a communist plot. Crash helmets, along with a shortage of sausage rolls, and universal health care.
He thought back to the terrible day when everything had changed….
October the 13th 2023, black Friday, the day that New Zealand had ended not in a glorious celebration of consumerism fitting for the day but in rejection of a system only run for “the few” and had been reborn as the Aotearoan Bolshevik Committee, or ABC, to benefit “the many”. He gagged at the thought of these last two words.
It had all started on election night, the 16th of September 2023, the end of a vicious and tightly fought campaign. As the votes came in it became clear that the centre right was going to take the government benches with a small but clear victory over the current government.
In the aftermath many had found the result hard to believe, and even harder to accept. So while the caretaker government were still in charge they had undertaken an investigation into what looked like anomalies with the electoral process. For example over 6 million votes had been cast but monitoring only showed half that many people entering a voting booth or mailing in their vote.
What became clear was that many of the people who had voted for a change in government didn’t actually exist. They were like right wing commenters on social media - a myriad of fake accounts, some people having dozens of the things, championing the most appalling things.
It was shown beyond any doubt that centre right voters not only at this election but seemingly at many previous ones, were actually creatures of the imagination.
A tale told to frighten good little socialist children at bedtime into being kind. Hobgoblins out there in the dark, terrifying the good people of New Zealand that they were actually the majority, when it was scarcely believable that any one could have such vile intentions - let alone more than half the population.
It was decided to nullify the election and in the review that followed it was determined that the roles of the opposition and of the media were not actually adding any value, but were in fact detrimental to the country.
It turned out the intended purpose of an opposition, to keep the government honest and provide alternate ideas, wasn’t working. The main opposition party spent its time turning molehills into mountains, flailing about over the tiniest of things, opposing everything for the sake of it, generally demanding that the government was destroying the country and that the sky was falling. And they hadn’t come up with any policies.
The media were worse. They didn’t listen, they ran absurd attack lines as if they were written by the opposition, and gave no serious analysis that would help inform people.
And the questions they asked? Just diabolical, the section of the public who most needed to be better informed had simply stopped listening and now basked happily, proudly, and surprisingly vocally in their uninformed state.
So both were abandoned and it was announced by the Great Leader that there would not be elections any more and the other parties would be made redundant - there had been a shortage of low skill workers after all. She hadn’t yet thought of something useful that those employed as the media could do – scarecrows perhaps?
Some people had complained noisily but it was determined than many of them had referred to the previous democratically elected centre left government as being a communist state.
So they were rounded up and shot.
I'm kidding.
They were told - you already said it was a communist state, and now it is one – so you have nothing to complain about.
As complaining and being miserable were their reason for being they should actually have been happier now because they're right and also simultaneously still unhappy.
The Prime minister, subsequently only referred to as Comrade One, went on Television and spoke to the nation:
“You’ve seen those people claiming this is a Communist state and that I am a Communist leader, people that apparently can’t tell the difference between quite moderate Socialism and full blown Communism. Well we’ve decided to give those people the Communist State they already believe exists, and maybe it will shut them up?”
She rolled her eyes at this last part signaling – “yeah right!”
The “journalists” that would have squawked nonsense in a press conference to follow, and produced anti government bile adjacent to the facts afterwards, would now be redeployed, a few kept to do puff pieces on the party, and for the worst - sent to the Gulag.
The positions genuinely were redundant – all criticism of Comrade One now required to be framed simply as ideas for improvement, things to work on, ways to be even greater.
So join us next week dear readers when the hobgoblins awaken to their Gulag full of rumours of the outside world…
Have you heard they will whisper - the ABC has an actual horse for a leader, and the first bloke has run off with the wife of “he who shall not be remembered” following a drug fueled rampage while on home detention.
Cycling is compulsory, including the Lycra – they gasp wincing. As is being a Vegan, not only that but they have to tell all their mates down the pub how great it is being one even though they’re obviously all Vegan’s and are tucking into their nut burgers. Mmm nutty!
Worst of all - all pronouns are now “they” and “them”, nobody understands what the signs on bathroom doors mean any more, or which one they should be going into.
The struggle is real…
So best not to rely on the above happening, as appealing as that might be.
Great writing, totally in la la land just like the ridiculous rhetoric about this government. Made me smile.
Awesomeness Nick. 👏👏👏👏Totally lifted my spirits!! Thanks so very much 🙏