My last opinion piece

This is my last opinion piece, I promise.

In my previous two Frydays I wrote about the blurring, sometimes deliberate, of opinion and fact and how each can be skewed to support an argument. In this Fryday I want to examine the juxtaposition of two other words that can be similarly blurred at least in interpretation but never after deliberation: arrogance and ignorance.

They are two interesting characteristics of human nature. They appear to be polar opposites, yet one can stem from the other and either can be the nurturing source. Exempla: ignorance can be masked by arrogance and arrogance can be fostered by ignorance.

They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are far from rare among those who hold extreme views (opinions are facts) but it is rare to find them among people running our country.

However, dear readers, we found one—Kelvin Davis.

Kelvin Davis is both ignorant and arrogant. The only question is, which comes first.

This week Kelvin Davis is our acting prime minister. I don’t know why. I know that our deputy prime minister is justifiably on health leave, but I don’t know why Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is absent from Parliament at a time when she should be answering questions about what she knew, and when, of alleged sexual assaults within her party.

Instead, we are left with  (Labour Party deputy) Kelvin Davis answering questions in the House. This is a man who previously called the allegations (of sexual assault) rumours (long after they were patently not), but Davis has been a disaster before.

How did Davis choose to answer questions on this important issue when asked in Questions for Oral Answer?

In Te Reo.

Did he or anybody else give an English interpretation? No. Thus depriving 90 percent of New Zealanders who don’t speak Maori of an answer. Okay, let me deal here with the inevitable arguments that some will use to support this obfuscating by Davis: 

1. Te Reo Maori is one of our three official languages. Yes, it is, but English is the only one universally understood and an English translation should have been provided. If it had been delivered in the third language—sign language—it would have been. But, not Maori.
2. It was Maori Language Week. Yes, it was, but bullshit; common courtesy says that if you are going to make a public statement, make it in a manner that the public can understand. 
3. We should all learn Te Reo Maori. Really? I am not going even to answer that.

 No, Kelvin Davis, who has displayed his idiocy in the past, acted in a deplorable  manner displaying  both his ignorance and arrogance that no amount of argument in his favour can justify. He may think in giving those answers solely in Te Reo he is clever (arrogant) but he nothing more than a twat (ignorant).

Footnote: Fryday has written to the House Speaker asking that in the interest of parliamentary transparency all Te Reo speakers in the House provide an English translation.
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