Revenge of the Square Dancers

From the latest newsletter from National MP, Murray McCully

Justice was in short supply for the nation’s oppressed square dancing fraternity this week. One of their number took broadcaster Paul Holmes and his employer, the Radio Network, to the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA). Hot off the press, we have the BSA decision.

Mr Holmes, we are advised, had, in his usual moderate tones, referred to the Green Party as a party of "hippies, the Morris dancers, the square dancers, the anti-Americans, the nuclear ships fanatics, the fascists of greenness, the far left, the remnants of the alliance, anti-free traders, apologists for Mao, communist sympathisers, the enemies of science, and the rabid, irrational anti-GM movement."

So, what, we hear you ask, is wrong with that? Well, a great deal, apparently, according to a Mr Mike Savill of Auckland. Mr Savill took Mr Holmes and the Radio Network, to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. Mr Savill, it appears, is a square dancer. And, the Authority reported, "in thirty years of square dancing he had not met a square dancer who supported the Green Party."

Mr Savill lost his case. There is no justice to be had, apparently, at the hands of the BSA which, it appears, is now stacked with persons who are unable to discern the massive insult inflicted on this hapless minority by asserting a connection with the Green Party. The square dancers of New Zealand have every right to feel thoroughly defamed.