Hi David
I note the following from a RNZ report:
ACT leader David Seymour was similarly derisive of the approach.
"It's possible to have a peaceful protest but I think what they're doing is far too intense. I think what they need to do is respect the law, respect people's basic property rights and not believe that because they disagree they have the right to trample over a whole lot of other people.
"I mean, they're trespassed, they're breaking the law ... but look, I just think it's rude to set up your tents on someone's lawn - not everyone in New Zealand can do it, what makes them different?"
I support the protest 100 percent.
I know several who have travelled up from Arrowtown including a young mother with her toddler. Good people who work their business and have been destroyed by policies you have supported.
I don't agree with you that my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are extinguished by a government declaring a pandemic. To me those rights are absolute.
With the ACT party in support we have been locked up and are now excluded from society. We have been shut out of our local swimming pool because literally we don't take the government's recommended medicine and refuse to present the government's ID.
That small indignity after all the misery inflicted upon us as a family was the proverbial straw that broke my back.
If anything, I would wish the protest be more intense given the damage Parliament has inflicted on the people I love and the community of which I am a part.
I have no doubt that in standing up to this tyranny we are a minority, but the smallest minority of them all is the individual, and individuals have rights and their rights have been trampled and destroyed and the people have not been listened to or understood. Our political leaders including you have belittled us and disparaged us.
Somehow I am anti-science and anti-vax. You know me to be neither. But I oppose lockdowns and I oppose mandates. I oppose them for the best reason of them all: I believe in human freedom above all else. I do not want the human spirit squashed and it has been, and it continues to be.
The protest is a little spark of human spirit.
We might be wrong about the madness of staying locked up or whether this or that medicine is ill advised or not but in a free society we all are allowed to be wrong. Indeed, it is through different approaches, and the many mistakes, that we learn and develop. What we are seeing now is only mistakes from government and no learning.
You publicly complain of trespass by which I assume you mean tents on Parliament's lawn and of disruption to traffic. That's nothing to the damage that I have personally witnessed by the policies of lockdown and mandate. And I am only a little corner of just a small part of the country. Your comments suggest you don't understand the suffering being caused when I am sure you do understand.
I don't expect you will change course and I don't need a response. I just wanted to have my say.
I don't write as a former anything. Just as a concerned once citizen now subject.
And to ask you to consider this: what do you expect people to do when their rights are trampled and their lives destroyed while politicians not only refuse to meet with them but belittle them when they protest?
My answer is to fight.
Sincerely
Rodney Hide
Well said Mr Hide... I agree whole heartedly. It would take an hour of a time to walk around this beautiful village of freedom and just know you were standing on the right side of history. I undeniably support the protest, Freedom village is the only place that makes sense to me at the moment. I walked along The Terrace on Saturday and saw a homeless man wearing a mask and trying to smoke a cigarette at the same time, a girl in a shop backed away from me as if I was a bio hazard because I wore a t-shirt that said 'hands off our children' and didn't wear a mask, I was asked if I had a vaccine…
Can you two who are having a private argument please stop. Give each other your e-mail addresses so you can carry on in private. Most of us don't know what you are talking about and you are detracting from the excellent set of comments.
This week an astonishing number of documents came into public view that have been dubbed as 'The Jacinda Papers'. Every New Zealander needs to read them. It is pertinent to why people are protesting and to Rodney's original post. I am unsurprised by the contents of these documents, but even more appalled than I was, by the treason of those involved and the complicity of all sitting MPs. https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/news/the-jacinda-papers/ Parliament should be dissolved. As a start, a new constitution based on common law, human rights, and honouring the Nuremberg Code needs to be written and agreed to by the people.
my response to the Speaker of the House and his tactics against protesters and disregard for Democracy
i must admit...
when this protest begun, ten or so days ago, i was not at all convinced it was a legitimate expression of the good people of new zealand. rather, i thought, it was a bunch of dope-smoking, lsd popping loonies with nothing better to do but just protest for the sake of protesting.
🤣. how things change!
now, reading about the mix of people involved, the diverse motives, and, especially, the obvious merging of political extremes into a common goal, yes, even i am beginning to support their actions.
it was not just our "red queen" making completely absurd statements, rather the speech by one of her minions in parliament describing the good folk present that made me…