The kids had their ‘school holidays’ last week, but given that they have been stuck at home for the last nine weeks, it didn’t quite go as I planned six months ago.
I had originally planned to spend a week with the kids visiting old relatives and a few adventures (jet boating and kayaking) while we were down south, but ended up spending the week at home with the kids instead. On top of this, my oldest daughters birthday was last week as well.
To give the kids something to look forward to, I managed to buy a clay pizza oven online, as well as a few skateboards. The pizza oven went down a treat after a bit of working out how to get the best out of it.
The skateboarding went well until I fell off and sprained my wrist. Luckily, I still had the notes from the physiotherapist from when I sprained it last time….
The birthday party went as good we could get under the circumstances, and I think my daughter (16yrs) understands we did the best we could. It was a low key affair as no friends or relatives could attend. She was quite delighted to just have everyone play monopoly as well other card games.
I’m a casual cyclist at best these days and I mostly ride to keep fit and stay at a healthy weight. I don’t go as fast as I used to ten years ago, because it takes weeks of physio to get my knee’s back to normal if I over do it (again).
Gone are the days of flying down a hill trying to break the landspeed record, and going hard out on a hill climb, I’ve finally learnt that I’m not as indestructible as I was 30 years ago.
I usually ride to another town for breakfast, which is up to 24km away (15 miles), then wonder back home, but these days it’s a bit complicated because you can’t sit at a cafe because of covid lockdown restrictions.
To get around this, I simply buy a takeaway meal, and sit on the ground with it. It may sound a bit uncomfortable for some, but I’ve gone for months without eggs benedict for breakfast, so needs must!
They don’t have a lot of customers these days and are always pleased to see a regular customer.
Todays ride was a windy one, so I was fast getting there and slow back.
My tactic for riding the bike these days is to keep a good cadence, and simply not put a lot of power thru my knee’s for any length of time. When it comes to hills, I change down pretty quick and just grind away, while admiring the scenery.
For the last year, the majority of Kiwi’s have been bombarded by horror stories about covid and have meekly agreed with everything the Government has told them via a compliant media in a very sycophantic fashion.
There has always been a distinct minority who have been sceptical about the whole thing however, and this group is getting larger by the day as the Governments credibility is been torn to shreds by constantly making dumb mistakes and officials been caught out not following the rules they had set for ‘everyone’.
It’s spring in New Zealand and Kiwi’s love the great outdoors and the xmas summer holidays. It’s now common to see people just ignoring the restrictions and imposing a stricter lockdown now would go down like a lead balloon.
The article below is posted here on behalf of The Freedoms & Rights Coalition
How long will we allow the oppressive nature of this government’s voice to define us as a country? Every day at 1 pm they facilitate another fearful, brain-washing press conference from a podium of untruths.
As Kiwis, we would like to naively believe we live in paradise, free to live and raise our families as we wish and determine our own future. Yet, instead of living in the land of the long white cloud, there has been a depressing grey fog that we’ve allowed to overshadow us, all at the hands of this oppressive government.
Many may say, it’s not the government’s fault, it’s the fault of this nasty virus. Yet, don’t forget who let this virus gain access to our country. This government allowed this virus to enter, and now every day Kiwis are the ones continually paying the price for their incompetence.
The government were given ample warning from abroad, and we had the benefit of being a remote country with vast seas surrounding our borders. Yet this government has failed us at every turn to effectively manage the border, to manage MIQs, to manage testing, to manage ICU capacities….the list goes on and on.
However, this government always capitalises on a good crisis. They have seized this opportunity with glee and sought to punish us, to silence us, locking us down, fleecing us of our freedoms, trying to dupe us into believing they are the only source of truth. They won’t allow any healthy open debate or questioning of their actions.
The effects of this government’s action will be long lasting on New Zealanders, for this generation and many future generations to come. They are not assessing or even reporting on the horrendous effects on society due to lockdowns:
Increases in Family Harm (Domestic Violence), including child abuse and miscarriages
Increases in Suicides and Parasuicides
Increases in Loss of Employment/Careers
Increases in Business shutdowns and bankruptcy
Increases in Mental Health issues
Increases in Financial Hardship
Increases in Health conditions being untreated
Increases in Students falling behind in their learning
Increases in Divorces and Relationship breakdowns
Increases in State Dependency through wage subsidies and benefits
Increases in National Debt
A lot of this pain and suffering could have been avoided if this government hadn’t taken such a nanny-state approach, where they’ve sent us all to our rooms and grounded us like we’re misbehaving teenagers.
If you’re not familiar with the nanny-state term, it’s when a government interferes unduly with personal choice. They give too much advice and make too many laws about how people should live their lives.
Just think, imagine if this government had treated us with respect and dignity from the outset, and allowed individuals and families to make their own informed decisions. Enough of this discriminative, dividing and degrading talk about protecting vulnerable people like Maori and Pacific Islanders, insinuating they are too incompetent to make informed decisions.
If this government had just presented the facts and then allowed the Kiwis to make their own personal choices, we may not be seeing the serious social carnage that we are at present.
South Dakota in the USA presents an interesting contrast. This state has applied a ‘freedom-first’ approach to the COVID pandemic and they have much lower COVID death rates than states like New Jersey and New York who enforced strict lockdowns, devastating their economies and people in the process.
The South Dakota governor has also not mandated vaccinations or put restrictions on businesses. This state has never ordered a single business or church to close in the pandemic fight. They never declared some businesses essential, and others unessential – the governor said she had no authority to declare someone’s livelihood ‘unessential.’ Instead the governor has encouraged people to take common-sense precautions at their own choosing. The governor has instead focused the state on building hospital capacity. This has allowed businesses and families to make their own decisions on how to best deal with COVID. Their children have continued learning in their classrooms. They have maintained social, economic and mental health, and haven’t seen an increase in suicide rates like other states have.
It’s time our New Zealand government treated us like adults, not adolescents, and trusted us to each make responsible, informed decisions over our own lives. We will no longer be grounded!
This Saturday, 16th October 2021, at Auckland Domain we are hosting a peaceful Families Freedom Picnic that everyone is welcome to join, as long as you wear a mask and maintain social distancing. We have a range of guest speakers who will share at this picnic about their personal struggles under the tyranny and mandates of this government. The speakers include a doctor, a teacher, a business owner, and a farmer.
We are also hosting a Freedom Run motorcade of motorbikes, classic cars and tractors. They are riding and driving to raise awareness of the 1005 lives that have been lost to suicide over the 19 months since the first lockdowns began at the beginning of 2020. 696 of these lives were in the year ended 30 June 2021.
This government is not allowing these shocking and gut-wrenching statistics to see the light of day, but we will be shining a light on this nasty plight taking many lives at the hand of these lockdowns….these lives lost are way more damaging than the 28 COVID deaths New Zealand has experienced. The lives lost through lockdown suicides are way more concerning and avoidable than the COVID death fear peddled.
Never has it been more important for New Zealanders to stand up for their freedoms and rights. We want better….we deserve better. We care about our fellow Kiwis and don’t want to see any more lives lost to suicide. We have had enough of lockdowns and levels.
We the people…will no longer stay silent, stay still or shut up.
We the people…have the power, not this government.
A reporter interviewed members of the Amish communities in Pennsylvania to see how they’ve been handling Covid-19 without electricity, TV or the Internet, with limited phones and basically just being cut off from the outside world, as has been their practice since their founding in the US over a century ago.
The Amish are a Christian group that emphasizes the virtuous over the superficial. They don’t usually drive, use electricity, or have TVs. And during the Covid-19 outbreak, they became subjects in a massive social and medical experiment. … After a short shutdown last year, the Amish chose a unique path that led to Covid-19 tearing through at warp speed. It began with an important religious holiday in May.
You can read the details at the link but some key quotes:
There’s three things the Amish don’t like. And that’s government— they won’t get involved in the government, they don’t likethe public education system— they won’t send their children to education, and they also don’t like the health system. They rip us off. Those are three things that we feel like we’re fighting against all the time. Well, those three things are all part of what Covid is. (Calvin Lapp, Amish Mennonite)
Funnily enough that’s the surname of the Amish family with which detective John Book resides in the famous movie Witness.
When they take communion, they dump their wine into a cup and they take turns to drink out of that cup. So, you go the whole way down the line, and everybody drinks out of that cup, if one person has coronavirus, the rest of church is going to get coronavirus. The first time they went back to church, everybody got coronavirus.
Also interviewed was one Steve Nolt, a scholar on Amish and Mennonite culture, and Mennonite himself.
Sharyl: “So, are you saying, as of about May of 2020, things kind of went back to normal in the Amish community?”
Steve Nolt: “For the most part, yeah, by the middle of May, it’s sort of like back to a typical behavior again”.
Back to a normal life by May 2020 and ever since! With no lockdowns, no masks and no vaccinations.
There’s debate over case numbers because the Amish largely refused to get tested:
Lapp: “We didn’t want the numbers to go up, because then they would shut things more. What’s the advantage of getting a test?“
Well if you’re a government and you need to frighten the shit out of a population but can’t show sufficient numbers of hospitalisations or deaths then “case numbers” become vital (BTW, it looks like NZ’s track-and-trace system is about to break down).
But here’s the key aspect:
One thing’s clear: there’s no evidence of any more deaths among the Amish than in places that shut down tight— some claim there were fewer here. … Lapp: “Oh, we’re glad all the English people got their Covid vaccines. That’s great. Because now we don’t have to wear a mask, we can do what we want. So good for you. Thank you. We appreciate it. Us? No, we’re not getting vaccines. Of course not. We all got the Covid, so why would you get a vaccine?”
Uncoffined 
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