According to Labour, Bill English's third Budget signalled the end of the world
Apparently the world did not come to a spectacular end on 21 May 2011 as an unheard of American preacher had predicted it would.
According to Harold Camping, an 89-yearold evangelical broadcaster for Family Radio Worldwide, the big news for Judgment Day – other than a series of killer earthquakes— was going to be “the Rapture,” a supernatural event featuring “the mother of all heavenly jet streams catapulting Christians by the millions into the stratosphere to meet Jesus”.
He also predicted that some people (non Christians I assume) would be left alive on Earth and “experience 153 days of torment”.
Unbelievably, Camping’s prediction – broadcast to tens of thousands around the world prior to the big day – actually saw some people giving up their jobs and euthanizing their pets in preparation for the mass exodus to heaven. There’s nought as queer as folk!
However, after awakening to find the earth still in one piece and that the world’s population intact on May 22, it was evident that the good preacher’s prophecy was about as accurate as your average long-range weather forecast or Treasury’s economic growth predictions.
Speaking of which – according to the Labour Party, unions, as well as a list of other nut jobs, whingers and moaners – Armageddon didn’t happen on May 21 either, but actually occurred two days earlier on 19 May 2011 when Finance Minister Bill English arose in Parliament to present this year’s Budget!
English had some pretty sobering news for the country. A $16.7 billion deficit meant some cuts will be made to things like KiwiSaver, Working for Families, the public service and the student loans schemes. He also forecast that there will be partial sales of some state assets to raise funds to pay off the huge mountain of debt New Zealand now faces.
However listening to the moral outrage and doomsday predictions that came from Labour after the Budget was delivered you would have been forgiven for thinking that English had eaten a number of freshly born babies – rather than the rather unremarkable and austere plan he unveiled.
The hapless and increasingly hopeless Phil Goff screamed that he had gutted KiwiSaver, destroyed Working for Families and demolished the public service. Meanwhile, Labour’s permanently smug finance spokesman, David Cunliffe cried how the document basically meant the end of New Zealand and the mass murder of its population
Goff and Cunliffe’s hysterics over the Budget made Pastor Camping’s crazy end of the world prediction look quite rationale in comparison. While Goff and co were both full of ‘the-end-is-nigh’ rhetoric, they were remarkably short on any proposals to bring the books back into black.
Despite these most dire post-Budget predictions, I awoke on May 20 to discover that the sun still rose, the birds still sang and life continued to carry on as per normal. I was reminded of the comments made by NZ Sceptics’ Vicky Hyde following the failure of rev Camping’s Rapture to eventuate.
“These sorts of things play of people’s fears a great deal and we’ve seen a great deal of harm,” she opined. “Every year we see predictions that the world will end one way or another.
“I’ve lived through so many now and we haven’t actually seen the world disintegrate yet. We should hold these people to account – we should remember when they fail because they fail every time.”
Messrs Goff, Cunliffe et el should take note of the redoubtable Hyde’s views before crying wolf anymore over the Budget!