An overheated pot . . .

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The tiresome frequency with which Iain Boyle attempts to persuade this district to reject the present Government is very easily disregarded, but his conviction that he understands politics, academia, school curricula and goodness knows what else, very frequently requires challenging — as on June 2nd. Perhaps he would care to enlighten us with answers to the following questions pertaining to his latest ubiquitous outburst.

In exactly which universities has he conducted research to determine that they are hotbeds of indoctrination?

In which schools — presumably both primary and secondary — has he picked up devious indoctrination of NZ kids?

In what public venues, where opinions are aired, has he discovered there is no longer robust debate?

Exactly when — time and date please — did this Government, “claim to be the only source of truth” as he insists?

If it “broke their social licence with their covid bungling”, why was it that the entire world was in awe of how rapidly and effectively our attempts were made to contain the virus, triggered by the Government under Jacinda Ardern?

When was there a time that universities worldwide did not indoctrinate students, since those holding doctorates were (and still are) required to articulate both knowledge and informed opinion?

When was Iain Boyle’s golden age in which universities did not reflect prevailing views of the societies they served? (It might assist him to check out religious indoctrination that prevailed throughout Europe’s universities for most of the last thousand years.)

Why did “the collapse of our society as a free and open one”, as he contends, not occur when censorship and propaganda dominated all media during both World Wars 1 and 2?

And lastly, is it just possible that contention and opinion alone are causing our overheated pot to Boyle over?

Norman Maclean