Saviours of the Nation. By the time you read this I will have quit smoking, be thinking of quitting, or just be very grumpy. This midlife crisis has been brought on by last week's Budget decision to hike the tax on cigarettes as part of the Government's plan to persecute the people who give them more money than any other single private-sector group. Smokers are the lepers of the 90s and the Ministry of Health is determined to eradicate us.
Smokers are the only people in New Zealand who know how rabbits truly feel.
The nifty way they have devised to eliminate us is to raise the price of cigarettes to the point where we can no longer afford to buy them. If nobody can afford to smoke, nobody will smoke and the health problem will be solved. I now expect this logic to be applied to the problem of the road toll. If petrol is so expensive, nobody can afford to run a car, there will be no cars on the road and the road toll will be zero. Possibly because if you apply the same theory, in reverse, to the problem of meddling politicians, we could eliminate them too.