“Willingness to assist in a meaningful manner that demonstrates the practicalities of the partnership.”

Tokelau’s Administrator Ross Ardern is getting ready to vaccinate his Islands too. Like father like daughter.

I’ll just bet! New Zealand pumps some $13,000,000 into Tokelau each year. Where’s it go? Try not to make that your primary talking point, OK?

Sounds like Ardern and Ardern are about to fire off some more millions of our money at Tokelau since we’re being told not to pay attention.

And how about this language? Mr Ardern’s a great ‘communicator’ too..

How do you ‘demonstrate a practicality’? Is the partnership’s practicality in need of demonstrating?

Who needs to see a demonstration? After the demonstration is complete will some practicalities be made manifest in the partnership? Are we deferring doing practical things until that point?

What do we mean by partnership practicalities anyway? You mean jabbing Tokelauians with vaccines don’t you? Why not just say it then?

And what’s ‘willingness to assist in a meaningful manner’ look like? It sounds like something Vermeer might try to capture in an oil painting in the glint of some maid’s eyes. An art study.

Can we just get on with it and assist? We have to establish it’s a meaningful assist rather than a pretend one? But then, tag on that it’s not really assistance being offered but the willingness to assist. Like a dog posturing it’s willingness to chase a ball if you’ll please throw it? Or a government willing to inject a vaccine but something short of actually saying they will or doing it…?

“Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. ” – Richard Mitchell

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Ref. Tokelau Laundry Service, NZB3

Ref. Less than Words Can Say; Richard Mitchell (1979)