Hot Air Zone

     The sky is falling. Godzone opposition Member of Parliament, Shane Ardern, has
been arrested and charged with offensive behaviour for driving an ancient, fume belching
tractor up the steps of Parliament Building in Wellington. Surely a harmless protest compared with the endless violence overseas?   He was objecting to a FART tax soon to be imposed on the country's farmers. But one doesn't insult the intelligence of politicians with smelly tractors. It's just not the done thing. It's preferable to write letters that they can blame their secretaries for ignoring.
     Apparently cows and sheep spend their entire lives farting and belching obnoxious
substances into the atmosphere. Tilting at windmills, government has decided that farmers must pay a fee to justify their animal's natural gases that are allegedly destroying the planet of the apes.
     A 1986 Minister of Conscience was the first politician to drive a tractor up the steps
protesting about something nobody can remember. But he was in the ruling party and not a word was uttered. Today's ruling politicians are on the antipollution bandwagon and blame animals for doing what they do naturally. Selfishly, they nibble the grasslands farting endlessly until it's their turn to be slaughtered. A pollution free slaughter?
     The animals are hemmed in by fences and spend their time pondering whether the grass is greener on the other side or should they be content being labelled ponderous farting machines and their backsides deemed undesirable in the national interest.
     The FART tax is a money raising venture and the animals will never notice the hot air
waffling from parliament. Naturally, they will continue to lift their tails. Wealth creating
Dolly the sheep and Daisy the genetic cow are thus public enemies.
     The police will probably arrest every four legged animal and throw them in the
slammer for a hundred years, the sitting of Parliament, or whatever bores Kiwis the most. Think of the work created building prisons for eighty million animals. To create even more employment, they could run educational courses teaching ruminating inmates how to fart without offending politicians. After all, politicians don't belch or fart and pollute the
environment. They leave that to motor vehicles and industrial waste.
     Multi millions of years of animal farting haven't caused the slightest greenhouse
problems, yet almost overnight the financial backbone of New Zealand's economy is under siege to indulge political fantasies. A more imaginative fund-raising scheme is difficult to comprehend. Though the mind boggles at the initiative crippling taxation that might be imposed in the future. How about a tax on right and wrong, or perhaps commonsense should be considered undesirable and ripe for exploitation? What about steam from electric kettles? Puffing while walking up stairs or a 10% tax on overweight women?
     What does it take for politicians to realise that mankind is the major pollutant?
     I lift my tail. Brrrrff!