John Armstrong has quite a good column in the NZ Herald today. I read it keenly, for I agree with a lot of what he says. He echoes criticism of the Key govt’s economic policy made here lately, and he obviously recognises there is a major problem with rising Auckland house prices.

A much-anticipated return to surplus somehow metamorphoses into yet another unwelcome deficit; dairy prices slump ever lower; the New Zealand dollar keeps rising ever higher; the overheated Auckland property market makes the South Sea Bubble of the 1700s look like an exercise in financial probity.

Is this the so-called rock-star economy? Or the rocky road to recession?

It is not raining on John Key and his colleagues. It is pouring.

Still smarting at the mass defection of erstwhile supporters which the party took for granted in the Northland byelection, National is currently exhibiting the self-absorbed demeanour of someone who cannot quite work out what is happening to himself or herself and is not sure what to do about it.

Then John goes on to solutions, and here I thought we’d get some courageous analysis and realistic answers. But no way. We just get the same old trembling reluctance to state the obvious.

Johnny Armstrong like a lot of people fears attracting the label xenophobe, racist or bigot. At a progressive political organ like the NZ Herald it would indeed be the kiss of death.

This is what stops him from being up front about what he and many others know is the real problem. We have allowed too many people into the country and over-stretched all of our resources. Not the least, the ability to provide land and housing.

90,000 Indian students (source Winston Peters) need shelter, and so do 30,000 other net immigrants and probably twice as many due to NZers returning from Australia because the socialist dream has hit harsh reality there too.

We don’t need a capital gains tax. We don’t need a graduated LRV on borrowing. We need to stop mass immigration now as the most immediate easy and uncomplicated solution.

However, as I have said before, and as Armstrong suggests in his article, the question is what happens when we do stop the Auckland madness.

John Key and Bill English helped to put us on this treadmill. Its up to them to face the music and do what they should have done years ago. Cut spending by ending the plethora of unnecessary and unaffordable government services. Give NZ a tax break, cut back on environmental regulations that are choking investment and get a real damn economy started.

The National party has been taken over by progressive fools who have far too much in common with their colleagues in the Labour party and NZ is going to pay a heavy price for this destructive political subversion.

When you write your next column on the NZ economy Mr. Armstrong, draw up some courage and tell it like it really is. People who might scream those labels at you are actually ignorant bigots themselves so trammeled in their thinking they can’t think of any good arguments to maintain the status quo we both recognise as so destructive to our future.