Who's next?

Scapegoat. n. One who is made to bear the blame of others. See goat, fall guy, whipping boy.

Helen Clark does scapegoats well, doesn't she. First she puts the boot into the Exclusive Brethren, who she would like us to believe were almost single-handledly responsible for contemporary corruption in politics (anything to divert us from the very real corruption of an election bought with our money); now Mercury Energy, whose "heartlessness" she says (rather than a family's own bad lifestyle choices) is responsible for a woman's death ... anything, any lies at all, to get people's minds off the clusterfuck that her Government has become. Anything to avoid blame being pointed at her.

Still eighteen months before an election. Who's next? Do we all need to keep our heads down? As a blues singer said once, "Every culture needs a scapegoat to clean the shithouse." There's still an awful lot of shit to clean up 'tween now and next November -- if this strategy can last that long.