Relentless political polling, a surge of anti-mandate protesters, and athletes' gravitational feats on snow converged this week to form a heady concoction of Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion
It was a big week for Sir Isaac Newton. The English physicist has been dead for nearly 300 years but his three laws of motion have had quite the workout this week, from the curling rinks at the Winter Olympics to the vagaries of yet more political polling to the protester-influxed grounds of Parliament.
The Winter Olympics mainly consists of hundreds of contestants wrapped in brightly coloured glad wrap conducting life-threatening experiments in applied gravitational studies on snow and ice to the occasional accompaniment of Ravel’s ‘Boléro’. And then there’s curling, which is like watching darts in slow motion while being heavily sedated, and which is so addictive to watch it can only be safely broadcast once every four years. Newton’s second law of motion is about momentum, which is the product of mass and velocity. The greater the mass the harder it is to generate momentum. This explains why 19kg curling stones travel so slowly that contestants have time to sweep up after themselves while they’re still playing the game.
This incessant polling is like being subjected to a continuous broadcast of the debate worm, which is way less interesting than curling and no one sweeps up after themselves.
More difficult to explain is the momentum that National’s current leader Christopher Luxon appears to have based on this week’s polling, carrying on from last week’s polling, ahead of next week’s polling, and to be followed by 80 more weeks of polling before the next election. This incessant polling is like being subjected to a continuous broadcast of the debate worm, which is way less interesting than curling and no one sweeps up after themselves.
Columnist Simon Wilson explained that Luxon has a higher approval rating than PM Jacinda Ardern despite having only been in the job for 10 weeks because “he hasn’t had time to annoy many people yet”. Which is a fair point. Giving Luxon a higher approval than the PM after just 10 weeks is like awarding the gold medal to a ski-jumper who’s only half-way down the take-off ramp. Sure, he might be a highly-trained athlete with a degree in aerodynamics but he might also just be some bloke who got off at the wrong floor on his way to the observation deck. Mind you, Luxon would probably fancy his chances at the flying challenge of ski-jumping – after all he did run an airline, as he’s fond of saying, and which is going to annoy a great many people if he keeps saying it for the next 80 weeks.
If your leader’s going to display the emotional maturity of a highly frustrated incel by calling the PM “the Red Queen” then be prepared for the plummet, not the summit.
Even more difficult to explain is ACT’s polling momentum. According to the latest poll toll, Act has lost 8 percentage points to be on err … 8 percentage points. That’s a halving of its support which is more Xeno’s territory than it is Newton’s. And as far as momentum is concerned it’s a luge-like trajectory - downhill, very fast, and only watchable because there’s the potential for calamity around every corner. If he had been forced to look at ACT’s numbers, Newton would have had to come up with a fourth law, something along the lines of – if your leader’s going to display the emotional maturity of a highly frustrated incel by calling the PM “the Red Queen” then be prepared for the plummet, not the summit. On reflection, that fourth law is not too far removed from Newton’s third law of motion – for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
Which brings us in a roundabout way to Newton’s first law of motion which is all about inertia, one definition of which is a state where everything remains unchanged. I reckon a lot of us would describe ourselves as being in a perpetual and persistent state of inertia, still living under, with and despite Covid as we march towards March 2022. And some of us are coping better than others.
Flags are being flown upside down which is either an intentional signifier of protest, or flags are simply being flown upside down.
Some of the no-copers found their way to the grounds of Parliament this week, which is an achievement of sorts. Not a podium finish but worthy of an acknowledgment for having driven from wherever to Wellington albeit in a week when petrol prices hit $3 per litre. Journalists, threatened with retributions including lynching for undefined defalcations, did their best to describe the protesters more objectively than no-coper no-hopers. Describing the full gamut of what they are protesting against is as challenging as shooting all the targets in the biathlon, you’re bound to miss a couple. Kudos to Michael Neilson for spotting a sub-protest against the Marsden Point closure. Flags are being flown upside down which is either an intentional signifier of protest, or flags are simply being flown upside down.
As you’re reading this, Newton’s first law of motion is being put to the test in the Parliamentary precinct. The protesters are, in Newtonian terms, a body at rest that will only be moved if acted upon by a force. And it looks like a lot more laws than Newton’s three are going to come into play before this is all over.
Have a peaceful weekend.
