The Sacrificial Cow

Friday, before 5, but at least I've managed a few hours.  After initial blink, resuscitate and recall whilst transitioning the hypnogogic mist, awake and, I realise, angry.  This malfeasance permeates from within and without, my spidey senses, as soon as I hit the corridor, detect that bad smell....it's called cat faeces...and my brain, kicked into full consciousness and mirroring the olfactory displeasure, resets to the previous night's state.
With the presence of mind to self care, I had broken lent and eaten pudding.  Sugar, you see, is an antidote to shock, as in sweet tea, although I don't like tea so much, so rice pudding was the nearest thing.
I had to take something for a shock which, although I had anticipated, was, nevertheless, a shock.
Watching parliament TV, I caught the third reading of the Student loan amendment bill, being debated and promptly passed into law by the majority of the ruling 'conservative' (and I use this as a relative term for it is in actual fact way too mild) party.
Very few remained in the house for this debate, after all, who would want to seen to be associated with this vile onslaught on human rights and the final carving of the sacrificial cow, education.
Education had been anointed, dressed, garlanded and pumped with bovine growth hormone till it can hardly move, led amongst the throngs of admirers and wavers of large fronds through the streets of deception right to the steps of the house of the stone altar.
Last night, around 5 o'clock, the blood from the throat of the sacrificial cow spurted from her dying corpse.  Most of the MPs, having hurriedly left the chamber already, avoided the rivulets of gore and kept their shoes clean.  A few diehards of no particular rank were left to hold her down in her death throes and you will in future see those honourable members; they will be perpetually wiping their glasses, laundering their shirts and dry cleaning their jackets, muttering,
"Out! Out, damn spot!", and then aloud, very loud,
"Personal Responsibility!  We said: Personal Responsibility!!",  as if middle New Zealand hasn't had 'personal responsibility' repeatedly shoved right up the back passages for the past three decades as  loan sharks buy, sell and feed on their gore.
A few more honourable members on the other side of the house stayed to weep, wail and witness this travesty, this crossing of an invisible line in the blood soaked sand which demarks civil law/criminal law.
Now, dearest reader, you, you children and you children's children are burdened with the lumbering, churning, spewing machine which is the IRD, complete with it's outdated and stuttering computers which are manufacturing arrest warrants to be served (without tea and biscuits) as you leave the country.
No polite, "ahem, would you please see to this account?" on arrival, be it for a wedding, funeral, death of a relative, parental illness, holiday, returning for snowboarding, surfing or just sausage.
No, it is when you are hurtling back to the obligations which have sent you overseas in the first place, ( like a job ) that you will be detained, pulled out of the queue as you wait to board your plane, and arressted.
Honestly, if you escape mandatory harvesting of an organ at this stage, count yourself lucky.  
The sacrificial cow, not so fortunate....
I, also, wanting to pursue excellence, to support myself, give back, learn, share, further understand, to make the world a richer, more beautiful place, in my misguided, middle class optimism,  condemned in perpetuity now,  defausse´, signed in perfidious passance the document of the dammed .