Letter to the Editor – the Royal Visit and endless photo ops for Dear Leader

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From a Radio NZ report,

The Royal visit cost several hundred thousand dollars more than the Government originally said it did.

The Duke and Duchess visited eight centres, and the Department of Internal Affairs said that cost taxpayers just over $1 million.

But that figure did not take into account the costs for other government departments, such as police, Defence, Tourism New Zealand and Customs. With those costs included, the ten-day visit cost about $1.7 million.

The group New Zealand Republic said it expects the final bill to climb further, to more than $2 million.

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My views on this…

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FROM:   "f.macskasy" 
SUBJECT: Letter to the Editor
DATE:    Sun, 13 Jul 2014 14:28:01 +1200
TO:     "The Dominion Post" <letters@dompost.co.nz> 

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The editor
DOMINION POST

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Sir/madam,

A recent Radio NZ report stated that the recent Royal Visit
cost cost-payers $1.7 million - with the final bill from
other government departments pushing the final amount well
over $2 million.

This is money that could have been invested in alleviating
child poverty, buying extra hip-operations, or cleaning up
this country's  many spoiled, polluted water-ways.

Considering that Dear Leader John Key maximised publicity
opportunities for the National Party,  by inserting himself
in as many photo-ops as possible, perhaps the $2 million
could be deducted from National's tax-payer funded
allocation  for political parties' TV and radio advertising?

That might balance out the ledger somewhat.

Children living in poverty and elderly needing
hip-replacement operations would be very appreciative.

After all, National does believe in user pays, does it not?


-Frank Macskasy

[address & phone number supplied]

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Or maybe there’s nothing to this?

After all, how many photo-ops could Dear Leader possibly insert himself into…?

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Oh.

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References

Radio NZ:  Royal visit a $68m advert for tourism

NZ Herald: Advertising funding down for Nats, Labour; up for Greens, NZ First

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Above image acknowledgment: Francis Owen/Lurch Left Memes

This blogpost was first published on The Daily Blog on 14 July 2014.

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= fs =