Privatising Parts, by Richard Meris
Meros to Key: “Privatise Love or suffer the same fate as Clark!”
When Helen Clark failed to heed the logic of Richard Meros’ On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her Young Lover in 2008 she also lost the leadership of the nation. But Helen’s error does not stand alone. In 2008, according to Treasury, errors in love not only cost the New Zealand economy a whopping $600 million in reduced productivity, but an immeasurable quantity of happiness.
Amongst Aotearoa’s saddest of the sad is Richard Meros. Enraged blog postings from the Left made him fear for his safety. Like Salmon Rushdie evading his fatwah, Meros left his fixed abode for a life of freedom camping. Embittered, and with only a shonky laptop and a Toyota Townace to his name, Meros analysed Helen’s failure.
His answer came in the form of the unassailable logic of free market economics: Helen failed to take Meros as a Young Lover for she was already contractually obliged to a monogamous relationship.
“To save such future errors,” Meros claims, “the National government needs to privatise love. Only the private sector’s know-how and can-do, along with glorious technological advancements, will dissolve the nation’s heartache.”
The only problem: how can Meros convince the leader of the National Party, the Rt Hon Key, that the policy of Privatising Parts is what his constituency needs?
In 2012 the book was triumphantly (as with the spirit of the times) transformed into a stage play by Eleanor Bishop and Heleyni Pratley.
Book details
ISBN: 978-0-473-18475-9
Release date: May 2011
Paperback