Willis: Protesting Clergy An Example Of Wasteful Overstaffing

As you may know over the last 32 hours six protesting members of the clergy have shackled themselves to the outside of my electorate office.

I have just spent an hour with these misguided unfortunates listening to their concerns for a couple of minutes. In a conciliatory gesture I offered each of them a mug of tea and a cheese roll for which I would make only a nominal profit on top of the usual overheads.

I took the opportunity to deliver a brisk and rational lecture to all six protestors setting out their various failures - failures which, I emphasised to them, would not have occurred had they approached their objectives in the same manner as hard-working Kiwi business people, and not woolly-minded do-gooders.

As I explained to them, their whole enterprise was hopelessly overstaffed. There was simply no need for six clergy members to be present at the protest. One would be sufficient, leaving the other five to get on with the core business of whatever it is that members of the clergy do.

I understand for example that there is a great demand for soup kitchens at the moment and frankly that is the demand that they should have been supplying.