Brash's secret letter

Investigations by Dim-Post staff reporters have uncovered a second, secret letter sent to John Key by former National leader Don Brash. It is presented, unexpurgated, below.

Dear John,

It is with a heavy heart that I withdraw my membership, not only of the National Party, as I explained in my previous letter, but also from the National Party Social Bowling Club of which I have been a proud member for twenty-three years.

I do not take this decision lightly and I have made it after observing, with mounting alarm, your lack of commitment to the activity of bowling.

When I had the privilege to serve as President of the Social Bowling Club and you were my treasurer, I railed against the inefficiency of the sport as I saw it. Despite repeated attempts to destroy the little pins at the end of the lane with our heavy balls, there was never any reduction in the total amount of pins. We spent many hours knocking them down but the next time the Club met there they all were again, standing upright just as before, presumably placed there by some malign, unseen state agency.

I gave many speeches, John – which you endorsed – calling for the cessation of bowling using balls, arguing for the deployment of hand grenades and fragile crystal globes filled with acid. Have you forgotten those plans?

I have not.

When I stood down as National Social Bowling President – after that unfortunate incident with the ball polishing machine – you appointed me as head of the National Party Bowling Oversight Committee, and gave me a red sash, a clipboard and a nominal payment of $9000 a day to investigate bowling related issues.

The things I discovered shocked me. I learned, and reported back to you, that the pins we knocked down during each game were the SAME PINS EVERY TIME. Concealed at the back of the lane was a large, complicated mechanical apparatus that picked them up and set them standing again! I was literally sick with terror and disgust! All our previous efforts had been for naught!

I appraised you of these facts, John, but your response to them staggers me. You have not disconnected this equipment, as I advised. You have not smashed the pins with heavy mallets, even though, as we now know to our terrible cost, their total number is small, no more than a few dozen at best, and they could easily be annihilated. Instead I have looked on with uncomprehending horror as, under your leadership, National MPs now bowl from the start of the lane instead of standing directly above the pins and hurling the balls at them as was practise during my presidency.

In some small ways your time as Social Bowling Club President has been a success. You have never been locked in the toilet stall and had beer and onion rings thrown in over the top of the cubical, which was an accident that occurred several times during my tenure. Your shoes are not repeatedly stolen and thrown on top of the roof of the bowling club, and in this way, also, you have been fortunate.

Yet I cannot consider your performance anything but a failure. You had the mandate and the opportunity to achieve a final victory in bowling, and you have squandered it by ignoring my advice and playing air-guitar in my face every time you achieve a strike.

And so, with deep regret, I felt I had no alternative than to resign my membership of the National Party Social Bowling Club.

Sincerely,

Don Brash

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