Well, they would be stupid darn loonies if it were not for the fact that the SDL submission has to be one of the saddest documents of all time. It is a shameful example of the fact that human nature does not change. Our technology improves by leaps and bounds – but some human brains remain in the dark ages.

 The SDL submission stinks of neo-Nazism, a movement which is gaining ground in Germany, according to a recent BBC documentary. It stinks, too, of the methods of a madman named Robert Mugabe. Or how about Pol Pot? Unfortunately, the list of tyrants is way too long and all too recent. If the SDL followers got their way they’d have a foot in the door to eventual ethnic cleansing – no doubt about that.

 Is the ‘bula beam’ merely superficial? Are the so-called Christian iTaukei really so hate-filled, so intolerant, and so arrogant? No – I don’t think so. I think that the mindset behind that SDL submission belongs to a very small and insignificant group of bitter and twisted people of a much older generation, which, judging by that mindset, we shall be better off without as they pass on to live forever in that loving, caring, tolerant and Christian figment of their imagination in the sky – hopefully before 2014.

 Our young people need to be told about the idiocies that resulted from the clamp-down on Sunday following the 1987 coups. Army trucks full of soldiers, roaring about with what seemed to be a carte blanch right to stop people enjoying their Sundays – I remember it well. A young mother told that she couldn’t wash and hang nappies to dry. A father told to stop playing ball with his two sons and go inside and read the Bible. A child of 9 having to choose which of two sports to drop because sport was not allowed on Sunday, so the only sporting day he had was Saturday. A pilot turned around at a road-block after dark and told he could not drive to Nausori to fly a plane to Sydney. And, my personal favourite – Lyle Cupit of Conag being told that his workers could not milk cows on Sundays!

 All very funny in retrospect, because the whole exercise did nothing more than point out to the general public how lacking in general knowledge the soldiers were. But there were many sad stories, too. Especially those about the relatives and friends of the sick and dying, who could not visit them in the various hospitals and clinics. Good grief – we couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread! 

Today’s young people have tasted freedom. They have the internet and mobile phones and they know a damned sight more than their elders’ do, that’s for sure. They are street-smart and switched on, and any government that tries to curtail their freedoms will not last long. But nor will the SDL, for with that nasty submission they have sealed their coffin. It will be interesting to see if, and how, they will try to back-track come September. My bet is that they will simply fade away, and good riddance.