2015 – it was a shit of a year

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I’m glad that 2015 has dragged itself to an exhausted end. 2015 was another year of the KEYdashians and NZ loves them more than Kanye loves Kim.

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If you are a progressive, it’s been a pretty bleak year. When NZ First winning an electorate seat becomes the big win it’s been a rotten harvest for the Left.

With Kim Dotcom’s early Christmas present, renditioned by America to face unbalanced legal representation has seen some on the Left jumping with schadenfreude, so tribal is the fractured opposition.

The Greens are treading water, Labour has done the minimal least to be defined as an Opposition and National pushed through State house privatization, seen Unemployment increase, houses become ridiculously unaffordable, inequality rise, poverty become entrenched, draconian welfare reforms, a joke climate deal and a weakening of worker rights. Private prisons highlighted the obscenity of their profits before people mindset and NZers didn’t pause once in their love affair with John Key.

Despite Key being outed for bullying a young waitress on 10 separate occasions by repeatedly touching her, NZers laughed it off with the ease they laughed off his prison rape joke.

And what are National going to try and get next? More state house privatisation, more Charter Schools, more social welfare privatisation and yet more surveillance powers for the Police, SIS and GCSB.

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The manner in which critical fourth estate journalism has been attacked and strangled off this year should deeply concern every citizen. The lack of outrage is just as alarming.

We had clear proof that inequality has more than doubled in 30 years while this year our suicide rate skyrocketed and imprisonment rates explode to their highest levels ever.

We have sick and damaged communities who are struggling to stay afloat in Key’s brave new world, yet none of that reality is ever reflected in a media who are now simply about clickbait traffic as opposed to holding the powerful to account.

And that flag, that bloody stupid flag. The obviousness of it as a political distraction has not dented the masses love affair with the multimillionaire shark-in-dorks-clothing has not diminished.

You can lead a NZer to a blog but you can’t make ’em think.

2015 was like a never ending Empire Strikes back.

Here’s to 2016 and fighting to regain the values egalitarian Aotearoa can be proud of.  Despite the misery, we’re the lucky ones my friends – here’s to everyone alone, hurt & suffering poverty this season – may 2016 bring consciousness to those who can’t see you.

Merry Marxmas Comrades – peace on earth, good will to all and smash the State in the New Year!

 

20 COMMENTS

  1. “Here’s to 2016 and fighting to regain the values egalitarian Aotearoa can be proud of.”

    Well said mate.

    Yes same to you Martyn, the deteriorating media coverage demands that we give the majority of us all a new voice to be heard above the NatZ spin doctors who jam every media vehicle with rubbish double speak & lies that suggest we are doing well under planet key.

    He is clearly undermining us all quietly as we struggle to retain our former egalitarian fair share of the economy.

    Chances are this 2016 will be the defining year that shoes plane key was a pipe dream and we all wake up to realise that he has been screwing us all and letting the provinces die as HB and Gisborne is showing now.

  2. I’m trying to dig in and be debt free on a piece of land by a creek with a shady tree and keep chickens. The reason ?
    I think they’re fucked.
    You know who don’t you?

    Our masters. Those. Them.

    They live in identical houses hoarding together like cluster flies. They live in Malls and wear the same type of clothing/uniform. The drive shiny SUV’s that never see mud and they watch paul henry and solemnly ponder his sage words of wisdom like the brain dead masses who fawn over evangelist preachers. They shovel their kids into boarding schools as soon as they teach their kids to not cry who will then head to designer schools who churn out more of Them.
    I drove into Christchurch yesterday evening past tumour after tumour of ghastly housing estates, all with their ubiquitous grey roofs and plasti-lawns. In those houses are people who must go to long suffering G.P’s and show them their haemorrhoids, their rashes, their OCD’s and their chest pains. They’re lost to their loneliness, their empty, miserable lives scavenged by Banksters and occasionally they might get a card or a call from their kids now living off shore who will assure their parents that they’ll never come back to jonky’s little islands of perverse misery to be preyed upon by a sick society in free-fall.
    These are strange times. My advice ? Stand back and watch on and have a few “ I told you so’s “ at the ready.

    Happy New Year @ Martyn Bradbury. Thanks for this place to come to release the pressures. And remember ; worrying, like resistance, is futile so have fun. Focus on fun. Fun and love and sex and a bush walk and a beach and a movie and a friend and a beer, smoke, snort etc. Have fun and enjoy our beautiful lands and keep to your own human species. Never mind the Thems. They’re fucked.

    • Well said,we have done the same thing – off the grid, build a small batch, grow our food and live an honest ethical life. The Neo Lib system is doomed to crash and crash hard. It is not easy for me to sit back and watch good people be hoodwinked by a system that was meant to have there best interests at heard. 2015 was very depressing, 2016 I shall look at the bigger picture and enjoy, laugh and love life again and put my energy into people you desire change. All the best to all Free Thinkers Everywhere.

  3. This is a government who have smashed the state rather well this past 12 months. Try talking to any government department, it’s a Muppet fest. This mob, are anarcho capitalist on acid. I’d have to agree with smashing the surveillance state, it should be number one on everyone’s list for 2016!

  4. “The manner in which critical fourth estate journalism has been attacked and strangled off this year should deeply concern every citizen. The lack of outrage is just as alarming.”

    Indeed, it is shocking and frightening, but we must overcome fear, it means, that there will be more asked from us ourselves, to present the truth, to show the public what really goes on.

    So we must endeavour to reveal the crap that goes on behind the scene, and shout it out, if needed, and present it here, on this blog, same as others that may be friendly towards us, who are not living a “brighter future”, rather a bleak future, where anger levels are rising, at least below the surface.

    Happy New Year to all, do NEVER give up the fight for justice, for fairness, the truth and for holding the ones in power accountable, NEVER, and do not let fear take hold of you, NEVER.

    Kia Kaha!

  5. I thought that the theme of this post was ‘fairness’.

    How can you promote the idea of fairness in an egalitarian society? Egalitarianism is about as far from fairness as you could get. If I earn a dollar through hard work and pay 30% tax on it to fulfil my legal obligation, I should be able, in a fair society, to keep the remaining 70c and pass it on to whoever I want, when I want.

    My advice to you is to be careful what you wish for.

  6. Good article and thanks to you and TDB team for all your high-quality work through 2015.

    As usual, the pathetic trolls are on here, down-voting good comments. They really do function at the level of nasty 12-year-olds, don’t they? As does their esteemed leader Key. Bitchiness and spite are unpleasant traits in women – and even worse in men.

    Best wishes for 2016.

  7. The really good thing about shit is that it gets wonderfully reconstituted into something useful on this planet. Plants love it.

    Not saying all people of this country are vegetables but it sure does seem a lot of them have been consuming shit and then turned into vegetables when they voted for Key.

    But , shit is as shit does ,… and reconstitute it does well . Always.

    And having a shit year is no different.

    Because the more shit we have the better the final vegetable product we will have . And that means a stronger , healthier vegetable that can resist the virus we call John Key.

    If it wasn’t for shit ( or the lack of it ) the virus couldn’t be exposed as the pathogen that needs attention. We can see this by doing a double blind experiment using one plot of vegetables with shit and another plot without shit which plot is actually , over time , … more resistant to disease.

    And invariably it is the shit fed plot that eventually builds up a healthy resistance and grows taller, healthier and more viable and productive than its shitless counterpart.

    So one could in fact say that having shit is actually a good thing.

    All we need to have like a good farmer is patience and at the end of harvest we will soon be reaping a bountiful and bumper crop that is disease resistant and a healthy populace who can quickly spot the difference between a healthy plant and one that is sickly and stunted because of the Key virus. And people will never choose the latter after having tasted the former.

    And we owe it all to shit.

  8. First we had colonisation, we have now had corporatisation which is almost complete, we as a Nation own very little, as most companies in NZ are now offshore owned, what happens next?

    Most of the population are working on minimum wages competing with new immigrants, the neo liberals are not loyal to NZ citizens as they worship the $, Key, Bennett and Rebstock say they care about NZ citizens but they are merely weasel words to placate the masses.

    What is National’s economic growth strategy for NZ, I have witnessed little in the last 7 years apart from milk and oil exploration yet our overseas debt has spiralled 10 fold to $105 Billion, hopefully Key will pull some rabbits out of the hat over the next couple of years.

    However with NZ’s rebranding exercise with the new flag and the TPPA we should be able to sell more exports offshore?

    • How pathetic Higherstandard. Have you got anything intelligent and insightful to add? Perhaps a higher standard of commentary?

    • Looks like Gosman has taken on a new persona to try and hide his fuckwittery. Didn’t work Gossie, once a fuckwit, always a fuckwit.

      As a New Year’s Resolution, try and develop a soul and some caring towards your fellow Kiwis, struggling under the neoliberal attacks since 1984. High walls of indifference, and sneering privilege won’t protect anyone once inequality reaches critical mass Highstandard.

  9. Seems a shame to point out the obvious, but 2016 will be much of the same…status quo with Labour/Greens languishing well adrift of National, and i’m sorry to ruin your new years day, but 2017 will have you all jumping off bridges by the end of that year when National get their 4th term! Still you can always look at how Venesuala has fared as it seems to be the kind of utopia you guys on here dream of. But of course it will be different when you all get into power eh? 🙂

    • You are right. Shame. What’s the view like from behind the barricades of ignorance, indifference and privilege?

    • Hey , um,…Dickhead…

      No one here’s mentioned Venuezla, … and it almost seems like your some sort of Anal retentive neo con American talking like that around here…

      I’m sorry, … feel free to go back to your Joe McCarthy books… but don’t worry , Kruschevs dead and so is that Democrat JFK you neo cons hate and needed to shoot… but I would like to invite you into the year 2016 not 1963…

      And I would also like to invite you to pull your head out of your arse and REALIZE THIS :

      The most successful , per capita , most individually and collectively , wealthy nations on earth AS WE SPEAK NOW aint the ” God bless America ” of Obama complete with Ronald Reagan plastic mascot round his neck –

      Its the SOCIAL DEMOCRAT NATIONS OF SCANDINAVIA !!!

      Have a nice New years , … ARSE-HOLE.

      DANG !!! GOD – DAMN !!! …we hear him say as he mutters to himself off in the distance…

      The truth hurts.

      And I’m more than happy to deliver it to you.

    • Now , RIGHTY BOY , … so who do we know who you are ?…

      Do you have certain affiliation with a bank that encourages Auckland house prices to rise unrealistically ?

      Soooooo….what happens when the speculators stop coming here en masse….and you know… the world ecomony’s not lookin’ too healthy now , is it?

      China’s slowing down , America’s in debt ( suprise , suprise ) , Aussies gettin the speed wobbles at 7% unemployment… and we are near that as well…

      You know ,…RIGHTY BOY … there’s a lot of pissed off struggling people out here in the real world when you take off those rose tinted glasses and come out from your Ivory tower…or more aptly …. crawl out from under your favorite rock …

      If I were you… I just wouldn’t gloat to long and loud round certain parts,… you just might find some folks will take a mighty big exception to spouting off those sorts of sentiments in their polite company …

      You wouldn’t like that canned spaghetti bolognese all down your shirt front at that family dinner , now , would you…

      And besides…that sure would be a real waste of the foodbanks resources on a slimy little night creature like you.

      Wouldn’t it , now…

      • Highstandard aka Gosman have recruited others to downvote comments here. Can’t be much to do behind the barricades of privilege and entitlement except count their money and “mum-and-dad” electricity shares.

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