Andrew Little swamped by the love in Dunedin last night
Bill English must be sweating and the National Party increasingly nervous.
Day by day, the mainstream media are turning on English.
Look at Gower’s devastating attack on him here over his pathetic response to Trump.
Look at Lloyd Burr’s knifing of English over his decade old comments on Muslims.
Look at the the ODTs remarkable praise and support of Labour last night.
Christ, even the stuff editorial team are on side.
These are remarkable feats for a mainstream media who were enslaved and in the thrall of John Key, but with his leaving they have the ‘courage’ to finally start questioning the pantomime of policy promises that is the National Party.
The question is are the public listening?
The ultimate problem for Labour and the Greens is that they face an electorate who shrugged their shoulders in 2014 at mass surveillance lies and dirty politics. The property owning middle classes who in the past have been relied upon to champion the frustrations of the working class and the poor have been missing in action now they are all paper millionaires with over inflated property valuations.
You can be as liberal as a feminist vegan crossfitter and have every copy of Marx in your home library, but when you are earning three times the average wage per year from property speculation then you’ll vote for Creation Theory to be taught at your local school if you think that will keep your wealth illusion growing for another 3 years.
If the global economy takes it in the chops and the property bubble explodes, NZers will be scrambling to demand Labour do something. If it doesn’t, they’ll press like on the Facebook and Twitter outrage, but they’ll quietly vote National when no one can see come September.
That’s why I’m slightly surprised English didn’t call an earlier election. He’s got as much of the deck stacked in his favour now, as he is ever likely to have.
“if you reach the top floor, don’t forget to send the elevator back down” is an old US saying, “we’re doing ok but voted for those that aren’t” was a sign outside a wealthy looking Wellington home last election…
sure it is going to be tough to break the property habit for people that used to give a shit about their fellow New Zealanders, but that is what the replacement for the Nats is going to have to do, but incrementally not with a crash hopefully
a combination is needed…
–massive nationwide house/apartment build and trades training
–strong tenants rights and rent control, organised occupations of 33,000 empty houses in Auckland till the greedies get the message
–capital gains tax on multiple dwellings beyond a family home
Absolutely 100%
Whatever problems English has with the media, Guyon Espiner (Morning Report) isn’t one of them.
In an interview with English last week, Espiner was like Rowan Atkinson in the Billy Connolly “grovel grovel smarm smarm” sketch (see You Tube). Espiner sounded like he was having an orgasm just talking to English, calling him “sir” in deferential tones at every opportunity. Must be missing John Key.
Espiner is a National Party boot polisher.
Can we have Kim Hill back please!
Here here
Spot on lefty. Moaning Report is as weak as a one teabag pot of tea without a bulldog anchor like Kim Hill or Sean Plunket. Even Checkpoint’s gone soft since Mary Wilson gave up fronting it for producing it. Our weak fourth estate is one of the main reasons the Nats get away with murder.
The only way National will win again is if the ‘left’ start going on about property owners vs renters and make another election about that… again….
I’ve pointed this out before – do the figures – 33% rent in NZ, 33% own a home with a mortgage and 33% own a home without a mortgage.
A big issue to remember is that Kiwis are asset rich and income poor. Therefore any hike in prices/taxes or what have you effects them a lot more than countries that have real wages.
It’s pretty much imaginary that all these homeowners are living the high life in my view. People with mortgages are chained to paying them off as the prices rose and those without a mortgage are often the elderly with few savings.
I’ve had my share of bad landlords but I’ve also rented my house out when I went overseas, and the types that rented did grow Cananabis in the garage under lights, did suddenly disappear in the middle of the night and did not pay the rent. I did get beneficiaries that wrecked the home, had hanger-on relatives that caused trouble. These days many renters seem helpless and are now unable to change a lightbulb, mow a lawn and expect a concierge type service and then complain about the cost of rent – there is a massive shortage of landlords in Auckland – far from being some lucrative activity that homeowners are cashing in on, it seems the opposite – no one wants to be a landlord any more. That is the problem.
Not all tenants are these law abiding, cherubs living in Grey lynn or Central Wellington that left rental policy seems to be directed at and you are alienating a big percentage of voters by championing them as such.
Young people have it rough, but I paid 11% on my mortgage when I bought a house, paid back my student loan at compounding interest at similar rates and certainly don’t think I had some fairy tale run as a current homeowner and leftie. I cringe when I see 23 yo demanding someone organise her a house because they feel so hard done by – my generation didn’t even get interest free loans when studying! It was full on user pays Rogernomics.
There was also a rental crisis in the late 1990’s – I remember walking around and there were 100 applicants for 1 flatmate position. It is nothing new. What is new is that students can’t actually get any jobs anymore because there are thousands of temporary visas and huge competition for part time (and full time) work.
FYI – without a secure job, it’s difficult to rent or buy a house.
If we look at the renters – my guess is that half of those people will never own their own home because they many have some disability that prevents them from getting their own home and will never earn enough and should be in a state house. I’m for State houses.
The rest approx 16.5% may be looking to buy a home and of that half probably vote National because they hate that the other renters are a getting a cheap state house and in their view don’t work hard enough!
The anti homeowner is a militant voice on the left sites, but it is not a big voter voice probably under 10% of the population is my guess, hence the tanking of last election by the left.
If Labour, Greens, Mana and The Maori party spend all their time going on about renters vs landlords vs homeowners – they may lose the election yet again – worse still they dilute the votes between them and keep other lefty political parties out of power! Look at Mana and the fight for the Maori vote.
Labour/Green supporters keep going on about how they can’t work out how they are not rising in the polls with the housing crisis! Go figure!
Don’t be part of the problem Bomber! You many hate homeowners and middle class but do you want the Natz back yet again by alienating more than 67% of voters by spreading this discourse?
Same message to the Greens and those renters that want a change of government!
FYI – change is practically always achieved by the middle class from Kate Sheppard to Nelson Mandela, so don’t knock them.
When I bought my first house in 1985 my mortgage interest rate was 16% and for a while it went up to 18%, and that was through the government Housing Corp.
Guess who was finance minister then.
The one and only “Sir” Roger Douglas.
The Nats are going to get back in for precisely the reason(s) that Bomber outlined in this, his most lucid piece to date. Keep alienating the renters, I say, while the “middle class” evaporates and the “haves” ranks are swelled by foreign neo-colonialists to the ponoint where the have nots just go “fuck it” and pull out the pitchforks and guillotines. Fuck the polls. Violence in the streets is where “we” are headed. “Oh, it’ll NEVER happen here…” and other such BS….. Famous last words.
change is not always achieved by the middle class we only have to look at the USA
Actually Michelle that is middle class change, and that is what happens when the democrats don’t unite their voters (Hillary + Bernie) but instead alienate them allowing the right to win.
Yes, change is achieved by the working class and the bourgeoisie. The middle-class perpetuate suffering and prevent change. I hope they continue to disappear. They offer us nothing
Why doesn’t any one mention the role fucking banksters play.
Money got you by the interlectual balls
@Fatty – your wish is coming true, because the middle class are disappearing in the Western world, politicians seem to be working towards having just super rich running corporations and the poor….
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/29/the_sharing_economy_partner/
Yes, the middle class is disappearing and neoliberalism is crumbling…good, about time!
In short there are Kiwi’s who got screwed over and bought a house, then there are Kiwi’s who got screwed over and did not buy a house. Rather than fighting about the house, maybe unite and fight the system about being screwed over.
Meh…go read generation rent. I hope the housing market crashes hard. It will be for the best
Special mention goes to those children in primary school right now who when they exit the education system will confront challenges humanity has not experienced in 200,000 years of human history.
Don’t make yourself into one of those challenges fatty. We must be better than that. All we want is children hungry to learn and teachers willing to teach, not preach so we can create one investment to solve all problems
I see a housing crash as a solution. Former Reserve Bank chair Arthur Grimes says Auckland property prices must come down by 40 percent…Don Brash says by 60 percent.
…and many on the left in NZ want Labour to introduce policies that keep our housing bubble going.
SaveNZ tells me to fight the system. Well, our system is a property owning democracy – those are words of Maggie Thatcher too.
We need to give up this Kiwi Dream nonsense and provide some left-wing solutions…like renters rights and ending property speculation. 70% of Kiwis as renters would be far better than 70% as home owners.
When the fuck will you learn that when ever a central banker says so thing, they are wrong
If Labour continue to be a party for landlords and Kiwi speculators before renters, then I hope they lose the election – because they’re a right wing party. I’d rather have National delivering similar policies until Labour finds its soul.
Me and my friends will be voting for left-wing parties, so not Labour. What’s the point of this Tory-Labour party?
Some of my friends won’t even vote because people keep telling them Labour is left-wing…they now assume left-wing = promoting housing speculation.
Its interesting u talk about the middle classes when the middle classes are being squeezed out of that class. I think there is a world wide trend of this. Will be interesting to see how much power they continue to wield. But with reducing numbers i would say they have less power at the voting booth.
You hit the nail on the head with this, Bomber. Hats off to you, sir.
“The property owning middle classes who in the past have been relied upon to champion the frustrations of the working class and the poor have been missing in action now they are all paper millions with over inflated property valuations.
You can be as liberal as a feminist vegan crossfitter and have every copy of Marx in your home library, but when you are earning three times the average wage per year from property speculation then you’ll vote for Creation Theory to be taught at your local school if you think that will keep your wealth illusion growing for another 3 years.”
national cant control interest rates NZ is at the mercy of off shore creditors
we have built up this debt with ponzi finance the buck stops with national why do you think key shot through he not hanging around to take the blame.
no government has ever been able to stop a bubble bursting .they pop fast with devistating results it would good to an article on post bubble new Zealand
debtor have themselves to blame nobody has made them take loans they -cant afford to pay back
Could the biggest of the 99 problems be dealing with W Peters in establishing the make up of the Government? A likely scenario.
Don’t get excited, the MSM have got “bored” with National, they now consider looking at alternatives, so they open up their “reporting”, shoddy at best.
This is the usual “political cycle” in little Niu Zilliland, once the MSM have decided, oh yawn, we may desire some exciting change, the time for a change of government becomes the program. The public, tired and dull, and usually indifferent, or rather inclined to cheer on the All Blacks (and those supporting them), they may then listen up, hey, it is “time for a change”.
It will be largely symbolic, that change, and as we have noticed, not all that much will chance, same as it never did before, we will just have a little more considerate WINZ staff team not harass the beneficiaries quite as much, a government consider a slight jig on taxation, a bit more or less here or there in financiing, and for the rest, nothing much at all will change, the rich will still be rich and in control, and the workers will still slave away, maybe misled by a bit of false “hope” they get a slightly higher minimum wage.
Nothing to enthuse me, dear friends, heard and seen it ALL before.
Any SERIOUS change would be instantly stopped or boycotted by the MSM, loyal master of the old boys and girls in control at the top.
FYI – change is practically always achieved by the middle class from Kate Sheppard to Nelson Mandela, so don’t knock them.
OMFG! I can’t stop laughing at this one…
Please get me some dry undies…
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