Kheala: Nice! Many thanks for those; I’ve passed them on to family.
Merry Christmas and all the best of the season to all here.
Best wishes to you all. May 2020 be a good one for all TDB readers, contributors and in particular the wonderful team who put TDB together as a great alternative news site.
Bring on a Labour/Green year 🙂
The best of the season to all, and to you and yours Martyn.
Merry Christmas, and a New Year 2020 with Courage and Enlightenment. Best wishes to publisher, authors, writers and readers of this blog. Nice piece of work.
Venceremos.
Happy Christmas to all.
We still live in an incredibly beautiful and courteous country. Hopefully everyone can come together to protect and enrich that further than eroding it.
In particular happy Christmas, to those who have lost loved ones or in pain for health or emotional reasons or kids that do not have the care and happy Christmas they should be having.
Merry Christmas, to an even better NZ and world, 2020!
I’m so boomer my girlfriend gives me viagra for Christmas
Hope everyone who contributes to this superb blog (except the wankers, and you know who you are) had an awesome Christmas day yesterday. Plenty of eating, drinking, smiling and sharing the love with those you value most. We managed to achieve that but not before navigating a minefield as a result of the cultural and religious beliefs of my brothers new partner and her sons. We were ok to leave the ham in the fridge to avoid any offence and welcome new family but the more concessions we made, the more the demands rolled in. My wife was asked not to give her traditional thanks before eating lunch as that would be an affront despite the day being in honour of the very person being given thanks to. We were asked not to mention the word “Christmas”as that would also be an affront. Our deserts were “permissible” but the only meat that was deemed acceptable had to be halal lamb regardless of any thoughts we may have about that. Ultimately, we said fuck off and arranged our Christmas lunch two hours before my brother and his new family were due to arrive. I couldn’t help but feel what we were experiencing was at least a potential metaphor for the new New Zealand where giving and taking can so easily turn into just taking if you allow it.
Politically, this is my wish list for 2020 and not in any particular order.
1) Immigration floodgates are closed for long enough for the country to catch it’s breath from the tidal wave of change that has been occurring at rocket speed over the last decade. NZ is in danger of becoming a country none of us recognize. Also allowing arranged Indian marriages to have the same value as Western marriages when it comes to immigration was a huge blunder. We must be protected from potential immigration fraud and have our cultural values given paramount respect. Shane Jones was 100% correct on this important issue but was totally undermined and chopped off at the knees. In my opinion, Ardern’s biggest error of 2019.
2) Pike River achieve a successful resolution once again highlighting the enormous chasm between a Government that cares about all New Zealanders, and a Government who only cared about their own personal wealth and people who voted for their party.
3) The Government on behalf of all New Zealanders prepare themselves for the tsunami of diabolical dirty politics we all know is coming from the desperate Nats headed by the vile Bridges and Bennett. Their reprehensible conduct knows no bounds and unless you forget about kindness and stand up and counter punch, this Government will only survive one term. When they hit you once, you hit them three times. You allow them to get any traction with any bullshit, you’re fucked. The enormous drop in polling Ardern suffered after the farcical “sexual assault cover up” was your steep learning curve.
4) Put serious priority of the cannabis referendum. You can budget on a new level of scaremongering on this topic from the Nats and God botherers. Knock them out of the ball park with facts and information to counter all the misinformation you know is coming. The subject is just to important to fuck it up.
5) The Government to make a lot more progress with housing and child poverty. Not only is this win win, it removes the bullets from desperate Nat guns.
6) The Government handsomely win a second term.
7) Nats get wasted at the polls resulting in their most despised members being sent into oblivion. Show them there is no place for Dirty Politics in NZ. Hopefully the Nats will come back a better party. If that Party is led by Christopher Luxon, you know they haven’t learned a thing and it will just be more of the same vile from them.
8) Have a clean out of the political media here. Some of them are an absolute disgrace. Their blatant bias masquerades as credible news on a daily basis. This must stop.
9) Wanker of the year for six years running, Mike Hosking decides to go live in Tasmania with his wife. He takes Tova O’brien with him along with Duncan Garner,Andrea Vance, Pullya Benefit, Soymon Bwidges, Gerry Brownlee, Jack Tame, Heather Du Plessis-Allan, Mark Richardson, Nick Smith, David Farrar, Chris Bishop, Matthew Hooton etc etc.
Jacindafan: “I couldn’t help but feel what we were experiencing was at least a potential metaphor for the new New Zealand where giving and taking can so easily turn into just taking if you allow it.”
Agreed. I read out your entire comment to family members; it chimed with our sentiments as well.
With the possible exception of the current government being re-elected.
I sure as hell don’t want the Natz back in power, but neither do I want a continuation of the political cock-ups we’ve seen with the incumbents. I’m conflicted: what to do, what to do?
With regard to the issue you raise above, regarding cultural differences, a while back, one of us found the following on Facebook. It’s from Canada:
“Welcome.
You came here from there because you didn’t like there, and now you want to change here to be like there.
We are not racist, phobic or anti whatever-you-are, we simply like here the way it is and most of us actually came here because it is not like there, wherever there was.
You are welcome here, but please stop trying to make here like there.
If you want here to be like there you should not have left there to come here, and you are invited to leave here and go back there at your earliest convenience.”
Our sentiments precisely. I am, to be blunt, astonished at the arrogance of – in particular – recent migrants here who are Muslim. Enough already! This is NZ: kindly desist with attempting to make this country over in the image of wherever it is that you came from.
Happy Christmas 🙂
Or, Happy Xmas Whichever you prefer 🙂
Kheala: Nice! Many thanks for those; I’ve passed them on to family.
Merry Christmas and all the best of the season to all here.
Best wishes to you all. May 2020 be a good one for all TDB readers, contributors and in particular the wonderful team who put TDB together as a great alternative news site.
Bring on a Labour/Green year 🙂
The best of the season to all, and to you and yours Martyn.
Merry Christmas, and a New Year 2020 with Courage and Enlightenment. Best wishes to publisher, authors, writers and readers of this blog. Nice piece of work.
Venceremos.
Happy Christmas to all.
We still live in an incredibly beautiful and courteous country. Hopefully everyone can come together to protect and enrich that further than eroding it.
In particular happy Christmas, to those who have lost loved ones or in pain for health or emotional reasons or kids that do not have the care and happy Christmas they should be having.
Merry Christmas, to an even better NZ and world, 2020!
I’m so boomer my girlfriend gives me viagra for Christmas
Hope everyone who contributes to this superb blog (except the wankers, and you know who you are) had an awesome Christmas day yesterday. Plenty of eating, drinking, smiling and sharing the love with those you value most. We managed to achieve that but not before navigating a minefield as a result of the cultural and religious beliefs of my brothers new partner and her sons. We were ok to leave the ham in the fridge to avoid any offence and welcome new family but the more concessions we made, the more the demands rolled in. My wife was asked not to give her traditional thanks before eating lunch as that would be an affront despite the day being in honour of the very person being given thanks to. We were asked not to mention the word “Christmas”as that would also be an affront. Our deserts were “permissible” but the only meat that was deemed acceptable had to be halal lamb regardless of any thoughts we may have about that. Ultimately, we said fuck off and arranged our Christmas lunch two hours before my brother and his new family were due to arrive. I couldn’t help but feel what we were experiencing was at least a potential metaphor for the new New Zealand where giving and taking can so easily turn into just taking if you allow it.
Politically, this is my wish list for 2020 and not in any particular order.
1) Immigration floodgates are closed for long enough for the country to catch it’s breath from the tidal wave of change that has been occurring at rocket speed over the last decade. NZ is in danger of becoming a country none of us recognize. Also allowing arranged Indian marriages to have the same value as Western marriages when it comes to immigration was a huge blunder. We must be protected from potential immigration fraud and have our cultural values given paramount respect. Shane Jones was 100% correct on this important issue but was totally undermined and chopped off at the knees. In my opinion, Ardern’s biggest error of 2019.
2) Pike River achieve a successful resolution once again highlighting the enormous chasm between a Government that cares about all New Zealanders, and a Government who only cared about their own personal wealth and people who voted for their party.
3) The Government on behalf of all New Zealanders prepare themselves for the tsunami of diabolical dirty politics we all know is coming from the desperate Nats headed by the vile Bridges and Bennett. Their reprehensible conduct knows no bounds and unless you forget about kindness and stand up and counter punch, this Government will only survive one term. When they hit you once, you hit them three times. You allow them to get any traction with any bullshit, you’re fucked. The enormous drop in polling Ardern suffered after the farcical “sexual assault cover up” was your steep learning curve.
4) Put serious priority of the cannabis referendum. You can budget on a new level of scaremongering on this topic from the Nats and God botherers. Knock them out of the ball park with facts and information to counter all the misinformation you know is coming. The subject is just to important to fuck it up.
5) The Government to make a lot more progress with housing and child poverty. Not only is this win win, it removes the bullets from desperate Nat guns.
6) The Government handsomely win a second term.
7) Nats get wasted at the polls resulting in their most despised members being sent into oblivion. Show them there is no place for Dirty Politics in NZ. Hopefully the Nats will come back a better party. If that Party is led by Christopher Luxon, you know they haven’t learned a thing and it will just be more of the same vile from them.
8) Have a clean out of the political media here. Some of them are an absolute disgrace. Their blatant bias masquerades as credible news on a daily basis. This must stop.
9) Wanker of the year for six years running, Mike Hosking decides to go live in Tasmania with his wife. He takes Tova O’brien with him along with Duncan Garner,Andrea Vance, Pullya Benefit, Soymon Bwidges, Gerry Brownlee, Jack Tame, Heather Du Plessis-Allan, Mark Richardson, Nick Smith, David Farrar, Chris Bishop, Matthew Hooton etc etc.
Jacindafan: “I couldn’t help but feel what we were experiencing was at least a potential metaphor for the new New Zealand where giving and taking can so easily turn into just taking if you allow it.”
Agreed. I read out your entire comment to family members; it chimed with our sentiments as well.
With the possible exception of the current government being re-elected.
I sure as hell don’t want the Natz back in power, but neither do I want a continuation of the political cock-ups we’ve seen with the incumbents. I’m conflicted: what to do, what to do?
With regard to the issue you raise above, regarding cultural differences, a while back, one of us found the following on Facebook. It’s from Canada:
“Welcome.
You came here from there because you didn’t like there, and now you want to change here to be like there.
We are not racist, phobic or anti whatever-you-are, we simply like here the way it is and most of us actually came here because it is not like there, wherever there was.
You are welcome here, but please stop trying to make here like there.
If you want here to be like there you should not have left there to come here, and you are invited to leave here and go back there at your earliest convenience.”
Our sentiments precisely. I am, to be blunt, astonished at the arrogance of – in particular – recent migrants here who are Muslim. Enough already! This is NZ: kindly desist with attempting to make this country over in the image of wherever it is that you came from.
Merry Xmas from Rammstein:
It seems Germans ‘won’ the war on arguments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnitidPpMgc
What a joke.
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