As Labour and the Greens face a tsunami of criticism from the Left at the total lack of transformative change (despite an unprecedented MMP majority), Labour and the Greens are going on a blitzkrieg of ramming through incremental tepid nothing laws before Christmas to counter the perception they can only pass incremental tepid nothing laws.
Working class people who smoke cannabis can go fuck themselves, but the precious wee middle class kids who gobble down the Party Pills at expensive summer festivals MUST COME HOME SAFE so we are legalising Pill testing so Bruschetta and Charlie can get back to mummy and daddy without over dosing and getting kicked out of Kings.
By the way, won’t the Police just hang around the pill testing tent?
The low hanging fruit of doubling sick pay won’t take effect until halfway through next year when the worst of the pandemic will be behind us and a meaningless climate emergency declaration that doesn’t actually trigger the Civil Defence Emergency Management ACT will be rammed through Parliament as if that means something.
So, protecting middle class kids chewing E, doubling of sick days after the pandemic has passed and a Climate Emergency declaration that is an empty gesture, that’s the best the Labour and Greens can come up with to counter criticism of their incremental and tepid policy platform?
While those meaningless gestures pass, the property speculators Labour gave a $100billion to continue to price entire generations out of home ownership, 100 people a month are still getting arrested for possession of cannabis, people on welfare are stretching food banks to snapping and inequality is being cemented into place.
Not the transformation we were all hoping for.
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“Government action unjustifiably slow.”
“One in five children living in dire poverty,” and “They are permanently harmed.”
Ah, but we’ve got the Americas Cup to think about. And holiday homes for the global ‘elites’ -who are actually narcissistic sociopaths. And there’s the banksters Ponzi scheme we are committed to supporting.
It’s the new norm, introduced by the traitorous ‘Labour’ government of the mid-80s and perpetuated ever since.
Is there also a guarantee citizens won’t be arrested for possessing the drugs on the street while transporting their pill to a concert testing tent? Do you have a type of druggy diplomatic immunity once you step inside the sovereign space of the event grounds? I doubt it, police will still choke whomever they like for whatever reason in public space, wearing those little black leather gloves so they don’t graze their lily white knuckles. Police will still be free to roam the streets making law rather than enforcing it, your garden variety schoolyard bully looking for weak prey.
druggy diplomatic immunity….bahahahahahha this should become a thingy majiggy
Well written concise disposition Martyn.
Not the transformation we were hoping for but disco bickies anyone?
Again the correlation between housing and poverty are simply one in the same. For our new and deeply conservative government, (that fact is even noted by none other than Richard Prebble), who think housing crisis’s was so 2017, wake the fuck up!
Jacinda’s radar is a country mile off at the moment. She is simply NOT reading the room in anyway whatsoever.
I think Jacinda’s ‘radar’ is turned off -that’s if she ever had any; after all, she became PM by accident and really wasn’t prepared for high office; she still isn’t prepared for high office and probably will never be because she’s too young (born 1980) and has only ever known bullshit politics, as practiced from the time of Muldoon on.
Hence we get all the smiling of someone who really doesn’t know what she’s doing and lacks genuine confidence and conviction.
Just watch her when confronted by something she doesn’t have an out-of-the-book answer for; she collapses immediately.
Therefore, as everything gets made worse by governments everywhere, expect Adern to become increasingly remote and even more out of touch. And then resign.
Liberalism is a conservative ideology, it’s as simple as that. You voted for it.
Let’s not just describe this problem of a “Blair lite” Lab Govt. for 3 years-time to organise and act-rather than retreat into passivity as happened during the Clark years.
The 70 NGOs should become an extra Parliamentary opposition, and direct action organised.
-picket any appearance by a Labour Minister
-picket and visit new Labour MPs electorate offices (at this rate they will be one termers!)
-occupy empty houses
-strategic strike action as appropriate
-restart Climate Strikes across all communities
-support Maori issues like Ihumatao, Maori Wards, and water rights
-stand Peoples “freak power” candidates in any and all elections to lessen influence of neo liberal managerialists in local Govt., school BOTs, etc.
Build a movement to end neo liberalism for good, at the 2023 Election.
Unfortunately, NGO’s are run like corporations by neoliberal management. That’s why hardly any of their employees are in unions- indeed it is actively discouraged. Their boards are stacked with management’s “recommendations” (i.e. neoliberal friends in banking or other such industries wanting to start a parallel career in directorship). You must be dreaming
Am well aware of the likes of the Salvation Army (who do put some useful reports out) and the background of some of the others, no one is an island, or immune to the pall of managerialism after 36 years of official neo liberalism.
It would be an unstable shifting alliance of these NGO groups dipping in and out, but, it is worth a try–is anyone else opposing the Govt. passivity and inaction?
My prediction is that the relatively tame NZCTU will be well hosed off when their coveted “Fair Pay Agreements” do not happen, or happen in a diluted form. The CTU represents approaching 400,000 union members and would be a significant NGO member of an extra Parliamentary opposition.
HUNGRY KIDS LOVE AMERICAS CUP
I think taking hungry kids to the beach to watch the shiny Americas Cup boats go wizzing past is a great Labour policy to distract kids from their stomach pains .Transformational indeed. What vision.We can even pay for their bus fare .Who says Labour isn’t helping the poor ?
Spot on Martyn , short , focused and accurate , yet again ,blowing away the corrosive fog of spin .
How about declaring a Poverty and Housing Emergency , and then actually doing something about it ?
Now that would be a Merry Christmas.HO HO HO .
” How about declaring a Poverty and Housing Emergency , and then actually doing something about it ”
Yes got it in one.
” Not the transformation we were all hoping for ”
Bomber i did not vote for them because i knew that they were never going to do anything constructive except tinker around the edges.
Neoliberal structure and Labours new constituency will see to that and a compliant media that will keep the worst effects a continued state secret.
This was a Covid panic vote on October 17th with no focus or plan to address the increasing seriousness of poverty , disconnection and the ever increasing greed and legalised theft at the expense of a great number of New Zealanders.
No one represents the people the TDB continues to highlight…. no one !
This majority of the centre will miss an extraordinary opportunity to act to do anything meaningful and real to address the massive imbalance in our society.
That is a real real tragedy and haven’t we had enough of them !
Geez, imagine these clowns with even more power. They can’t help themselves. And they want to regulate cannabis.
Chloe is the only real hope the left has. The more excuses and inaction over the next three years may be the catalyst for a strong movement on the left that can and must be negotiated with. These ideas about NGO’s and other groups uniting under a new political banner is only a matter of time.
A environmental Progressive Justice party maybe a possibility.
So, they’ve done it -declared a ‘climate emergency’. Now they can back to sleep.
Actually, they were asleep when they formulated the ‘carbon neutral’ policy
‘Govt requires public sector to be carbon neutral in 5 years’ time, convert to EVs, phase out coal boilers and ensure buildings meet green standards’
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/108232/govt-requires-public-sector-be-carbon-neutral-5-years-time-convert-evs-phase-out-coal
or are trying to con the masses yet again.
The only way government departments can become ‘carbon neutral’ is to close them all down. All the so-called strategies for ‘carbon neutrality’ are not carbon neutral at all, and many of them are based on financial scams.
Unless Jacinda means all government employees eat no industrially-generated food, must walk to work, must light their workplaces with candles made from tallow, and have no heating or air conditioning from 2025 on. 🙂
Jacinda needs to stop speaking ” News Speak” and do the fuckng job she was voted in to do,so far nothing but news bites and window dressing. After all she is the minister of child poverty, and dam all progress achieved,. no control over property speculating, The only claim to fame is the Covid response, which was designed by health experts. The redeeming quality Labour has is National was and would be worse..
10 days sick pay, come on, you still need a doctor’s cert after 3 days, big deal., Jacinda, get off your pedestal and try something transformational.
100 a month? You sure on those figures?
2019- illicit drug offences were at 468, so far this year 417, those charged and imprisoned.
Those attending community service for illicit drugs- 2019 – 96 so far this year 39.
Should be 1200 a year according to your statement.
http://nzdotstat.stats.govt.nz/wbos/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLECODE7325
Roll a fat one and relax.
It would be easy to place factory build small homes on Maori land.
This government was elected on Covid 19 and nothing else. Jacinda even called it “a Covid 19 election”
They know they don’t have a mandate for significant change, so are little more than caretakers for the next three years.
Its because Adern, Swarbrick et al are the most incompetent MPs to ever enter parliament.
Wonderful at pointing out what’s wrong but no fucking idea how to fix it and no intention of burning political capital to try.
But then again, you were told this before the election and deep down I’d like to think you know it because the alternative is that you are incompetent.
This government is unbelievably worse than the Key government. At least Key didn’t spend a fortune whilst he achieved nothing.
Adern has spent hundreds of millions on zero fees alone which actually saw enrolments drop in an effort to out money into the pockets of her own little special interest group.
But I’ve got a prediction: You will still vote for them next time despite if all this because you lack critical thinking.
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