Many of us on the Political Left had hoped a Summer holiday would take some of the stinging animosity towards Jacinda out of our collective system in time for the 2023 election.
Unfortunately I think it will make things worse.
After coming back from my Summer holidays, I can attest to the appalling service shortage our reliance on a low wage economy has caused, I saw the potholes as our roads struggle to cope with the extreme weather events climate change is causing, I saw the madness of the one lane bridges in the Coromandel and I saw the insanity of Waka Kotahi’s decision to close off passing lanes.
The sheer scale of dysfunction across the country’s roading network and holidaying infrastructure will have reinforced for many that there is enormous break down and on top of the ever worsening climate extremes combine to create the perception of outright entropy.
Little of this is the Labour Government’s fault, indeed they are desperately attempting to upgrade the roads after National underfunded repairs for almost a decade, but the experience of these problems will all still get sheeted to the Government because the animosity towards Jacinda hasn’t dissipated.
This is our Summer of Discontent and when the next food inflation prices are released, it won’t get any better.
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Summer? What summer? All we’ve had is rain 🙁
We arrived in Auckland 26 years ago from overseas, only to face exactly the same weather: A series of spent tropical storms rolling down from the NE corner of Aussie. I thought we’d moved into a washing machine! So, in this respect nothing has changed. It’s just part of a long-term cycle.
Don’t forget no eggs in the supermarkets!
How screwed up and incompetent a nation has to be to run out of a basic food like eggs.
Must be the British roots of those in charge Ada. Ask the UK what their egg situation is like.
We don’t live in the uk though so why would i worry about that? Eggs, priced their weight in gold. 2023 – vote labour or national and pretend its different.
The egg shortage (as I understand the reasons) is a combination of weak minded Nat ministers in the Key government, a deliberately gummed up land planning system, and very woke supermarkets trying to out ‘feels’ each other.
So plenty of blame to go around.
because farmers where given 10 years, I’ll just repeat that for effect 10YEARS to adapt to new and frankly not very onerous new regs…which they chose to ignore.
and as for the UK it’s down to brexshit.
Yes, food shortages and massive food inflation in a country that produces enough to feed 40 million people. Grocery prices – meat and dairy at our supermarkets – that our Australian friends cannot believe.
Dysfunction everywhere from duopoly supermarkets to meat works unable to function – over reliant on overseas labour (preceding bad labour laws allowing it)and now hopelessly messed up from covid and immigration settings.
NZTA needs entirely disbanding and starting again. But pick a government department (if you can recognise them from their new Maori name only 4% of the county understands) and the story will be similar. Utter self serving cretinism is what our public service bureaucracy represents.
And bad government decisions everywhere finally starting to show :education, roading, co governance, supermarkets, labour law, immigration, covid restrictions, gun law, emptying the prisons.
This government is going to go down as the worst in our history to this point.
Get chickens?
On eggs
ther has been a campaign to eliminate caged chickens. Understandable. The alternative is free range; mostly “free range isn’t much better, either all enclosed in a barn or free range on a bare piece of dirt. Truly free range has a problem that everyone has forgotten about over the years of caged birds.
There is a tape worm that plagues truly free range chickens that you can find nothing about if you google ‘ chicken diseases or something like that. this is because ther is nothing the industry can sell you because there is nothing that can remedy it. You have to know the name of it…. dravinia Proglatina ” to find anything and then you will find lots. But it makes genuine free range chicken farming almost impossible on a commercial scale. the disease has snails and slugs as secondary hosts and the favorite food of free range chickens id slugs and snails; and the favourite food of snails is chicken shit.
This is doubtless why caged chicken farming was developed , but it has been the norm for so long that this has been long forgotten.
D J S
caged farming was developed because more birds per sq foot. not animal care,
Going through Auckland Airport is another 3rd world journey back in time. Contrast to Sydney where it took less than 30 mins as opposed to over 2 hours and we look well and truely backward.
We drove from Sydney to Gold Coast – duel carriageway with barriers in between, large and consistent rest places and surprise, surprise no white crosses.
Australia ain’t perfect however they do understand infrastructure whereas the woke bureaucracy of New Zimbabwe don’t.
Frank are you seriously saying that woke bureaucrats are the main reason we have underfunded infrastructure for years? Like before woke was even a word we have been creating this problem. The usual we need to run the government like “a business” bullshit.
Wheel,
look at the composition and experience of the executive NZTA.
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/about-us/about-waka-kotahi-nz-transport-agency/our-executive-leadership-team
Not a single person with a Transport background. Just a group of spin doctors. The only engineer in the whole group brags in his cv that he built cycleways. Can you imagine a company run by people who haven’t got the foggiest what they do?
So Werner, based on your breathtaking reasoning, Luxon, a toothpaste and shampoo salesman, should never come within a bulls roar of Air New Zealand nor should’ve the current CEO.
Could you inform us how the IT specialist, the legal specialist, corporate affairs need to know anything about roading. Granted there are systemic issues at WK but they existed long before the formation of the current entity.
The question you should have asked is how the comms person who wrote the biographies got a job.
Kiwijoker
I don’t think Werner has used the term ‘generic’ management practice. That’s the idea that with the proper tertiary or similar credentials anyone can manage anything without specialist, or in-depth knowledge. That sounds exaggerated but is I understand the basic idea that Werner was commenting on unfavourably.
Yes that board is all corporate affairs, public affairs and engagement which would imply road building and maintenance is off the agenda.
As for “Luxon, a toothpaste and shampoo salesman, should never come within a bulls roar of Air New Zealand”, agreed same goes for leader of Govt New Zealand.
well the experience of neo lib economies proves otherwise grey
Again I would point out we have been underfunding all kinds of infrastructure for years . It’s not a defence of the current credentials of anyone in NZTA. To say we got where we are today because of “wokeness” is rubbish. I wouldn’t call Helen Clark, Key, English etc woke but it didn’t stop them underfunding things.
If he’s not saying it wheel, then I am. As much money spent on spin as road maintenance, “road to zero” bullshit with a rising road toll and lowering speed limits to increase driver frustration.
The actions of anti car ideological zealots in the bureaucracy are actually costing lives.
Wheel
Yes Frank is correct! Google Waka Kotahi and this is what you get, please focus on the words ‘primary function’:
“Our primary function is to promote an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive and sustainable land transport system.”
Talk about waffling a bunch of crap! It should read: “Our primary function is to increase, improve and maintain New Zealand’s national road (and rail) network. Our secondary function is to…” Note I said primary function, before all the other woke crap like hyper expensive tv ads kick in! That’s like saying our waste collectors primary function is to promote an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive and sustainable waste collection system. When their primary job to collect the rubbish – that’s it!!! This is the problem with this useless Labour govt: they have no fucking clue what a ‘primary function’ is. So they have no focus, no clear direction, no targets thus no accountability for pissing our tax money away. Billions of dollars pissed away. Like we have 30 million taxpayers???? And Jacinda, with her ‘zero managerial skills’ and no real authority over the bureaucrats, is the CEO of the whole circus. No wonder fuck all is achieved, other than woke crap which only requires words and academia.
Kraut I grew up in a country where people have been taking the piss out of our ability to put in roads, and the length of time it takes for them to be built, for f’ing ages. Well before the term woke came along
well the privatised binmen round our way are ok when they come but their timing is ad hoc at best
It is the main reason no traction has been made and the largest impediment to improve the situation. For example roads are deliberately not being funded nationally and locally due to ideology. LOL the road to zero.
They ain’t underfunded. The politburo sucks up so much of the funding and funds ngo’s for things like openings of an incomplete roading projects that they run out of money! For example a amateur drama theater in Aucklands Point Chev scores $200k+ for 2hrs of work for running the security of the opening event! An ex Green Party member scammed it.
Thankyou for helping to expose governmental waste, incompetence and corruption.
the trouble with privatisation is when you ask for a truly working example (good/better service and CHEAPER) the right always comes up dry..because and I do stand to be corrected, I can’t think of an example
It took the Wall Street neoliberals much longer to deindustrialise and union-bust in Australia. Full local production in the auto’ industry lasted until 2016, and the apparel industry lasted until the early 2010s. The mining boom also helped.
As a result there was a lot of domestic income that could be taxed. Although high speed rail and tramways have fallen below par, standard heavy rail and the new underground metros are in good shape.
There is no real anti-rail lobby to speak of.
Urban motorways need expanding and are behind schedule, but regional and interstate highways are in reasonable shape (considering the population).
Hi Frank, to be fair we drove GC to Sydney in November just gone, and did see one white cross/shrine setup.
And 2 dead ‘roos.
Will do the drive Sydney to GC in November this year after a cruise Akl BOI Syd. Very much looking forward to that!
Arriving by sea into the Bay of Islands totally suits my NZ history interest.
Blame Stephen Joyce for the condition of our roads. He was the one who increased the single axle truck weight limits from 44 tonnes to 53 tonnes?
Yep
If that’s true, I’ve got yet another reason to hate that smarmy bastard Joyce.
I’m interested to know from those who know, I don’t ‘dine’ as such but do noodle houses, japanese and kebab restaurants that kinda thing…and yes there will be fine dining..but are the vast majority of our restaurants microwaved and reheated slop like in the UK and yankland ?genuine question…if so maybe they don’t need to exist.
New Zealand has gone from a make work scheme for the illiterate to a make work scheme for the incompetent. At least the former gave us workers, the later just gives us numpties.
Many of us on the Political Left had hoped a Summer holiday would take some of the stinging animosity towards Jacinda out of our collective system in time for the 2023 election.
REALLY!
I am 74 have always been on the left, my parents were on the left, my siblings are all on the left.
But frankly the woman who got into politics because of child poverty and then became the PM and the minister of child poverty is a failure for all those living in poverty and all of those at the bottom of the heap. But no doubt south auckland will vote for Labour again, they never ever get looked at, their living conditions never ever change, but why would Labour concern themselves with this, they will still vote for them, and the middle class don’t like the poor and dispossessed to get anything. That is exactly where Labour aim themselves.
At least with the other lot we will know what we are fighting and all those stupid Labour Tribal people will be out in their drives hating what the Nats do although Labour could have likely done exactly the same thing and the Tribal Labour lot would have sat on their hands.
jacinda is shaping up to be our kirsten sinema….all the left noises on the way to power all the RIGHT noises now she’s in power.
Compounding price increases exasperated by rising oil/fuel costs, mainly diesel. We all know that when diesel goes up in price, everything goes up!
The US and their oil barons are trying to drive the price of oil up over $80+ pb.
Hyperinflation is on its way!
All Adern needs to do, in my humble opinion, is to turn the clock to back before douglas to about a time of Norman Kirk and from there, beg like fuck of the King for a royal commission of inquiry into our politics and its relationships to sad little limp-dick kiwi-as urban banking and investments cartels and our agricultural primary industry, then imprison as required.
Something like this.
Madoff. The Monster of Wall Street.
https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=81466159
What is the ‘Political left?’
As far as I can see, and know, there isn’t one. There’s those of us that are not neoliberal believers and are not associated with this thing call the political left or the current neoliberal political party’s known as Labour or the retarded gweens.
Is it a remnant of a bye gone era? Because I struggle to see one anywhere.
You can worry or not about what ever you like.
sausage
New Zealand’s first motorway, north from Wellington, opened in 1950.
Will it reach Palmerston North for it’s centenary?
https://twitter.com/wakakotahi_news/status/1474115127481884676?lang=ar-x-fm
What holiday?