It truly says something about how much the last election was a class war fought for landlords and property speculators that this wasn’t mentioned once this election…
Cost of living crisis: More than half a million people rely on food charity each month
Hundreds of thousands of people are relying on an Auckland food charity each month as the cost of living crisis pushes them to the brink.
The New Zealand Food Network rescues food that would normally end up in landfills and give it to families in need. It is dealing with a drastic spike in the number of people needing help.
CEO Gavin Findlay told Newshub months of high living costs are starting to collide for many Kiwis and they’re unable to afford the basics.
“Earlier on in the year, we kind of took a pulse of post-COVID needs and we saw an 165 percent rise in demand for services across our food hubs. Six months later, it’s risen by another 20 percent.
“We thought the demand would kind of flatten out after COVID but obviously the cost of living is really prevalent.”
…half a million fellow Kiwis are dependent on food charity each month in a rigged capitalism that the IRD told us is biased in favour of the rich.
Shouldn’t it shock us all that we didn’t know it was half a million each month and that it was never mentioned?
This election was a class war against the poor but because the middle class woke activists have robbed the political vocabulary with their ‘Me! Me! Me!’ identify virtue signalling, there was no language to describe what just happened to renters.
Half a million need food charity every month, but tell me again why we must persecute people for misusing pronouns and not loving Te Reo enough.
Here are the true winners of woke identity politics.
White men in blue suits.
I fear the half a million Kiwis needing food charities each month will despise the Left for our incremental solutions.
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The Left did focus on the growing inequality in NZ/Ao and gained some support and reward. Greens and TPM lifted their combined share of the vote from 9.1% in 2020 to 13.4% in 2023.
The central neoliberal parties, Nat/Lab weren’t in the least bit concerned about poverty and inequality. Their share of the vote fell from 75.6% to 65.9% for the same period.
The real problem is that the conservative/right parties NZF/ Act grew their vote from 10.2% to 15.5%.
The sad conclusion is that the majority of Kiwi not only don’t care if you are poor and struggling but consider that it is your own fault if you are in that position.
I don’t know why but even when the most humane fair people in NZ get their own home then something occurs where they start to slowly degrade into the most selfish and horrific form of humanity. All of a sudden they start seeing capital gains increase, this switches something on in the brain, they start seeing this gain as a result of their hard work. Therefore others not getting this free money are not hard working? They cannot see it for what it actually is, which is a corruption of the system whereby the Reserve Bank of NZ and the Treasury manipulate the markets to make the rich asset owners feel richer through house price gains, even when house prices should actually be falling (eg COVID). We need research into what this does to the human brain and we need to know what new hormones are produced by Capital Gains. I imagine if you did a proper investigation and actually did a brain examination of a multiple property owning landlord who has recently passed, that when you cut off the scalp using a circular saw all that would seep out would be a black/green stinking toxic sludge of hate. The system needs to reset and this corruption of decent people needs to stop. Lets get our humanity back, our societal cohesion. These unfair fixed capital gains are destroying all of us, even those who think they are “getting ahead”, they may be “winning” comparing themselves to non home owners but the unfairness is destroying the whole of society, which means we are all losing, its just that some are losing much more than others.
I dont think hatred is the issue. IT is greed that most venal of sins. Greed and the lure of filthy lucre will find excuses for any behaviour. That is what twists brains.
Exactly this!
Social justice and economic justice aren’t an either/or, in many ways it’s the same struggle
Another reason why Labour is out . Most of the volunteers at food banks are retired middle class who vote and we saw first hand the effect of Labour’s running of the country .
6 years ago many were full of hope but as numbers swell the sadden increased.The poor were effected badly by covid and it will take a lot to improve life for the poor not just promises.
Yes and those million volunteers voted Green or TPM or didnt vote at all.
Thank you for your work in the community Trevor.
Do you seriously think this change of government will make a difference to what you see happening? I hope you are right, but I fear you are not.
I don’t think Mr. Luxon is on the same page as you, he has other priorities.
He’s already used very insulting language to describe the people you help which doesn’t bode well.
If that’s one of the main reasons, NACT won’t last beyond three years
One more reason why Labour is out: some 22% eligible voters didn’t vote and I suspect many are the half a million needing food charity. May be wrong. But so hard to engage when times are desperate and ‘the government’ is seen to be at fault.
Why ? Because MSM hacks control the narrative, and the government controls them, that’s why. The savage kneecapping of the Commissioner for Children was sidelined too. Ardern’s ‘child povidy’ mantra wasn’t as provocative as declaring critics of just about everything transphobic, homophobic, racist, or sexist, and achieving nothing useful by doing so.
Silly goose! You get what you vote for. Now sit back and enjoy the ride. The white men know what they’re doing.
What we should be talking about is all those millions in donations that came from vested interests, now have those vested interests advising National what to because of their inexperience. Does no one see the irony that National are using consultants to tell them how to put money their pockets! It’s a f’ing joke. Where are all those strokers that were outraged over Mahuta now? F’ing hypocrites
Yeah agree with you Wheel and Mahutas’ husband contract will be minute in comparison to what these greedy mother fuckers are getting now I don’t like to swear but my blood is starting to boil.
Business people invested in sporting National because they knew another 3 years of Labour would see them ankrupt and the thought of Labour working with TPM or Greens sent a shiver down their spin. They do not need or get special treatment but with National in chargevof immigration and work laws thinks will be better for business Hopefully there will be less crime and the waste of money on extra staff for protection will not be needed as much
Based on what Trevor? Where are the actual numbers that remotely hint at that? You hear sound bites and lap it up. If it’s that dire there is no way National should be awarding their donors in the real estate industry or giving tax cuts. Don’t give me some riddle about reducing spend by laying off thousands. That won’t be a cheap exercise either.
This is long but the result of observation and thought – could it go in towards the end of the flow of comments or held back till others have had their less lengthy say so I don’t smother the comments line? I’ve referenced some links before but they stand repetition and become more pertinent as we advance then fall back – the present reminds me of what I read about the Somme.
Yesterday I put in OM that Dire Straits Money for Nothing has big meaning for us. It seemed pointed at the pollies and wealthy movers and groovers, financiers, Treasury officials, economists, amateur people movers – such are politicians, and trained grifters as too many of the administration and contractors to government are.
Now we have supinely accepted this unholy bunch I choose another couple of Dire Straits work to illustrate the situation. First is the attractive luscious langorous guitar work in Private Investigations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9K27HvhDxA
– just right for relaxing to after your Walk –
I am referring to The Walk of Life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpKJYpP5xhA (official vid – you choose)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAg8NGTZf_g
If we want something we have to think for ourselves, walk up to the work and get life. No-one is going to give it to us. People made getting a better life for others their big obsession in the 19-20th centuries, sacrificed much, cried with relief when they made changes that were good in law or other disciplines. We accepted them, used them, and slipped back into apathetic acceptance of the very wrongs and faults of before. Good things are to be enjoyed and then a good deed passed on to the others around us, and also to further in the world. So I am sure, we must find others with a practical vision for helping others with some skill we possess which will help others and us, to find value in our lives through finding and using those innate skills. Do the Walk of Life and let’s remember poems and songs and music are oil that aid the turning of the mind.
WHAuden verses from 1 September 1939 are the crux, the hub – speak of what we need to do.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1,_1939
I think this is deathless work and so good. But we need to discuss what we do for value and clarity. An example of how we can get lost in thoughts and words is in how Auden himself was dissatisfied with his own poem – trying to make a point, arouse an understanding that was true to what he observed and felt, I suppose.
Even though “September 1, 1939” became one of his best-known poems, Auden later criticized the poem for its “incurable dishonesty,” and he revised it several times. He removed the final stanza in 1945 before repudiating the poem entirely by leaving it out of his Collected Shorter Poems (1966).https://www.britannica.com/topic/September-1-1939
Musings from In Memory of W.B. Yeats WHAuden- https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats
…But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Are these words for us? Do they speak to our inner being, our souls, our subconscious; whatever? They’d better get a reaction or dessicated ‘pecuns’ and AI will step into the breach for sure.
Rant and us rave, their leader, now saying im a ceo, thats my lead, why, political not knowing, leaving these others advice, to say.
6 years of a Labour Government (3 years with a majority) ends with half a million Kiwis needing food charity each month.
One can see why Labour didn’t want to talk about it.
And landlords wealth has risen exponentially. Like Luxons. Betrayed…
Yes he need for food parcels has increased under Labour. I knew this because the money I regularly give to charaties is often responded to with emails and newsletters telling me how much demand has increased.
In Auckland anyway the 11c a litre odd petrol (tax) will undoubtably help
Neo Liberalism has breed a selfish and self centred society.
There’s no argument you see it all around us including how we vote.
Shame on us for accepting it.
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