Two stories that tell us everything about where we are as a nation right now…
NZ’s richest man reveals covid lockdown project: A custom built superyacht
Kiwi billionaire Graeme Hart has taken delivery of his latest superyacht, said to be a 102-metre custom-built feat of engineering.
Specifications released by the manufacturer, Feadship, reveal the yacht has four outdoor hot tubs and a pool occupying the full height of the main deck, accessed via a pool deck.
It also has a helipad and a hangar and the largest tender boat garage door that the firm has ever installed on a luxury vessel.
…vs this…
Salvation Army forced to quit Christmas meal hampers
The cost of living crisis has forced The Salvation Army New Zealand to make a national decision to stop providing its traditional Christmas meal hampers.
It’s possibly the first year it’s had to make the call but divisional director for community ministries Vikki Stevenson said the organisation couldn’t justify the cost of the Christmas treats when an increasing number of Kiwis needed everyday grocery items.
This comes as The Salvation Army released its State of our Communities 2023 report this week, with respondents highlighting unaffordable housing, and soaring prices of essentials like food, petrol and power as their main concerns.
“Food shortage is a big thing, even people with jobs are finding it hard and have nowhere to turn to,” one respondent shared.
…post Covid we all sacrificed equally in an unequal society.
NZ is now a tale of two pities.
There is a class war happening in NZ right now to exclude the under class, the beneficiaries, the working poor, state house tenants, prisoners, exploited migrant workers, the disabled, drug addicts, workers, the 600 000 reliant on food banks each month, the 300 000 living in housing and energy poverty and renters, but thanks to middle class Wellington activists who have stolen all the political oxygen for their woke identity politics virtue signals, we don’t have the vocabulary to articulate class war.
Our past history of egalitarianism is now a mere pretension used by the Woke to feel superior while the mega wealthy continue to avoid any focus on their obscene wealth.
Bernard Hickey has argued, “We could have gotten $200 billion in extra tax revenues if only there had been a fair tax system which meant that capital gains were taxed at the same rate as every other type of income.”
In a liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.
It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.
Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.
Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.
These rich pricks have designed the system for themselves, ‘you can’t tax unrealised capital gains’ the Right scream, like bullshit we can’t!
Council rates are based on valuation and you can borrow against that capital gain.
If it means the mega rich have to sell a mansion or two to pay the tax bill, so fucking be it!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
Making these levels of extreme profit right before the looming recession of late stage capitalism is an outrage!
Unfortunately the middle class woke Left are too focused on Social Justice Privileges to fight for Economic Justice Rights!
No poor family in NZ are sitting around the kitchen table cancelling each other for misusing pronouns.
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NZ is full of a lot of selfish cunts now sad not the country we use to be
@ CiP. I think we’re still the country we used to be, it’s just that we’re experiencing an MSM manufactured attention deficit.
While we were living beautiful lives until cunts like hart slithered in and stole it out from under our blissful, restful noses. AO/NZ’s still there. We just need to comprehend that it is and by that, we need to read, to re experience and to re encounter our wonderful AO/NZ for the sake if its safety and frankly, selfishly, our blissful joy. Truly, I believe it’s all merely a matter of an awareness born of inquisitiveness and having the confidence to boldly evaluate situations and then act accordingly. We just get pissed up or drug fucked then brawl.
Billionaires, by their very presence, shout that they don’t care if they’ve deprived us of a right to a carefree life.They, instead, see their so called ‘achievements’ as being entitlements and therefore they have a sacrosanct right to exploit us and who should care if, in so doing, they deprive us, which they clearly, boldly and arrogantly do.
I personally think that Hart and his other 13 billionaire cronies are mentally unwell. Where we have natural empathy and conscience they have callous disregard and couldn’t give one small fuck about us which surely gives them into a predatory mindset. Some might call that psychopathic narcissism. So, I’m compelled to ponder then, should we be OK with predatory psychopathic narcissists deeply embedded within our politics and well able to subvert even those rare politicians with the best intentions by offering them vast amounts of money to see things their way. Graeme Hart? He was the national party’s largest contributor at $250,000.00 wasn’t he? How could a homeless person and equally valid AO/NZ citizen compete with that? By offering a blow job and a fag end in a public toilet?
Read stories by good people like George Monbiot, Rutger Bergman and the studies of Professor Stanley Milgram. And also study the extraordinary escapades of Sasha Baron Cohen and chillingly witness just how easy it is to bullshit people out of their minds to make them compliant to unnatural demands. Check this guy out also and I’m proud to say I’ve worked with him.
Craig Zobel.
‘Compliance’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(film)
Finally @ Covid is Pa. Language use is extremely important in keeping one’s flight path straight and level.
Our AO/NZ STILL IS they way it used to be. We just need to unearth it and give it a brush down and a cup or tea.
@ Graeme Hart. Go and tell the cunt what you think. Show no fear! I get the feeling you’re the sort of person who’s not afraid of much. Kia kaha.
+100
Just wait Martyn for the Right wingers to accuse you of fomenting the Politics of envy.
Martyn – I wonder if Graeme Hart donates to charity?
I wonder if he pays tax?
Well done Graeme! Not bad for a guy who started out as a tow trucker and panel beater.
It just shows what can be done with some intelligence and effort.
So where did you go wrong Andrew?
You’re assuming I went wrong 😉
We all get to make choices in life I stand by mine.
“We all get to make choices in life I stand by mine.”
So very wrong.
Good on you Andrew,I suspect MHK has relied on Government handouts.
Brain dead Bob, here’s a question for your pathetic little brain,those young babies dying in Palestine, Gaza, did they have a choice?
I’d suggest you fuck off but given your infantile posts, you’d struggle to even know what that means. You really are truly obnoxious let alone unintelligent.
Know doubt still living with mummy.
You neglected that Mr Hart got a few sweetheart deals along the way that set him on the path to prosperity. He did well to specialise in packaging & his decisions showed a long-term plan to build wealth so he has reaped the reward of his labor.
I also know that you can’t take it with you & “What profit is it to gain the world yet lose your soul” so I am happy with my lot in life as I am sure he is also.
‘Packaging’?? that’s CZ code for trafficking, dear.
It is clear reading the regular right wing contributors on this site that they sold their soles many years ago because for them life is only about the money. When they’re long dead no one will remember them.
During peak COVID a person well known to me was a union organiser who dealt with an interesting situation involving Mr Hart. One of his other huge boats was in Auck for a refit and some regional boat builders shuffled staff around to do it. The company my friend dealt with had made workers initially use up their leave and holidays which was wrong to do in the wage subsidy regime, as a precedent setting successful case taken by Etū against Carter Holt Harvey on the same issue later showed.
The company coughed up and paid back all its workers their leave. The quiet admission from the employer was that the Hart job was a windfall and had enabled that, when in reality the boss should have employed the spirit of the wage subsidy in the first place. Yay Graeme Hart!–not–he is a venal corporate thug. Thinking it is ok to have such a preposterous boat has to indicate some form of physcopathy. That yacht deserves a torpedo.
So why is Hart the villain here .He gave a company some work in a period that was devoid of work .How the boss ran his business cannot come back on Hart
because trev he bears a close relationship to you except he’s got the money and you havn’t and never will have with the nats in power….but continue the slavish admiration of people who despise you.
The difference between you and me is I am satisfied with my life and how I lived it .Been round the World washed dishes,had my own businesses and now retired can help others and past on skills .I would like some of Hart’s money but I have enough and am not envious .
As Frank Sinatra sang I did it my way
To the likes of Hart, you are just as much an undeserving ‘bottom feeder’ as the people you hand out food parcels to.
Don’t kid yourself that you are in their league, Trevor.
Which brings me back again to why no-one has looked up the meaning of bottom feeder.
Maybe Mr. Hart knows.
The top 100 richest people want to pay more tax. They just don’t know how.
Let them pay 45% not the squeezed middle.
I’m sure the accountants and lawyers they hire to pay their taxes, could work it out if they wanted too.
Agreed why won’t the powers that be let them pay?
An interesting point you make about council rates being based on the property valuation.
Wouldn’t it be much fairer for rates to be based on usage? Why should some widow 80 yo who bought a house 50 years ago be charged the same as the family of 5 living next door using 5 times the water, producing 5, times the rubbish etc?
Those Wellington woke middle class, Left activists are the people who are already well-housed and securely employed in the public sector or NGOs, and they don’t want any significant economic change – because that might lower house prices and reduce their real estate capital gains. Increasing income taxes on them goes down like a cup of cold sick.
So, while they use all the right pronouns and wouldn’t dream of stopping drag queen performances at the city library, their response to poverty is to think the poor really should have bought a house or two back in the 1990s, just like they – or their parents – did. Too bad if the poor didn’t.
Every billionaire is a sign of an economy that fails us – the majority.
A system that rewards the few, not the many.
Why do WE, the masses, have to support these tax-dodging, self-glorifying parasites?
Why is Stuff rubbing our noses in his excesses?
Is it because he bribed – sorry, “donated to” – the nascent Coalition of Clowns, and therefore gets the same puff piece propaganda as these Parliamentary whores he’s recently bought and paid for?
charity solves nothing, as times get hard charity dries up, just when it’s needed most
kudos to all the charity volonteers but the govt is living off your efforts
Completely agree re this, just look at Carer Support.
The maximum funding available is $80 per day or $10/per hour despite minimum wage being over $23/hour.
” Specifications released by the manufacturer, Feadship, reveal the yacht has four outdoor hot tubs and a pool occupying the full height of the main deck, accessed via a pool deck.
It also has a helipad and a hangar and the largest tender boat garage door that the firm has ever installed on a luxury vessel.
Imagine how many homeless families that tub could accommodate !
That what celebrating success looks like if you listen to Luxon , Willis , Seymour and their party members , caucuses , their donors and other corporates , shareholders and big business tax free recipients with great accountants and hidden off shore tax havens.
All the bullshit around getting the country back on track is that it is not a universal commitment , in other words the bottom feeders , wage slave’s and all the groups mentioned in this post are exempt. Like Key ( who he suspiciously reminds me of every time he speaks ) its aimed at wannabee Graeme Harts and other institutionalized wealthy citizens and the property millionaires not forgetting the managerial six figure club and protecting THEIR interests nothing more and dressed up to appear Hobbit friendly. Its history repeating itself over and over again with the same shitty dishonest marketing campaign.
I hope Luxon gets an invitation to go cruising ( that will make a great selfie for public consumption ) just to keep him in mind of who is really in charge here and how the many are to be kept in their place serving the few.
In the past there was always a movement to counter and defend so many of the marginalized and serfs whose mission in life is to celebrate and contribute to this success and marvel of high productivity.
Niiiiice waka bro… Give us a hoon !!!
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