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They say smokers largely come from the poorer side of society.
Therefore, it’s interesting to see Labour people being upset that future tax increases on tobacco may potentially be suspended for 3 years.
Labour need to stop being so holier-than-thou. It’s a real voter turn off.
If people want to stop, help them. And if they don’t, stop bashing them with financial penalties.
Financial penalties, that’s all middle class Labour or whatever know about governing. Help to learn to cope and get a fair go in society well that’s a no-no. If you can’t keep up, if you fall and can’t get up, the answer is a sneer and a surprised look at suggestion of some more humane approach – but ‘they’…but there are lots …. if they want to work…. If you don’t convince us of your worth to be in this world and ‘properly’ participate in it, then your permit is withdrawn!
What we need is less financial thrashings and less tongue-lashings by poisonous administrators. Sufficient money to come from progressive taxes. And stop funding the police and corrections from the takings of gangs from their various industries – I think that is what the weasly types. not even people, who are in power are doing. Well they think ‘crime is happening anyway so let them get on with it, and when we catch them we will grab their funds and use them to pay for the punishment process’. It is the practice that I believe is immoral behaviour.
And then fewer MPs Councillors and admin staff – particularly fewer planners; a block on borrowing and expenditure for Councils again. And set up jolly, keen groups of retired and ratepayers specialising in some interest, working one morning a week say and then having subsidised hot scone or muffin and tea or coffee together. Cohesion, keenness, caring for whatever, perhaps being picked up by dedicated people-mover and dropped off. Great for positive ambience and cheaper. (Positive motto: Good Vibes – Ambience not Ambulance.)
We are being bled through rates, incurring GST and fines that replace taxes that aren’t spent where they should be, more on prettying up for tourists. Nelson followed Eugenie Sage’s Green direction and increased tip charges to limit throwouts. Now there is an increase in fly tipping. But still now the Council has decided to up tip charges again. as for toursim we are
prostituting ourselves from need,as we have given away, gambled away, all our own rightful, practical, own-supply businesses and the steady jobs that went with them, plus sold off any clever, good-earning export businesses. Tourists are nice but dense, whether NZs or from overseas.
Re Eugenie Sage’s Green direction and increased tip charges.
Where is the just transition?
“The global transition to a low carbon future needs to be a fair and equitable transition that leaves no community, no family, and no person behind,”
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz-commits-just-transition
PS Just got a flyer to build cohesive neighbourhood, getting resilience – from an undeclared real estate agent. Hollow ironic laugh. Sell us our old lives back is the kaupapa of the sharp upwardly-mobile middle class. No doubt the rates will still stay high though we do mutual self-help.
I have unearthed some Listeners from 2003 when Finlay Macdonald was editor. The items were all relevant for today and interesting.
One was about Robin Morrison a NZ photographer who died age 48 in 1993.
He and his work should be remembered.
Some background and there is something apparently on youtube on him.
https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/culturalelsewhere/6262/robin-morrison-remembered-2014-life-in-the-lens/
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2401/S00367/man-sentenced-for-skippering-vessel-into-flock-of-protected-seabirds.htm
…Matthew Jurlina, a professional rugby player, was prosecuted by DOC after investigators were alerted to a video of the incident shared on Instagram in 2022. He appeared for sentencing in the North Shore District Court yesterday (24 January)…
“They don’t deserve to be deliberately harmed on the water or chased by dogs on land – behaviour like this disturbs them and can kill them,” Dylan says.
A pet peeve about word usage. Can we stop saying that something ‘doesn’t deserve’ .
Could be ‘they deserve the utmost care’ don’t you think DOC?
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/19eaa1h/fisherman_and_international_rugby_player_matt/
Good chest muscle, don’t know if physically-skewed types attend to developing their brains and sensitivities as well as physically?
Is this an example of what we are struggling with in the country – no brain, no pain felt by many, but then even more do feel pain? Which came first – stupidness from ‘team’ sport, or the stupid gravitating to sport?
Christchurch and cathedrals! Let’s have a great contest of ideas and plans that will finish in to years. And people from all over invited to vote with dollars. In the end there would be enough to fund the Chosen One.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/culture-101/audio/2018923387/watch-immerse-yourself-in-alan-parkinson-s-giant-inflatable-cathedral
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/507389/the-1m-pr-and-lobbying-campaign-to-overturn-livestock-export-ban
Surely the past was lesson enough. But no if there are $ to be made, and old ships to wear out, and excess people – what can it matter if there are problems – out of mind out of sight.
Why are the old 3 Left blogs so diminished? Spose it’s down to media trends of non-attn pushing strains. We know about the other 2.
Hope you saw Maher’s latest show where in his monologue he compared Left woke feelings to Right overthrow of democracy as an equal thing. Mostly his utterly foul defence of Israel.
That aside, I’m bored here. Which shouldn’t be the way for rationalists vicious for reality. Pootling shooting at the new day’s prob here.
Personally I’m so excited reading and hearing about things, that just expressing and recounting thoughts and reading concerns and facts here means I just about have to have tranquilisers. Boring it isn’t. Better grease your brains with a bit of whisky to both excite them and dull the edges of the sharp practices observed and felt, with Labour included in that. That’s the bitter pill but tells us something about human nature, and ourselves and family, that is inescapable. And that’s not boring – so stop whingeing.
I’m interested in general reality, dear GW. Your ‘personally’ says it all. You’re a character, an individual footnoting his way through life. In other words, your dominance of the comments section is a symptom of the stagnant pond that is the Left blogs, and, to an extent, cause.
Not your fault, keep it up indeed. Media has moved away from interest in politics — see ‘Brave New World’. We’ve put pleasure before imminent extinction.