2023 wasn’t an election, it was a grudge fuck against Labour by an embittered post Covid electorate who were economically insecure, alienated by woke dogma and heart broken that all Labour could do with a once in a generation MMP majority was ‘good first steps’ rather than transformational leaps.
It has resulted in a Hard Right Racist Government bound together only by a shared glee in bashing beneficiaries, workers, renters, prisoners, the environment, gang members, drug addicts and the disabled.
They all have a particular dislike for Māori and have used attempts at co-governance to fulfil the promise of the Treaty (which is our collective obligation) as a weapon with which to cement into place 19th Century White Settler Privilege and call that ‘democracy’.
Saying you are implementing the cruelty you promised during the election isn’t ‘democracy’, it’s malicious spite!
In a modern liberal democracy, you acknowledge the power imbalance created in society and you resource to ensure those power imbalances are compensated for!
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.
The Political Right are screaming that imposing Qanon talking points as social policy, destroying workers rights, Tobacco deaths for tax cuts and taking $555million from the poorest families are all acceptable because they have the Majority so fuck everyone else!
That’s why on the first day of the Government there were nationwide protests. That’s why in the first week of the new Government global headlines were attacking our u-turn on gas and oil exploration and smoking policy.
Dismantling the values of a liberal progressive democracy to cement into place 19th Century White Settler privilege using culture war vengeance as social policy IS NOT Democratic, it’s majoritarianism without any of the values of a true Democracy.
You can’t shit on Renters, Māori, the Environment, Workers, Beneficiaries and Prisoners while pretending to be democratic.
That’s the zeal of the Lynch mob, that’s not Democracy!
Majoritarianism is the whip of the autocrat masquerading as legitimacy. Is has none of the soul or wisdom that a Democracy requires to be meaningful.
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#BHN Christopher Luxon’s disastrous appearance on Breakfast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIQ7-VzSR2c
@christophermarshall527
33 minutes ago
That Relief to Landlords is at the top of their priorities, and not say subsidies for 1st time home buyers, says everything that needs to be said about this vile three headed Government. Especially coming from the stuttering mouth of 11 homes Luxon.
@lvmarv1
8 minutes ago
I have a friend who has a rental property, I asked him how much he was going ro reduce his rent for his tenant with interest deductibility being reintroduced. He just laughed.
Yes…thatcwas a complete and utter trainwreck…
Finally we have an interviewer, in Anna Burns Francis, who can think on her feet and out the complete and utter nonsense and hypocricy coming out of Clusterfuxon’s mouth..
Cry me a river for those poor hard done by landlords who are only buying houses so they think that they can make a tax free capital gain..
Anna was right on point when she called Luxon out for conflating a business like a cafe who pay tax o profits with a landlord who doesn’t.
The game is up on this narrative that owning houses is a business.
Nobody is asking these people to buy up houses..that is their’s, and the bank’s, decision, and their risk.
All they are doing is gambling on the property market to continually rise.
In other words…it’s one giant pyramid scheme…and we all know what happens to them in the end.
For a Government to be openly aiding this giant pyramid scheme is as dumb as you can get.
Where do they think that that will end up.
In the same breath he is saying that they want average houses prices to get back to being 3 × an average household income .
That means that either the average household income would need to be $300,000 to match the average house price of $900,000, or, the average house price will need to drop to $ 300,000..
Now Clusterfuxon…which one of these two scenarios is most likely???
NZ First hand brake are in play, so they will make sure the mega rich pay more tax.
NZF along with NACT, ARE making sure that the select group of “mega rich ” is protected throughout successive generations.
These elite kids through inheritance, will be the richest generation despite not working for it, nor paying a tax on it here in NZ ? $TRILLIONS to be gained
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/28/millennials-richest-generation-wealth-property
Some kind of joke? NZ1st took the bribe to kill the CGT, and killed it.
They ain’t going to do anything for NZ.
Delivered with all the passion of a man who, suddenly and unaccountably, finds himself in the minority.
Do you think maybe you and @MB could get a room? Bring Bryce the aggregator in chief along for a 3some. You really are becoming a bit tedious @CT. We know you’ve gone done paid your dues and aren’t really getting the attention you think you deserve but spare us please.
You are proof that this forum is one thing and one thing only: an echo chamber. Your name says it all…Once Was.
Isn’t it a bit early in the day to be hitting the wine cask snouter/trotter ,,, I meant trotter
**********************************************************************
Austerity, or the supposed need for it (TINA), is artificially created by right-wing Govt regulations + shadow banking/off-shore tax havens, and the top 100 corporations worldwide using these constructs to avoid paying tax on their huge revenues and profits…..
Austerity is used to shrink Govt/social services ,,, and increase the role/revenue for the corporations/private sector.
When Luxon did his bennie bash speech people need to know the basic numbers ,,,, to know he was engaging in Dirty Politics.
Breaking it down ,,, out of every $10 the Dept of social welfare spends, roughly $6.60 ( and rising goes on pensions ) ,,,,
Accommodation Allowance ( which is Govt welfare paid to Landlords so they can get higher rental income) ,,, and ‘working for familys’ tax credits (which is Govt welfare to employers to top up their low non-livable wages) ,,, Accommodation Allowance + Tax credits + the pension, accounts for approximately $7.50 out of every $10 spent by social welfare.
‘Fraud’ on the remaining $2.50 is estimated (by a bull-shitter whose own $52,000 accommodation rort/entitlement would rightly be called fraud if a Welfare recipient pulled the same stunt) ,,,, is estimated between 5%-10% ,,,,
So Luxon was making a big song and dance about ‘going after’ the approximately 12cents to 25cents, out of every $10 the Dept of Social Welfare spends….. One has to ask, did he spend all his time as CEO of Air NZ trying to catch stewards and hostesses who may have been stealing sugar and coffee from the airline??? ,,, because that’s the equivalent leadership skills and priority’s.
What do he,,, or Act,,, ever have to say about the untold and unpaid billions that we are missing, year in and year out, stiffed from our Govt revenue/income by the richest entities in the world….
… Nothing, because that’s who they are really working for….. now have some austerity
“Accommodation Allowance ( which is Govt welfare paid to Landlords so they can get higher rental income) ”
Now if the accommodation allowance was paid directly to landlords there would be transparency. The allowance could cut or capped or not increased like all those other public servants incomes, GPs, cops, nurses, teachers.
It’s laughable that landlords think they are entrepreneurs running private enterprises.
That’s a stupid commemt but to phrase it better does becoming a property owner mean by the necessity of the property rights mean you are morally bankrupt and corrupt? No it doesn’t. You have to do way more dodgy shitnthan that like oh I don’t know cutbschool lunches from the budget to fund your tax cuts, moron.
People have to be nice to eachother, work together, and in general be good individuals more than they act violent, cruel, or evil. If this wasn’t true, if people fought and were evil more then they were good and work together then there just wouldn’t be human civilization. Our evolution made us a social species, which means we have a stronger impulse to help eachother than to fight eachother.
Says the man who is pretty much the only left-wing blogger that hasn’t condemned the murder of thousands of Palestinian children in revenge for the Hamas terrorist attack, and who allows bullshit about Palestinian war crimes to go unchallenged on their blog site.
Terrorists deserve what they get. Boo hoo.
Yes, almost 3 year old terrorists.
Some of those “terrorists” were less than five years old. Probably not big enough to carry a gun. Only a prick would approve of killing kids. Palestinian or Israeli.
“Wah, I love & support terrorists”.
What a cogent reply – I will change my mind instantly. Fuckwit. Not even a good troll.
You reacted though.
Tick.
so did you gerald gold star to surgeon
Nothing leftist about Snouter.
Did Trotter just leave a snide remark then take off? SIGH\
“2023 wasn’t an election, it was a grudge fuck against Labour by an embittered post Covid electorate who were economically insecure. ”
But what ‘Labour’ are you writing about @ MB? The ‘Labour’ we have is not the labour we who are now over 60 , give or take, remembers it as being.
It’s extremely important to be mindful of that. Today’s 40 year olds were sticky and freshly hatched when roger douglas was stabbing his mate, David Lange, in the back to then go on to gut old labour and replace it was the far right wing fascism we know of as neo-liberalism, and even more chilling, was all bought and paid for by the national party and its intestinal parasites feasting on free exports-earned farmer money. We must not forget that! It’d be hugely dangerous to move blithely past that letting dumb luck and the hopes and fiction of dreams delude us from giving up the steerage of OUR country and OUR lives. We must remain aware of the fact that history dictates our future so with that in mind, look around ? Walk past the homeless in all the larger cities? What do you see? Do you see Labour? What do your eyes tell you?
@ fabulous Martyn Bradbury. There is no Labour Left, left and before we can make changes we must learn to accept reality and the reality is that what was Labour is not the Labour we have now. If it was, luxon’s national and his fleas would’ve been banished to the back benches at the last election. Instead ! We have the fuckers in our faces telling us this and fucking that.
Luxon? Fuck off! Peters? Did anyone do a blood test on *Paul White’s body? Seymour. What, exactly, are you? You more remind me of Ash ( Ian Holm ) in the first Alien movie than of being a human being. You’re a scary little fucker, that’s what you are but I take great comfort in knowing you’re not match for Chloe Swarbrick.
* The Paradise Conspiracy.
Here it is. Buy it. Read it. Have a strong cup of tea on stand-by.
https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Conspiracy-Ian-Wishart/dp/0473033976
The Paradise Conspiracy 2 which I’ve not read. Yet.
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace/books/non-fiction/true-crime/listing/4604866366?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-r-vBhC-ARIsAGgUO2ADuHzVuKkL6N5HiuAoCKtDzE7iVijkDAJS8OH1QG1vy4li1tnQRJcaAm2eEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
You are right CB. There’s Labour and then there’s Labour as we remember from the 60s and 70s.
With the Lange govt., they lost their way. Lange might have been brilliant at the Oxford Union debating society but he was letting rats take the helm in his own govt. back home.
I hope you are right about Swarbrick. I really do.
Seymour has been groomed and programmed to do what he’s doing, for a very long time. He doesn’t seem to have high emotional intelligence. His puppeteers could see his weaknesses a mile off and have exploited them. He is the Trojan Horse, whoever said that – thanks, good description. Explains his role perfectly.
We cannot afford to trust dumb luck as you call it, to see us through this crisis. We’ll need all the Chloe Swarbricks we can find and for all people of good will to pull together.
Seymour doesn’t see himself losing this fight. He’s a winner, there is no other possible outcome as far as he’s concerned. That means he’ll pull every trick he can to persuade the people that he’s talking good sense.
Be prepared to hear the words democracy, sensible, reasonable, and numerous other soothing bits of blather coming from him.
Push him to really explain himself, not just accept it when he says it’s sensible and reasonable to have these debates.
He’s loves free speech, as many have noted, but only when it’s him doing it. When others try to speak freely, he dismisses their comments, maintaining that level of debate is beneath him. So that’s not actually debating is it and that is the level of ‘debate’ he engages in.
He and his minions in the Robot Party appear to all have the same lifeless, unhappy, cold faces. None of them look happy and I suspect they are not. Perhaps a few of them didn’t realise what they were signing themselves on for. Too focussed on their own little agendas to understand the wider impacts of what he was proposing. One hopes they are brave enough to take stock of themselves before he sells our souls to the devil.
He assumes OUR country, OUR assets and infrastructure, businesses and land are HIS to sell.
He needs to get rid of the Treaty of Waitangi as it stands, to do that. Please don’t let him.
You are hopeful Joy because anyone who is a member of the Act party, let alone a voter for them, has already been to the crossroads and signed away their soul to the devil. Too late for redemption for any of them.
You’re probably right LC. It’s so depressing to contemplate.
Laughing Luxury boy is no use at all. He’s not really on the same page as anyone, even other members of his own govt.
As for control…we can forget that.
Jay, 7 house s I think it is. Not 11.
Poor Luther only 7!
7 houses now 11 later when we get rid of bullshitting baldy at the next election
The first two paras are 100% correct. I think it was forecast clearly by political roosters but you can’t get through to people who have turned their hearing aids off! I found this from the site discussing French savant de Tocqueville from which I also extracted a quote for 12 March Julian Assange’s post.
No man can struggle with advantage against the spirit of his age and country; and, however powerful he may be supposed to be, he will find it difficult to make his contemporaries share in feelings and opinions which are repugnant to all their feelings and desires…sometimes they will even applaud him – but they do not follow him.,,
Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property – not only are they possessed of property, but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
If we attentively consider each of the classes of which society is composed, it is easy to see that the passions engendered by property are keenest and most tenacious amongst the middle classes. The poor often care but little for what they possess, because they suffer much more from the want of what they have not, than they enjoy the little they have. The rich have many other passions besides that of riches to satisfy; and, besides, the long and arduous enjoyment of a great fortune sometimes makes them in the end insensible to its charms. But the men who have a competency, alike removed from opulence and from penury, attach an enormous value to their possessions…
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/de-tocqueville/democracy-america/ch39.htm
Like the cute and acute cartoon.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350211394/pm-christopher-luxon-argues-renters-will-be-grateful-interest-deductibility
Mmmm, trickle down, now where have we heard that before?
You make me think of the great man’s death spirals now.
The neoliberal Left is over now. That carrionage must be cleared out of the way despite their rich friends. Despite Fred Trotter being defeated by their utter shit.
Was I insulting to him or not? That it matters is a pale reflection of the warfare for the people and reality. My last comment to the gentle middle-classer ( mind you, I’m middle-class, but from a recently uplifted brand full of fight) was about his criticism of Galloway, who brings back the Left. He’s lost his way.
7 houses now 11 later when we get rid of bullshitting baldy at the next election