TDB warned NZ that this Government was not moderate.
TDB warned NZ that Luxon was a uniquely weak leader who would get played by Winston and David Seymour.
TDB warned you the policy platform would be a hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government.
TDB warned you punishing Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives by electing this Government of malice would see culture war revenge fantasies masquerading as social policy.
TDB warned you that allowing the woke left to take the movement down alienating identity politics cul de sacs would only create culture war political ammunition that would be used against us.
TDB warned you American Dark money via the Atlas Network was setting a climate denial agenda using hate algorithms that use culture war triggers to manipulate voters.
TDB warned you that this new hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government would act to deregulate our under regulated capitalism for their donor mates.
TDB warned you.
I think after the 100 days we’ve all just witness, there is an agreement now that this Government represents an extreme lurch to the right akin to Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas combined.
The price of this capitulation to the wealthy elites?
$2.9billion in tax breaks for the richest landlords.
$15 billion in tax cuts to the richest.
$100m in redundancies for the public service.
$18.1billion is the total price of this policy bribe for the richest amongst us.
Imagine what we could do to the physical and social infrastructure of NZ with $19.1billion.
We have allowed the unhinged parts of NZ First’s Conspiracy Swamp Kingdom to combine with the anti-Māori small Government fanatics inside ACT with the born-to-rule-Prickdom of National and their corporate donors to vandalise NZ Egalitarianism and mutilate the common good.
The fast track powers they’ve given Dr Pork (Shane Jones) to allow Trans National Mining interests to mine conservation land are beyond anything NZ has ever done before.
It is a licence to pollute the environment at a time when climate change is destroying the environment.
The Political Right have sold us out to their donor mates for a rampaging environmental and societal mutilation
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You are right about this hard right government ripping off about $20 Billion for the already rich. Of course its gonna be much more than that. But its chicken feed compared with the $1 Trillion that Labour, Greens and Winston made the Govt transfer to the rich and wannabee property owners during Covid.
Both govt’s work for the bosses but only one tries to pretend it doesn’t.
This is exactly what we would expect of zombie Kapitalismus on its last legs as the genocidal rich line their bomb shelters with gold and the rest of humanity is expected to sacrifice itself for their privilege.
We need a workers’ govt that seizes the means of production, distribution and exchange and plans the economy, taking back the stolen wages of generations, and honours the Treaty based on socialist equality – to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability.
Hear hear! Couldn’t agree more
What you say Martyn – exactement. I think I made that word up but hey everybody is able to make up their own reality these days, especially right wing governments that call themselves left-wing if they pay for public toilets and clean them as well. And will possibly next year be putting up fountains for water for the public in the crowded streets just like in the days of Dr Snow and cholera.
From go to whoa in under 200 years perhaps – 1844-20….?
John Snow
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › … Whakamāoritia tēnei whārangi
After finishing his medical studies in the University of London, he earned his MD in 1844. Snow set up his practice at 54 Frith Street in Soho as a surgeon and …
Early life and education
Snow was born on 15 March 1813 in York, England, the first of nine children born to William and Frances Snow in their North Street home, and was baptised at All Saints’ Church, North Street, York. His father was a labourer[3] who worked at a local coal yard, by the Ouse, constantly replenished from the Yorkshire coalfield by barges, but later was a farmer in a small village to the north of York.[4]
The neighbourhood was one of the poorest in the city, and was frequently in danger of flooding because of its proximity to the River Ouse. Growing up, Snow experienced unsanitary conditions and contamination in his hometown. Most of the streets were unsanitary and the river was contaminated by runoff water from market squares, cemeteries and sewage.[5]
From a young age, Snow demonstrated an aptitude for mathematics.In 1827, when he was 14, he obtained a medical apprenticeship with William Hardcastle in the area of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1832, during his time as a surgeon-apothecary apprentice, he encountered a cholera epidemic for the first time in Killingworth, a coal-mining village.[6] Snow treated many victims of the disease and thus gained experience. Eventually he adjusted to teetotalism and led a life characterized by abstinence,
Note how children were not tied down to attending school till 15, and then being allowed out into the hard world like now. My contention, work and education mixed from teen years now, not clinging to practices and ideas that events and deliberate malpractice from governments. They have set impossible constraints on people who are not able to participate in life at the middle-class income level that is considered the norm – by the middle and upper class comfortably off. They are deliberately, wilfully ignorant of the facts of living costs for many others with doors shut in their faces when they try to go forward. The complacency and soft-soap that we better-off live with is disquieting to an intolerable degree.
And today’s Dr Snow’s are being abused with overwork in an underfunded system because of the desire for lower taxes and more spending money by the cute middle and upper class – too much like old moneybags Grandpa McDuck for comfort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=LKMKMhiGV0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEmjiCoZ6e4
Family history https://scrooge-mcduck.fandom.com/wiki/Fergus_McDuck!
You think you know what ‘cute’ means. Merriam -Webster shows how it has changed over time. We can change the meaning of words and we can change the meaning of our lives, if we try. It actually started from ‘acute’ but from 1731 came down to cute, and then became more frivolous. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cute
Time for frivolity is passed! We have to keep it for small bursts as we look at our ridiculous ways of building society. (If you have seen Hundertwasser’s buildings you can see how frivolous buildings can be and still stand and do their task.)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cute
I warned you too, but you’re still happy to continue with your nonsense. Enjoy.
I was looking up Gwyneth Jones in UK, cover artist of an old Futura paperback, but came across this interview with an articulate Gwyneth Jones in NZ/AO. Her thinking is that we don’t understand our country’s sturdy support and effectiveness in the past, and if we did we would stand up, step forward and uphold it. So these memories might stir the turgid, from their chairs or such things as seeking excitement, throwing themselves in the air on mountain bikes etc.
https://www.sunlive.co.nz/news/203547-a-novel-out-of-frustration-and-fact.html
Gwyneth Jones discusses her book ‘This Same Flower’, based partly on her own childhood memories of Huntly during the World War II.
During war drills as a wee girl, Gwyneth Jones was given a piece of cork to bite down on.
The thinking at the time was that it would stop her, and other children, from severing their tongues should Japanese invaders bomb their school.
‘No-one knows that,” says Gwyneth, ‘and that really gets up my nose.”
The author, historian and artist is not easily irritated, but she hears stories coming out of England – via movies, TV and books – about how they coped and how difficult life was, during the war.
‘If I ever get anyone from England who says how hard it was, I tell them they would be dead if it wasn’t for us,” she says. ‘Not only did we fight for them, we fed them.”
No, we weren’t bombed, and the suffering can’t be compared. ‘But we made huge sacrifices,” she adds. ‘Men, resources and food. We were rationed so they could eat, and rationing didn’t finish ‘til 1952, long after the war.”
Hers is not an attack on the allied cause – it’s more about what she believes to be a void in the awareness of New Zealand’s history. That’s why she’s written a book – another book – baked with historical fact and iced with romance.
‘This Same Flower’ is named after a line from a Robert Herrick poem. ‘And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.”
She’s drawn on her own childhood for this war-time tale, set against the backdrop of Glen Afton, a coal mining village west of Huntly, during the war.
‘The miners were heroes,” she explains. ‘They were very, very brave. They worked 24/7, often back shifting, to keep this country running because it was a coal-fired country.”..
Don’t let these political local weasel-copies of imported opulent powerful and cherry-pickers, ruin us then buy us cheaply in a firesale, real or not.
The 3headed hydra Govt…has a master plan…’the Great ,leap..backward’!
As with almost all political change, there are tipping points from which the incumbent government cannot disengage. Despite this government’s clear intentions, very little has filtered down to the ordinary worker – yet!!! Yes some public servants have lost jobs and some critical services are back into coffin territory, like they were under Key, BUT the effects of these have yet to be felt. Until they do, our message will be largely ignored, or will be marginalised as per usual with our pathetic media. What we can do now, is create a bullet point list of cause and effect ready to bombard the media with when the first real protests arrive. Do to this government what was done to the Labour government during COVID – mount a concerted, co-ordinated campaign of publicity. Then get people involved with easy publicised means to join – a left political party, a union, whatever. Anything to get them off the couch and away from stupid sport and to start looking out for themselves and their neighbours.