Banning Plastic, Legal Abortion, Cannabis Legalisation, Take back the Golf Courses, Remove GST from fresh fruit, vegetables and essentials, Dump Punitive Welfare Punishments, Sugar Tax, Free Public Transport: 8 Things we should show courage on today!
We have enormous challenges confronting us.
Climate change, poverty, underfunded social services and infrastructure, a ballooning prison population and a system that produces racist and sexist outcomes of inequality.
We need to work on them all, and they will be difficult debates to have, but right now, as of today, with a majority in Parliament, the progressive forces of Labour, the Greens and NZ First should force through some immediate updates to our system.
The hype around Labour’s new working for families package is great news for the fastidious middle classes who fill in their taxes every year, but for many beneficiaries who need this the most, it’s something they don’t and won’t see.
We might have an unmarried Mum with a stay at home Dad First Family, but NZ has not and is not progressing positively.
Here are 8 things NZ should do right now:
Ban Plastic Bags NOW: Screw thinking about ‘phasing’ out. Ban plastic bags now with a huge fine levelled on any retailer who uses them. Bring back brown paper bags that can actually be recycled while stoking our timber industry. Bring in flax kits for carrying things and stoke the local market in their creation.The plastics armageddon is here now, we need leadership not more bullshit on this.
Legal Abortion NOW: It is an offence to our collective intelligence that any woman should have to jump through so many degrading hoops to get a medical procedure. If a woman decides after consulting their Dr that they want an abortion, that’s the only process that should occur. Legal, safe, free abortions now.
Cannabis Legalisation: The madness of filling our prisons, the madness of empowering organised crime, the extra taxation and enormously positive impacts on our environment and economy that occur when you legalise cannabis demands immediate reform,
Take back the Golf Courses: Seize 50% of the golf courses in NZ to build affordable houses on now.
Remove GST from fresh Fruit, Vegetables and essentials: 15% off fruit, vegetables and essentials like toilet paper, oral health, condoms and tampons would help the poor while resetting the market so that healthy eating is encouraged.
Dump Punitive Welfare Punishments: They just don’t work!
Docking welfare payments is not incentive to work, report claims
Government-backed employment project found benefit cuts that push claimants further into poverty also create barriers to finding work
Sugar Tax: Big sugar have had it too good for too long.
Free Public Transport: For every student, every pensioner and every community card holder. Transport around the country is tough enough, allowing the poor to have more in their pocket by taking more people out of cars is a far better solution to maximising our current roading network while reducing climate change causing emissions.
‘Rid the use of plastic bags.’
While we are concentrating on banning plastic bags that are polluting our oceans and environment, can we also ban using components of plastic in our vehicle tyres please?
As “synthetic tyres” today now have the very same chemicals inert in them also as all plastics have. Many benzene components are included in our commonly used tyres and these tyres have black carbon dust
Worse is that the carbon tyre dust that is emitted from one truck with 32 tyres will shed 100 times the plastic dust (cancer causing) more than just one car.
This toxic carbon tyre dust have been found its way to our artic ice caps.
Tyre black carbon dust has now been found to have been carried from our road pollution ‘runoff’ and transported in heavy rain into our roadside water ducts and water ‘sheds’ and then sent out to the rivers and coast to be transferred to the Antarctic ice caps by the prevailing ocean currents.
Scientists have found that the black carbon dust that may include tyre dust settles on the ice caps and accelerates the melting of our ice caps now.
Tyre particles are now known to travel far greater distances than previously known now.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-connection-unraveling-the-surprising-ecology-of-dust
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/22/the-damaging-effects-of-black-carbon/
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140610-connecting-dots-dust-soot-snow-ice-climate-change-dimick/
http://washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/realistic-ways-stop-melting-arctic-ice.html
Leave the golf courses alone Bomber Bradbury …but make them free to beneficiaries , students, teenagers , low income people, elderly
( we have enough housing for NZers …we just have to wrest it back from overseas ownership…big taxes on overseas ownership of NZ houses…a thorough audit needs to be done)
Yes to free public transport …and it would relieve the roads of congestion
BIG Tax overseas ownership of anything in NZ eg houses , land , banks, utilities
Prisoners who have not committed bodily harm to others should be allowed out to pay back their victims in full
Cannabis legalisation a BIG YES…and Hemp industry ….and cannabis meds…lets lead the world on this..get away from dairy and go hemp and cannabis
Renovate the main track railway lines and promote light rail and buses for cities ….and create a world class essentially free public transport and railway system…this will relieve the roads for bikes and tourists
Take back our houses for NZers…and our land
Yes to getting rid of plastic bags
Yes to free legal abortion ( which it more or less is anyway)
Yes to getting rid of plastic bags …hemp bags instead
Yes to removing GST from veges, fruit , essentials
Yes to NOT punishing welfare beneficiaries …people should be helped up, not ground down
Yes to sugar tax and free dental care
Much tree planting
No ban – or at least a moratorium – on the export of water?
Fresh fruit and vegetables – why not just off food? (isn’t it a bit patronizing to deny the poor food choice because ‘fresh fruit and vege’ are healthy for you – like the minute amount of meat and dairy they can afford to eat isn’t?). Why not utilities – a large amount of which are either owned by councils or govt orgs? Or just put pull GST back to pre-National level -and give themselves some much need brownies by reminding everyone who put it up to start with.
A bit of a light revolution but probably achievable.