It’s ironic that with about 270,000 children living in poverty, and one of the highest child abuse and child death by maltreatment rates in the world, that women’s decisions about whether they can cope with a child, are still in the hands of doctors and politicians, not the women themselves.
Who woulda thunk a Czech drug smugglers and lime scooters would dominate the news cycle in a way environmental apocalypse, China buying MPs and state house meth hysteria couldn’t?
If 100 000 ‘affordable’ houses are to go to the children of the middle classes, then 100 000 also need to go to the state tenants and renters and Millennials and Gen Xers who have been locked out of home ownership by a 30 year neoliberal economic model that has punished the user pays generations while insulating the cradle to grave subsidised generations.
Bridges can’t survive this, not because what’s been released is any more damning than anything else that has been released in this pus pit of a Game of Thrones meets House of Cards meets Jaws meets Nightmare on Elm Street meets Saw meets #MeToo pantomime of the grotesque, but because his total inability to provide any control or cauterisation of this makes him powerless and a powerless leader in a shark pool of vicious power hungry National Party MPs is about as stable as Donald Trump at a feminist folk festival.
The government’s announcement today of a major regeneration project for East Porirua has all the hallmarks of Auckland’s Tamaki tragedy whereby low-income residents and families are being displaced from Glen Innes, Point England and Panmure as these suburbs are gentrified for the middle class.
In the NZ Herald there were 7 news stories on the IPCC report, compare that with over 25 news stories for those fucking Lime Scooters. It really says something about us as a people when electric scooters can generate far more attention than the end of the planet as we know it.
ANZ New Zealand has posted a record net profit after tax of nearly $2 billion. That’s a 12 percent increase on last year’s profit. ANZ is the country’s biggest home and business lender as well as the biggest KiwiSaver provider. New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority review of banking practices is expected shortly.
WHAT DOES IT SAY about the times we are living in that electric scooters are permitted to share our footpaths? These vehicles are capable of speeds of up to 27 kms p/hr – constituting a significant threat to the health and safety of riders and pedestrians alike.
The news of another waterfront stadium, this one to be sunk in the harbour is the latest in a long list of controversial waterfront developments proposed or under way.
PRESIDENT-ELECT JAIR BOLSONARO and Halloween are made for each other. If you’re attempting to evoke feelings of fear and dread, then the next President of Brazil is indisputably the right man for the job. For sheer terror, however, nothing beats contemplating the people whose votes propelled him into office.