The history of slavery, racism and a brutal apartheid mentality Police force mixed with America’s ludicrous gun laws is a hateful cocktail of spite that erupts with enough regularity to remind us that there are deep problems still within the culture of our largest Super Power.
In my own area of the Otara subdivision, only 29 per cent of eligible voters returned ballot papers – well below the greater Auckland average. And the data speaks for itself: older, wealthier, housed and white voters had a much higher rate of ballot return. That’s what the data tells us so our challenge is to encourage a better ballot return from younger, poorer, transient and brown voters
There has been a lot of discussion lately here in Ōtepoti about something called “cultural appropriation”. It first came to my attention when a well-meaning friend starting objecting to our plan to have a “Gypsy Party” as part of a local festival, with Eastern European and Arabic influenced music, a performance by our local belly dancer troupe, and decoration to fit the theme.
The era of neoliberal globalisation is ending. People – who are also voters – have had enough of governments that work for the rich. Precarious jobs, stagnant incomes, unaffordable housing, massive household debt, stripped out safety nets, elected governments that are arrogant and unaccountable, opposition parties who are captives of their past or too cowed by fears of a collapse in business confidence to embrace demands for real change.
Joining us tonight to discuss the Government’s $1billion dollar solution to housing and whether it will do anything for the homeless and most vulnerable…
MATT HEATH’S SATIRICAL THRUST at the over-65s in Monday’s NZ Herald has caused considerable angst. Depriving the elderly of the right to vote is one of those suggestions that stops people in their tracks. Not so much because it’s a good idea (which it obviously isn’t) but because somebody’s had the bare-faced cheek to put such a subversive thought into words.
Fast food has an enormous amount of power in our economy and it politically inoculates itself by having far right hate speech bloggers post attacks on their health campaigns.
Bryce Edwards covers off the anger that is simmering in the electorate and the fear by elites of where that anger will erupt, but I think he misses a very important part of the spectrum which is open to radicalism.
We should fund private schools ONLY when they enrol students on the same basis as public schools and abandon their fees.