No one should be mocked for being violently robbed. It’s a terrifying experience for any human being to endure. Mocking Kim Kardashian for being the victim of such violence is cruel, spiteful and mean spirited.
However.
We have a user pays Generation with no political compass being asked to vote on issues that they and the wider public have zero idea about because our mainstream media are more focused on Real Housewives of fucking Auckland and Kim Kardashian getting robbed.
I grew up on a dead end street, each side divided into quarter, or fifth acre sections. At the end of the street was farmland, where cows would graze; beyond the paddocks the Waipa river, glistening and murky, and in the far distance: Mt Pirongia. It was rarely cold enough for snow to fall on that mountain.
Part-way through last month, I became aware of a number of interesting things happening down in the Wairarapa electorate. This is a National seat (and these days arguably something of a ‘safe’ one), but with a local MP widely regarded as an aloof and out-of-touch carpet-bagger who spends most of his time in Wellington. So we’d presumably be unsurprised to see the Nats putting a bit of work in to campaign there next year.
The truth is that mental health services, when they are available, are creaking at the seams even worse than the overall public health system. Staff numbers are insufficient and staff are poorly remunerated for the work they do, facilities are antiquated or were never adequate, community mental health services are underfunded and sparse or unavailable in many areas and support for vulnerable patients and their families is missing.
Like The Spinoff, it always helps to know who is actually paying the bills here, and Transport Blog seems very much in the thrall of Auckland Transport – they whose corruption knows no bounds – so there was an official information act request to actually check if Auckland Transport have paid any of the lead bloggers on Transport Blog any money.
“This country wants waking up and setting to rights … and Sharkey’s going to do it; and make it hard, if you drive him to it. You need a bigger Boss. And you’ll get one before the year is out if there’s any more trouble. Then you’ll learn a thing or two, you little rat folk.”
…why would the PM be so crass? Because he knows via his polling that the rump of his vote blame poor people for having children they can’t feed. Key is delighting in making this point while more educated souls gasp and that’s probably deliberate. Key is reaching out to his own voting base’s bias by saving birds but leaving the poor to fend for themselves.
…before he was elected, John Key couldn’t stop talking about the growing underclass in NZ and how he was going to fix it. 8 years later and homelessness is worse, inequality is worse and child poverty is worse.
I’ve never been to Hawkes Bay, so I have no idea of the collective IQ of this region, but are the people of Hawke’s Bay blind stupid?