The Daily Blog Open Mic – 15th November 2023
Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
The Editor doesn’t moderate this blog, 3 volunteers do, they are very lenient to provide you a free speech space but if it’s just deranged abuse or putting words in bloggers mouths to have a pointless argument, we don’t bother publishing.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/502456/congestion-charging-bill-derailed-at-last-minute-former-mp-says
Shanan Halbert sounds as if he has got nous Denny. Seems as if he could be an asset to Maori interest in good government
A quizzical, sardonic look at our limited news coverage of The World outside our pretensions by Gordon Campbell is rather good and apposite.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2311/S00025/on-apec-mali-and-sleater-kinney.htm
OK, so we’re living in an Information Age of 24/7 news feeds and non-stop celebrity gossip. Sure. Yet the focus for almost all of this newsy news is extremely narrow. Unless there’s a Third World earthquake/cyclone/train wreck with a high body count and available TV footage, or unless an American or a New Zealander has got in trouble somewhere off the grid, vast swathes of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America will remain invisible. These are Unknown Lands, just as much as they were in the Middle Ages. They are places where only Al Jazeera dares to tread.
A thought – NZ trailing Germany of the 1930’s?
NZ in financial woes, the economy distorted (theirs by inflation that I have read Hitler introduced, having got himself to a position, where the Weimar Republic politicians handed the Chancellorship to him); we selling our domestic assets such as houses as speculative parcels inflating the price though needed to be affordable as part of a balanced economy. This resulting in falling living standards for ordinary working people, on top of the work market being fractured by unfair competition from low-no-wage economies, thus wages decreased with long working hours enabled. Then insecurity of employment rife, with no true support to those on wages below cost of living, out of work or thrown between jobs like shuttlecocks in badminton?
Labour doesn’t support the ordinary blokes/esses that the Party was started for. The Party having sold out to the wishfully unconstrained wealthy, their hands are tied and their pockets stay locked till given directions to hunt the code by their rich patrons and mentors; they are a spent force.
They have lost the hunger for building a great little nation, and have only a hunger for power and strutting their stuff. Similar to Trump, talking up the line of ‘follow-me and make the country great again’ which in NZ has lost its resonance for Labour for ever. But get a strong man with a similar message from the other side of the field, hardened by practical experience of some sort, who will follow through with believable ideas and memorable, observable activity (Hitler’s autobahns!) and we will convince ourselves we’ve chosen right.
Then have someone plucked from the background to blame problems on, a scapegoat who has been holding us back and has to be constrained. Will it be females, Maori, rainbow people? We are in a sticky mess, and who knows what evil genie will pop out of our sad, jejune little minds?
Helping workers left in the lurch, as well as tradies, when an outfit goes bust is doing God’s work!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/502323/nz-workers-have-few-protections-if-employer-goes-bust-fixing-companies-act-would-help