Irredeemably Liberal
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Up until the 2023 election Aotearoa had an effective school lunch program. Kids got fed on locally-produced food, improving educational and employment outcomes. But National hated that, so they wrecked the system and replaced it with Seymour's Slop - mass-produced by the lowest-bidder (a massive foreign multinational with a shady record of course), which has burned , poisoned , or otherwise…
National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track legislation has a problem: in addition to being corrupt and Muldoonist, it allows developers to buy approval for projects where there isn't the infrastructure to support them. For example, the recently approved Delmore development in Ōrewa, which will require wastewater to be trucked out for the forseeable future , because there's no sewage connection…
Last year, at the behest of its Five Eyes "allies", the regime passed a tyrannical anti-"foreign interference" law , criminalising "improper conduct" on behalf of a "foreign power". The law effectively allows the regime to criminalise anyone based on its own fantasies and misconceptions, and would have outlawed virtually every major protest movement in Aotearoa's history. It is a horrific assault…
This morning one of my bleeps took one for the team and asked to be convinced not to vote for Opportunity . Like me, they're a long-time Green voter. Like me, they see Opportunity as having some attractive policies on land taxes, the environment, and Te Tiriti. And with the party now consistently polling over 5%, but not so high that we can be sure they'll make it, is it worth left voters to lend…
The Lebanese parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty : Lebanon's parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty, a move that would make it the first country in the Middle East to formally end capital punishment. A majority of MPs in the 128-seat parliament backed the measure on Tuesday, while Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc voted against it. The legislation will now go to the cabinet…
So, after a three hour emergency caucus meeting, Chris Luxon has emerged to claim that he has the National Party's full support and that his caucus is united . Which is obviously why he had to have a three hour meeting about it. Which means National will be going into the election with a historically unpopular Prime Minister - unless they change their mind about it next week. Meanwhile Chris (the…
Its 88 days until the election, and I had been planning to post about how the electoral landscape is becoming a little clearer. While the polls are statistically tied (still, with this regime, what the fuck are you doing Chris?), Opportunity is increasingly polling above the threshold, meaning they'll be in Parliament and no coalition seems possible without them. Meanwhile Luxon ruling them out…
Politicians defend their practice of taking huge bribes from the rich in the form of election "donations" by saying that its all out in the open: we can see who is buying them, we can see what they do in exchange and make sure that there is no "undue" influence (as opposed to the "due" influence they have paid for?), and so there is no problem. This is obviously false, and the current regime's…
How do you have an emissions trading scheme when there are no permits to emit? That's a question Aotearoa is eventually going to have to confront as we move towards carbon neutrality. And, thanks to exclusions from the ETS and huge pollution subsidies, that end is beginning to come into sight. The regime announced its new ETS unit limits and price control settings yesterday. They largely follow…
The National party in Aotearoa has always hated democracy. In the late 70's and early 80's they retained power in the face of majority opposition only by virtue of an unfair electoral system. When popular discontent at that led to a push for MMP, they opposed it. When the people won and imposed it on the traitorous political class who had given us Rogernomics and Ruthanasia, they tried to overturn…