Posts by Steve Withers
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I never had any problems with paying taxes. I understand insurance.
I certainly had problems with National's 90s drive to make us all buy private health insurance from impoverished multi-nationals by allowing the deterioration of public health by stealth. It was the dishonesty of it......doing it while claiming not to. I'd rather pay the tax that at least goes somewhere in NZ than the private insurance that covers less and less and goes to some shareholder in DesMoine or Liverpool.
By 1999, our local school in Raumati Beach wasn't able to afford to fix the roof or the boys loo.....with water trickling across the floor and out of the door for months. They used the girls' loo in turns.
Apprenticeships wiped. Obviously dreadfully stupid, but they wouldn't listen. Students fees through the roof generating mortgage-size debts with ballooning interest, paid to the impoverished banks, heaped on young people who should be starting families and careers and who ultimately will keep New Zealand operational if they don't leave. I remember getting my own life underway in the 70s was challenge enough without a massive loan shackled to my leg as well.
Labour isn't perfect. Far from it. But National was worse on almost everything that mattered to me. Given the chance they will be worse again. Despite John Key's apparently moderate personal views, the same crew stands behind him waiting for their moment to resume the rush to cuts services and export our money to their clients of greatest concern: banks and insurance companies. Plus they want to take my vote away by pushing to get rid of MMP. That moves them from mere endurable irritant to the status of enemy of my democracy. That is visceral and deep.
The fact National has released so little policy says to me they don't want to allow too much time for people to think about it. Keep'em in the dark and when the time comes feed'em the proverbial.
Having said all that, I don't vote for either of them. They both fall over badly where prudence is concerned. To be fair to them, though, that isn't necessarily their fault.
Most Kiwi voters don't know - and don't really want to know - how the world actually works. To some extent, the media are enablers by infotaining people instead of informing them.
Problem is, if people knew how the world worked, they would share responsibility for it. As any school child knows from their earliest days, the best way to avoid being responsible for anything ts to ensure you know as little about it as possible. That way, if things are going wrong, it's always someone else's fault. It can't be yours. You didn't know anything about it.
So politicians of any stripe who may try to lead in one direction or another for reasons they think prudent for the future, but uncomfortable for someone in the present, will find themselves running hard into this lump of willfully ignorant inertia that composes the broad mass of voters.
Other politicians have merged with the broad mass and react as they do, rejecting anything they don't like no matter how necessary it may ultimately prove to be. Together, they won't give up the V8 even though a 1.3L car would cost them half as much. The kids can go without. Gimme a tax cut.
This year it's Labour's turn to face the music for threatening voters with reality. Whoever wins the election, reality will always win in the end...and politicians are always the fall guys for the folks who need someone to blame. They are perennially between the rock of change and the hard place of voter resistance to it.
It was a good budget.....if you like tax cuts.
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I think the story does the party's election campaign some harm, but it does much greater harm to Goff's chances of ever taking over.
Bruce: I agree. The "at the moment" changed my perception of what Goff had said on AltTV and of him. Positive to negative in a 'Beach Haven moment'.
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Far be it from me to give Labour any free campaign advice, but they're really going to have to do a little better than Irradiated Rogergnomes Under The Bed. I really think that's going to work as well as the GOP's latest strategic brainfart -- let's paint Obama as Neville Chamberlain with added melanin.
Craig, I love that..... LOL!
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Then it should be refined to "needia". It's more clear... :-)
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I was all on board with the media beatup idea and blogged as much myself. Goff could easily stand by his comments on AltTV and come up smelling roses and the media looking silly had he stuck to that. But adding the "at the moment" to his comment reported in the Herald certainly made me think he was putting his own political ambitions ahead of the wider interest of the party he would like to lead. He would only use that short-term description to indicate a short term.....like from here to the election. The doubt he raised is based on a Labour loss...and the timing for such trial balloons was just....well.....awful.
Thanks, Russell for making that "moment" gaffe look a tiny bit smaller, but it was still a poor show (IMHO) from a would-be Labour leader the day before the Budget, whereas his comments in the AltTV interview made him look genuine and open.
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Having worked in a prison and seen these people first hand daily, the media's efforts to cover criminal justice matters stands out as typically sensational and playing on public misconceptions about the system, the people in it and the efficacy of locking people up with several hundred other crims. Portraying this sad, sad boy as somehow a 'winner' who is now creaming it with his new shoes, stereo and Playstation in South Auckland is pathetic. Just one more reason I've taken up blogging and reading blogs. When a blogger is dishonest, you read another blog. When the newspaper with a monopoly in your town is dishonest....you have no alternative. Reality is damaged if not broken.
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BRAVO!!
(I enjoyed your story....)
:-)
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Rogan: For many people, Karyn Hay was a sex symbol. Be gentle with our past goddesses of TV. They live in a safe and quiet space in our memories, untarnished by time or revisionism. My wife and I used to watch Radio With Pictures religiously...and Hay was part of the fun. Her "style" was typical 80's flat-cool....(my own term, freshly minted).
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One kid off the top of a building is all it takes to get pretty much anything banned.....except building tops and stairwells and lifts.
"Harm reduction". Two little words that mean so much more. I haven't taken any recreational drugs other than booze and caffeine since I turned 20. I like my head straight. Not on the rocks, shaken or stirred. ;-)
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I'm relatively new to PA and completely new to blogging generally.
PA is a must-read for me most days. I tend to feel I'm getting more of what I want / need from the informative or issues-based posts and I do admit to struggling with writing about too much personal trivia (I have more than enough of my own)....but PA is always worth the time.
Congratulations to all. If my vote helped, so much the better.