TDB Domestic Political Predictions 2022

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The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.

We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber alles where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.

Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.

Media proxification is leading to a fascist kaleidoscope of climate crisis decay triggered by Covid, woke supremacy & QAnon Karen echo chambers.

2022 is a good time to start smoking, drinking and eating more butter fried bacon because fuck it, this year has the potential to really go bad and you may as well load up on distracting vices.

Here are the Domestic TDB political predictions 2022.

Issues

Omicron & Covid – Omicron will hospitalize more people (because it’s so much more contagious) but it will kill far less than Delta. The only threat now is overwhelming our Hospital infrastructure which the Government will have to enforce restrictions to guard against.

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Don’t expect MIQ to end before June.

The Economic and Social damage however will not see any reprieve. The unvaccinated will radicalize because of economic pain. The economy will also radicalize with 10% interest rates.

The curve ball is the unvaccinated poorer nations who are the beginning points of Western Capitalism’s supply chains. There the virus can find a never ending source of humans to mutate into something far more lethal that can rebound on us.

That’s why a global vaccination program is so essential, no one is really safe until everyone is!

So we may beat Omicron but bets off whatever new variant mutates enough to sidestep our immunity and kicks off a new global tsunami of deaths. Remember, a virus has two paths towards mutation, the first is maximum transmissibility mutations and mutations that side step our immunity. Omicron looks like it has maxed out the transmissibility mutations, Covid could easily move to sidestepping our immunity mutations. Each of the variants before it came out of no where, the good news is that from new variant discovery to needles in arms is about 100 days now so there are off-ramps.

 

Political violence – if you think Jacinda is the anti-Christ, or the beginnings of Nazi Germany or raping Gaia, or is committing genocide, then any action is acceptable to stop that. The radicalization of the unvaccinated will reach fever pitch as the economic ramifications of being sacked from a job for refusing the vaccine starts to bite deeply.

My fear originally from the antivaxx radicalization we’ve seen was that political violence would be used against our politicians or academics or public health officials.

I think it’s worse now.

I think those antivaxxers will see everyone who has become vaccinated as the target.

Soft targets will be seen as legitimate.

Expect children being vaccinated to be the flashpoint.

Anything symbolic will become a target.

Parliament opening, first debating day, Jacinda’s wedding – all become targets to the lone wolf Qanon lunatic quietly brewing with malice and deformed hate.

The NZ Intelligence apparatus can’t fail us again.

Economy – So printing trillions to fuel Stock Market and housing speculation which has artificially created the lowest interest rates in 5000 years might have some inflationary issues?

Who would thunk it.

All we did after the Great Recession was kick the can down the street.

Well we’ve run out of street.

Fluctuations in your kiwisaver account is one thing. Paying $20 for a bottle of milk is another.

The hyper inflation we are starting down will force interest rates up and the gravity of those borrowed trillions will test how real the economic gains of the last decade have been.

I suspect they aren’t all that robust after all.

70% of homeowners need to readjust their mortgages this year – let’s see how much pain they will have to endure to just keep those overinflated roofs over their heads.

 

Crime – The full impact of the psychological whiplash caused by lockdown and Covid anxiety hasn’t hit yet. Expect domestic violence, street violence and self violence to explode.

In terms of organized crime, the 501 syndicates are still fighting the Head Hunters and the King Cobras for control over the Ports and Airport to ship in cheaper and purer meth from their South American Cartel links.

The 501s continue to infiltrate and stand over Black Power and Mongrel Mob chapters to gain dominance over the meth trade. The inevitability of this gang war erupting on the streets builds with no clear Police Intelligence direction of how they are intending to target the 501s.

National and ACT will make political mileage out of the increasing tensions.

 

Hate Speech Fiasco – Instead of focusing on the social media platforms using hate algorithms to brainwash individuals, the woke want to punish and lynch the racist sexist transphobes.

You can see them pointing to the Antivaxxers as evidence that speech should be criminalized, but of course it will coincide with woke dogma as well.

Misusing pronouns and blasphemy laws defined by the Police for a sentence that carry’s a 3 year prison term will scare the shit out of middle NZ and cause an enormous backlash.

Jacinda waded through the grief of the Christchurch atrocity and it convinced her this Hate Speech legislation is worth losing an election over.

Expect this to implode horribly. The only winner will be ACT.

 

Climate Change – In 1980, the time between billion dollar climate destruction events was 3 months.

It’s now 18 days.

There is a point where the next destructive weather event strikes before you can rebuild from the last one.

The rapid melting of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica is the final evidence that we can’t stop what’s coming and that radical adaptation will be the only option.

Expect to hear a lot more about the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation as its weakening will trigger irreversible environmental collapse.

There is no optimism on the climate front, just consequences now.

 

3 Waters – The 2 real issues posed by 3 Waters are can it stop foreign companies from bottling NZ water and can it ensure National and ACT don’t privatize the water once it’s nationalized…

Government seeks cross-party promise not to sell-off water assets, as Three Waters opponents organise for battle

The Government has sought cross-party support to safeguard the public’s water assets from privatisation, as opponents to the Three Waters reform organise themselves for battle.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta wrote to the leaders of each political party on Wednesday, as the Government released its first draft of the Three Waters reform legislation, asking for their support in entrenching in law a prohibition against the privatisation of the public’s drinking, waste, and storm water.

The attempt to gain some cross-party support within the reforms comes as the Government sustains heavy criticism for forging ahead with plans to create four new public water entities, that will assume control of all the water assets currently owned by local councils.

The Government has this week faced claims it quietly decided to mandate the reforms while still consulting with councils. Opponents to the contentious reforms descended on Parliament, for its last sitting day of the year.

…I am in favour of 3 Waters – I absolutely believe water should be nationalized so it can be protected and think Labour should seize the water assets via the Public Works Act.

I don’t see co-governance with Maori as a threat, I see it as another check and balance.

The only real question to 3 Waters is will National and ACT privatize water the millisecond they ever win power?

Based on ACTs far right agenda, you would have to say yes and based on Key selling 49% of our hydro power assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund for corporate farmers, you would have to say yes as well.

3 Waters will be fought like this:

Labour + Environmentalists + Maori = public protection of water

National + ACT + Corporate Dairy = water privatization

Once Labour lock in this narrative framework, opposition to 3 Waters will dissolve against anti water privatization forces.

3 Waters will not be the great vote loser all the pundits are predicting – properly framed as a fight against water privatization, 3 Waters will propel Labour forward and take back some protest Green vote.

 

 

New Supermarket player – To offset the damage inflation will cause, taking up the Commerce Commissions recommendations of a 3rd player in the Supermarket duopoly will sustain financially pressured electorates with hope rather than ask for yet more endurance.

 

New history curriculum – This is set to start this year and while most will cover this sensibly, you just know some woke teacher will take it too far and the thing becomes a dumpster fire. Pakeha parents will expect unpleasant history to be taught, they won’t expect their children being made to feel guilty for past crimes. This will be argued out on Twitter which will just make things worse.

Royal Society Inquisition –

Royal Society Is Investigating Academics For Defending Science

The Free Speech Union can reveal that two academic fellows are being investigated by The Royal Society of New Zealand for being among those to put their name to a letter in defence of science which was published earlier this year in The Listener Magazine.

Ugh, hasn’t this gotten ugly fast.

To be fair to the 7 Professors, they have a technical point.

You can’t have a publicly funded curriculum that undermines the legitimacy of ‘western science’.

1 + 1 always equals 2, that’s not up for negotiation. We already have enough people who think crystals cure cancer, that microchips are in the vaccine and that Covid is being spread by 5G technology.

We can’t undermine the legitimacy of ‘Western Science’, this is a public education curriculum, you can’t set it against itself, the task is to turn out scientifically literate citizens for a high tech economy. Debating the ideas about cultural dominance of western scientific presumptions at Uni is one thing, sowing seeds of illegitimacy in high school students is completely another.

So the 7 Professors have a technical point, but the whole debate becomes immediately moot because this branch of inquiry wasn’t included in the next stage of the curriculum, so the 7 Professors claim a victory despite the other side not turning up.

Where I think they fail is in their condescending perspective that trashes 1000 years of indigenous knowledge by using an excruciatingly narrow definition  of what science actually means.

It’s like burning down the Sistine Chapel because proper art is painted on canvas.

I think the Professors are wrong about that, a people who navigated oceans by the stars, with complex astronomy, with vast natural science knowledge through a deep oral tradition, you can’t just arrogantly write that 1000 years of knowledge off with such snide parameters.

B-U-T we have academic freedom in NZ and as such it’s our academics who have the responsibility and freedom to articulate ideas that can be controversial.

I respect academic freedom enough to disagree vehemently with their conclusion but defend their right to say it.

The most disappointing part of this debate is that it’s made The Listener politically relevant for 30seconds.

Which is awful.

The Listener has all the self importance of a fart in an elevator. I stopped reading after Finlay MacDonald left.

The letters page of The Listener is the perfect place for these academics to duel it out. A white realm of Boomer privilege duking it out in the most low brow news media these ivory tower titans will collectively agree to stoop to.

What would be terrible right now is some type of woke purge to have these Professors expelled from Auckland University or from the Royal Society.

People can academically disagree and even be disagreeable without a lynch mob forming to burn heretics.

We should resist an academic purge because beyond its lynch mob immorality there is already a chunk of voters who fear the Woke will use new Hate Speech laws to settle scores.

Figuratively hanging Professors in the Uni Quad for crimes against dogma isn’t going to settle those nerves.

ACT will reap the political rewards from this.

Medicinal cannabis policy total failure – Labour have inadvertently set the medicinal cannabis industry up the way they have set the super market duopoly up. Labour have allowed the big pharma segment of the NZ market to write rules that exclude the smaller players which has led directly to the impasse we have now.

A framework that only the big pharma segment can pass through while fucking over medicinal cannabis patients as well as the wider industry.

Labour deserve nothing but contempt for their medicinal cannabis failure and if the Greens had any strategic brain they would make a legal market part of their agreement to form a government in 2023.

Unfortunately the Greens are fucking hopeless with anything that isn’t identity politics based so expect cannabis users to keep getting fucked over!

This really is the time for ACT to make a stand on cannabis legalization.

Kim Dotcom – Kim has been treated appallingly by NZ. Illegally spied on, his civil rights breached multiple times, Key’s collusion with the NSA to extend US jurisdiction into cyberspace and our own Judiciary’s fear of standing up to America have conspired to finally land Kim’s fate onto Kris Faa’foi’s desk.

For a Government struggling to find an issue that can create the symbolism of independence as the Pacific Cold War heats up, denying America’s request and allowing Kim to stay would be the perfect issue.

He doesn’t deserve to be dumped into a CIA torture camp.

 

Polarisation, Qanon lunacy & Woke lash – Thanks to social media algorithms of hate we are locked into echo chambers that are endlessly radicalizing.

Almost every single splinter group has become radicalized by the 90% double vaccination threshold.

The Vaccinated:

  • Angry Double vaxxed Good Citizens –  They have done what they were asked, they have sacrificed and now they want their lives back. Being told they can’t because morons don’t want to be vaccinated is going down about as well as a cup of cold sick. You can’t get angry at these people and painting their frustration out as racist will hurt the Left at the election. The unfairness of continuing to lose your liberty under de facto house arrest because Liz Gunn thinks vaccinations are raping Gaia makes this group ripe for radicalisation.
  • Small Business – These are people who for the first time in their lives feel economically vulnerable. They have haemorrhaged cash because of the lockdown and are on the verge of collapse. Economic hardship will see many blame Jacinda while seeing her only helping gangs. They are also ripe for radicalisation.
  • The Woke – If you honestly think like the Maori Party that this is modern genocide, all violence is justified.

The Unvaccinated:

  • Qanon Anti-vaxx lunatics – Will see the vaccination passports as a vast erosion of their civil rights and that measure will dangerously radicalize this fringe. If you honestly believe Jacinda is the same as Nazi Germany, any violence becomes permissible.
  • Crystal Karens – These are the middle class new age conspiracy clique who will become culturally ostracised by the vaccine passports. If you believe like Liz Gunn does, that the vaccine is raping Gaia to the point that the Earth Mother Goddess is starting earthquakes then any violence is justified.
  • Jesus is my vaccine fanatics – They will see Bishop Brian Tamaki’s prosecution as persecution and see end of days symbolism at every turn. The passport will be framed as the number of the beast. If Jacinda is the antiChrist then any violence is acceptable.

The speed of the radicalization has been driven by the desperation of Covid mixed with fear and rage.

This radicalisation has created an alternate reality on the right and we saw that in Wellington last year, but this alternate reality has also been a feature of the Left.

Post me too we had to believe anything anyone said on social media. We had to BELIEVE women. There was no longer objective truth, there was only subjective truth because due process is a heteronormative white cis male privilege and if someone questioned that they were a rapist.

The bewildering venom of the Trans debate and the demand that everyone else be forced to accept an identity subjectively defined by the individual and must never be challenged or you were canceled.

The demand for protection from micro aggressions and trigger free safe spaces.

The identity politics left is as radicalized and operating in their own dimension of reality as much as the feral right.

This deplatforming woke cancel culture is touched on in Bryce Edwards latest blog detailing the wokes attempt to cancel him!

TDB has been warning about this for sometime, that a culture backlash has been building against woke social engineering and that because Identity Politics and not class is the dominant philosophical schism within the Left, we are intellectually too weak to challenge the economic hegemony of neoliberalism and instead pick the low hanging fruit of identity.

This loss of class solidarity is causing the political spectrum to rapidly collapse.

I’m here to tell you that the radicalization in NZ politics is only going to get more extreme.

The woke will re-enter the debate this year empowered with the self belief that if they just criminalize the speech of the right we can all be safe.

Their zeal and cult like identity politics dogma will enrage the right and the debate will become extreme.

The solution of course is to penalize the social media networks themselves, not criminalize the toxic rantings of sad fuckwits.

Unfortunately there are no more adults left on the left to drive that as the solution.

In 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei explores the dangers of cultural dogma…

Under the pressure to conform, everyone sank into an ideological swamp of “criticism” and “self-­criticism.” My father repeatedly wrote self-­critiques, and when controls on thought and expression rose to the level of threatening his very survival, he, like others, wrote an essay denouncing Wang Shiwei, the author of “Wild Lilies,” taking a public stand that went against his inner convictions.

Situations such as this occurred in Yan’an in the 1940s, occurred in China after 1949, and still occur in the present day. Ideological cleansing, I would note, exists not only under totalitarian regimes—­it is also present, in a different form, in liberal Western democracies. Under the influence of politically correct extremism, individual thought and expression are too often curbed and too often replaced by empty political slogans.

…and Edward Snowden warns

From the time I began studying China’s quest to intermediate the information space of its domestic internet, as part of my classified work at the NSA, I’d experience an unpleasant spinal tingle whenever I came across a new report indicating that the United States government, was, piece by piece, building out a similar technological and political infrastructure, using similar the justifications of countering terrorism, misinformation, sedition, and subjective “social harms.” I don’t want to be misunderstood as saying “East” and “West” were, or are, the same; rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a toxic obsession with “national security”—a euphemism for state supremacy—are drawing the US and China to meet in the middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they’ve begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual and national political differences until little distance remains. 

If you thought getting people to take a vaccination was hard, wait till you tell them you will take away their free speech.

We ain’t seen nuthin yet.

Brace for impact.

 

Political Parties

Labour – The Waikeria Prison riot report will be damning. Kelvin’s position as Deputy must be questioned in its wake. Urgent Cabinet reshuffle is required and the best dynamic talent Labour has should be fast tracked into Cabinet. People will need more than being told to endure, they will want a vision and solution to the sharp rise in the cost of living.

National – Key will replace Goodfellow as President and start a candidate academy with Luxon to reshape the Party for 2023. Luxon will fail to win over the middle.

Greens – Any gains made will be lost in the Hate Speech war. Marama will continue to refuse to give Chloe the leadership despite her being the best bet for the future. First impact of the new rape laws will start becoming apparent.

ACT – Will have a plethora of culture war issues to attack. Will attract the angry urban male 18-49 market. Things will get nasty real quick as NZ Antifa  decide ACT voters are the same as fascists.

Maori Party – They had the most positive campaign in the 2020 election yet the leadership team have dragged the Party into racist ties, racist shoes, called on the SIS to form a Stasi and described the vaccine roll out as akin to the Squid Games while calling it genocide. John Tamihere is managing to do more real mahi outside Parliament than the co-leaders are doing inside it! You can really see the difference between what a JT co-led Party would have been and what it’s become. They risk becoming irrelevant.

NZ First – Talking of irrelevant. Winston’s claim the Government knew and hid that Harry Tam had infected the North with a sick prostitute was probably the last straw in terms of his relationship with Jacinda. Will try to attack Māori for blah blah blah but it’s all a bit desperate now. Could work the Free Speech issue but he would have to be clever about it. Could seize upon isolationism as the new zeitgeist.

 

Auckland Mayoralty

Goff is off to America and David Shearer won’t run, once Paula Bennett finds out, she will announce her candidacy in late January, early February. The only feasible Left wing candidate is Efeso Collins, but the Auckland Left have bewilderingly decided to back the glass jawed pronoun salad that is Richard Hill.

Richard Hill is a woke fart in a unisex elevator who is as electable as a vegan sex toy at a meatlovers BBQ festival. Paula Bennett will destroy him and he will come third to Efeso Collins who should run a rogue candidacy. Bennett will be smart if she offers Efeso Deputy as a final smack in the face to the Auckland Left for disrespecting him so badly!

Culture

Today FM – Instead of competing for the redneck spittle faction of the ZB audience, Mediaworks intends to just recreate ZB. Expect wall to wall Luxon as Today FM rebirths as ZB for women. This station will have an immediate impact in clawing back National voters in the urban centers. Think Radio Live hosted by Paula Bennett. Expect it to rip into ZBs bloated ratings.

The Platform – Can Sean Plunkett cobble together a new media Death Star to attack woke culture wars without it descending into a KKK rally run for AntiVaxxer Qanon enthusiasts? Let’s find out! Launching at the same time as Today FM.

The Working Group – The greatest and bestest weekly political podcast not funded by NZ on Air returns 7.30pm Monday January 10th. We had an insanely positive response to our 3 episode season last year and while the productivity screamed funded by NZ on Air, our bank accounts didn’t, despite this we are coming back because you the people deserve more than the terrible political podcasts currently being offered to you. Ep 1 will be a Economy 2022 special.

TVNZ/RNZ merger – Former National Party Minister & Westpac Boss, Simon Power has stepped into TVNZ to navigate the new political minefield of running TVNZ/RNZ. Tracy Martin is steering this so it should be amazing, the only question will be how Kris Faafoi manages to sink it accidentally, if he’s still the Broadcasting Minister.

 

NZ on Air funded woke ‘journalism’ – The Right have attempted to paint th Public Interest Journalism Fund up as Labour Party stooges pretending to be journalists writing news to appease Comrade Jacinda which is disgraceful bullshit, but equally the corporate mainstream media alongside NZ on Air can’t pretend this is actual journalism either!

Paying media to cover local journalism is what the fucking media should be doing in the first place and the diversity requirements are just woke box ticking for public funding requirements.

This is not journalism, it’s social engineering for agreed woke Wellington middle class virtue signals.

By playing to middle class virtue signals, the Government avoid the heavy lifting to rebuild the shattered free market monstrosity they have now!

What the Government should be doing is reforming the market by hitting Facebook and Google up for a Journalism tax which is funded to accredited media for them to decide the journalistic focus, not targeted niche woke knee jerks or local journalism which should be their existing obligation.

Re-create the market properly by taxing Facebook and Google for journalism that the big players use while obligating public service broadcasters to meet the needs of diversity.

Freed of actually having to reform the media market, NZ on Air isn’t funding journalism, it’s funding woke social engineering.

The echo chamber of elite opinion that has Newsroom sharing content with RNZ, sharing content with the Spin-off, sharing content with Stuff, sharing content with Newshub – the same echo chamber repeating the same capitalist values.

Facebook dirty deal – What is being proposed is the worst outcome for NZ journalism.

Here is what SHOULD happen.

Google & Facebook should face a separate media tax that is ringfenced and handed directly to NZ on Air.

NZ on Air in turn hands that money out to any journalist to specifically do investigative journalism.

That journalist’s work gains a ‘flag’ and NZ on Air runs a ‘read between the flags the way you swim between the flags’ campaign to help NZers distinguish what is journalism and what is social media disinformation.

This way you set the bench mark for actual journalism while countering misinformation while expanding investigative journalism.

We set this media tax on Google and Facebook to fund real journalism to counter their platforms misinformation.

That is what we SHOULD be doing.

What we are instead doing is allowing desperate media owners to gain the algorithms of Facebook to pimp out extreme headlines to drive more clicks and royalty revenue!

This won’t save good journalism, it will speed the demise of it!

Allowing mainstream media to gain royalties from hate algorithms is a recipe for disaster.

Middle class work culture – Will we all go back to working in an office? I don’t think so. For many comfortable middle class people, cutting the commute and working from home has been a revelation of happiness, and with many still frightened of the outside world through lockdown conditioning, expect far more shut in’s culturally. Companies will ask why they are spending so much money on office space. Expect a real change in the work culture space.

Conclusion: 

Look at the outrageous profits the NZ banks are bleeding us dry with….

…once upon a time when the Left were more focused on class and economics, we would have had a plethora of responses to this madness.

Sadly the entire movement is infected by woke identify politics with no intellectual muscle beyond micro aggression policing and cancelling people on Twitter.

Rather than focus on jobs, houses and poverty (because they are hard) we get middle class virtue signals.

That bloody bike bridge!

What were they thinking?

Thanks to middle class identity politics, the Left have spent more energy since 2016 on fighting heteronormative white cis male patriarchy than capitalism.

Labour have failed us over 4 years because they had no plan to scare the public service into serving the public.

They need 5 big Radical Centre ideas that actually do more than woke virtue signalling to challenge inequality and poverty .

1 – Financial Transaction Tax – TAX BANKS!

Society needs money for social infrastructure and to rapidly adapt to the climate crisis. It is unacceptable that citizens pay more tax. A Financial Transaction Tax set at .001 cent would capture all those speculators who trade and the banks that enable their gambling. Hit the corporates with this tax and the beauty is that it’s unavoidable because every electronic financial transaction is recorded. This would see billions available each year and start to push back on corporate power.

2 – Use Public Works Act to seize 90% of all golf courses in Auckland.

The Housing crisis needs an immediate solution, not more empty promises. Using the Public Works Act, central Government should seize 90% of golf courses in Auckland and build a mix of state houses and first time home buyer owner/occupier tiny houses using the best environmental & urban design housing. Fuck the golfers. We could solve homelessness, provide extra resources to these new communities while giving first home buyers an immediate way into the housing market. Why not turn golfing privilege into economic justice?

3 – Feed the bloody kids – all of them!

Not just some bullshit unhealthy food, I’m talking community garden, local produce, parents paid to come in and help serve up the most nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school we can provide. To actually care about our children and set standards of what is most healthy for us. Hungry children can’t learn and removing this cost from the poorest parents pockets would do more to put money back into those pockets than any welfare increase would do without getting clawed back by MSD. We would build community at schools, while providing healthy food to our kids, while putting money into the poorest parents. Make this universal.

4 – Legalize Cannabis

The hundreds of millions in tax revenues, the 5000 jobs, the weakening of gangs plus the means to move criminals out of the black market into law abiding jobs all combine to the need for a State regulated industry that will benefit everyone. A stoned nation is far less violent than a drunk one, I’m certain it would reduce the terrible culture of rage we live with in this country.

5 – Free Public Transport

You want Aucklanders to get out of their cars? Make public transport free. Again this would help save the poor money and force change by providing and enormous incentive to get people out of their polluting cars.

This Government is failing in every indicator except keeping us safe from Covid but that’s not enough.

What is required are some big ideas with immediate pay off that enables the Government to bypass the public service and their fiefdoms.

Keeping Covid out isn’t enough. Those 200000 kids in poverty, those 24000 on emergency housing wait lists and the generations locked out of home ownership deserve better.

We need to tax the corporations benefiting from climate change pollution to fund the public infrastructure to subsidize the damage their profit driven greed is causing.

We can’t change and adapt without the cash to resource it and the political will to drive it.

We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations.

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44 COMMENTS

  1. Prediction: Licenced firearms owners will continue to be the whipping boy for gang/criminal violence. New laws & increased restrictions will make the situation worse. Gun violence will increase & Police will be routinely armed leading to more people being shot (Police, criminals & innocents). More firearms will be lost in “boating accidents”.

    • Agree with Anker what a read to start the new year, and so do enjoy your analogies @ Martin Bradbury “ ..as relevant as a fart in an elevator…” whether your predictions come through or not remains to be seen, Happy New year and keep those articles coming

  2. Crime. Like it or not the perception Labour are weak on crime is fast becoming reality. Crime is quite simply getting worse.

    In reality with Andrew Coster at the helm, the police are delivering exactly what Labour want. Trouble is none of us are feeling any safer as a result and criminals are just loving it. Failure by police to take care of the smaller to middling crime by turning the big blind eye to counter offending and reoffending stats the government want swept away is leading to far more blatant violent crime by emboldened primates who think they’re untouchable. Most of us are over the pathetic police non responses and corporate cliche’ weasel words to everything telling us they’re “monitoring” whatever they’re not.

    With the Antichrist of police dream teams, Coster and Poto, even the terminally dull Mark Mitchell has a very good chance at making mincemeat of Labour’s weakness in this area and making inroads into Labour’s polling.

    • Labour will go real hard on ‘thought crime’ ‘speech crime’ and ‘hate crime’, but will fail spectacularly as it has for the last few years about crime committed by gangs, unruly bikies, violence, and so on and so forth. But then locking someone up for mis-gendering someone is much easier then going out and locking up some Meth head who fucks up the neighborhood.
      Labour has failed on every point or bench mark they ever pretended was a reason for their existence, and it will only get worse in this year.

    • And the great thing is that worsening crime allows the opposition to push the get tough on crime “lock’em up & throw away the key” ticket. Always a great vote grabber for scared citizens, but does nothing to address the root of the problem and only perpetuates the vicious criminal cycle. Fixing the problem is hard, building prisons is easy & boosts GDP.

  3. The year of Soylent Green. Yippee. Will the recycled dead carcasses from covid deaths be included in our food chain also? Or will it be every second live birth donated to the cause? Many options. Antivaxxers, haters, criminals. Just the poor

    • Sinic Fuck I love that. It’s not until you’ve seen the movie you start to see it’s a future possibility. Maybe not next year although some poor might enjoy an alternative food supply. Although it might not only be the poor.

  4. Frank’s Predictions:

    1). Centre right is neck-and-neck with centre left come August and post son-of-Megatron strain flowing through NZ. Uncle Fester gets back under 35 corporate women as the economy starts to splutter.
    2). MIQ remains. Expect there to be a M Morah revelation how Jacinda and Clark’s mates miraculously got slots yet joe public can’t. Bubble with Australia ‘forced’ open post Easter as Jacinda finally accepts son-of-Megatron inevitably.
    3). One high profile minister gets shitcanned for some dodgy shit but remains in parliament because just, because. Creates divisions in Labour that will become fault lines when they get back into opposition.
    4). Inflation and lack of supply really bites come mid 2022. With nowhere else in the developed world (bar China) having restricted movement some headlining airlines and sea freight organisations tell Aotearoa to get fucked making the issue get worse.
    5). House prices go flat and actually start to reduce. A plethora of apartments and ‘modern’ houses are sold on a dumpster basis. Still nobody that hasn’t got a house can’t afford them. Australian banks start shitting on struggling NZers as a directive from HQ. Grunter and Beetroot threaten them then back down as the Realpolitik of the situation dawns on them.
    6). 3 waters and hate speech laws get watered down so as to gain acceptance from the middle. Satisfies nobody then. Protests on the street during a son-of-Megatron restriction period. Biggest protest (Auckland) tops the 10k.
    7). Some innocent mother, child or disabled person gets brutally killed in the gang cross fire that becomes a lightening rod for law and order reform. Act and National devise policies that circumnavigate of Bill of Rights in line with how Australia deals with gangs – goes down a treat with the middle.

    AND:

    Jacinda gets pregnant again, retires and our own Gordon Brown (Grunter) takes over come Octoberish that coincides with the left’s poling advantages removed. PM gets out of the country and conveniently gets a job somewhere in New York and doesn’t come back for a long, long time.

    • My god I agree with everything you’ve said. There’s been many rumours around that Jacinda wants out, have another baby and actually be a mother and who can blame her? But Labour know that she’s their only asset and are reluctant to let her go.

      Can you imagine Labour without the fawning media giggling like school girls at a Beatles concert over Jacinda-mania?

      I predict that Grant will be Prime Minister by the end of the year and Labour will be well into the 30s. 2023 is game on

      • “There’s been many rumours around that Jacinda wants out.”

        I’ve been reading for years that she’s off to the UN. It’s better spreading stories by saying, “People are saying,” or “I’ve heard that…”

        You know, like, “People tell me that a dose of dicloxacillin every morning while facing the east will cure eczema,” or, “People are saying if you stick a light bulb up your arse will cure Covid.”

          • A prediction has an end point, the prediction that Ardern will end up overseas is like predicting she will have a birthday every year.
            It’s like me predicting your statement to Frank “My god I agree with everything you’ve said.” is only because you’re anti left and pro right, that is in itself a fact not a prediction.
            I predict Frankies predictions are just wishful thinking.

            • Fair call Bertie. Happy New Years – me old mate.

              Predictions are like assholes…….everyone has one

              • Happy New Year Frankie. All the best for the year whether we are right or wrong, I enjoy our banter as it’s never personal.

          • I also predict Sabine will continue her attack on the Government until a right wing government is elected.

            “Labour has failed on every point or bench mark they ever pretended was a reason for their existence, and it will only get worse in this year.”

            Nothing of any substance by Sabine just more rhetoric and more predicted from her in 2022.

  5. Climate change.

    Like it or not and Chris Trotter is right here, NZ can do nothing to change the outcome. We are strapped to the front of this train and we are going for the ride, like it or not to wherever it takes us.

    But…Climate change presupposes that if arrested, our environment remains as our memories are directed toward, to a typical North American 1950’s day complete with happy smiling Bing Crosby white faces, when the truth is change is life. Everything does not remain the same, good, bad or ever. It’s not that 8 billion human are expelling CO2 alarmingly where 50 years ago only half that many did, oh no, it’s cars!

    And speaking of the truth when it comes to climate change the truth dies a grizzly death. The bicycle lobby tell us if they get endless bike lanes for free to ride their free electric bikes that are not made with chemically hazardous short life batteries, in polluting factories by exploited workers in China, shipped on polluting ships, carried by polluting trucks to their green little hands, but ethically made by green vegan elves in Grey Lynn bungalows, then we will save the world. And even better if they can only access the Harbour Bridge lanes for a “trial” over the “quite summer months”, (trademark that bullshit phrase please), we will all be led by obnoxious odious smelling bicyclists to the promised land. Hallelujah! No we won’t, ever, you anti car ponces, and anti car, especially SUV’s or worse the devils car itself, the Ford Ranger double cab, is what their crusade is really about. They cannot stand the fact riff raff can access their CBD wonderlands!

    And I just cringe when I see some unco Grey Lynn dipstick parents riding their bicycles around Ponsonby like Kermit the Frog with a baby or toddler on the frame. The carnage if one of these idiots loses control is simply unspeakable and on par with child abuse. All to virtue signal!

    Electric bikes, which are really just non taxed motorcycles, or worse, electric cars, wont do anything to adjust the climate down one thousandth of a degree. But Christ, hitch your bludging green wagon to that manure, baby. It’s got bells on it!

    • Well they don’t do themselves any favours do they. Single lycra-clad cyclists demanding a better right to a bus lane than a bus carrying 50 or 60 people. Or WCC’s latest on residential parking. They probably need to send a bureaucrat and woke Councillor on another fact finding junket to somewhere like San Francisco.
      On the positive side though, at least a “resilience manager” had the common decency to resign after a couple of decades – considering Wellington’s infrastructure isn’t that resilient. Although we should probably expect him to resurface as a self-employed consultant that WCC will commission to advise on what to do next – and it won’t be the bleeding bloody obvious.

    • purely anecdotal ok…not my go to in the evidence dept but ok…

      one of my best mates travelled from wellie up the hutt valley at the weekend and being a bit of a greenie he was aghast that the lycra yobbos weren’t using the cycle lane provided but instead riding several abrest on the road instead…cuz,,,entitlement…or do they think wellie to the hutt is an actual leg of the tour de france?

      Now I don’t want to tar all cyclists with the same brush but the lycra clad middle class yobbos like in every field they touch are seriously fucking it up for all the other cyclists

  6. The caretaker government will make more promises and not deliver on any of them.

    The opposition partys will lie in wait.

    The Maori party will burn themselves out and eat their own arse.

    The gweens are cancelled.

    The middle class will contemplate swapping sides because they’re $400b wealthier and they know that, that sacred cow is nearly dry.

    The Mel’s & GenZero will sign up in droves for all of the mental health services available to them because they’re feeling a bit burnout from doing the ‘hard yards’ throughout the lockdown(s) hating on everyone who didn’t agree with them or listen to them or want anything to do with them because they’re victims of their own success. Mentals.

    And for the rest of us normal folks who’ve experienced a bit of life …. we’ll just adapt, regroup and push-on because fuck all is going to change in the near future or the next year years or so.

    And talk of a Republic in NZ and War overseas, Covid, Green Wash’n Greenies, US foreign policy, trade, and energy Crisis across the globe will hog the MSM whilst 25,000 people squander in motels in NZ at a cost of $1m per day and kids live in poverty because that’s how the PM wants it and fuck all houses will be built.

    Who is this guy and where is someone to replace him?

    “Labours Socialist War Hero Housing Minister-Under-secretary cut loose! And built thousands of houses.
    Who remembers his name?
    “When Labour won the 1935 election with a large majority, and formed its first government, many expected … to enter Cabinet. However, … did not have the support of Michael Joseph Savage, the new Prime Minister. Savage appears to have considered … too radical and uncontrolled, while … considered Savage too cautious. The two had clashed on a number of policy issues, and in the end, … was not awarded ministerial rank, instead, he became an under-secretary. This position did not, however, have any legal authority until the following year, when … threatened to resign. Given responsibility for housing, … quickly moved to implement a “socialist” plan for state housing, with the construction of many new dwellings for the poor.”

    Or is there no one?

    • talkin about the guy who politicized me at the tender age of 11 years there Denny.John A Lee “Simple on a Soapbox”.

    • Agree Denny. Sadly it looks like “There is No-One”. The future doesnt look too hot but most of us Kiwi’s will keep on tightening our belts and stoically put our best foot forward.

  7. I can’t do it — I just hover very high. Couldn’t even read your acridly realistic comments through. My four siblings have gone off to nonsense from the authoritarian Right for that reason. When past 50 you seek comfort no matter reality. See the strange matter of the Fabian — ‘willing to wait as long as it takes’ — Society’s infatuation with Stalin.

  8. A new political party? Currently the only alternative to wokeism seems to be ACT’s free-market fundamentalism. That leaves a lot of us with nowhere to go. The Nats’ current pitch seems to be a more business-friendly and more competent version of LINO – I doubt they’d repeal much of the wokeist legislation that’s being pushed through while we’re distracted by the latest Covid variant.

  9. Those at fault here are the law enforcement authorities. There was an extraordinarily high level of police complaints filed against this particular criminal gang, and none of them were upheld over a period of many years. The criminal justice system supported this criminal racket called the Waipori Falls Body Corporate at every step of the way.
    What you have left today, the ruins of a once beautiful village, is the outcome of years of a bizarre spectacular failure of law enforcement, that is so obvious that it appears as collusion.

  10. Reply to Dark Waters;-
    Those at fault here are the law enforcement authorities. There was an extraordinarily high level of police complaints filed against this particular criminal gang, and none of them were upheld over a period of many years. The criminal justice system supported this criminal racket called the Waipori Falls Body Corporate at every step of the way.
    What you have left today, the ruins of what was once beautiful village, is the outcome of years of a bizarre spectacular failure of the law enforcement establishment, that is so obvious that it appears as collusion.

  11. “Marama will continue to refuse to give Chloe the leadership despite her being the best bet for the future.” Yes, yes… replace the only non-propertied party leader with another propertied one…. genius, genius…

      • And you, Grosswobbler, taking your one good eye from your sanctimonious skyrocketing property values, to learn the very basic skill of spelling 😉

      • Not sure it’s possible @Grey.
        Roxina is prolly Roxanne’s ‘lil gal’ altho I’m more than likely a C**T for suggesting the possibility. And I better go hide now or I’ll get @ Applewood being offended on her behalf.
        The intergenerational blame game has become so productive and virtuous.
        (as in:
        All for the gram
        Bitches love the gram
        Oh wait shit
        Roxanne
        Roxanne
        All she wanna do is party all night ……. )

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