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The Greens In Real Government in October 2023

Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, September 11th, 2023 - 21 comments

What happens if the Green Party gets 10% of the vote and the top 9 get in. And say they get to form a government. What would Greens in Cabinet look like?

What Starts off in Support of Alabama’s Miners …

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, December 28th, 2021 - 2 comments

What Starts off in Support of Alabama’s Miners turns into a homily from Beau on the power of getting community change going when and only when you have the organisational power to pull it off month after month after month.

The Freedumb Protesters give protesting a bad name

Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, November 10th, 2021 - 58 comments

As a principle the right to protest is important.  But the freedumb protesters making outlandish claims and at the same time plagarizing the language of progressive protest movements deserves to be called out.

Layers of Culpability

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, February 2nd, 2021 - 20 comments

The huge tyre fire near Amberley in North Canterbury last Friday is in an area with a high water table, extreme fire risk in summer, two kilometres from a town of 2000 residents, and on the edge of one of NZ’s premier wine regions.

No extradition for Assange

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 am, January 5th, 2021 - 104 comments

Great news. While unexpected, Nicky Hager who was an expert witness for Assange at the trial, thought this might be a possibility when he spoke to the Fabian Society in November. More details tomorrow.

Update: Bail application to be heard on Wednesday London time.

Time’s up Labour

Written By: - Date published: 4:50 pm, November 20th, 2020 - 114 comments

It’s not possible to resolve New Zealand’s housing and poverty crises from within a neoliberal frame. Change is going to have to be driven from outside of parliament.

Covid recovery and bouncing forward

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, August 10th, 2020 - 21 comments

Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better. How then to ‘bounce forward’ from COVID-19 in such a way that we also move to a way of doing things consistent with the scale of the climate crisis?

NZ Police abandon Armed Response Teams

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, June 10th, 2020 - 9 comments

We have a model of policing by consent and that means we need the vast majority of people to see as legitimate the style in which we’re policing and it’s been clear to me that there has not been acceptance of this as an appropriate style of policing in New Zealand. – Police Commissioner Andrew Coster

Constitutions that build citizen power and joy

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, May 23rd, 2020 - 34 comments

Emerging from the current crisis, what kind of state can be envisaged that could do the opposite of this consciousness deflation, by enabling and encouraging an empowered citizenry, and harnessing public intelligence, creativity and ingenuity for the common good?

Covid-19 and a digital democracy

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 pm, March 15th, 2020 - 20 comments

Government has for the last decade been pushing for as many government services as possible to be primarily accessed digitally rather than face-to face. Funnily enough, the one public service they forgot to push to digital is themselves. Now’s the time Trevor.

Listening to left wing dissent

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, December 16th, 2019 - 178 comments

What stands out for me are the voices of the people who are saying actually, there were solid reasons for abandoning Labour, this is why I did. There’s something important here about really listening to dissent and being willing to engage with views that don’t make sense in the context of our own personal ideologies.

Brittle cities

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, October 29th, 2019 - 10 comments

It is pretty hard to miss a variety of cities around the world going nuts for apparently minor offences.

Dinosaurs Fight Extinction Rebellion

Written By: - Date published: 12:46 am, July 17th, 2019 - 181 comments

Dinosaurs are speeding up our extinction.

Confirmation bias

Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, April 21st, 2019 - 134 comments

The internet neatly divides us into separate isolated tribes with polarised views of what are the issues and what is reality.  How do we engage in a civilised discussion to educate each other and reach a consensus of what we should be doing?

James Casson and why YOU should Stand for Council

Written By: - Date published: 7:08 pm, March 31st, 2019 - 168 comments

Hamilton City Councillor James Casson has been exposed as a bigot. You can help rid NZ of people like him in just a few months. Time to put your best foot forward, Standarnistas!

Pete Shelley: History is Made by Those Who Turn Up

Written By: - Date published: 8:08 pm, December 7th, 2018 - 31 comments

Pete Shelley, lead singer of ground breaking punk band Buzzcocks has died. And Ed Sheeran still walks among us. Where’s the justice?

Vote City Vision in Entrust elections

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, October 12th, 2018 - 32 comments

Voting papers are being delivered to parts of Auckland relating to the Entrust elections, to elect trustees to oversee the management of Vector.  City Vision is standing a progressive group of candidates hoping to take power away from the current right wing dominated board.

Bigot’s Billboard

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, October 2nd, 2018 - 284 comments

Anti-Vaxxers are targeting South Auckland families in their latest bid to spread the virus of ignorance. You can help needle the pricks. The Standard shows you how.

UPDATE: The billboard is coming down!

Modern Technology Is Eroding Our Society

Written By: - Date published: 11:12 pm, September 30th, 2018 - 52 comments

People are losing their people skills rapidly and it is having an effect on society.

VSM – why it needs to go.

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, August 2nd, 2018 - 62 comments

In 2010 the ACT Party with the help of National managed to pass a piece of legislation that damaged student democracy, and blatantly ignored public opinion. Voluntary Student Membership or VSM sounds like a horrendous STI, and its impact has been to screw student democracy. Prior to 2010 students had a choice as to whether […]

Algorithms are threatening our democracy

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 9th, 2018 - 36 comments

Algorithms are a form of fascism – yet a fascism from data manipulation rather than from the state. Are they a threat to our democracy?

Democracy, Faux Democracy and Terror.

Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, March 19th, 2018 - 37 comments

Facebook, Putin, poisoning and Ghouta have all given fairly extensive media coverage of late. Nothing much on Afrin. Afrin has just fallen to terrorists backed by Turkey.

Update: the photo used for this post is of the The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army (TQILA), who are part of the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces fighting in Syria.

Is youth the new political divide?

Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, March 11th, 2018 - 44 comments

There is evidence in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand that youth and not class may be the new political divide.

Zen and the art of greening the government

Written By: - Date published: 6:25 am, February 3rd, 2018 - 65 comments

Democracy, protest, and what makes this the first ever progressive New Zealand MMP government.

Join Marama for an Announcement February 4th

Written By: - Date published: 6:19 am, January 23rd, 2018 - 7 comments

Marama DavidsonKia ora whānau! It would mean so much to me if you would all come and support my event on Sunday 04 Feb at 11am. We’ll be livestreaming the event so even if you can’t physically be there and you’d like to tautoko you can click ‘going’.

You Cowed?

Written By: - Date published: 3:21 pm, January 11th, 2018 - 94 comments

To bleat and wring hands, or to act? Jeez. It’s a difficult one.

To you live, from bed! – Writehanded

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, November 17th, 2017 - 1 comment

Writer Sarah Wilson blogged about her experience of the recent Nethui event, looking at Nethui itself, corporate control and the internet, safety for kids, sex worker access to the net, disability access, the importance of digital inclusion and literacy, and the social/cultural consequences of the internet.

Begone, capitalism! You don’t own me

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, October 25th, 2017 - 73 comments

Do we want to be owned by capitalism and stay in its trap of wage and debt slavery, or do we want to boldly go to post-capitalism, whatever that might be.

There is hope

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 4th, 2017 - 22 comments

Anarchism and democracy.

WINZ and Super Scandals

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, August 28th, 2017 - 138 comments

Here’s the scandal.

#LeftwithEnough

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, July 31st, 2017 - 14 comments

Mary St George writes about participatory democracy in this year’s election and the new twitter chat #LeftwithEnough.

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