The Greens are being sensible by downplaying the Identity Politics stuff and appealing to the universal (wealth tax, dentistry). And Labour under Hipkins has not helped itself. Another perk of the Greens doing well is that they have a chance of bringing in...
In 2008-2017, National was dealing with vassal parties. ACT is too damned big to be a vassal now (a good twice the size of NZ First, even if Winston gets in).
It's not the policies of the past. It's anti-vaxxerism, obsessing about transgender people, and cracking down on perceived Wokeness. It's far-right Culture War for anyone paying attention - and in this case, Winston's pulling in the same direction as ACT, ...
Obvious solution is National-NZ First Coalition that uses ACT the way Labour uses the Greens.
As 2020-2023 amply demonstrated, Winston Peters wasn't the handbrake in 2017-2020. Labour itself was the handbrake - Winston was just the excuse. But people thinking this is the 2017 Winston are not paying attention.
New Zealand First in 2023 is quite a different beast from the New Zealand First of 2017 or 2008. This version of Winston doesn't get the support of centrist Labourites (of course not, Labour is centre), and his days of economic interest are over. This ...
In this case, he thinks he can get power via jumping in with the Rightist Nutters. He ain't going to turn up his nose at ACT.
In 2008-2017, ACT was a vassal party. Now ACT and NZ First could quite possibly get 20% of the vote between them. That's real power.
There's a chap with horns and wings purchasing ice-skates as we talk. The 2023 incarnation of Winston Peters has utterly abandoned any residual opposition to neoliberalism. He straight-out doesn't care about economics any more (indeed, one would have ...
We'd want to be able to export to China too. You know, seeing as they earn us more cash than all your other little countries combined.
AUKUS doesn't protect international trade interests. It protects American interests, and American interests only. And those aren't New Zealand's interests. New Zealand's interests are sending milk powder to China, importing consumer goods in return, and ...
New Zealand exports more to China than all your listed countries combined. It is profoundly stupid to alienate our major trading partner because Washington says so.
We have substantially more trade with China than the USA. Our trade interests are "we export to them and import from them", without interference from the USA. (In fact, as of 2022, we export more to China than the USA and Australia combined. If you can't ...
Our economic interests are now so heavily integrated with China, appealing to us being a trade-based economy doesn't imply what you think it implies - in fact, it means the opposite. Neither India nor the USA are inclined to give us a Free Trade Agreement ...
Severe neglect of Otago-Southland. Rachel Brooking and Ingrid Leary will win Dunedin and Taieri, but this basically kicks Liz Craig out. From four current MPs in the region (two electorate, two list), Labour will now only have the two Dunedin electorate ...
Not just youth crime either. There's a substantial (and ongoing) spike in New Zealand's prison population from the mid-1980s onwards. Turns out that when you tell people there's no such thing as society, people take you at your word.
There are really two big problems with the article: - Health results are tied to socio-economic status, and while Maori and Pasifika are disproportionately poor, most poor people in New Zealand are Pakeha. - Health discrepancies between Maori and non-Maori...
Others take a different view on voting choice, or perhaps don’t consider climate to be that important, and there are a chunk of former left wing voters who now say they are politically homeless over gender identity politics. *Sniggers*. Try being a ...
Russians has always been profoundly depoliticised, with emphasis placed on keeping one's head down and staying out the way. Politics is a matter for elite squabbles. That is not new to Putin.
Remind me again how the United Nations is in a position to force the nuclear-armed Great Powers (USA, Russia, China) to do anything? The UN's purpose is to stop a Third World War. Thus far, it's done a pretty good job of that.
In Dunedin the university and polytech employ directly or indirectly about 1 in every 5 people in a total of 130,000, and there is no industry to replace it. Previously the university itself had 19,000 students and contributed $1.79 billion to our economy...
If he had done his research on Wanaka he would have recognised how few in that audience were voting Labour or Green, how rich on average they were and hence how wealth-controlling, how much in short he was in white haute-bourgeoisie heaven Wanaka's indeed...
Wood was too polite with respect to the protestors.
Literally the first thing that pops up on Google: https://www.history.com/news/what-was-life-like-for-women-in-the-viking-age Were women equal? No. But women in medieval Scandinavia had serious domestic and household power - and that isn't simply a ...
Well, yes. Turns out there's a little thing called class that trumps gender considerations. But I was merely attacking the notion that property = patriarchy.
The medieval Norse were property owners. They were also highly egalitarian on gender matters. The status of women in any given society ebbs and flows over time. It cannot be reduced to simple notions of pop-history.
Last year New Zealand’s current account deficit – the difference in value between what we import and what we export – was a massive $33.8 billion or nearly 9% of GDP. You are confusing the Current Account with the Balance of Trade. The Current Account not...
In relative (not absolute) terms, the Greens get more votes out of the South Island than the North Island. And yet there is only one South Islander in their top ten.
It didn't arrive all at once. France didn't have women's suffrage until 1945. Switzerland until 1971. Moreover, democracy itself is a weird fluke in human history. Our species naturally defers to Kings and Priests. The notion that the common people ought ...
We had efficient, functioning government (multiple ones, actually - this was the era of the provinces), and far less institutional inertia than Britain. There was a reason we were considered the Social Laboratory of the world - something that rather goes ...
The USA was managing it in the 1830s.
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