Now living in Wellington, NZ. Previously in Richmond, VA, USA. Toitū te Tiriti
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Hard to take Nicola Young et al seriously about pedestrian access and fiscal responsibility when they're not willing to spend $17m to build a new (more functional and accessible) bridge, but they want to spend $80m+ to strengthen this one. Exposes the whole enterprise as a nostalgia project...
The Democratic Party (at least at the national level) is a wholly corrupt and collaborationist organization that explicitly wants to work with Trump and punish the left half of their base.
Looks like Roseneath, off the crescent?
Finally saw an Andrew Little campaign sign. Why is it not in Labour red!? What's the point of being the Labour Party candidate if you're not going to match the branding of the other Labour candidates running in the same election? Somehow even his signs manage to be pale, male, and stale...
Yeah honestly it's really disappointing that the the Law Commission came out against even the minor changes to allow victims of sex crimes to have a say about permanent name suppression. And as far as I can tell, no MPs have any interest in taking this on, even as a private member's bill...
This paper gives more detail, for people that are interested ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-jour...
It wasn't even supposed to be this way! It was initially supposed to apply to young first time offenders for relatively minor crimes (sort of like a parole system), and that actually seems reasonable. But over time it's metastasized, and now it's an affront to the idea of open justice.
I hate everything about name suppression. Literally no other country does it because it's so absurd. Yet another way for rich white men to privilege themselves within the legal system.
A series of tubes!
The cost of milk for two young boys! 😱
Honestly unclear why he even stood for the job except for ego. He doesn't seem particularly interested in doing any work. And even more puzzling why Labour chose to run him. The party has local politicians that are engaged, etc.
Christ what an asshole.
I don't feel bad for them at all. I feel immense rage that they're squandering the small window of time we have before Trump consolidates power!
Seems like this 1% bullshit is the standard government offer to everyone. It's beyond insulting to offer a pay cut (after inflation), especially as MPs just gave themselves a nice pay bump. ASMS voted to reject the offer and a strike ballot is currently out, so I'd expect senior doctor strikes too
Oh nice that's great to hear. I just don't want to see the project delayed yet AGAIN because of endless moaning from rich and connected people 😱
Nurses are on strike today in Aotearoa. If you see them on the picket line, give them your aroha and support! Fairer pay and safer staffing levels are just the beginning.
This is so damn frustrating. No it absolutely shouldn’t be up to a new council. This decision, amongst others like the Golden Mile and Begonia House, were made months ago. Respect the democratic process. They must proceed otherwise we end up with unfinished projects and escalated costs. #nzpol
Any chance you guys can sign all the Golden Mile contracts before the election? So that the next lot don't spent another decade re-litigitating it...
Agree 100 percent. This whole city is less than 200 years old but has more heritage protections than cities with actual history. It's absurd. Also, the bridge is fucking ugly and poorly functional. Goddamn parochial NIMBYs who want to keep Wellington frozen in amber can get stuffed.
This fucking guy. On top of all this, he's running the laziest campaign I've ever seen. And I'm guessing he'll carry that same entitled attitude into the mayor's office if he wins...
To their credit, RNZ actually has a perfect headline, putting the announcement in context right up top.
Golden Mile should have been completed by now. Endless consultation, whinging by small businesses, etc have caused a relatively unremarkable infrastructure project to drag on I sincerely hope the current mayor signs the construction contracts before leaving office so we can just get on with it.
There's a decent chance he will still win (though maybe not! people don't like entitled and lazy!) But this doesn't bode well for his potential term in office. It's unlikely he suddenly becomes engaged and hard-working once he's elected.
Andrew Little seems to be running the laziest mayoral campaign of all time. He has no events, I haven't seen a single billboard or sign for him, his last website update is from 10 days ago, etc. He seems to have an air of entitlement to the mayor's office without putting in the work.
Remember when this guy gave one decent sounding speech and everyone rushed to anoint him as the future of the National Party? 18 months later we have: some incredibly duplicitous work on the TPB select committee, and a few more women can go fishing...
And after all that, he's viscerally off-putting because he's transparently insincere, so he won't even win! It's like looking past Biden's facilitating genocide because you had to beat Trump and then not beating Trump...
People everywhere around the world were sick of inflation and covid and took it out on incumbents. Every incumbent party up for election in 2023-4 lost for exactly that reason. Given the global trend, National and ACT's 2023 performance was actually quite poor (<50%, needed NZF to prop them up)
It's really been a weekend of rancid vibes, eh?
This is something that sounds unbelievable but it is literally true. Any senate Democrat could have objected to this arrangement and precisely zero of them did so.
Same in New Zealand. It's a very sparsely populated country with a lot of rural hunters, etc. But they just got rid of semiautomatic weapons after the Christchurch shooting because they're not in thrall to a deranged gun cult.
Meanwhile, the actual answer to reducing gun violence (reduce the number of existing guns and make it harder/impossible to get new guns and ammunition) is so fucking obvious that every other country in the world has implemented it.
Meanwhile, the actual answer to reducing gun violence (reduce the number of existing guns and make it harder/impossible to get new guns and ammunition) is so fucking obvious that every other country in the world has implemented it.
Every time there's a mass shooting, I'm reminded how deranged American gun discourse is. You have the "open carry assault rifles everywhere" nuts, the "we can't do anything, it's just how it is" nihilists, the "only people who know every bit of gun minutiae can possibly participate" weirdos, etc
Yeah man there are many problems. But the root cause of gun violence is the guns. The UK has shitty cops too, but they don't have gun massacres because they don't have guns
I'm going to leave this here because it's a waste of time to talk to someone this obtuse. But my original point was that the political will to control firearms is the missing piece in the US, not the details of legislative drafting
Americans can and will keep slaughtering themselves with guns at increasing rates. There is no atrocity that will compel them to take away the guns that are killing people. And the rest of the world will continue to look at the US as an insane gun cult
Again, whatever. I don't live there any more because, after Uvalde, it was clear that nothing would meaningfully reduce the number of gun deaths in America in my lifetime. So I left and moved somewhere that actually took away guns after a massacre.
Incidentally, this is why I moved away from the US after I had kids. They can grow up in a sane country that regulates firearms. Meanwhile there was another school shooting in the US yesterday and people like you and Sky keep bleating on about how nothing can or should be done.
My point is that it's not a question of legislative drafting, it's a question of political will. And the US is a gun death cult country that will repeatedly sacrifice children on the altar of the gun.
I'm not looking for a way to balance public safety with responsible gun ownership. I couldn't give less of a shit about hunters or gun enthusiasts.
Lol whatever. Ban all private gun ownership and ammunition sales. You get a year amnesty period to turn in or destroy the guns you have. After that you face 10k fine per gun per day if you're caught.
The issue is that the American public is in thrall to a gun death cult and nothing, including the repeated slaughter of children, will make that change.
Yeah I know, my point is just that the question of "how do you define what an assault weapon is in the law" is not the difficult part of this.
So sorry to hear that. We had to put our first cat to sleep at 6 because of cancer, and it was absolutely brutal. I'm sure you gave her a wonderful 13 years though, and her memory will always be a blessing
It really takes something special to make Nicola Willis seem like the reasonable party in a dispute, but he pulled it off...
Yeah though in this case, it appears Quigley really has been incompetent and mendacious. He's unfit for public service. newsroom.co.nz/2025/06/13/d...
Good riddance. The man is wholly incompetent and unfit for public service.
Yeah I mean questions about RBNZ independence are legitimate, and I don't particularly trust Willis to appoint a good successor. But Quigley is completely incompetent and kicking him out is good
Yeah this is not actually a difficult problem. It's a question of political will, not legislative drafting...
Really wish a certain subset of Biden dead-ender would get this into their head: Israel could not have conducted this war for more than a few weeks without US resupply and support. They would run out of bombs, their planes would be grounded, their tanks break down, their guns run out of bullets
The pay of the median teacher and a backbench MP used to be almost the same about 40 years ago! Then MPs kept raising their own pay while letting teacher wages stagnate...
No, this owner seems cool for sure, and I'm not saying he's blaming cycleways. They've done it tough and gotten fucked by Nicola Willis' austerity for sure. But the Post and other various anti-cycleway politicians and media figures will jump on it like they always do anytime a business closes
Also, what do these people think Dems in control of congress would accomplish at that point? They already had the ability to block trump's budget a few months ago and declined to do so.
It's unfortunate, because in theory, having MPs paid well with good benefits should be good for society. But if they grossly violate their social license by blatantly benefiting themselves while short-changing essential workers, then why should society support them?
This is fucking obscene, especially at a time when the government is offering pay cuts to teachers, nurses, and doctors. I'm fully radicalized against MP compensation and benefits at this point. They should be indexed to the median teacher pay and not a dollar more.
Haha I don't think I'd go that far. He's not actively whipping up an anti-immigrant mob, you know...
Sneering condescension is basically the Democratic party brand at this point, and Torres exemplifies it here
Yeah I mean they gotta toss him as leader or they're going to blow the election. It's honestly unfathomable to me why the rest of the Labour MPs want to keep this proven loser who obviously doesn't have the juice...
This government talks a lot about fiscal responsibility but it doesn't seem to apply to David Seymour's pet projects of trashing state services and funding charter schools #nzpol
I know they're busy hibernating, but come the fuck on.
Seems like something the LABOUR party needs to commit to reversing straightaway...
As was pointed out some time ago and remains true, 'This isn't a govt. It's a collection of semi-autonomous industry-appointed action groups fronted by a tootpaste salesman.' Sharpen your (metaphorical) pitchforks. #nzpol
There isn't a cycleway within several hundred meters, but there is a bike shop around the corner, so I'm sure they'll try...
When you miss these opportunities, you don't just get them back later. See also: Obama in 2009. Swept into power with a supermajority and a mandate to end GWOT and punish Wall Street excesses. Instead, he pardoned the torturers and brought the bankers into his administration. We've never recovered.
Dying of Whiteness explores this in great detail. These people are very clear that they would literally rather die than make different choices.
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
Dying of Whiteness remains one of the key books for understanding 21st century America
Oh man Costco is one of the American things I miss the most. Really wish they'd open a store in Wellington...
Honestly find it hard to imagine there will be a lot of uptake here. Given the requirements for tax residency and spending half the year here, it's hard to see a large pool of wealthy foreigners take this route
After every American school shooting, I'm reminded of Gary Wills' Our Moloch, the single best piece of writing on America's gun obsession. It's so obscene that the only apt comparison is to a religious death cult...
Remember when Luxon claimed he would march in the street against modern-day slavery? It seemed like bullshit at the time (can you seriously imagine Luxon at a protest?), and it's obvious now that he doesn't care enough to even send a delegate to this conference.
I'd imagine the Wellington store would actually need to be in Hutt or Porirua because of the physical footprint of the store itself. Can't imagine finding enough space in Wellington itself (maybe by the airport?)
Costco has stores in cities of 500k people in the US, so I'd imagine it would probably be feasible. They generally sell at cost and make their money on memberships, so as long as they can induce enough people to sign up, it would work in Wellington or Christchurch
Yep I knew I'd see a piece about him before but I couldn't find it. Thanks!
Quigley is a real piece of work. His behavior throughout this whole thing has been atrocious...
The absolute audacity of this woman blaming “local leadership” and cycleways for the flailing economy after firing our public servants. You’re the Minister of Finance AND Economic Growth. Take a hard look at yourself, your lack of plan and your missing boats before coming at us. #nzpol
Yeah that is also a big problem. I'd argue that having an unappealing leader AND no worthwhile ideas is why voters don't really like them despite the government's tremendous unpopularity
It does suggest that having a charismatic leader is important for a political party (shocking, I know), and that ditching the wet blanket known as Chris Hipkins for someone with some personal appeal would probably pay major dividends for Labour though...
This is why Erica Stanford and her ilk are so desperate to push Te Reo out of education. See also the government's increasingly sweaty and desperate moves to prioritize English (passports, changing agency names, etc).
"Concepts of a plan"-ass government
This is unspeakably vile. Joe Biden was a complete monster with regards to Gaza, and his appointees in that area are all complete ghouls.
Idiots like this are exactly why the Democratic party has favorablity ratings worse than Trump. Stop collaborating with fascists. Be the opposition party that people are desperate for, not Trump's junior coalition partners.
Your family members voted to destroy my family. The very least I can do is not intervene when the choices they've made destroy them.
I literally fled the country because rural white people (like your family members) decided they wanted to cast immigrants out of the social contract So no, I have no desire to continue subsidizing their unproductive, parasitic lifestyles. They can be self-sufficient like they pretend to be.
What is this dogshit article? Why is this a story? Why is RNZ granting anonymity to this person to whine about somewhat unclear wording on a council letter? A serious news organization wouldn't be running this drivel...
Yes those are large gallstones! She'll feel better now that they're out, and removing the gallbladder should prevent recurrence
Donald Trump could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and Democrats would say “he only committed murder to distract us from his failure to lower grocery bills for working families.”
So they are privatising health and not even telling us how much we are paying for it? #nzpol www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
It's become pretty clear that the ONLY check on government power is the ballot box, and ad a result, I'm a hard no on extending the term...
The issue is that the government can simply pass everything under urgency or set a very short SC timeframe and then overrule its recommendations. I think that's exactly what this government would be doing if the opposition controlled SCs.
"You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually" now THAT is the sort of rhetoric I want from everyone
We are five months into Senate Democrats capitulating and helping Republicans pass the government funding bill because “shutdown is unthinkable and would give Trump terrible, unhindered authority.” It’s very noticeable how those five months later no one is even attempting to defend this anymore.
The Wellington Hospital ED is the most overcrowded I've ever seen it -- the hospital is canceling elective surgeries because they don't have bed space. So I'm sure that's flowing out to things like After Hours unfortunately...
Of course no one listens to me (why would they) but I've been talking for 6 months about how important Democrats' armed thug situation will be and they've as far as I can tell done absolutely nothing to address it
Using Treasury's estimates of the daily cost of alert levels and the Oxford Stringency Index in other OECD countries I estimated how much it would have cost to implement other strategies over 2020-22. My conclusion: our response saved lives and was one of the most cost effective in the OECD.
Not just teachers! Nurses and doctors too! Just straight-up telling a huge portion of your highly-educated workforce to go fuck themselves and then whinging about why those same people aren't spending
It makes me so angry. I was in the US then, putting invasive lines into critically ill covid patients while watching refrigerator trucks full of bodies, etc because society didn't take it seriously. NZ did a damn fine job. But these assholes can't acknowledge that their country did it right
The covid response in NZ was so good that there was NEGATIVE excess mortality in 2020-2022... Literally the best in the world.
I don’t think mainstream journalism is filled with conservatives, precisely, but it is filled with people who would rather have a beer with chris rufo than jamelle bouie