Oh look, Labour once again putting the arbitrary state of the government’s books ahead of the wellbeing of New Zealanders. That’s a surprise!

classic John Key move

"Edmonds said growing the economy and balancing the books would mean Labour couldn't say 'yes' to everything."

"responsibility must always come first."

Labour are not putting fixing the country first.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

From a local beekeepers' info page:
• 27 confirmed queens identified
• 17 queens linked to nests or nesting activity
• Latest queen (27 Nov) found with eggs, larvae & pupae
• 609 traps now deployed across 1km–5km zones
• 183 properties surveyed + ground checks within 200m of detections

yes that's a big problem

some real Tories in Red Ties killing NZ Labour party the same way UK Labor sold themselves out

it's the same bullshit that got Labour kicked out of government instead of getting behind a wealth tax, and Grant Robertson prioritized his books looking pretty over fixing things that were broken

Nobody in government is asking whether we’d be prepared to respond to the US government murdering NZ citizens at sea if the whim took them. Until relatively recently it would have been a bizarro world hypothetical. It is now firmly in the low likelihood quadrant of things we should actively consider

As funny as that might sound I think that American politics has already reached idiocracy level, they need to bring it back a notch not push it further

Because an incurious, uninformed electorate stripped of their critical thinking skills is easier to control. (A particularly dark view of this could suggest that this was also behind the right wing's disdain for covid prevention measures, esp after its cognitive effects became known.)

And that goes hand in hand with the drum I've been beating for nearly 20 years now, since I *was* a student, of the societal attitude that an education is only worth what it gets you: ie, how it quite literally pays off by getting you a higher salary.

But one aspect I hope doesn't get overlooked in analyses is the viewpoint shift that considers the students as consumers. And when they consider *themselves* that way, it fosters an attitude of "Well, I paid for this, so I should get a passing grade & the credits whether I do the work or not."

Our society has so entirely lost the plot when it comes to education, no longer viewing it as a good in and of itself, no longer seeing it as necessary to live in a free society -- and that's down to several decades of the right wing deliberately devaluing education.