Humanity has tried for 1000s of years to find the perfect set of written rules that make civilization and we have never succeeded. Civilization only works because people are generally decent and intolerable of jerks. Rules come later as a way to generate gradients of power and accountability.

Deep down we're all dogs, but not Winston Peters' pet!
#NZpol 🐕 🐩 🦮 🐕‍🦺 🐶
www.emilywrites.co.nz/dogs/

When the PM says ‘we don’t owe them a living’, we should be clear that this is not a metaphor.

A living is life. And I want to live in a society in which it is clear that this is the least we owe each other, and are owed. 💞

I’d like us to aim for lives lived in dignity and with joy, personally 🤷‍♀️

This has been the vicious fucking thing about the "Jobseeker Benefit" ever since Paula Bennett coined it in 2013

In addition to keeping people in poverty it's been a term of propaganda forcing us all to accept the frame of welfare as economic obligation instead of social support

Fucksake. It's quite clear now that they only looked at this benefit policy as political marketing and took no advice on who it would impact – which includes young people with serious health issues and disabilities. Just feckless and cynical. Shame on them. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

ABSOLUTELY

Goddamn I hope we choose better in 2026.

Of course their "jokes" and disregard for the threats and abuse they foment are fine and dandy, and of course it's very serious business when they're on the receiving end, because they're the rightful holders of power. They "deserve" safety, unlike the plebs, who barely rate as human beings anyway

I guess what I can say, re this government's active, deliberate fostering of violent rhetoric against marginalized people, is that it's not hypocrisy at all. It's who they are. It's the principle they live by. You get power and you destroy anyone who threatens it by whipping up hatred and division

I know, I know, pointing out the hypocrisy doesn't matter, but jesus christ sometimes the scale of the hypocrisy is so unbelievable you have to voice it just to reassure yourself that you're not hallucinating

Senior doctors and dentists to join massive strike this month

After my interview with Bridge about women’s sport I heard from a LOT of women who’d had similar experiences. Many of them had complained. NZME are well aware Bridge is a raging misogynist and are happy to let him continue.

Pt1 🧵: Greta Thunberg deported to Athens says, "There's a live-streamed Genocide in front of our eyes in Gaza. No one will be able to say they didn't know this was happening. The Global Samud Flotilla only existed because our leaders failed. Our international systems are betraying Palestinians."

Oh my god I would so arrange a group of people to do this like an A/B test, line everyone up with signs from "I support" to "On reflection I must neither confirm nor deny my support" and see who gets arrested in which order

18 & 19 year olds with no income support should “just go where the jobs are” said the Prime Minister who famously had his limo deliver him across the road.

“Good luck with the train-hopping, you plucky young hobos,” he added, suggesting hedge-&-ditch as an affordable alternative to bed-&-breakfast.

Two of the most common unprompted arguments my students presented on over the last fortnight were lowering the voting age to 16 and exempting people under the voting age from having to pay income tax. I think the coalition government underestimates how politically engaged young people are.

"Christopher Luxon says the world doesn't owe you a living. Tell him how you feel with your vote" on big signs on stalls outside high schools next year with big stacks of enrolment forms.

Just a thought.

This is a REALLY GOOD POINT and will make it even harder to see a GP.

"The world doesn't owe you..." suggests entitlement, this is coming from the man who said "I'm entitled to my entitlements"
#nzpol

Being old and un sorted's hard enough but imagine being a jobless late teen under this Coalition of Cruelty.

Going to keep tapping the sign that says "young people would be thrilled to work if there were (a) jobs that (b) paid a living wage and (c) treated them well but this government is not interested in making any of those things happen"

When a policy is so bad you also accidentally(?) sound like you forgot half of the 14 words

The last time a New Zealander died fighting in Ukraine, Luxon said it was an absolute tragedy and engaged in zero victim blaming

www.1news.co.nz/2025/05/30/b...