Then Reality Kicks In...
Only two days ago, as you can read below, I had hopes for the damn of a new age of enlightenment.
Instead, it's the dawn of a new age of racism, homophobia, misogyny and hate unleashed by Donald J Trump.
Women will no longer have the right to decide what happens to their body in America, gays will lose the ability marry and adopt children, and trans people will need to head back to the closet. They will be banned from affirmative care, being a drag queen will be criminalised and sexual violence will increase.
At the same time, America's position at the top of the world will be controlled by the truly insane - Trump, Musk, RFK Jr, Rudy Giuliani, and probably Alex Jones.
The biggest loser will be the climate, with Trump and his cronies already drawing up withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the gutting of federal reserves.
The rich will get richer, and faster than they ever have before.
I'm reminded of a phrase first uttered by Alanis Obomsawin, a First Nations Canadian woman: When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.
I had a t-shirt with that on many years ago, and now it will likely become reality.
5 November 2024
Let this be the dawn of a new age.
I make no apology that the following is more than a 5-minute read. If that bothers you, fuck off - what we need are people who can pay attention. It's a fact that even if we can get a miserable 3.5% of people to take action, change will be effected. 1
I thought the election of Jacinda Ardern was the dawn of the new age - the second election, not the first. She'd shown what a leader with empathy and intelligence can do, and it was pretty popular everywhere. You can't seek a higher mandate than being given the first and only total majority under MMP and not see it as approval of a socialist society. I thought the world was beginning to learn that Milton Friedman's doctrine 2 of profit above all might finally be consigned to the dustbin of history, but alas, Dame Her Royal Majesty Jacinda did what every politician does - realise that her career was much more important than the country and sold out to property investors and developers and real estate agents. 3
I didn't see Keir Hardie's (I love that guys name 4 - if he doesn't live up to 5 it I'm going to bite his fucking knee-caps off) Labour as a new dawn, really. The Conservatives had been so bad that even the moronic Jeremy Corbyn would have beaten Rishi Sunak. If Rishi weren't so rich I'd almost feel sorry for him. He was the sacrificial lamb for the voters to reject while they try to figure out where to go to next. If Starmer gets it right, they will never matter again.
Churchill once described Russia as "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" 6. It's a much better descriptor of America than Russia these days - a country of vast wealth and power, but where the poor are shunned and vilified by the rich, who continue to grow richer, thanks to the money of those despised poor. A place where racism and misogyny still rule, while at the same thime, other states have the most-liberal societies on the planet. It's a place that voted in Donald Trump as president. Yes, it was funny as hell that a reality TV star got voted in, but the person in that position is somewhat important to the continuing stability of the world, and anyone who knows me knows I am not a fan of a lot of US actions, so it really is bloody important. If you're not aware of situations like the Red Sea, East African pirates and the South China Sea, then you've been living under a rock. Those utterly vital trade routes are only being kept open because someone with a lot of very big guns (America) is standing guard at the door. I'm not even going to mention Ukraine. I will mention Israel a bit later, so if you're squeamish you might like to cover your eyes while you read that bit.
Trump is thankfully absurdly thick - he is the perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 7 And he doesn't just have limited knowledge of a few subjects, he has limited knowledge of every subject - he really is a man of very low intelligence and such an entitled attitude he refuses to learn. 8 He is a blowhard, a braggart and a serial bankrupt who has been convicted of financial fraud and tried to start an insurrection to hold onto power, but those sins pale into insignificance in the face of his history with women and black people. Clearly and undeniably a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, 9 a pervert who enters young women's dressing rooms, and sexually assaults women. 10 A man who called for the execution of 5 innocent young men. 11
Thanks to his being so stupidly arrogant in his own abilities he was unable to do much damage to either America or the world in his 4-year term. Now, he knows how the game works and isn't going to spend 4 years basking in his own glory - he has said in his own words that he will be a vengeful autocrat who will disallow any criticism. 12
Fortunately, sufficient Boomers have died and been replaced by a larger number of new voters that Trump will lose, and lose badly.
Along with the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chloe Warbrick, I used to think we all needed to take a giant step left to that position of the Friedman Doctrine's death, Universal Basic Income for all, and the end of stupid fucking wars.
Age teaches you - as I'm sure it will them and their pals - that we can't do that. We need to take baby steps, just like in any new learning experience. Remember the old "walk before you can run" your great-grandmother spouted? It's fucking true!
You can't make the majority of voters take that big a leap, you need to do it in small increments, and the first and most important of those steps is to place a person with morals in the White House. Obama could easily have been the one to lead, but failed completely, way over-achieving in attacking other countries, letting Afghanistan continue to chew up lives and dollars, and probably the worst of all, being a traitor to the entire city of Flint Michigan, which, ironically, has a very high ration of poor black residents. 13
Kamala Harris is a woman, a mum (and if you give me that "they're only step-children, then double fuck off, you're a fucking bigot) and a thinker. I do not believe she would have walked into a room of mothers and betrayed them on national TV as a publicity stunt. She would have raised the roof and demanded that not one more drop of water be drunk in that town.
Think of it like Taylor Swift's Swifties, or Beyonce's Beyhive. Those kids who screamed at Taylor and Beyonce as Twelvies are now in their 20s, and they're not fan girls any more - they're smart young women who recognise they are entitled to have dominion over their own bodies and lives and not be dictated to by some fat old white man, or far worse, a clique of fat old white men. That demographic is dying, the young one is flying. And as Kamala well knows, woe betide those who betray the girls. They support human rights, the right for women to decide what they do with their bodies, and for everyone to have the right to live in whatever skin or gender they feel.
Somehow, and by the strangest set of circumstances in American politics to date, Kamala Harris has ended up as the nominee for the Democratic Party. Had Joe Biden decided to step down a year ago, there would have been a popularity contest to see who took over, and I'd bet my life that person would not have been Kamala. (And if you don't know how to pronounce her name, check it and learn it - you'll be hearing it enough)
Yet, here we are, and she's going to not just win, but will blow Trump, MAGA and the whole Republican machine into the dirt. Trump's pathetic whining about cheating will be even more pathetic in the face of the trouncing he's going to get. And I'd love to be a fly on the wall when the realisation that he's been beaten by the two things he considers lower than dirt - blacks and women.
Kamala can be the first of those true steps towards a better world - she has the opportunity to not just speak conciliation, but live it and demand it from those around her. People in Kyiv will be comforted and Putin's "friends" will finally come to the realisation that they have to do what Russians have always done - kill the prick and put someone in place who can make a polite withdrawal, as Mikhail Gorbachev did in Afghanistan.
Then there's that Israel question and I think that like Putin, the vile Benjamin Netanyahu will be crapping his pants.
I don't believe Kamala will be able to sit by and watch Palestinian children be torn apart by American bombs and has said as much.
The most-important thing she's done so far isn't widely known. People who are aware of of it may not even realise what a big deal it is.
When a foreign leader addresses the US House of Representatives, the Vice President attends. That's not just de rigeur, it's universally applied and no Veep has ever missed one.
When Netanyahu recently spoke to the that very House of Representatives, Kamala had already assumed the mantle of Democratic Party nominee for the presidency, so she would obviously attend. Israel is, after all, America's closest ally in the whole world.
Nah
In a break with all protocol and a clear slap in the face to Netanyahu, Kamala shunned him and instead chose to go and spend the day in the office. She did have an official meeting with him that took place - that one is part of her job description. Two days later, she also clearly stated that she would not be silent on the suffering in Gaza. 14 I believe her, and so do the millions of young women who are voting for her right now.
If she lets them down, she lets the whole world down and it can burn up as fast as Gaia decides is necessary to rid itself of the parasitic beings ruining it for all.
If, as I expect, she stops Israel's genocide, it will be an important step. Kamala is smart - which is ironically while the actually dumber-than-dirt Trump calls her thick (perfect projection) - and she doesn't want Boomers to continue destroying the planet by ignoring the blindingly obvious. She will start to take those baby steps towards a better ecosystem, she will protect and fight for women's rights. And if you think that isn't important, see if you can find out where the Iranian woman who stripped down to her bra and undies is right now. (Save you the trouble - I can tell you she's being held in an unspecified police cell awaiting charges for which she will be found guilty and sentenced to torture (whipping) and jail. If she even survives 15)
And things in Afghanistan are far, far worse.
If we allow things like this to go on the world, it's the fault of all of us. Humans are designed to be selfish - all life is; it's why evolution works and humans have evolved selfishness to global levels unknown since the Great Oxygenation Event billions of years ago. We are now smart enough to overcome this, but as always, humans need a leader - we can't do it on our own.
No politician since Churchill taking the reins in 1940 has any politician inherited such a cluster-fuck to deal with. From the Proud Boys to MAGA and the gun-crazy right in America, she has Putin, Xi, Netanyahu and even Modi of India to counter, among others.
The world is precariously balanced between the far right and the sane. The right has been making gains in Europe as disillusionment with the left festers, and Kamala can stop the rot.
There have been so many false dawns that I retain some skepticism that she won't just fall into the same trap as every other politician, but a spark of hope in me thinks this might be the real dawn. The circumstances are so unusual that humanity might have a shot.
This time tomorrow, we will either see the glimmer of light of that dawn, or I'll be eating the biggest plate of crow you ever saw and Elon Musk and the antivax horror of RKF Jr will be installed in leadership alongside the orange turd that is Donald J Trump.
It's also Melbourne Cup Day, and a dream might some true there too.
A guy I've known slightly for many years, Bruce Wallace, is a racehorse dealer who also trains a few horses. Exactly a quarter of a century ago Bruce had a starter in the Melbourne Cup - Able Master, ridden by Grant Cooksley. He was mounting what looked like the winning run when he had his heels clipped and Cooksley was dislodged and fell from the horse.
Bruce is now in training partnership with that same Grant Cooksley and they have a starter in the Cup. Last horse in the book, number 24. He will relish the two miles and is carrying a featherweight of 50 kg. He's been given the second-most-winning draw at number 5 at the barrier. The horse is called Trust in You, which is what this entire piece is about, so to me it would be the fitting result should he get up and win. He's paying 100:1, so a gold coin will get you a decent share of the TAB's money if he won.
As I said yesterday, the favourite will be enormously hard to beat, but who knows? 100:1 shots have won the cup and it might be the year for fairytales.
4 November 2024
Nice confluence of events this year, and two of them involve fireworks - Guy Fawkes Night and the US Election.
Sadly, the fine weather, some wind, and dry conditions, are likely to make this year's Guy Fawkes an absolute disaster for the fire brigade.
Meanwhile, Americans are voting, with an unbelievably clear choice - a decent, intelligent woman who wants to lift people up and a revolting misogynist racist who also happens to be a rapist, a serial bankrupt who has cost other people billions of dollars, and a total piece of shit in human form.
I look forward to his demise, as it surely will occur. He will get wiped from the board and with any luck, will have a stroke at being beaten not just by a woman, but a black woman.
More importantly, it's Melbourne Cup day, and I thoroughly expect our champion Kiwi bloke, who just happens to be the world's best trainer - Chris Waller - to hoist the trophy when Buckaroo wins it. Yes, he's drawn 21, but they have 800m run to the first turn and he'll find a spot. It doesn't matter how far back he is, he will storm home over the top of them. Get on at $6.50, it's the easiest money you'll make this year.
Mike King and the Gumboot Charity
1 November 2024
Mike King, who is apparently a former comedian, runs a charity that allegedly helps prevent suicide.
I never found King to be funny, and was so disgusted at his antics on Radio Sport that I stopped listening to it. He was homophobic and misogynist, which thankfully never caused anyone to become suicidal. Oh, wait...
King claimed that his program introduced to schools has saved lives. Two of my kids attended his speeches on the subject, so I'm familiar with it.
I asked for evidence of the decrease in suicide rates, but none was forthcoming, so I tried to do a kind of analysis myself, based on the schools King had been to, and suicide rates in the area. If the program had been successful to even a small degree, it would show up in the data.
Nada. No change could be detected, although there was a small increase in suicides in the areas King had covered. Well within margin of error, but still somewhat ironic.
Scroll forward and see King handing back his OBE when Jacinda failed to fund his hobby charity, only to stand delightedly next to Chris Luxon as the charity received $24M in funding from the National government.
I stated at the time that the evidence of the charity's claims about value for money was entirely absent, having been pulled out of someone arse. No lesser person than the Auditor General described the funding as "unusual and inonsistent". Those are kind words - the process was simply disgraceful as hell. Chairperson of I Am Hope (the charity's actual name) has clear links to National, and Winston Peters' oily fingers have been involved from the Coalition Agreement stage. There is no way a transparent process would select King as a leader of anything to do withy mental health - he's so ignorant on the subject he actually states that alcohol is a good answer, against enormous evidence to the contrary, and his own alcoholism.
Mike King is a fucking moron with no clue and the government has just thrown away $24 million it could have spent helping places like this: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/31-10-2024/the-bleak-reality-of-working-in-mental-health-when-you-dont-have-mike-kings-funding
Those people deserve the ultimate respect - King deserves nothing but scorn.
19 October 2024
I have no words
Man's inhumanity to man.
Read it and weep: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/10/worst-thing-happening-texas-prison-conditions.html
15 October 2024
The War on Drugs is Insane
There's a level of stupidity we are unable to overcome
New Zealand has a drug problem, according to both Captain Obvious and Stuff: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350439724/uber-eats-drugs-teens-getting-more-scrolling-fix-online
Let me assure you, this ain't news - it's been going on for well over a decade and you can trace the roots back to the dawn of social media, when Bebo was the first port of call for teens to source drugs online.
I've said this a thousand times and I'm going to say it again, backed by huge numbers of health professionals who work with drugs: If you want to reduce drug harm - and defund gangs - legalise the fucking drugs!
And don't go half measures - they need to be free from your local doctor. Want free P? Go see your doctor. The doctor will give you a prescription and also help you seek help when you're ready to get some. Clean, safe drugs, provided free. Addicts would have no reason to pay to dealers, massively reducing the insane sums of money spent on busting dealers and thereby taking away gangs' primary source of income. NZ Police are involved in 100,000 cases of crimes against the Misuse of Drugs Act every year. Let's be generous and say the average time spent on each case is 10 hours. Given some cases will involve thousands of hours, I think that's unquestionably an under-estimate, but we'll use it anyway. That is one million hours of police time every year - the equivalent of 250 extra police.
That also doesn't count the enormous amount of time police spend on crimes committed by people wanting money for drugs.
It's an absolute no-brainer, which is probably why even the most-liberal north European countries don't do it. The average voter is way too ignorant to see the facts and still believes Nixon's War on Drugs is helping.
Not only is it not helping, it's counter-productive. Prison populations would be reduced by 10-15% straight away, gangs would be unable to fund their purchase of shiny Harleys to attract young idiots, and overdoses would fall dramatically.
I expect no changes to be made.
We Don't Know How Lucky We Are!
19 September 2024
Just look back two posts and you'll see I'm not all that positive about this
country, but we need to remember that while things here could be better, they
could be a lot worse.
Darfur? Where selling your organs in hope of getting enough money to escape is a real thing.
Lebanon, Syria, Gaza... where Israel is openly praciticing genocide, with only a very few countries like South Africa trying to stop them.
Myanmar, where even children of muslims are fair targets
There are so many disgraceful things happening, it's impossible to list them all, so next time you're worried about having money to pay the mortgage, remember how lucky you are to hove one in the first place.
Fred Dagg said it best all those years ago: https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/dont-know-how-lucky-we-are-1998
12 September 2024 - Kamala Harris
What a revelation!
After watching the not-so-slow demise of Joe Biden daily, it's been a revelation to see a vibrant and articulate person trying to win the White House.
She seems to be the best candidate America has had since Obama, and by a country mile. Her opponent is a sick, nasty man who should never be allowed anywhere near the seat of power. The fact that he was actually president is a stain that America will take decades to remove. Trump is a toxic human with no brains, no morals, and no business sense. His entire persona was built up by reality TV with no substance whatsoever. Trump and his MAGA/Republican pals are misogynist, homophobic and stupid and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going to sweep them from the board.
Good fucking job
"We'll all be rooned!" said Hanrahan.
That was a poem we did in English in the 6th form, in 1975.*
The point of the poem is that messages of doom usually don't come true, and humans muddle through one disaster after another.
Today, I'm not so sure. New Zealand is in the shit, and I'm not convinced it's a situation we can come back from.
Our best and brightest are leaving the country in unprecedented numbers, and who can blame them when our economy is in such appalling shape. If almost half of small business owners are under-paying themselves to stay afloat, things are very grim. Admittedly, we have no idea as to the accuracy of this survey, being conducted by a company with vested interests in seeing results like that, and including a sales pitch in their data, but there's no doubt many small businesses are struggling, and it's 100% factual that company insolvencies are up by almost 50% year on year.
One thing that gets very little mention is New Zealand's crumbling infrastructure. Road workers are in short supply, which is hardly a surprise given the daily abuse and threats made against our workers, and our roads are truly awful. Potholes spring up from shoddy jobs and we can't even remotely keep pace with the damage as we struggle to fix the damage from the weather.
I've been looking for people lately to move to Aussie to work in a factory as machine operators. The very top earnings of machine operators in NZ is about $75,000 pa. In Aussie, you can start on $A103,000, with incentives and overtime to add on, in a city where house prices are half that of NZ. Why the hell wouldn't you move? The number of people applying was eye-opening, and I have no doubt many of them will move to Australia asap.
We don't have sufficient doctors, and the only reason teachers are almost keeping up is because a quarter of our kids don't go to school most of the time.
We rate at the bottom of the pile for productivity and make up for it by working longer hours - something which makes no sense whatsoever. Our banks and many of our large businesses are owned overseas and profits are sucked out of the country faster than we can make them. Ironically, it's against this backdrop that the Greemunists and morons want to destroy farming, our one shining light in a sea of mediocrity.
I'm not even going to mention crime; it's almost a red herring against the other problems, but you can guarantee a failing economy is only going to create more desperation, more gang membership, and more crime overall.
I'd like to say "Let's all pull together and fix the place. Get some bloody Number 8 wire, tie the loose bits back on and let's kick her in the guts!", except the few people able to understand that sentence would probably be overrun by the twin stupidity of Greenmunism and conspiracists.
.Enjoy it while you can, buy heavy locks and hunker down - it's going to be a bumpy ride.
The Biggest Problem Facing Humans is Apathy
But nobody cares.
I'll take a wild guess and say that 99% of humans, finding their house on fire, would gtfo, ensuring their kids did the same.
Yet, our home is on fire and very few people are doing jack shit about it.
The papers were full of how New Zealand was now firmly on side with climate change after the floods & cyclone. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief that even though there had been billions of dollars of damage done, and lives lost, at least we'd finally sold the story of catastrophic climate change.
So, what have we done about that?
1 March 2023
Two letters you're going to hear a lot: AI
Artificial Intelligence
If you haven\t heard about ChatGPT, you've probably been living under a rock for the past couple of months. It's a cross between a chatbot and Google and can write essays, design solutions to problems, and be your electronic friend.
It's the thin edge of the wedge of the coming AI revolution, something already described as "as big as the Industrial Revolution". Unlike steam engines and mass-production, the AI revolution will mostly creep under people's radar. When you consider that the first Industrial Revolution is directly responsible for the potentially cataclysmic climate change being unleashed on us, it's not hard to see that this time we are really out of our depth.
Stephen Hawking described AI as a threat to the human species. And note that he made those comments almost a decade ago, and AI has advanced a long way since then.
We already have superb evidence of how AI can generate algorithms that fuck with us - Brexit and the Trump presidency were engineered by the evil genius of Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica, so it's not like we need a guide to recognise the potential harm that can come from too much computing power. The potential for harm seems to outweigh the potential for good, and as far as I can tell, that potential good is limited to the rich making more money by having fewer staff. Twitter and Facebook may already doing this, with massive reductions in staff.
As usual, we'll see the danger too late.
Ho hum
31 October 2022
All Hallow's Eve, or as stupid Americans re-named it, Hallowe'en.
Who needs made up monsters when we've created a monstrous fuck up like the one we have right now?
Let's start with this comment today, from the Chief Executive of BusinessNZ: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/130310582/businessnz-chief-says-workforce-burnt-out-warns-people-will-die-if-immigration-system-remains-clogged
You know when big business is worried about worker deaths things are ugly. Of course, they're only worried about the impact on their business, but it really does ram home how desperate things are. I know for an outright fact that unskilled labour is virtually impossible to find, and that's the first time that's happened in my 40 years in business. And if you need highly skilled people, either be prepared to pay or wait.
But lack of migration is to blame? I call bullshit.
We already suck the best a brightest from nations who can least afford it, how about we do what actual humans do all over the world, and learn to live within our means? You know, if you're too busy to take on that new order - don't take it on. The reason unemployment no longer exists is because those same employers who are crying about the danger of staff burnout are the very people putting them in that position! If your company has lost 10% of its workforce, don't push that onto the remaining staff, reduce your output by 10%. God knows it might mean you make a little less money, but in the long run, you'll prosper, as will the entire country.
Getting an influx of migrants will only serve to push up rents and house prices, and since there's already upwards pressure on rents, we're only making matters worse.
The government is spending one million dollars every day on "emergency housing", which is a euphemism for "paying dodgy motels excessive rates for housing our most vulnerable people". (Also housing dirt bags whose record means no sane landlord would allow them near their property) And if you didn't see this marvellous expose from the TVNZ Sunday team, you should bloody well watch it: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/sunday/clips/golden-mile
I used to live in Rotorua and have stayed at many of those motels over the years and what's going on is an outrage, and it's not going to be helped by thousands of migrants from even shittier countries coming here and doing jobs.
I'm reminded of David Lange's Cup of Tea moment. He was right, but got harpooned for it. Well, if ever there was a time the entire country could do with a sit down and a nice cup of tea, it's right now.
We need to stop, re-set, focus on keeping every person in the country safe and well, and live within our resources. (See, I didn't even mention the utter shit-sandwich of Christchurch and the wider ram-raid crap)
27 July 2022
This is some really shocking news - rock pools no longer have life in them, because some people come and clean them out of all life forms: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/26/keep-starfish-off-the-barbecue-new-zealanders-call-for-rockpool-protections
It's now over 20 years ago that my oldest son and I took a day trip to Rangitoto and other islands in the gulf. We moored at a beach on the ocean side of Rangitoto and enjoyed a picnic lunch as we watched a boat of Asians arrive at the beach. Armed with buckets, they stripped every living thing from the rocks at the beach. Crabs as small a match head, limpets, snails and anything alive went into the buckets, then the people left, no doubt to go and strip another beach.
And here, all those years later, people are only just noticing?
Where the hell have you been? This has been going on for many years and it's insanity.
25 July 2022
1980s Take over the 2020s!
You might not have noticed, but the paucity of musical talent in the 202s - with the notable exception of Muse - has led to a new Chart Invasion: the 1980s.
Whether it's Kate Bush, finding a new audience for her superb Running Up That Hill thanks to some Netflix series, or Tears for Fears suddenly making the charts in the 2020s, the Time Invasion won't stop as long as old acts like Psychedelic Furs keep making music like the unbelievably good Wrong Train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Bu7ctVR8c
The title of this entry could equally be Old Bastards Kick Millennials to Touch!
7 July 2022
What the fuck are we becoming?
No, really. What the hell are we doing?
A woman turned up to a foodbank because the family had no money for food.
The worker, charged with helping families survive, and sensibly giving helpful tips on budgeting, quite rightly suggested that if you're struggling to feed your children, maybe you shouldn't have two dogs.
Fuck no!
You can't do that - it disrespects their something.
No, it doesn't disrespect anything, it's helpful advice. The world does not owe you a living, and foodbanks are there for people who don't piss money away on luxuries like dogs. The fact they have two dogs is even more damning and should be a signal that the people refuse to deal with reality.
In the immortal words of Ronnie Johns, Harden the Fuck Up!
Recession! Inflation! Skills Crisis! Brain Drain! 27 June 2022
The news is all bad. Or is it really?
New Zealand has suffered from one of the lowest productivity rates in any
developed country, and if take care to work on our productivity, we can buffer
ourselves from a lot of the negative fallout from all of these crises. We can
use these challenges to make our businesses stronger and more profitable.
Work smarter, not harder. Be a gardener rather than a farmer.
Take time to work on the business rather than in the business. You may feel that
taking a week out of your schedule will be disastrous, but it might actually be
the best thing you can do. Step back, and cast an objective eye over every
aspect of your business. Be ruthless in culling dead wood and be generous in
nurturing the strong shoots.
And if you need help prioritising what to do, give me a call, or send a message
- you might be surprised how easy it is.
2 June 2022
A Sense of Humour...
Is essential.
I'm pleased to see the Chinese Communist Party has one, with this announcement from the China-Russia summit taking place at the moment: "China Says it Will Work With Russia to Promote Real Democracy"
No comedian would even go there - a statement so absurd as to be
mind-boggling. George Orwell is surely smiling in his grave this morning.
______________________________
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the outrageous actions of the banks continues to
disgust. Along with poking their filthy noses into people's personal lives,
charging Kiwis more than Australians and sucking billions of dollars out of the
economy every year,
they also make it extremely difficult for law-abiding citizens to do business.
Hope Never Dies
31 May 2022
Despite the setbacks, the wars, the screaming children dying from hunger and preventable disease, despite the people living in cars, or families sending only one child to school in the one uniform, I can't let go of hope.
Even the crushing of hope you worked and paid for in the guise of a Labour Prime Minister failing to address needs and instead propping up the housing market with cheap mortgages and unlimited migration can't completely extinguish the flame of hope in me.
In the dark world we inhabit, some people keep that little spark of hope alive. Whether it's Alexandria Ocasio Cortez standing up to the hypocrites of her own party, Mario Ovsyannikova (see below) standing up to Putin at the cost of her freedom, or Aitzaz Hussein, the 15-year-old boy who gave his life to save many others, there are always people who show that not only does hope live, it's all we have.
There have been a few glimmers lately, and the potential for hope to realised grows stronger with every victory.
Australia not just kicking Morrison's government out, but actually savaging them in WA, blew the spark of hope a little brighter. Even America is fanning the spark, as the Democrats overwhelmingly reject the Pelosi doctrine for newcomers with social conscience in their primaries.
I'm not going to even go as far as Churchill's famous "This isn't the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning" because the spark is still so faint in a world of pain, where food crises grow worse at the exact time supply chains are breaking. What it is, is a sign to the world that unshackled capitalism and the revolting Friedman Doctrine aren't taken as gospel any longer. It's going to take decades, maybe even generations, but neither Mohandas Gandhi nor Martin Luther King Jr believed the fight would be over quickly, and nor do I.
The changes may be forced on humanity as Gaia herself revolts at the damage we've done to the planet as the climate bites the moneyed, with their beachfront views and endless property portfolios, who are walking in gumboots through their ill-gotten gains, but it will come. The irony that change could be driven by the ultimate capitalists, insurance companies, is karmic.
A Hero for our Times
15 March 2022
This is what a hero looks like, and she can take her place of honour alongside the other heroes of the Ukraine War - Maria Ovsyannikova.
Maria is a TV editot who is disgusted by the reality of the atrocities Putin is perpetrating on Ukraine.
Faced with her own news program telling lies, she decided to act and took a banner live on air, letting the people know they're being lied to. Her action will probably result in a prison sentence of more than ten years. Think about that for a second - conditions in Russian prisons aren't that flash, and here's a small woman risking that in the name of truth.
Maria Ovsyannikova, I salute you!
10 March 2022
Excuse while I ROFL, then LMAO and finally start to calm down to just LOLing...
The worst and dumbest Labour Government in NZ's history has today announced the merger of Radio NZ and TVNZ.
They were one organisation for the entire history of TV, up until 1975, when they were split up by the Labour Government of Bill Rowling. It's like time travel, but with the laughs of Back to the Future. They're going to become a greater digital force is the official line, and that would be great.
If it were the 1990s.
The government here aren't just trying to turn back the clock, they're charging the flashy new corporation with an impossible task. Utter stupidity of the highest order.
9 March 2022 - Yes, I am outraged!
Outraged enough that I'll bother commenting on it.
No, not Ukraine - that's simple, Putin is a piece of shit who's just shown the world who's really the boss as the toothless west imposes meaningless sanctions while still buying his gas.
Not covid - that's been and almost gone.
Supermarket prices? A joke. If you think supermarket prices are too high (and they are) then try buying your meals through one of the ready-made meal companies; their prices are 2 or 3 times what the same item will cost you in a supermarket.
But it's not outrageous.
What's outrageous is banks making six billion dollars in profits.
That is so unconscionable it makes me very angry indeed. The New Zealand economy is being treated as a cash cow by Australian banks, and if you don't think that's true, then look at the fact that the bank profits per person is much higher in New Zealand and Australia.
A big thing is being made about supermarkets making a million bucks a day in profit, yet our feeble crowd of clowns that make up our goverment don't call for a Commerce Commission inquiry for banking.
Could that possibly be because they own one of the banks - the much-vaunted Kiwibank. The government refuses to invest money in it, and it's money they'd have repaid exponentially, because banks make profits! (There's no irony in one of the biggest banks, BNZ being one that was sold by the government...) Grant Robertson is a gutless twat - he picks on easy targets and pats himself on the back for doing fuck all. The supermarket final paper does nothing to alleviate that duopoly, and he's done nothing at all to try to break the cartel of Australian banks raping New Zealand.
At least supermarkets contribute to the wider economy - tens or hundreds of thousands of people are employed in supplying supermarkets. What does banking prop up?
Real estate agents - a bunch of over-paid wankers whose delicious self-regulation has been exposed time after time as a hypocritical slapper of wrists with wet bus tickets.
16 August 2021
5 August 2021. Time for some facts to whack the scum who are out there promoting antivax messages.
Only old and sick people are dying, or having serious trouble with Covid.
1 - A man in his 40s, described by his sister as the healthiest and fittest guy she knows...
Or knew, since he's now dead of the harmless little 'flu: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/uk/125973772/he-was-the-fittest-healthiest-person-i-know-uk-fitness-enthusiast-who-rejected-covid19-vaccine-dies-at-42
2 - the woman in her 30s in Aussie who died of Covid this week: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/447675/young-people-warned-after-covid-19-death-of-sydney-woman-in-her-30s
In the words of Nobel winning infectious disease expert, Peter Doherty:
"It's very sad that a young woman should die from Covid, or from anything for that matter," Doherty said.
"But I think it highlights that particularly this Delta variant that's circulating now is really quite problematic in younger people.
"The message is that young people are at considerable risk and at higher risk than with the earlier variants of Covid.
"Young people shouldn't think they're at no risk or even minimal risks. Because it's going to kill."
Yes, the numbers of people dying are low, but along with those dying, between 10 and 30% of Covid infections will cause long-term, and sometimes life-threatening complications.
Get your vaccine, and shun those who don't.
___________________________________________
Whether it's idiot theists demanding their right to not wear masks, crazy
Taliban who think vaccines are part of a plot to stop their insanity, to Billy
Te Kahika and his pod of morons who somehow think radio waves have anything to
do with viruses or vaccines, we seem to be trying to turn the clock back several
hundred years.
We live in a complex and occasionally scary world, where we went from flying around the world as we wished, to a deadly pandemic in the space of mere weeks.
An American philosopher names Steven Pinker wrote a book a few years back where he counted up some numbers and said that the world was the safest it's ever been, with the fewest wars and war deaths.
At that point in time, he might have even been right, but since then we have moved on, with the largest number of refugees in human history, and wars in every corner of the planet. From Syria to Chad to Ethiopia to Nigeria and Zimbabwe, Africa is the most dangerous it's been in decades, while in South & Central America we have Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico in the grip of man-made disasters. Even countries not at war are riven by politics to a degree unseen in the past. History has no analogy for Bolsonaro, Trump and Modi - elected populists who manage to fuck everything up and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
We live at a time where a virus is politicised, a bloody virus! Viruses have no politics, they just do what they do, and the fact that most of the world missed the bus on Covid is a guide that things are not as rosy as old Pinky would have us believe.
I'll be adding to this page, but in the meantime, have a look around the extensive archives.