Wednesday Morning Coffee

It's been a while since we had a coffee and so I decided let's just do it and talk about the things going down around us.

Perhaps the topic of the day is really about the fact the Police have been offered a worse offer than they were were offered by Labour before the election.

After all National's talk about how much they value the Police, the rhetoric from National to "back our Police" ended up being total rubbish and National and their sycophants are now making flimsy excuses while licking their lips and doshing out buckets of cash to mega Landlords. ( Mega means more than several houses )

The biggest excuse I have heard used by Nat and Act supporters is that "all Governments are the same".

I first heard this line used yesterday when listening to Bryce Edwards talk about the Government's initial 100 days to Oliver Sean Plunket on the Platform.

Bryce suggested all Governments do what we are seeing now and that most of you are just unhappy with everything as he and Plunket laughed about our silly values over on the left and how we feel they are trodden upon over by what are really very minor matters.

They remarked that the biggest gripe we have is over Premier House and the way Luxon doubled down over his entitlement when it's all so very trivial really. Plunket added something about the "Mainstream Woke Media" being to blame for rarking us all up - and yes everything could be batted away - unless there was something they cared about to gripe about.

That lens is apologetic for things like taking away the wheelchairs for the disabled, making people with cancer work 10 hours per week, having no plan B for the ferries, gutting the RMA and cracking on with fossil fuel exploration in a climate emergency, bringing back housing speculation so first home buyers are shut out, reworking the Treaty principles, no fair pay agreements for the most vulnerable, racist English first policies, massive budget holes and absolute lies about the economy ...so of course it thinks things are going just swimmingly.

It's a head in the sand kind of denial.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Many of us heard the same kind of apologetic banter this morning from Lloyd Burr after his interview with Chippy that "all governments are the same" ...which if true - means we are wasting our time with democracy. If they are all the same - why have elections?

Perhaps these folk have poor critical thinking skills and are not detail orientated, or perhaps they are just suffering cognitive dissonance as Luxon and mates are a disaster?

I am aware Nick Rockel has written about yesterday's debacle by Luxon and will post his article soon on G News, but before I read his work - I have a few thoughts of my own on that matter.

I noticed that Luxon told Anna yesterday that introducing a removal of interest deductibility was "Insanity" in the first place and "why would anyone do that?".

Luxon repeated the word "Insanity" a few times - and it reminded me how nobody in media ( media that I was reading ) had written about the reasons Jacinda and Grant introduced these measures.

The context was house price inflation went up steeply during the Covid lockdowns - because the Government protected lives and livelihoods and some people took advantage of it. Many people were delighted that they made a quick $400,000 on the value of their home - on paper anyway.

However the problem was first home buyers were being shut out of the housing market so Jacinda introduced measures to tilt the market back in favour of first home buyers ( insanity according to Luxon ) and we all saw the speculators cool off and first home buyers become the largest proportion of buyers - like they should be in a healthy society.

So now Luxon was tearing that all apart again while some say "oh governments are all the same".

Clearly some governments are better than others at looking after the average Joe Public - and last night many expressed their deep anxiety and fears for the future - after ordinary folk up and down Aoteroa New Zealand felt under attack in a class war - as Luxon's government punched down hard.

It's in that context that Luxon's entitlement bugs people and his poor political judgement is not going to improve.

This is the salient point - he cannot and will never read the room.

My other comment is that we are witnessing a PR strategy borrowed from the Trump Playbook - which is a confidence strategy which may work on half of Americans who love a winner - but here in New Zealand self praise is no recommendation.

The "we are working incredibly hard" and "we are working incredibly fast" and "we are incredibly proud of our selves" goes down like a bucket of vomit in heartland NZ.

"We are confident that" and "We are committed to" are standard responses to questions that point out failures and the fact there is no plan - like detailed steps to an outcome that makes any sense. The PR language leads us all around the garden path to nowhere and you still have no answers.

Over at the NZ Herald it's been tough to polish this so we often see Thomas, Claire and Audrey with buttoned up lips and heads in the sand.

Yesterday Audrey finally realised there are no "generalised Treaty clauses" being inserted into legislation any more - and it was like "Hello, welcome to planet Earth, did you have a nice trip?"

Where ever Audrey had been it was not here - and it's clear to me that Te Tiriti is standing in between the vested interests of Oil and Gas companies, Energy companies, Retail Banks, Transnational Investment Corporations, Infrastructure and Development companies and the like ...so wake up ...little Audrey wake up...and see yourself as part of the machinery that breaks down such barriers at NZME.

Clearing that pesky Treaty out of the way and thinking you are terribly noble for doing so - does not impress me much. I've seen the damage these people do - the way they prioritise short term profits over the long term climate risks for most of my life. But it's more than that - it's the disgusting finger flipped at Justice to Māori by these neoliberal backwater ideologues.

Between you and me I hope the public ditches the neoliberals soon and the left surfs back on in - in 2026 - as people realise the magnitude of the error - of swing voting against cost of living resentments....only to literally threaten the very fabric of New Zealand society and our environment.

Cyclone Gabrielle anyone?

Class war?

A massive deterioration in race relations. Police protesting? Smoking killing half of it's consumers again? Yes I am not joking - we can't afford the wheelchairs cos the election bribe means the mega landlords get millions as Willis looks to cut public services...and food banks shake their heads.

The whole "economy is fragile" rhetoric and excuse making about "fiscal cliffs" is bogus and people smell the fiction ...and most have already had a gutsful.

Now we are like spectators willing the Government to crash so we can be rid of them.

We're damned well ready to take up a sign and protest.

That's just the start really but I appear to have finished my coffee and I can see you have something to say.

So go ahead - what do you make of it all?

Wednesday Morning Coffee

G