Back home and all is the same
We’re back from our mid-winter break now. We were at a tiny little place called Mataikona, very isolated and not another person around us for miles. It was very relaxing!
But while we were away, the world continued as ever. Trump both amazes and terrifies the world each day with a new act of recklessness and/or naivety and/or stupidity and/or crassness. Having failed to keep his pre-election promise to stop the Russia-Ukrainian war in 24 hours, he’s now decided to suck up to Putin, who’s currently running neck and neck with Netanyahu as the most despised person on the planet. Despite next week’s meeting taking place in Alaska, which has been US territory since 1867, Trump happily told the press that he was looking forward to his meeting with Putin in Russia. Imagine Trump’s anguished outcry if it had been Joe Biden who made that most fundamental error.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, Trump does know where Washington DC is. Despite statistics showing that violent crime is at a 30 year low in the territory, Trump is sending in the National Guard to…..reduce violent crime. Oh, and to kick out all the homeless people sleeping on the streets. It is of course irrelevant that a lot of these folk are amongst the most disadvantaged and troubled in society; they do apparently offend Trump by just existing. So he’s forcibly removing them from their doorways and alleyways, sending them to Mar-a-Lago just so they can experience how the other half, ah, the other 0.00001% live.
Life in Aotearoa/New Zealand (I like calling our country that, not only cos it seems entirely appropriate but because it really pisses Peters and Seymour off considerably) also continues merrily. Christopher Luxon, to give him credit, continues to display excellent consistency in showing, on an almost daily basis, how completely undermined he is by his coalition partners. His government can’t even agree on a unified stance on Gaza, despite the rest of the world (apart from the US) almost universally condemning Israel’s crimes against humanity. Act’s Nicole McKee, the Associate Justice Minister, has sidelined Cabinet’s proposals to restrict trading hours for alcohol outlets by seemingly caving in to industry lobbyists and making it even easier for them to wreak havoc amongst vulnerable citizens. Shane Jones, as Minister of Oceans and Fisheries as well as Resources, continues to deny climate change, encourage overfishing and work as hard as he possibly can to drag NZ back into the dark ages of environmental destruction and exploitation, both onshore and offshore. While Luxon prattles on about his commitment to Māori, his Education Minister, Erica Stanford, has ordered a near-ban on the use of te reo words in readers for five year olds, saying the use of these words will cause too much confusion. I guess she’s just forgotten that Māori is an official language of NZ. Weird, too, is that this is the government that is pushing for much greater exposure to Shakespeare in our schools: I guess “kia ora” is really confusing for our kids but
“That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly:
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy.”
from King Lear is pretty straightforward.
And, of course, my most favourite politician, Deputy Prime Minister Seymour, is reveling in his new role and trying very hard to project himself as a statesman rather than a rabble rouser. Remember during the debate on his now happily dead Treaty Principles Bill, how he kept calling for intelligent, informed debate rather than personal and ad hominem attacks. He’s clearly forgotten all that now, as he launches regular attacks on any one who dares disagree with anything he says. His latest attack on Chris Hipkins made not a single reference to Hipkins’s statements or stance but instead condemned Hipkins as “useless’. Now, I’m sure there are plenty of people around who do indeed think Hipkins is useless, but they’re not the ones calling for intelligent and non-personal debate. Seymour’s hypocrisy is self-evident.
Lastly, a special mention for Speaker Gerry Brownlee, who kicked Chloe Swarbrick out of the debating chamber for uttering these most offensive words, “If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history.” I’m unsure why Brownlee was so upset by this. Presumably he thought Swarbrick was being completely outrageous in suggesting there might be six members of the coalition with a spine when clearly the appropriate number was zero.