To an extent. The Government cancelling three waters has forced massive rate rises across the country so yeah you might have seen this no matter who was in.

I think credit is still due for sticking to it though, especially when you have candidates pretending they can do this with no rate rises, and pay for billions of dollars of underinvestment by putting back a few carparks.

Biblically accurate Chicago

The Science Media Centre got comment from bunch of scientists on this and it’s a really interesting read. There’s a couple of positive takes I there, but mostly skeptical it will actually happen and if they do is it really a moa.

The point that resonated with me most is the risk that these big claims are picked up and used to undermine actual conversation work and protecting endangered species as “we can always just resurrect them later”

https://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/07/09/moa-de-extinction-plans-announced-expert-reaction/

We got the project 2025 test run when a three party far right coalition got elected in 2023. Most regressive, cruel and mean sprited government in a generation.

USA, NZ, Australia, Canada, UK and beyond. They all coordinate, they use the same consultants, the same messages, their AstroTurf political advocacy groups all share info and coordinate policy to make our lives worse and the rich richer. Tailored slightly for local conditions but the same overall goal.

Yes we’ve been through multiple housing crises although it’s gotten truly ridiculous in the last couple decades.

The crowning achievement of the first labour government when they were elected in 1935 was to create a massive state house building programme due to the huge shortages and miserable state of the stock at the time. This continued until the 1980s when we went full neoliberal, privatised everything and sold off most of the state houses and private landlords and speculation now dominate.

Anything built between early 1990s and 2004ish is prone to leaks due to the deregulated building code at the time and is basically trash.

Wellington is a particularly bad case, and has always had a worse housing situation than the rest of the country (although Auckland is more expensive). Hilly topography has meant lack of space to build and lots of damp hovels that get little sun. Add in character/heritage protection that made it effectively illegal to alter or demolish the draughty and falling apart 1920s wooden villas that make up most of inner Wellington and there you go.

This place is fucked, and now we know Australia won’t shoot themselves in the head for another three years at least people will continue to leave in droves.

When the bloodbath government budget here hits in two weeks time it will turn into a torrent.

Oh, is that the sound of a free market correction?

I get where you’re coming from, Retail NZ and the sector they represent (which is not all retailers of course) always come off as incredibly self absorbed and uncaring imo, particularly when they comment on employment stuff. Bunch of small business tyrants.

But that lets the govt off the hook a bit I think. A lot of the article is Wellington focused, and talks about the link to the job cuts in the public sector and the way that’s been done. They’ve actively cratered things on top of a downturn that was already happening.

Oh that’s a pain, yeah there’s a bit of a mix of places where you have to confirm the surcharge on the machine and others that just have a sign and you get automatically charged for credit/contactless.

It’s all a bit of a mess and I can see that could lead some to just go back to cash, although there’ll be other reasons I’m sure

I don’t use a lot of cash, but I like to keep some on me cause it comes in handy every so often.

I am switching back more and more to eftpos over my credit card though, as so many places are either not accepting credit cards and/or contactless, or adding the extra charge that irks me (yes, I do blame the banks/payment providers for that, not the businesses).

Asshole government making life harder and costing the health system more money in the long term.

Yes I think so, that rings a bell. Something like that would be cool, I downloaded beeper earlier to give it a go and it immediately wants an email and privacy policy and I assume collects data on what clients you use and so on.

Something like pigdin that’s just a front end that doesn’t phone home anywhere or collect your data and you just log in through it would be awesome.

Right I see, could be useful if you’re constantly switching between conversations on multiple platforms I guess. Which come to think of it I am. I only have the Instagram app because typing goes nuts when I try to message on their web interface.

Way back when I was running Ubuntu (like over a decade ago) there were a chat application that would combine Facebook chat, MSN (lol) and a bunch of others and it was very handy to have it right there on the desktop.

Oh damn that’s a shame, I use Facebook calls quite a lot. Sounds like for me it could be one app to rule them all just resulting in yet another app on top the others lol.

On a related note, this is the first I’m hearing of beeper.

Is the main draw just being able to combine messaging across different apps into one, or are there other benefits too?

I’ll say it. He’s a real Clown

The Prime Minister is a C-word

Adjusting for population it seems to be about the same - population has gone from about 4.3 million in 2013 to 5 point whatever million is it now.

I think it’s cold comfort though that every time we get a downturn like this, we do austerity that makes things even worse and let key sectors like construction just collapse and workers relocate to places where they actually try and do counter cyclical support.

Lisa needs braces

That’s so cool, like a sailboat/yacht? I love the idea of getting a liveaboard boat and doing something wild like sailing across the Pacific in it.

I say this as someone with exactly zero sailing experience, but the idea going such a huge distance using mostly the wind would be such an adventure.

Genuine worker involvement in these decisions from the start, not just consulting on a fait accompli.

Ultimately that means proper structured worker representation through unions that can meet management at their level. Germany for example, has union representation on company boards. Worker owned cooperatives are another model.