Like many women, my wife Amie likes to watch Instagram reels. These are little clips, mostly from the lives of women, where the algorithm figures out what you like and feeds you more of it.
My EasyVote pack has arrived and early voting is about to start, so it must be a good time to examine the list of parties on the menu this election, in the order they are presented in the voting pack.
"... If you're going to treat us like some new breed that's just arrived here, and wipe out our rights, there will be trouble in this country … Tonight, when you go to bed, 25% of all babies under 5 have Maori descent.
I've been biking, using a pedal-assist e-bike, around Auckland since early February 2021. While I was born in the biking Mecca known as Holland, I had always been sceptical of biking here and claimed it would never work.
Family First has released their usual information guide for voters. It shows how politicians have voted on social issues and how party leaders say they would vote on those issues or potential issues today.
Bob McCroskie made a video titled "United they stand, divided they…" calling for "conservative-leaning" parties to work together along an Alliance-style setup. We've talked about this and it hasn't worked.
I'll start with a few disclaimers: I have been critical of the various political factions that came out of the "freedom movement" of NZ's COVID policies, and I am of course a card-carrying member and the secretary-general of the New Conservatives.
Last week I wrote that the left-wing was fundamentally about making all things equal in a race to the bottom: an ideology of the lowest common denominator.
Much could be written on the rise and fall of Kiritapu Allan, the "queer wahine Maori" who was groomed to be a Prime Minister-in-waiting as the queen of diversity hires.
It's not every day that we get a visceral window into how justice works in our society. Ours is a system that employs the most liberal and modern approach to justice possible: post-justice.
What do the commissars of the dominant cultural force spend their social capital on? It's bashing "TERFS" as they create new social media accounts on yet another Twitter clone (that will be a zombie social network in a few months).
Speed limits are being lowered around the country as part of a "Road to Zero" plan by the government. The Ministry of Transport website proudly lays out the strategy:
Last Friday, my wife and I were a couple out of the 800+ delegates at the annual "Forum on the Family" held by Family First NZ. Bob McCroskrie had put together an impressive lineup of speakers.
The story was a big one and the "talk of the town" in Christian circles. A maths teacher was deregistered for refusing to use false pronouns and names for a 14 year old girl who was being transitioned by the school.
New Zealand has a gang problem. There has been much discussion about this problem in recent weeks, especially with everyone gearing up for the election season.
I listened to Liam Hehir's podcast with Thomas Coughlan from the NZH and there were some very key things talked about that confirm I am on the right track.
The summit organised by Peter Mortlock was on the North Shore at 7pm on a Tuesday evening, so I arrived late. It was very well attended, perhaps 700 people and we needed to park on the road.
There are a few topics this week that I considered weighing in on: bi-lingual road signs, drug prescriptions, and accusations of homophobia. There is a common thread that runs through these stories.
A little bit of a bizarre situation has formed in the wake of New Zealand's COVID lockdowns and forced vaccination policies. The opposition to these things was chaotic and disorganised.
The Media Council is somewhat of a strange beast. Sometimes it delivers good and interesting verdicts on issues of media balance, but most of the time it seems to share the heavy left-wing bias of the organisations it represents.