As I predicted last month, things were a little quieter around here as I got used to a fantastic new job. But I managed to crank >5 posts out and thus can technically fulfil the requirements of a Top Five!
I beseeched my fellow progressives to stop letting the side down with your fate hate:
There are serious health problems in our country. Actual diseases caused by substandard housing, actual illnesses made worse by a lack of varied food (where added sugar is a concern, but here’s the amazing irony: that’s because we decided too much fat made people fat so we got rid of all the fat in foods which made them taste awful!) We have actual epidemics of preventable diseases and we have too many families in our community who cannot afford a full load of groceries, or even the time to Just Grow Their Own Vegetables in the garden they don’t have because they’re living in their goddamned car.
Imposing a sugar tax fixes none of these.
I talked about how we got here:
A long time ago in New Zealand we all, through public services run by the government, ensured every family had enough money to feed their kids and a safe house to live in. We used to make people’s jobs secure and support people who weren’t able to work.
We knew some things were too important to leave in the hands of private companies whose first priority was profit. We knew together, as people who are part of a community, we could help each other. And the government, or the state, was the best instrument of that – because it wasn’t driven by making a quick buck, because it was accountable to the people.
We lost that. But we didn’t lose it by accident. It was by design.
Tony Veitch was in the news again, having a column bafflingly published in the NZ Herald where he wasn’t repentant, just making it worse:
When Tony Veitch as a famous dude in sports entertainment does NOTHING to educate men or challenge our culture of violence, HE MAKES IT WORSE.
There are things men can do to really challenge family violence in New Zealand. Tony Veitch has done none of these things. Because every single time, it’s all about Tony Veitch.
This also saw a number of people revisiting my post from last October: Tony Veitch is a danger to women.
In Budget week I talked about the government’s housing message dilemma:
For eight (long) years there’s been little mainstream pushback against the ideas that ordinary people deserve near-zero support from their community, and the market must not be meddled with.
But this week John Key has looked up and everyone’s staring at him saying “WTF, mate? People are living in cars? We’re putting them up in motels so their kids can sleep in a bed for once and we’re charging them for the privilege? What the hell is going on and why aren’t you doing anything about it?”
Shock ran through the NZ blogosphere as I revealed exclusive, compelling, very very very credible documents exposing a vast righwing conspiracy.
An internal WhaleOil document, exclusively
created byreleased to Boots Theory, show the innermost workings of a corrupt, depraved, unmitigated, cryptofascist conspiracy to control our media, our government, our daily lives and even our rare Pepes.
Also in May I wrote about Nick Smith’s effective support of irresponsible landlords, and riffed on Joanna Russ in my post how to suppress feminist voices on domestic violence.
Stephanie Rodgers 