A few moments to reflect on what stared up at me over the Marmite soldiers this morning (on a very nice multi grain loaf from the Sansom farmer's market as it happens) before hoeing into the day. All bad I'm afraid.
Politicians are never my flavour of the month - ghastly profession, no, job - but the Philip Field matter has me shaking my head. Like it or not (and I certanly don't) this duplicitous toad is going to get away with this despite National's best attempts to keep the pot boiling. Quite what the Headmistress said to old Botox Face to bring her into line a day or so back I know not but it certainly worked. Hell, the damned woman is good at all this. We now just await the next transgression to be similarly papered over. If this was not bad enough we have this morning a picture of Ron Mark (who normally appears less odious than the rest of them) grinning in a simian fashion from his seat in Parliament whilst giving the finger to another of our elected (or not as the MMP case maybe) representatives. And we let these people run our lives? And make no mistake we are increasingly letting them stick their obnoxous little snouts into our everyday to-ings and fro-ings.
Rates are going up in case we haven't noticed. My latest rate bill is so horrible I had to get my wife to deal with it whilst I had a cup of tea and a lie down. Granny decides we need a rates sob story to ram home the bleedin' obvious. We hear the story of some joker on Waiheke who bought his baronial hall some years ago for $40,000 and finds it is now rated on a value of $1.7mil. Lucky man I would say. Oh no. We have allowed our society to be so constructed that his 'only option' to deal with this burden on his finances is to go on the sickness benefit so he can meet his obligatons to the council. He used to be 'on the benefit' but managed to get off and hold down a $14,000 per annum post doing something with computers. With his rates increase he can no longer afford to live and he goes back on a sickness benefit for stress reasons exacerbated by the rates bill. So, if I read this correctly, I now pay for him to do less so he doesn't cross some income threshold and this money then goes into a different bureaucratic cocoa tin. This is nuts. Of course he can afford to live - he sells his house with a profit of $1,660,00 and lives on that. Why the hell should I have to support him because he wants to stay in a house he can no longer afford? The world changes and we must move on.
Garth George brings the only sensible spin to affairs with his entirely reasonable piece on the proposed new national curriculum. He quite rightly points out that the so so called 'values' being laid down are no such thing but are more attitudes and aptitudes. He also highlights the golden opportunities these proposals give for warped ideas to be peddled by those with vested interests. He even sights the global warming bollocks as a case in point so his thoughts would appeal, wouldn't they?
There was also something about bees that showed up politicians in a very poor light but I can't quite remember what it was. Making decisions based on certainty when that was not possible was, I think, the issue. No matter, it happens all the time and so should no longer rank as news.
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