Hi Dave. The article is a fair representation of reality.
Fortunately, the current socialist feminazi government hasn't rolled back the reforms fully, but we are being suffocated with regulation after regulation after regulation.
Everything is banned unless it's specifically approved. Bureaucracy has gone nuts. Things are privately owned, but government controlled. If it wasn't still a democracy, it would be called fascism. People vote for it, so they have only themselves to blame.
NZ was really was number 3 in GDP per capita in the 1950s. And, as a bonus, life was great with a splendid natural environment. Sure, it was a provincial place, lacking the sometimes dubious cultural highlights of London, Paris and New York, and had odd cultural norms such as no alcohol after 6pm and unions ruled the roost.
It was during the 1930s that socialism took off. My mother told me that her parents considered it the beginning of the end when Labour won in 1936 and away we went down the welfare state, socialism, government control and regulation trajectory.
It takes a generation for social mores to shift. My parents generation were workers so didn't just swing onto welfare when it became available. My generation were workers too, with the depression and WWII reported to us in many ways and looming as a threat which might return. However, the next generation were imbued with a sense of entitlement, and increasingly a desultory dependence on government.
We now have something like 1 in 3 children in families getting welfare payments of some sort. We have violent crime levels and styles to match the frightening worst of what happens overseas. In the 1950s, and 1960s, life was safe and violent crime wasn't part of the scene, other than in aberrant instances. Now it's normal.
Hundreds of thousands of people live on welfare. Something like 20% I suppose. liberalvalues.org.nz
Don't be a Pavlov dog when you see the word liberal. Liberal is used in the 19th century way, not the modern American way. Lindsay Mitchell is excellent.
Now we have women running the show, right from the top. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we are being Mummied and smothered. Women like things nice. Dirty, noisy boys are person non grata. The love rules even more than the old-style blokes. The more rules the better they think. And, we are getting stupid defacto relationship laws and civil unions and nonsense. They are going down a well-worn track over millennia of human sexuality, and I think at the end of it, they will reinvent marriage after creating all sorts of difficulties.
Blokes ran the 20th century and brought us many wars and carnage and nastiness. Blokes have run most of history and it has been a litany of Taleban style repressive violence and territorial aggression. So I'm not too worried about the latest experiments in political management. But it would be gullible and naive to think that there won't be problems at least as big with a culture dominated by women.
Women aren't inventors and creators and producers of all that stuff that actually makes wealth. Sure, a few get into management and dabble with a bit of R&D and stuff, but Einstein wasn't a girl. They like to play dolls, house and boss the boys around. The boys will run away into cyberspace, or the shed, to invent something else and have boys' clubs.
The USA will assuredly follow NZ, as they have in the past. NZ is a little social laboratory, which prides itself on conducting such experiments. So, a woman should be President and Commander in Chief in the USA pretty soon. Being a politician is an effeminate job and real blokes shouldn't be doing it. Once blokes realize they are being girlz, they'll not be so keen.
I think the natural two political parties are no longer left and right, state versus individual, socialism versus capitalism, freedom versus fascism, but male vs female.
As with a happy marriage, there'll be a compromise where the two sides meet somewhere in the middle and muddle through.
Mqurice
PS: Our rulers in New Zealand
Queen Elizabeth II = head of state and monarch; The Crown.
Dame Silvia Cartwright = Governor General.
Helen Clark = Prime Minister
Jenny Shipley = Previous Prime Minister
Sian Elias = Chief Justice and boss of the newly anointed Supreme Court
Margaret Wilson = Attorney General
Annette King = Minister of Health
There are only 6 of 26 ministers, so blokes still have the numbers, but Helengrad is run by Helen Clark, who has the say. dpmc.govt.nz
Theresa Gattung is boss of Telecom New Zealand, by far the biggest company in NZ
Women are also the boss of most families. Blokes are hen-pecked. Women are sole charge parents in quarter of families, much of which is due to divorce/relationship break-up, but also because of having children as a state-paid career. Teachers are mostly women, so children grow up not seeing men around all that much. Dad's are has-beens.
That will have an effect. I don't think a good one. So far, it seems not to be good. |
