A grumpy old woman keeping up to date

 When I first started blogging back in 2014 as we took possession of the boat for real (rather than owning it long distance) I posted pretty much every day. Over the intervening time, my performance has diminished, in part because we were back home in NZ and in part because, at times I got pretty busy with work. And at times, I am better at writing the blog in my head (and taking suitable photos with the best of intentions) than I am at getting my fingers on the keyboard!

This trip though, my slack performance has been just slack. At first I was feeling very rough with Covid (and ashamed at not being aware that I actually had it - having misdiagnosed myself with a bad cold), then we were clearing and cleaning up the boat, then away in Cornwall and points south west and then up north in Scotland.

In the last week or so, I have been valiantly working at being a more regular poster. I hope you have noticed!

Last evening and this morning, I have been reading old posts of mine from 2017. I notice that I was a lot perkier then.  I am noticing that I appear to be turning into a grumpy old woman (a GOW). It distresses me because one of my defining characteristics has always been that I am a Yellow Hat person in Edward de Bono's parlance - I am an optimist and I can always see the positives. But at the moment, I feel myself inexorably becoming a Black Hat - a pessimist who thinks that if anything can go wrong it will, or it already has and people just haven't seen it yet.

I don't like being a Black Hat, I don't like it at all! It's a depressing way to be.

I know a good part of it is to do with the parlous state of opposition politics in NZ enabled and encouraged by the media who mistake bagging the government with holding them to account - they do their bagging both mendaciously and by cherry picking pieces of information out of context and then opining about it and pretending it's news, pretending it's factual.

Opposition politics in NZ has taken a trumpian/republican turn especially since the first year that Covid hit our shores. Now as a matter of course, stories are conjured up or old events are resurrected and presented as issues NOW. 

A case in point from this week: Kiri Allen was previously Minister of Conservation. Over a year ago, a staff member ended her secondment in the Minister's Office because apparently Ms Allen 'yelled and screamed' at her - the actual words used in the media... There was no formal complaint made through NZ's comprehensive anti-bullying regs, the CEO of DOC handled it with the Minister and it was all sorted. But now, because our Prime Minister has been having great success re trade etc in China this last week, the Opposition has dredged up this non-complaint, and the ever compliant media have turned it into a 3 ring circus. It became the lead story in the 'news' rather than reporting of the advances Chris Hipkins has made. Reporters have questioned Hipkins about it. He is a sensible man and noted to the media that the event occurred last year, that no formal complaint was made, that it is impossible to discuss sensibly when the person wishes to remain anonymous, he's checked with officials and been assured the issue was sorted, and basically gave the media the message that they were derelict in their duty.

My Black Hat thinking is focused mainly on where this kind of thing leads us to as a country - it's where the USA already is, where the UK is. Where right wing politicians and right wing owned news media distract the populace with non-news, with a view to leading NZ to a right wing government in October's election with no policies declared for examination, no costings to show we can afford these non-policies and where the focus of spend will change from. What we do know is that they intend to reduce taxes on the very well off, and cut services (housing, education, health, social welfare) to fund the reduction in the tax take. As it is already, the wealthy in NZ (and the US and the UK) do not pay a proportionate amount of tax in relation to their incomes. But still they want more, and they are prepared to take it from those with already not enough or only just enough - but let's face it, the rich NEVER have enough.

I am finding this all very depressing - after the advances made by the Labour Government since 2017, the prospect of a National government with no policies except to make the rich richer with the fallacy of the trickle down economic theory, to lock up more people, to lower the number of people in government departments and ministries - leading inevitably to cutting services.

And knowing that otherwise sensible people have swallowed their bullsh*t and parrot the lines they hear, without thinking through what is said, without examining the truth of a situation. It destroys me.

It also destroys me that there is a significant group of NZers who are happy at the prospect of people becoming poorer, of people not being able to afford food for their kids or themselves and who justify that view by tarring all with the brush of laziness/unwillingness to work/a beneficiary their cousin's brother in law knows who smokes and drinks alcohol instead of feeding their kids... The generalising from the specific really riles me! If you hadn't noticed.

So that is my update for today. If you have noticed lately that I have sounded a bit jaundiced, you are right.

I feel the need to invoke the final scenes from Life of Brian and sing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life... sing along here

Tomorrow I will be back on deck, I promise.