The spat106 short longform #30

Sticking to principles

A lot of my newsletters have been political lately, well the other 2 people reading them could tell you that. It has been the New Zealand election period however so that explains that a bit. Well a lot actually. So we’re still in the time where a government hasn’t been formed, I mean no offence to people who can time travel, they are probably going back to stare at women in the ancient Minoan civilisation, who were always topless. One option for a coalition that has been bandied about is the Green Party of Aotearoa should be in coalition with the New Zealand National Party, that would then make them together a majority government. One problem with that, well there a lot of problems with that seeing as Green Party entire campaign was for a change of government, they are left of centre-left Labour, they’ve only ever been associated as a coalition partner of Labour, so much so that they had a Memorandum of Understanding with Labour up to the start of this election and people who vote for them only do so with the understanding they’d only ever enter into an agreement where they would be in a Labour-led government.

“I only voted Greens so that a National-Greens coalition would be on the table” was said by no Green voter ever, or even if that were the case the above reasons would say why that type of vote sticking with the present government would have been silly. A reason why some people are actually suggesting this is so that NZ First will be bypassed as a kingmaker. Only National Party supporters are suggesting it though, whenever a party is seen to be aligning with them however, that party loses support or basically dies off. So even though National may have biggest support for a single party in New Zealand, they are basically a black widow to any parties that support them, just look at Maori Party, ACT and United Future. Or if you have ever seen the baby shark come out, that was the shark that ate all the other baby sharks in the womb before being delivered, that’s National. That’s o couple of animal analogies for you right there. Just to stress that I’m not wanting to give sharks a bad name. Also to reiterate National is not to be confused with The National, which is a musical group that consists of Bill English 6 kids with Max Key as the DJ.

One argument that’s being put in place, almost a guilt trip, is that if the Greens want their environmental policies to be in place now rather than wait for 3 years they should join with National now, otherwise it proves they don’t care about the environment. As Kermiet once sang it ain’t easy being Green so it’s even harder when you have emotional blackmail put on you. This doesn’t make sense as it makes it look like National won’t do anything good with the environment unless Greens come on board. They are saying “We in government are powerless to put in any policies that help the environment”. That must have been some weird risky long game National has been playing for their 9 years in government previously by getting the environment is such a bad state that they’d need Greens to come on board to fix the terrible job the previous government has done and then Greens voters would kill any support that the Greens have by going against their wishes by going for power over loyalty. Also people who think this coalition is a good idea forget that Greens aren’t just about environment, they have socially progressive policies that are fundamentally opposite to what National has. Although this is all moot as they will stick to principles (which you should do) rather than be a martyr for something you’ve been in opposition to for a lot of the time.

Also to end this I have to stick to my principles by doing a paragraph that is on a bit of a tangent so here I am discussing sticking to principals. So your local school principal will stick a magnet on themselves and then when you’re sleeping at night, they’ll stick a magnet on you, they’d be positive and you’d be negative, when you walk then you slowly gravitate towards the principal because opposites attract.