State of the bleugh (Patreon)

God I wish we stopped doing state of the nation speeches. They're no such thing and it's such a lame Americanism.

Anyway, Luxo had his moment in the sun (after postponing it twice due to shit weather). It was better than last year when he made up a communist family he'd never spoken with in Russia about the perils of communism, after the USSR had broken up. But still... Meh.

The childcare policy is... fine? I support anything that helps people with less get more. And it's not something that Luxo's rich mates can easily rort. So yay?

Except Labour also did a childcare policy at its conference last year and while the ceiling for earning is higher with National's policy, early analysis by Beehive strategists suggests Labour's policy is more generous than this one. Pretty awks when your tent pole announcement is shitter than one your opposition already made.

More awks when this was Luxo's response to Labour's childcare policy:




And then there were the fucking military academies. God the right has such a boner for authoritarianism. I'm yet to see any evidence of military academies being an effective tool. Except in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where the threat of Military School was enough to make Bill and Ted ace their history project and form the Wyld Stallyns and save humanity. God I hope National based their policy off that.

If I was advising National (and we can all laugh at that), I'd have suggested a bold climate change policy. That would've been timely, cashing in on what's being talked about, and would have been surprising. But for that to happen National would need to believe in man made climate change and actually want to do something about it.

Or something that was overtly Pro-Māori. But good luck getting that past his caucus and his base and probably his weird church too.

So instead we get lazy centrist third way policies that I'm sure Labour will steal, or alter in some minor way. Our two biggest political parties basically fight elections over who can give what to Working for Families. Tony Blair has truly left a stain on political thinking.

Meanwhile everything is still fucking expensive, and weather events are ruining the world. Our political class shall fiddle while the world burns.