In late breaking garden news there are six caterpillars that I can see. We don't have a lot of good foliage so I will have to move some of them from plant to plant.
Also the magnolia is flowering but I will have to reset my pixelfed password to post pictures!
The one thing I usually like about Winston is his foriegn policy work, which he has been doing on and off for a long time.
I really, really hope that isn't about to change. Luxon is not the sharpest pencil in the box.
That's my gut feeling too. Im not a medical doctor but the lungs are delicate and complex and coating everything in there with chemical-laced humectant doesn't seem like a great idea.
Plus, the vaping industry seems to be the tobacco industry.
We don't yet have good longitudinal studies, and the short term effects are already pretty bad, so in my opinion there's no reason to believe claims that vaping will not have serious long-term effects.
It's disappointing to see this kind of thinking. Apart from being inhuman this would probably tank productivity because of presenteeism.
I love this quote:
It wasn't the case that suddenly people woke up in that last quarter of 2024 and decided, 'Well, we're going to double our meth use'' or 'We're really interested in meth suddenly'."
I don't love the increase in cheaper meth though. Meth was already a disaster.
Why are you so opposed to it?
I don't think anyone disputes that they intentionally disrupted the process of Paliament.
I too am pointing out that the punishment is overly disproportionate.
I also think if you want a harsher penalty than a few days' suspension, it should not be one that comes at the expense of the constituency, as this one does.
This context makes sense, thanks. I can see that interrupting a vote is more serious than ordinary interjections.
I agree though, preventing people (and their constituencies) from voting for weeks seems really anti-democratic.
Yes, I get the impression most people are worse off lately. Devil take the hindmost seems to be turning into devil take the entire bottom half.
I wonder what conclusions they will come to about what to do about it...
I'm familiar with it; I think it's a really great illustration! I guess some of the low income parenting examples like boots would be things like dentistry.
Domestically, I feel like he is a troll.
But in Foriegn Affairs I have liked how active and informed he is, and in my experience his office is always better to correspond with than many other ministers because it seems to always be across whatever obscure foriegn policy thing I'm talking about rather than giving me off-topic form letters.
I guess an example of this side of Winston is this speech at the UN. I of course often wish our foriegn policy stances went a lot further, but he gave a speech that was much better than I would expect given our current centre-right leadership and it balanced our need to remain on good terms with the US with our independent voice.
When UNRWA was accused of terrorism, and many western allies suspended funding to it, NZ only followed suit temporarily while Foriegn Affairs looked into the veracity of those claims. Our payments resumed when it was disproved - and in the interim, we funded humanitarian relief in other ways.
This) is another Winston UN speech on our stance that I liked.