There’s a really good reason I only talk/write about sport. It’s because sport, for me, is an escape. The utter unimportance of something taken as so seriously important is the exact kind of absurdity I thrive on. Sport allows, for however minuscule be the moments, our minds to drift away from the humdrum of everyday life, a life that for most here in NZ has increasingly become a struggle for cost survival. Ask yourself. Who isn’t feeling the economic squeeze? The mile long queues at service stations on Friday 30th June were the most obvious indicator yet that for many many Kiwis right now life is about nothing but paying the bills and trying to keep the financial head above water. There’s a reason I concentrate on sport. Because I resent this current government and everyone in it responsible for the state our country is in right now.
No I’m not anti-Labour. Not at all. In fact since 1984 when I first was able to vote general election I’ve ticked red more often that not. I grew up in the Labour stronghold of Upper Hutt in a working class family that has always voted Labour. What I am is anti-incompetence. Six years this current lot have been in power and no-one can honestly say we are better off as a country, either individually or collectively, than we were when their coalition was voted in. No-one can seriously suggest that we are. I measure this by asking the most basic appropriate economic question:
Are those at the bottom of the NZ economic ladder better off now than they were six years ago?
I have close family members who would be described by govt agencies as being in the (very) lower socio-economic groups they monitor. Without naming their names, they live very much week-to-week hand-to-mouth. Some are on benefits, some exist on minimum wage. Arriving at payday with $2.08 left in the account and zero food in the fridge is the norm. Being behind in all your bills, bleeding the overdraft and never being able to pay that back is simply called life as they know it. Saving to buy a house involves buying a Lotto ticket. Queueing for hours before petrol went up another 29c a litre was considered essential.
Here’s how New Zealand looks to me at this current time.
I live in a central Auckland suburb. We have a crime wave in this city at levels I’ve never seen before. I’m 59yo and have lived (mostly) here since 1987, full-time since ‘98. I’m talking street crime, violence, robberies, a total BRAZEN disregard and disrespect for other people and their property. Personally I’ve been the victim of an attempted hit-and-run. That was last year. Despite three separate witnesses and managing to record the guy’s number plate the police never came. Twelve weeks later after persistent calling to them we were granted an appointment and were told that a random nutbar mounting the footpath and trying to run two of us over was “not worth taking to court”. They didn’t want to pursue a conviction because of the driver’s “immigrant status”. “You two won’t get any justice” is what we were told. I didn’t in fact want a conviction I just wanted him locked up somewhere so he couldn’t pull the same stunt again. Unsurprisingly the offender HAD tried something similar before and “was on our books” (police words).
The previous suburb I lived in until earlier this year was Kingsland, a stone’s throw from Eden Park. The main road saw six ram raids in three months, most of them posted and boasted about on TikTok. I’ve seen people brazenly walk into a service station and just rob the shelves without a care in the world, not covering their faces and eating the spoils while leaning on their car afterwards outside by the bowser. The police never came. I’ve seen scum losers ripping open courier packages clearly not theirs that they’ve stolen off a porch while walking past and discard the contents down the street. The police never came. These sorts of stories are now commonplace in Auckland. Every week you’ll hear of several brazen thefts of trolley loads of groceries from suburban supermarkets. Where staff members give up trying to apprehend these thieves for fear of violent reprisal. Auckland for my mind is largely lawless. Ask anyone you know who lives close to the central city whether they feel safe walking around Queen St at night. They’ll laugh in your face. At Xmas last year I spent time in both NY and DC. I felt totally safe wandering the streets and catching public transport anytime of the day or night. Same for when I was in Tokyo in 2019. Massive uber sized cities where a police presence is visible, where you feel genuinely safe. That is not NZ anymore. That is the reality of life here in Auckland. Again, ask yourself. Would you be happy with your wife/gf/partner walking home from the Viaduct by herself in Auckland at night? Why not? Aren’t we meant to feel safe walking around our city’s streets no matter what time of day it is? Are you happy with the idea of your children walking around Auckland suburban streets after dark? Why not? What is there to fear? WE all know the answer to these questions: BECAUSE IT IS NOT SAFE. There is no visible police presence anywhere. Unless they’re revenue collecting ticketing traffic. You fear becoming another victim of crime. That is the reality of life here in Auckland.
We have rampant inflation. Petrol’s just gone up 29c a litre. It costs $5 for a capsicum at the supermarket. You do your grocery shopping, fill up four bags and it’s $250 or more. We ALL know how much the price of basic foodstuffs has increased this last 12 months. Don’t even try and deny it. We pay record prices for power, cell phones, our interest rates on mortgages are among the highest in the western world. We have truancy rates among the worst in the OECD. On the news last week I listened incredulously as the Education Minister was celebrating the fact that “60% of students attended the first term of the year”. What. The. F? We all remember when not going to school was NEVER even an afterthought, you simply HAD to go. We murder a child here in NZ every few days. Our domestic violence rates are the highest in the western world. We have what the Ministry of Health calls “an obesity epidemic”. One in eight kids, so the Ministry says, “live in a household where there isn’t enough food”. Our road toll is a national disgrace. In fact our roads, including state highways, are full of potholes that never seem to get fixed. Every time it heavily rains in Auckland raw sewage pumps into the harbour. Every time it heavily rains the same drains which weren’t cleared last time overflow and flood around the same houses and businesses that copped it in January. For every two people who work in this country we subsidise someone who chooses to be unemployed or is simply too lazy or incompetent or incapable of working. And all our government can think of is banning single serve plastic bags in the supermarket and giggle while one of its own ministers no less accuses every tax-paying non-crime-committing white man in this country of being a violent colonial rapist.
I’m not making any of this up. It’s all true. Six years of this current government and are we any better off than we were six years ago? Stop it. If you seriously believe we are your brain is a horse’s backside. Meanwhile our former beloved leader swans around the world signing million dollar book deals to tell the planet how fabulous she was at landing us all in this mess. Nice for some. Last year while on another PR junket Jacinda was appearing on US tv talk shows boasting about how she’d “solved gun crime” in NZ. Meanwhile every night Auckland was witnessing drive-by’s amid an ongoing gang war. And the paid-for-coverage media riding alongside on her junket slavishly reported this rubbish as “fact”.
New Zealand right now is a crap basket. That’s the beautiful country I have always loved and adored. WE have a PM belting us about climate change who flies a spare plane up to China with no-one on it. Oh the blatant hypocrisy. We have a parliament, and that’s ALL of them, who do nothing but bicker, fight, catcall and waste billions of our precious tax dollars on pointless projects many of which (like the nonsensical TVNZ/RNZ merger) never even come to fruition. This is NZ right now. This is where we are after six years of the current government. Yet our sycophantic politically-biased hide-everything tell-no-truth take-the-PIJ-money-to-buy-silence “legacy media” won’t ever report it. There are very good reasons why I don’t/won’t talk/write about politics.
To quote an East London geezer mate:
“Because it’s a big bunch of butt-covering do-nothing bleedin’-pony load of old bollocks”.
Martin Devlin is a veteran New Zealand radio and television broadcaster. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
Are those at the bottom of the NZ economic ladder better off now than they were six years ago?
I have close family members who would be described by govt agencies as being in the (very) lower socio-economic groups they monitor. Without naming their names, they live very much week-to-week hand-to-mouth. Some are on benefits, some exist on minimum wage. Arriving at payday with $2.08 left in the account and zero food in the fridge is the norm. Being behind in all your bills, bleeding the overdraft and never being able to pay that back is simply called life as they know it. Saving to buy a house involves buying a Lotto ticket. Queueing for hours before petrol went up another 29c a litre was considered essential.
Here’s how New Zealand looks to me at this current time.
I live in a central Auckland suburb. We have a crime wave in this city at levels I’ve never seen before. I’m 59yo and have lived (mostly) here since 1987, full-time since ‘98. I’m talking street crime, violence, robberies, a total BRAZEN disregard and disrespect for other people and their property. Personally I’ve been the victim of an attempted hit-and-run. That was last year. Despite three separate witnesses and managing to record the guy’s number plate the police never came. Twelve weeks later after persistent calling to them we were granted an appointment and were told that a random nutbar mounting the footpath and trying to run two of us over was “not worth taking to court”. They didn’t want to pursue a conviction because of the driver’s “immigrant status”. “You two won’t get any justice” is what we were told. I didn’t in fact want a conviction I just wanted him locked up somewhere so he couldn’t pull the same stunt again. Unsurprisingly the offender HAD tried something similar before and “was on our books” (police words).
The previous suburb I lived in until earlier this year was Kingsland, a stone’s throw from Eden Park. The main road saw six ram raids in three months, most of them posted and boasted about on TikTok. I’ve seen people brazenly walk into a service station and just rob the shelves without a care in the world, not covering their faces and eating the spoils while leaning on their car afterwards outside by the bowser. The police never came. I’ve seen scum losers ripping open courier packages clearly not theirs that they’ve stolen off a porch while walking past and discard the contents down the street. The police never came. These sorts of stories are now commonplace in Auckland. Every week you’ll hear of several brazen thefts of trolley loads of groceries from suburban supermarkets. Where staff members give up trying to apprehend these thieves for fear of violent reprisal. Auckland for my mind is largely lawless. Ask anyone you know who lives close to the central city whether they feel safe walking around Queen St at night. They’ll laugh in your face. At Xmas last year I spent time in both NY and DC. I felt totally safe wandering the streets and catching public transport anytime of the day or night. Same for when I was in Tokyo in 2019. Massive uber sized cities where a police presence is visible, where you feel genuinely safe. That is not NZ anymore. That is the reality of life here in Auckland. Again, ask yourself. Would you be happy with your wife/gf/partner walking home from the Viaduct by herself in Auckland at night? Why not? Aren’t we meant to feel safe walking around our city’s streets no matter what time of day it is? Are you happy with the idea of your children walking around Auckland suburban streets after dark? Why not? What is there to fear? WE all know the answer to these questions: BECAUSE IT IS NOT SAFE. There is no visible police presence anywhere. Unless they’re revenue collecting ticketing traffic. You fear becoming another victim of crime. That is the reality of life here in Auckland.
We have rampant inflation. Petrol’s just gone up 29c a litre. It costs $5 for a capsicum at the supermarket. You do your grocery shopping, fill up four bags and it’s $250 or more. We ALL know how much the price of basic foodstuffs has increased this last 12 months. Don’t even try and deny it. We pay record prices for power, cell phones, our interest rates on mortgages are among the highest in the western world. We have truancy rates among the worst in the OECD. On the news last week I listened incredulously as the Education Minister was celebrating the fact that “60% of students attended the first term of the year”. What. The. F? We all remember when not going to school was NEVER even an afterthought, you simply HAD to go. We murder a child here in NZ every few days. Our domestic violence rates are the highest in the western world. We have what the Ministry of Health calls “an obesity epidemic”. One in eight kids, so the Ministry says, “live in a household where there isn’t enough food”. Our road toll is a national disgrace. In fact our roads, including state highways, are full of potholes that never seem to get fixed. Every time it heavily rains in Auckland raw sewage pumps into the harbour. Every time it heavily rains the same drains which weren’t cleared last time overflow and flood around the same houses and businesses that copped it in January. For every two people who work in this country we subsidise someone who chooses to be unemployed or is simply too lazy or incompetent or incapable of working. And all our government can think of is banning single serve plastic bags in the supermarket and giggle while one of its own ministers no less accuses every tax-paying non-crime-committing white man in this country of being a violent colonial rapist.
I’m not making any of this up. It’s all true. Six years of this current government and are we any better off than we were six years ago? Stop it. If you seriously believe we are your brain is a horse’s backside. Meanwhile our former beloved leader swans around the world signing million dollar book deals to tell the planet how fabulous she was at landing us all in this mess. Nice for some. Last year while on another PR junket Jacinda was appearing on US tv talk shows boasting about how she’d “solved gun crime” in NZ. Meanwhile every night Auckland was witnessing drive-by’s amid an ongoing gang war. And the paid-for-coverage media riding alongside on her junket slavishly reported this rubbish as “fact”.
New Zealand right now is a crap basket. That’s the beautiful country I have always loved and adored. WE have a PM belting us about climate change who flies a spare plane up to China with no-one on it. Oh the blatant hypocrisy. We have a parliament, and that’s ALL of them, who do nothing but bicker, fight, catcall and waste billions of our precious tax dollars on pointless projects many of which (like the nonsensical TVNZ/RNZ merger) never even come to fruition. This is NZ right now. This is where we are after six years of the current government. Yet our sycophantic politically-biased hide-everything tell-no-truth take-the-PIJ-money-to-buy-silence “legacy media” won’t ever report it. There are very good reasons why I don’t/won’t talk/write about politics.
To quote an East London geezer mate:
“Because it’s a big bunch of butt-covering do-nothing bleedin’-pony load of old bollocks”.
Martin Devlin is a veteran New Zealand radio and television broadcaster. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
15 comments:
Can't argue with any of that... sadly. Such a rubbish, lying, incompetent bunch of incumbents we have been saddled with.
Martin Devlin.
I will post this comment, probably the first of many, as you article will require "specific reading of the detail".
[1] - you have a history of coming from a Family, that had strong Labour connections, via the ballot box; did your Dad belong to a Union, in his working day, if so, then that "bond" will have been stronger - the reason being that The Union leadership would have required Dad to put "his tick in the red box", just like you used to do. That same approach still prevails today, particularly in the older age range. Such actions were the trend "back then", the change came later when the trendy 20 year old's "walked away from historical voting";
[2] - you "speak of the current Labour Govt" as being incompetent, on the basis of the 'time in the Treasury Seats'(from late 2016)- BUT you forgot to "review" the nine years this same group (with adjustment for coming & goings of MPs) who sat in the Opposition benches, during the John Key Term; why it was observed, in that time, that a certain female, when the House sat, to spend more time on her Cell Phone (in the House) and to oft "deride John Key" at specific times. Of her colleagues in the same area, only a few showed dexterity in debates. Her "sudden elevation to Deputy Leader in early 2016" had people wondering - "how the hell..."!!, then "propelled into the "Leadership Seat", for which many commentators claimed - "How the Hell..., she has no background and/or ability (to that point 2016)- and having not shown such traits, going forward from 2017 did not show just cause to be the PM. Look at Jack Tame's interview of Andrew Little (2016) - it was more than interesting - he knew the "writing was on the wall". Ask - How, did he know??
You will note that the "elevation of Jacinda", was deliberate as Labour had "read the wet dishcloth - Bill English"- and used "new face" that caused many (mostly women & younger people) to vote Labour - you reap what you sow.
As an aside - look at the last State of Victoria/Australia elections - that had many conservative media "wanting Daniel Andrews slung out", what did the electorate do - voted Labour (they have the same past historical voting traits as we do in NZ) - besides the, then opposition were more "wet dish cloth types and showed no ability of being a Govt".
3. Crime - you need to ask the current Com of Police as to the reason/rational for "lack of frontline staff carrying out "their Sworn Duties"?
You should also review the past TV footage of Kelvin Davis, in the 9 years he sat in opposition (Key Govt) and listen to what he had to say on Crime, Maori involvement, Prisons etc. And his "pending intentions" should Labour become the next Govt".
I shall return - I have more "in-depth reading to do".
An interesting article, sad that other New Zealander's can not get to read, it is one that needs - "The Town Criers to voice the content".
I am ANON, resident of New Zealand.
p.s. - Have Heart Martin - we "may see a change in Govt".
Hang on a minute matie. You won't write about it but you just did. You're a broadcaster but you're castigating the MSM. Remind us again what is the problem? I must say this is a jolly good rant and I know you have plenty of support for your views. We are so going to enjoy watching them disappear down the river of filth in October.
MC
Big picture, it's all by design.
A good state of the nation item.
“Because it’s a big bunch of butt-covering do-nothing bleedin’-pony load of old bollocks”
While this statement is accurate, the language is way to mild.
My description would be far more accurate but I would probably be cancelled.
No big problem, cancelling wankers don't look at this site.
Your article made my cry martin because you are so correct. And yet I love my country. It's nz and I'm a new zealander. I have so much compassion for the good people just trying to do the right thing. I went into new world metro recently and the sign there says " kia ora market." For some reason that signage just broke my heart. It is well meant . We are all kiwis. None of us are racists except the fools in power. All of us just want our country back to the way it was. Thanks for your honest article.
Incompetence i deplore - and they just aren't capable - any of them, but it is the corruption and sneaky downright dishonesty that makes me despise them. How dare they! I come from a family of long-time Labour voters too. I fervently wish each one of them never working in politics again.
It was all rather predictable when you look at it. Making that waste of space Ardern PM was a monumental stuff up and it was so obvious, why she shouldn’t have sat in the big chair.
Policy matters when voting and Labour does not and never did have any policy, the last election was an outright joke. Voted in with a clear majority and not a single worthwhile policy on the table.
NZ got what it deserves in spades because we stopped thinking.
Remember that in October when ticking the box
My God Martin !!
You have described it so well, and I can completely understand why you stick to sport.
Like you - I see our once proud nation falling into ruins from a completely incompetent government.
Bravo Mr Devlin, very well written capturing the rapid demise of my country under this dreadful govt. I implore traditional Labour Party voters to think twice before following tradition. Your party is no longer what it was. It has been hijacked by a bunch of Marxists. We can not allow the destruction of NZ to continue.
Well said Martin. Love your work. Cheers
That's so true and you've only scratched the surface. The undemocratic, unpopular racist, wrongly called policies that are still being rushed through are so frightening. It will take ages to sort out the mess if we ever get the right politicians in power.
I never ever thought NZ could possibly have a civil war, but that horrible thought is now popping up too often. We are being polarised by the current bunch of crooks and incompetents with no end in sight.
Incompetence is status quo across the board in NZ. Well that's an exaggeration but you get my drift.
We used to have politicians we could vote for positively. Now, like most of the rest of the western world, it's a matter of voting for the least worst option - assuming there even is one (hint: in this upcoming election IMO there isn't!)
If the very strong rumours are true that the last election in NZ was rigged to put Jacinda back in power... what makes us think it won't happen again this election?
True, the damage has been done, and it will be decades at the very least before we even look like we might be recovering but perhaps 3 more years of damage is their plan?
What has been done to prevent manipulation of the voting system? Nothing.
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