The only acceptable position regarding Ukraine, is to pull the wool over New Zealanders' eyes. Russian aggression, blah blah, precision missile strikes on playgrounds and children's hospitals, brutal, unprovoked war. Blah blah. Now Rubio says that the US will pull out of Ukraine within a matter of days.

Wait, is this the guy that got caught making minor wording edits to articles about Russia’s war on Ukraine to make them more Russia friendly?

All the articles in New Zealand media are already too pro-Ukraine. Last month The Press had two pro-Ukraine articles, one by the Ukrainian ambassador, and another by Kate Turska (Mahi For Ukraine). According to RNZ, talking about colour-revolutions is pro-Russian. I call it pro-reality. The CIA and USAID are always up to no good in former soviet states.

Maybe house prices dropped but my rent keeps going up.

My rent went up under labour.

Neither of them has a credible plan to end the 10+ years of housing crisis that New Zealanders have suffered.

The way I read long and complicated threads is by going down one conversation, then collapsing that last comment at the end of it, and making my way back up the chain, collapsing “parent” comments if they have no uncollapsed “children”, and reading “sibling” comments and replies to those as I go up to the original “root” comment.

That's it, I didn't even realise there's a collapse button lol. Until now I just saw a lot of coloured lines that I thought I had to follow. I suppose it's simple enough to follow things here if I collapse threads, or if I read threads before they get dozens of replies.

No, but so far it’s your sole redeeming characteristic.

At least I'm not sarcastically criticising people, while holding no position of my own.

So you need to get yourself into a party. But you can’t just rock up to your party of choices offices and have them put your name next to their logo in the next election.

Just wait another 10 years for Megan Woods to resign and they will open a new position lol

According to my friend Vince McLeod, smoking weed and eating mushrooms is a sacred religious rite that dates back thousands of years. The government is wrong to leave it up to pharmaceutical companies to regulate this issue.

Because people wouldn’t vote for me.

Where are you based, and do you care about local council issues? You can at least start with community board.

Well, the company is dying apparently. Good luck to him, lol. NZ Herald seems to have some fairly interesting premium articles from time-to-time, but most of their articles are about finance, business and investment. Not very interesting for me. If they made a newspaper or digital subscription for poor people I'd be more interested, but not if they dumb down language and assume everyone is a dolt.

Who listens to Newstalk ZB and reads NZ Herald? Nobody my age.

At least you’re pro school lunches, I guess.

That itself isn't the hill to die on though.

And the left aren’t the ones obsessed with abortions.

Well not most people, but a small subset of the left is obsessed with it. They were very upset about the protests in Christchurch. Now there's a law to ban the pro-lifers in Christchurch. They used to protest all the time across from the hospital, at Hagley Park. There is a road between the park and the hospital, but the femmi-nazis weren't happy and obviously they made this law change so that the protests can't be within 300m of the hospital. It's ridiculous. Why not just ban protests within 1km of parliament while we're at it.

I agree but from Seymour's perspective he views it as ideological. I listened to Rodney Hyde on Reality Check Radio a while ago. He had good intentions to just make it easier to do business, but now he's embarrassed that he was in politics. He moved on and says it's bad that people view politics as a legitimate career (lasting many decades for some MPs).

I understand that Act Party want to make it simpler to invest and stuff - after all I wouldn't want it to become overly complicated to apply for a job, or government assistance. That said: I have come to realise that it's one-sided.

Act will make it easier for billionaires to buy just about anything, while making it impossible for anyone to build apartments or decent houses. It's out-of-touch. For a few years now, I consider Seymour's intent to be harmful to the country. These people would cry and demand a law change if rich people had to piss in a cup to get a job or fly their own helicopter or private jet. But it's fine if poor people have to piss in a cup every few weeks just to drive a class 1 or class 2 truck.

Rules for the workers but not for the elite class. It's total B.S. and I'm glad I can see everything clearly now that I'm a bit older and wiser.

It's hard to say, but a guy on a bicycle said "slava ooocrane" and one guy in a car said f*** putin. That was in the course of 1 hour and 10 minutes. It's hard to judge how many people recognise it, but dozens of people do, I'm sure. Some people older than me will know the modern RF flag from the end of the Soviet Union. I was too young to understand it at the time, but as a child I remember looking at a country on the map called USSR and thinking, wow, this country is pretty big lol.

Fighting terrorism. What year were you born in son ;-D

School lunches are one of a few things that should be funded (and I'm saying that as someone who previously voted for Libertarianz and Act). We need to be proud of our services and our country. I don't mean waving flags or saluting flags. Just basic stuff.

Do you want a country you can be proud of, where the schools are good quality, and the children have good quality food, or do you want a country that sucks, where it's a case of "every man for himself"? Pretty basic.

I'm actually embarrassed that I voted for Act in 2014. David Seymour does too many stupid things for attention, and he is like Zuckerberg, I wonder if he is actually just an android because he is so fake.

That leads to the question…what makes a good politician?

Someone who can turn the country around 180 degrees and tie up all the loose ends. Changing heaps of things at once if they must. Like Vladimir Putin in the 2000s or Donald Trump in the past 5-6 weeks. Rightly or wrongly! History will be written. I'm one of those impatient people who despises the Barack Obamas and the Mitt Romneys. I've heard enough about abortion, healthcare and ram-raids and the same old talking points ad nauseum.