"As for the government, the plan is now clearer, and they're spending less than ... might have been expected under Labour."

#RussellPalmer, 2026

https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/focusonpolitics?share=a06dda4a-e2dd-410a-8afc-bf71d5cfa749

I'm sorry, what?

Hasn't your colleague at TVNZ, Jack Tame, reported figures that show NatACT First spending and borrowing *more* than Labour, while *not* governing through a disease pandemic?! Instead giving away huge wads of public money to landlords, corporations, and white elephant projects

#podcasts #RNZ #FocusOnPolitics

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Also, is it just me, or has Shame Jones started looking like one of the skeksis from The Dark Crystal?

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/minister/hon-shane-jones

I wonder where his gentle mystic half is hiding out, maybe Golden Bay or Coromandel? Maybe there's a Motherstone we could find and return the missing half of, so we can save old Otis Claw from this half-man state of being?

#NZPolitics #NZFirst #ShaneJones

@strypey separating the factual critique from the slander. Nice touch :)

@Niall
> separating the factual critique from the slander

I prefer to call it satire, but I'm not going to pretend it's factual ; }

For those who've read The Halfmen of O, if you know, you know. For the rest of you, why not?!

@strypey yes, I was searching for a better word and didn't find it. Satire is the one.

@Niall
> I was searching for a better word and didn't find it

Makes sense. IANAL but it's only slander if I call Shame Jones a stunted halfman out loud, it would be libel if I write it in a social media post, right? 😆

What intrigues me though is that The Halfmen of O was published in 1982. Which means that Maurice Gee was writing it during Muldoonism, which Jones is the contemporary echo of. It may not be intended as allegory, but fantasy is always as least partly about the times it's written in, whether the author intends it or not.

That was kind of the point of my little satire there, even though I only notice it myself on reflection ...

#books #novels #fantasy #HalfmenOfO #NZPolitics #Muldoonism

@Niall