#simon bridges

[ifreakingloveroyals]

28 October 2018 | Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex meet the Leader of the Opposition Simon Bridges and his wife Natalie, at Government House in Wellington, New Zealand. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are on their official 16-day Autumn tour visiting cities in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. (c) Kirsty Wigglesworth - Pool /Getty Images

[ierotits]

[soloh]

It was announced that New Zealand will remain in full lockdown until April 28th. Leader of the opposition party, Simon Bridges, took to Facebook to write a long post slamming the government's decision to remain in lockdown for five days longer than originally planned. At 4.6k angry reacts, 3.6k haha reacts, and 16k (and climbing) mostly annoyed comments, it's safe to say New Zealand did not take kindly to Simon's "rich people's bank accounts first, everyone else's lives second" opinion. These are just some of my favourite comments.

[yeltsinsstar]

Fuck Simon Bridges and the entire fucking National Party. At a time when unity and compassion should be at the fore, those conservative, neo-liberal fuckwits decided to use the government's pandemic financial relief package for workers and beneficiaries to attack beneficiaries.

To attack the sick, the disabled, the elderly and the unemployed, including those who are about to lose their jobs because of the pandemic.

They have proven, yet again, that all they care about is power & lining the pockets of their rich mates.

Fuck them. Anyone who voted or will vote for them needs to open their fucking eyes & ears because these bastards WILL fuck you over, again, while telling you that you're their beat mate.

[tomorrowusa]

New Zealand has ‘effectively eliminated’ coronavirus. Here’s what they did right.

The island nation chose strict lockdowns and austerity. What’s next?

While Donald Trump is telling Americans to inject bleach and is encouraging armed gangs of astroturfers to disrupt quarantines, New Zealand has effectively stopped the growth of COVID-19 in the country.

If there is a bright spot in the global response to the pandemic, it is surely New Zealand. While governments worldwide have vacillated on how to respond and ensuing cases of the virus have soared, New Zealand has set an uncompromising, science-driven example.

And the person who is the driving force behind that science-driven example is Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern decisively shut down the country for weeks and followed a classic playbook for fighting communicable disease. Her policy of putting medical science ahead of politics has unsurprisingly resulted in an extremely low per capita fatality rate.

Being a competent leader, even if that means occasionally making unpopular decisions, is good politics. 

A leaked poll shows National has dropped below 30 per cent, and Labour at 55 per cent

The prime minister’s Labour Party has soared in the polls while the main opposition National Party has drooped.

A poll taken when the country was still in a Level 4 lockdown (the strictest level) showed Labour at 55%, National at 29%, New Zealand First at 6%, the Greens at 5%, and ACT at 3%.

On a personal level, Jacinda Ardern‘s approval rating is 65% while the approval for National Party leader Simon Bridges is at 7%. 

Things are not perfect in NZ. There are some people abusing social distancing guidelines as well as some soreheads who would like to ignore the health crisis and prematurely return to the pre-pandemic way of doing things. But they’re not running around with assault rifles or exchanging bleach recipes.

But 78% of New Zealanders do feel that the country is headed in the right direction. And that is likely a more enduring figure than stats for politics.

NZ is 4.5 months ahead of the September 19th election. If Jacinda Ardern is returned to power it will serve as an indication that good government is also good politics. In the US I hope the GOP will soon learn the lesson that bad government is bad politics.

And because strong measures were taken from the start of the crisis, New Zealand has now begun to carefully reopen its economy.

New Zealand starts reopening for business with coffee a hot-selling favourite

[airandangels]

'Not my intention': Dean disappointed by Collins’ move against Bridges

Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean says she was surprised and disappointed a conversation she had with Judith Collins some weeks ago was this week used

So not only had Simon Bridges apologised for his offensive remarks (which were certainly crass and stupid but did not in my opinion rise to the level of “serious misconduct”) when Jacqui Dean complained about them at the time, and she accepted his apology, she never asked Judith Collins to take any action against him in the present - she just talked with her about improvements that could be made in how National handles situations like that. Collins took her story and made it a pretext to shaft Bridges (and if she chose such a minor thing you know she didn’t have any serious dirt on him, at least not dirt that wouldn’t also affect people she didn’t want to target at the same time; Bridges used to be mates with Jami-Lee Ross who is a known arsehole so I don’t think he’s likely to be squeaky clean), to try to defeat her competition for leadership, and got rolled for it. Epic self-own.

I have never liked or voted for National and never will, but could they have some dignity please.

(We’ve been having a normal one politically in New Zealand.)