What a year this has been for us all. This government has continued to make decisions which has widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots. The South Island has been put on the back burner. Personally, Rosemary and I have both had health challenges, but are completing the year in a better nick than we have been at times during the year. We both thank you all for your good wishes and support for our whanau.
Many of us are retired and often wonder how we can contribute to society. We all assist whanau, neighbors and friends, but often ask ourselves are we doing enough. It is possible, with the time we have available, to support those in our society who are struggling with life. It’s also important that we remain active and engaged for as long as is possible. I read the quote below during the year and found the writer’s thoughts comforting:
More fundamentally, we do not make the most of experience because we do not appreciate how deeply experience can enrich judgement and improve project planning and leadership. Aristotle said that experience is “the fruit of years” and argued that it is the source of what he called “phronesis” – the “practical wisdom” that allows us to see what is good for people and to make it happen, which Aristotle saw as the highest “intellectual virtue.” Modern science suggest that he was quite right.
So, there’s our challenge…
Leftwing political commentator Chris Trotter has provided what is possibly the best account of why the Labour Government lost nearly half its support between 2020 and crashing out of power in 2023. Trotter argues that Labour never really knew what it wanted to achieve in government, and then when it had an historic majority to do whatever it wanted it got captured by an elite programme of liberal social and constitutional reforms that the party hadn’t tried to persuade the public about. Unlike, leftwing politicians of the past like Jim Anderton and Norm Kirk who argued that you needed to be democratic in your radicalism (“Always build your footpaths where the people walk”), Labour generated a backlash, including from its own supporters, by deviating into “the peculiar notions of the educated urban middle-classes”.
I was one of those supporters who didn’t vote Labour for the first time in my life.
This has been another interesting year in an increasingly troubled world
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