Ya know Chris, you may not have as much trouble here as you think. At least you aren't pretending to be a conservative.
Well for me personally it is always interesting to talk to people from far away. I like to see how other people on the planet are getting along.
As for leaning left, well, no one is perfect. Maybe if you want to describe what "Left" is to you by specific examples we can convert you to the "Right" Come to the light.....come to the light.....
Chris,
Thank you, for posting from the Canada of the Antipodes, a nation of 4 million people which has disbanded its airforce, navy, and its principles.
Any country that elects a rugby prop forward as Prime Minister irrespective of gender,greets people with the name of an orange juice (Kia-ora),sings a tongue wagging,thigh slapping chant made famous by an English bowls team, and after legalizing prostitution claims moral supremecy over the US has a place in our hearts.
PS. All is not lost, thank you for the Braeburn apples.
Socialists love big government and this shortage of heads in the workforce has given Hell'n Klark a wonderful idea... why not drag women out of their homes, abandoning their children to a flock of underpaid teenage childcare workers a la Soviet bloc institutional style and at the same time, make women "richer". Yes, they can realise their full potential - in supervised employment. Imagine taking on the role of a batch hen in a call centre or something like that and tossing your kid into a dawn to dusk urban tribe management facility. That's a bit left, but that's gotta be OK, doesn't it? - you know, for the economy.
This wholesale crap has been tried in the Soviet bloc for over seventy years. It's tired and pitiful. In theory, people like Klark and Hitlery Klinton will tell you, when it comes to raising children, it takes a village... their sort of village. Helen Klark is in no position to write the manual of motherhood and women voters will tell her that this coming election. She's tried to push the UN's no smacking deal onto Kiwis and they hit out at it. We don't need socialists running our lives and when the average Kiwi wakes up to the fact that all we're getting from the booming econony is only still bread and circuses, they'll look for something a whole lot better. This government has sold the workers of New Zealand out by maintaining a low wage strategy, using inflation as the bogey man, while the banks laugh all the way to the bank as they mop the floor with people like you and me. If you read no news at all, you'd still notice that the banks and the government are at the very top of the pile in reaching what Hell'n is now trying to sell us as she desperately tries to cancel Brash out... the ownership society. She shifts into any space she can to hold power and that's the essence of her zero credibility. Brash, like him or not, states his position and (apart from his outlook on superannuation) doesn't let his position slip.
Over the last three years, Hell'n has spent over $NZ1,5m on travel alone. A small pay rise for her is $NZ12k; the last one was $NZ60k. The servant is the master. Her own department has a staff of around 120 - many of those are ex unionists on very good money, who visit journalists who don't reflect what she'd like to see in print. You'll have to excuse me if I have trouble leaning left Chris, it puts my mind off balance.
Well, as a politically very conservative New Zealander and a migrant to this country, let me ask if you agree with the three pillars of conservatism (trust me, even 85% of thsoe described as conservative wobble on one or more of these points):
1) That a free market economic system is a better system than one that stresses equality by redistributive tax rates, labour regulations, and ownership of industries of "public interests" in public hands?
2) That on balance, the West has done more good than ill to the whole world, and there is nothing wrong to defend the West's interests in front of the non-Western world, even to the point of using military force?
3) That a society's legislations should be founded on the Judeo-Christian moral values because they are right?
Welcome Chris ~ we like paragraphs. :)
Welcome aboard. Interesting about NZ's laws about 'working girls'. Please keep us updated as to how it's working out, as a lot of FReepers think it's a common sense approach to the "oldest profession". Add in some facts about how abortion stats are going and it will be appreciated. Thanks