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felissapien.bsky.social
CuriousCat
@felissapien.bsky.social
650 followers 870 following 310 posts
Green. Geek. Loves books, TV and movies, politics, history, and animals. Prohibition doesn’t work, so make it legal NZ
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felissapien.bsky.social
“The new roadside testing regime is yet another example of our country failing to implement evidenced-based drug policy. For far too long we have had an irrational approach to substance use.”…

#nzpol

Accessible article here: archive.ph/17n0y
Screenshot of an article in The Post titled, Testing approach will lead to innocent people being charged by Jack McDonald
November 12, 2025 at 6:35 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
“The co-leader said it was still the party's position that cannabis should be legalised.”…

#nzpol

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...
Screenshot of an RNZ article, titled: Greens want public feedback on cannabis laws.
October 29, 2025 at 12:16 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
The minister has not even reverted to research or evidence for the maths curriculum changes, because there is no evidence to support them. The ministerial advisory group leading the curriculum rewrite has said this explicitly.

#nzpol

Accessible article here: archive.ph/4UETG
Screenshot of an article in The Post NZ, titled: Curriculum upheaval is darkening the mood in school classrooms by Tom Pearce. Paywalled, accessible article in this post.
October 22, 2025 at 8:48 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
Finished season 5 of Brassic on Netflix (NZ) and it ended on a cliffhanger! Anyone know where I can watch the last two seasons in NZ?

Anyway, it’s a great show. Very funny. Worth watching.

#kikorangi #tvshow #tv
Promo shot of the cast of Brassic - tv show on Netflix
October 19, 2025 at 8:24 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
The drugs were very nice
Photo from the movie, Human Traffic.
October 19, 2025 at 4:15 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
I’m between books at the moment, so I’m rereading an old favourite.

Red Dwarf Omnibus by Grant Naylor.

It includes 2 books: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, and, Better Than Life.

A great read for those who love the tv show, Red Dwarf.

#pukapuka #scifi #booksky
Photo of a book - Red Dwarf omnibus by Grant Naylor. Two books included - Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, and, Better Than Life.
October 15, 2025 at 9:10 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
“A major new report has called for sweeping reform of New Zealand’s drug laws, warning punitive approaches are fuelling addiction, overdoses and inequality and leaving the country unprepared for the illicit drug market.”

#nzpol

www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...
Screenshot of an article from Stuff NZ by Bridie Witton titled: ‘Colossal Failure’ - Drug Foundation calls for law reform as three die each week.
October 8, 2025 at 9:37 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
Paywalled - accessible article here.
archive.ph/a85UO
Screenshot of an article from the ODT NZ by Matthew Littlewood titled, ‘Frankly Astonished’: Concerns raised over Health Minister’s meeting. Paywalled - accessible article in the comments.
September 30, 2025 at 1:00 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
Concerns are being raised about privatisation after Health Minister Simeon Brown met representatives of a controversial multinational company that runs prisons and hospitals.

“The Minister must immediately & fully disclose the nature, purpose, & content of his discussions with Serco.”

#nzpol
Screenshot of an article from the ODT NZ by Matthew Littlewood titled, ‘Frankly Astonished’: Concerns raised over Health Minister’s meeting. Paywalled - accessible article in the comments.
September 30, 2025 at 12:57 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
Got this cd last week. Hadn’t heard of Kneecap before the furore over their support for Palestine.

I love this soundtrack. Parful, Guilty Conscience, and, H.O.O.D are bangers. Liberty Belle by Fontaines DC is great too. Excited to watch the movie now.
Photo of the soundtrack cd - Kneecap: Music From the Motion Picture
September 19, 2025 at 9:26 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
“Māori were once regarded by Pākehā as a dying race and the language was to be the first casualty. That was a false prophecy.”…

Paywalled - accessible article here: archive.ph/MDGwA

#nzpol #ToitūTeTiriti
Screenshot of the title of an article in the NZ Listener - Aaron Smale: Te reo rises again.
September 14, 2025 at 10:45 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
Loved the laser kiwi mention.
Paragraph from the book, Turncoat by Tīhema Baker. A reference to the laser kiwi flag. “Even when Mother filled us in on her secret plan for New Zealand to protest MEET which I won’t outline in full here (but involved a giant projection of New Zealand’s greatest icon: a now extinct flightless bird that reputedly had the ability to fire coherent-matter beams from its cornea), all I could think about was the infuriating ‘Seen’ mocking me in my tree.”
September 4, 2025 at 1:45 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
Just finished this great book: Turncoat by Tīhema Baker.

Saw a review of the book and thought it looked interesting. It was awesome, highly recommended.

#pukapuka #ToitūTeTiriti
Front cover of the book, Turncoat by Tīhema Baker. Back cover of the book, Turncoat by Tīhema Baker. ‘I see you’re coming to terms with what it means for a Human to serve the Hierarch.’ ‘Well, I know that a lot of Hierarch edicts completely contradict Human values. I was prepared for that when I began here—’ ‘Were you?’ Daniel is a young, idealistic Human determined to make a difference for his people. He lives in a distant future in which Earth has been colonised by aliens. His mission: infiltrate the Alien government called the Hierarch and push for it to honour the infamous Covenant of Wellington, the founding agreement between the Hierarch and Humans. With compassion and insight, Turncoat explores the trauma of Māori public servants and the deeply conflicted role they are expected to fill within the machinery of government. From casual racism to co-governance, Treaty settlements to tino rangatiratanga, Turncoat is a timely critique of the Aotearoa zeitgeist, holding a mirror up to Pākehā New Zealanders and asking: “What if it happened to you?” About Tīhema Baker Tīhema Baker (Raukawa te Au ki te Tonga, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira) is a writer and Tiriti o Waitangi-based policy advisor from Ōtaki. He has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, for which he wrote this novel
September 4, 2025 at 1:38 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
“It’s hard to know whether it is more Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four but this Government is racking up a growing list of reforms that it claims will achieve the very opposite of logic.”…

Paywalled - accessible article here…
archive.ph/nUF2m

#nzpol
Screenshot of an article from The Post NZ by Vernon Small, titled, Government’s Reforms Verging on Orwellian.
August 30, 2025 at 10:56 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
“In an ideal world, people blind to social inequity should not be given the power to govern the less fortunate. Yet here we are.”…

#nzpol

werewolf.co.nz/2025/08/gord...
Screenshot of the title of an article by Gordon Campbell, ‘On ACT’s Fake Defence of Equality’.
August 28, 2025 at 9:53 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
“An unpopular Government, struggling in the polls and facing the prospect of election defeat in a year’s time, tries to change the law to block 100,000 mostly young and indigenous people from voting.”

#nzpol

Paywalled - accessible article here: archive.ph/3gAeQ
Screenshot of an article by Shane Te Pou in the NZ Herald. Titled, Facing prospect of election defeat, Government tries to change the rules.
August 2, 2025 at 10:07 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
Photos of the new social housing models built in Rotorua…
#nzpol
Photo from the article showing one of the new social housing models built in Rotorua. Photo of one of the new social housing models built in Rotorua.
July 15, 2025 at 11:32 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
For a government that supposedly supports free speech and debate, they sure like to shut down free speech and debate 🤨

#nzpol
Screenshot from the article shared - “ Hospital managers have started taking the view that doctors are ‘public servants’ and as such are not allowed to express ‘political views’. Apparently, the coalition government views any criticism of their health system demolition reforms as being too political. This thin skin in response to what is meant as constructive problem solving seems unique to this government. On March 18, the National Public Health Service Director Dr Nick Chamberlain told public health doctors that any advice they wanted to offer about issues in their regions needed sign off at a “national level”. Health Minister Simeon Brown added that he wanted medical officers of health to stop “leading advocacy campaigns” on public health issues. Instead, he said their focus should be on “technical advice” and immunisation campaigns. When public health doctors pointed out that health advocacy and advice giving was most of their job, David Seymour moved on to schoolboy insults and denial. He said he was ‘cheering on Simeon putting those muppets back in their box’ then doubled down, saying our profession has ‘too many whining busy-bodies.’ In other words, stick to your real job of holding the health system together by your toes and fingernails and don’t you dare complain. But those public fireworks distract from what’s really happening. Many doctors are being muzzled. HR ‘processes’ are becoming systemic and weaponised as ways to control otherwise powerful professionals.”
July 2, 2025 at 4:01 AM
felissapien.bsky.social
“Does she know Pōmare walked those halls with a limp, due to an injury he suffered when he was one of the children who welcomed the troops who invaded Parihaka with singing, only to be trampled by horses?”

#nzpol

Paywalled - accessible article in the comments.
Screenshot of an article in the NZ Listener by Aaron Smale titled, ‘Jail for a Haka? The Arrogance of Ignorance in Parliament.’ Unfortunately paywalled - accessible article in the comments.
June 12, 2025 at 11:23 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
It is inescapably true that the rules have been written to benefit a tiny elite. They can be rewritten. If not, then the cost to society risks being paid in populist anger, democratic decay and a long-term loss of trust.

#nzpol
Billionaires do not emerge in a vacuum. They are the product of deliberate choices. Property speculation, inheritance laws and tax avoidance schemes are not spontaneous market outcomes. They are often lobbied for by people with access to government, on behalf of those who stand to profit. It’s no accident, then, that over a quarter of UK billionaires built their wealth through property and inheritance, and another quarter through finance – sectors that rely on rent extraction more than innovation. The rich get richer because political leaders protect that growth – often in service of their own ambitions. A Britain governed in the public interest must not defer to a plutocratic class. There needs to be a break with the current model. Politicians could, as a start, take up Tax Justice UK’s idea for a 2% wealth tax on assets over £10m. Campaigners say this would raise £24bn annually – enough to begin repairing broken Britain. Oxfam says 78% of the public would support such a progressive levy. Yet such proposals are still framed as radical. What’s radical is that monopoly profits end up in private hands while the state can’t fund public services. It is inescapably true that the rules have been written to benefit a tiny elite. They can be rewritten. If not, then the cost to society risks being paid in populist anger, democratic decay and a long-term loss of trust.
May 23, 2025 at 9:19 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
Defining success & wealth solely by economic growth loses sight of true wealth. Nature is wealth, the source of all forms of wealth, & the infrastructure that sustains life. It is the “bank” from which we are borrowing - and we are massively indebted.

#nzpol

(Paywalled - free link in comments)
Screenshot of an article in The Post by Maria Armoudian titled - The Politics Driving The Mass Tragedy of Native Species Decline. Article is paywalled - accessible article in the comments.
May 2, 2025 at 10:15 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
This is spot on…

#nzpol
Brown’s agenda is clearly to run down our Public Health system and bolster the Private sector, leading us to the American style of hospital care where, if you don’t have private health insurance, you either don’t get treated or will be burdened with medical debt. Proof, if proof be needed, of Brown’s plan, is the outsourcing of operations to private hospitals. He has directed hospitals to farm out 10,579 procedures by the end of June at a cost of $50 million. If he spent that tax payer money hiring doctors and nurses in the Public sector it would put a serious dent in the backlog of elective surgeries. Instead, the private hospitals will make a fat profit so Brown can boast about reducing hospital waiting times. (Screenshot from Bryan Bruce’s substack article - link in main post)
April 28, 2025 at 7:56 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
#nzpol
Screenshot from article: “ In all these cases, a pattern emerges: The Campaign Company specialises in running anonymous or misleading campaigns that appear to be independent “grassroots” initiatives or third-party advocacy, but in fact are bankrolled and directed by clients with very specific political agendas. Whether it’s farmers, crime victims, dairy owners, or concerned citizens, TCC will happily dress up your cause in populist clothing and push it into the public arena – for a price.”
April 14, 2025 at 11:10 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
Accessible article here: archive.ph/BpcrM
April 11, 2025 at 9:41 PM
felissapien.bsky.social
“Is Peters promising to build the new ships for much, much less than the iRex ferries? No, he isn’t. That’s because in all likelihood, we will be paying nearly as much for lesser ships, which will be in service three years later than the iRex ferries.”…

#nzpol

werewolf.co.nz/2025/04/gord...
April 1, 2025 at 7:16 PM