I'm suspended from Facebook - AGAIN! If you're still on FB and have Dunedin people in your friends, please share my Leftie-progressive Voter guide on FB (as all my links to it will be invisible while my account is suspended). Link >> tinyurl.com/BaxtersLefti...

Roger Douglas' neo-liberal economics "...produced an explosion of inequality which has never been reversed. To this day Aotearoa has a low-wage economy, a broken tax system, a housing crisis, and high levels of poverty”… elliotcrossan.substack.com/p/roger-doug...

Here's one reason necessity and strategic public services shouldn't be run as businesses...

Invisible incumbent Mayor & a johnnie-come-lately businessman as challenger - is this Vandervis' best chance to become #Dunedin Mayor? Find out how to try and avoid that with my DCC-ORC Lefty Voters Guide... Link >> docs.google.com/document/d/1... Please share thanks 🙂

For those who think there's no housing crisis and it's just a few junkies etc forced to live in cars etc, show them this clip. Build. More. State. Houses. Yesterday. www.instagram.com/reel/DOHroSx...

No idea which of the seemingly 100s of DCC candidates lean to the Left or Right? Or who won’t flog off #Dunedin assets, and cut services? Or which are progressive or dinosaurs? --My Lefty voters guide may help you (& please share if is helpful).. tinyurl.com/BaxtersLefti...

USA's "average annual health expenditure per person is $25,000, compared to $5658 per person in New Zealand". --It's almost like private profit being added to the price of healthcare makes it significantly more expensive eh.

#Dunedin peeps - my Leftie-progressive DCC-ORC Voters Guide is finally completed and live.... Please feel free to share far and wide if you find it helpful (because, with suspicious timing, I've been blocked from my usual platform it gets good distribution on 😢 ). tinyurl.com/BaxtersLefti...

#Dunedin peeps - my Leftie-progressive DCC-ORC Voters Guide is finally completed and live.... Please feel free to share far and wide if you find it helpful (because, with suspicious timing, I've been blocked from my usual platform it gets good distribution on 😢 ). tinyurl.com/BaxtersLefti...

Lefties with #Dunedin connections - my Leftie Voters Guide to DCC elections will drop in the next couple days. However, my FB account was hacked and suspended, so when it drops, I could desperately use your help to get it out there in social media and shared... TIA tinyurl.com/BaxtersLefti...

#Scootering in #Aoteroa #NZ 20 years ago... www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhcG...

Some good news in #NZ - ACT drop yet again in the polls. Last time they were in Government and voters could see what they're like, the same thing happened - and they fell to 1% support. Which nearly wiped them out. Fingers crossed eh. www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO25...

Selling off state house land in Dunedin while there is literally a homeless camp in Dunedin for the first time since the Great Depression is, well, plain fucking mental. Sign the petition...

My youngest moved to Dunedin a month or so ago - haven’t heard if he needed his passport to get into the sovereign United States of Pamela-land where conspiracies flow like tears in rain. Paul's Hard Right Red Flags - Dunedin City Council youtu.be/09--UJEOHwI

Jimmy The Giant looks at the increased use of AI in making fake propaganda, and what is and isn't being done about it...

I will be doing my usual Lefty/Progressive voter's guide to #Dunedin local body ( #DCC & #ORC) elections. --It should be released late next week 😁

More contracts for mates corruption! “Documents released under the Official Information Act show that instead of the usual procurement approach where the government publicly tendered for services... www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Here's a government slightly more laser focused on the cost of living...

"Online vitriol about residents of the "Tent City" at Kensington Oval has inspired a small group of Dunedin residents to band together to provide support and give the area a spruce-up..." Done with great attitude and sensitivity, someone shout this woman a beer please. www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

"...causes are understaffing and too few cardiac beds in public hospitals". --Still, gotta pay for those large tax-cuts for the uber-wealthy and landlords somehow eh.

"One of the best cinematic moments of the '80s".

#Dunedin rents climbed by over 12% in the last year, to $709 a week. #Hamilton recorded a 18% per cent increase... 😢

Sure, RUCs might be a better way to fund roads. --But NOT if government or private contractors TRACKING YOU, with better abilities than a dystopian novel, is how it's done. This massive invasion of privacy is vastly worse than the problem it is trying to address (ie how road funding is charged).

What do the Left REALLY think about unemployed and immigrants?

Even the neo-liberal gonks at Treasury think polytechs like #Otago are being set up to fail: "Treasury had many criticisms about the handling of the breakup of mega-polytechnic. Among the risks were the lack of monetary support for the reconstituted polytechnics..." 😡😡 www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

Petition to save an iconic piece of Brutalist architecture at #Otago Uni. Please sign - and share, if you're an advocate of preserving some '60s/'70s architectural heritage, and not simply just the really old stuff. www.change.org/p/save-this-...

"Withholding detailed financial information from the public increases transparency, the University of Otago says". Yeah, nah 🤣 #Otago

We're back baby! 😀

This should be a serious issue (well, in a democracy): "In emails and briefings, the ministers and their staff acknowledged their plans would bypass public scrutiny, extinguish existing claims, and potentially breach people's rights... #NZPol #NZ www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Cutting this significantly would be fucking brutal 😳 --For many disabled people this is the difference between being able to leave the house, or not.

Some debt collection agencies act ethically and responsibly, but there's also these largely unregulated cowboys. Let's hope the proposed review actually happens.

This Government is breaching basic human rights and undermining our democracy by making it harder for thousands of people to vote. Sign the petition opposing this...

IMPORTANT: Check you are actually enrolled to vote - I've heard of several peeps who have unexplainably found they're no longer enrolled. --Check here > enrol.vote.nz/app/enrol/#/...

NZ's healthcare is plummeting - I'm heading out now to stand with the nurses as they strike to demand safe staffing levels around the country today. #Dunedin "the union has specifically asked for people to join them at NOON at the Museum Reserve...

This will see many of the best and brightest Kiwis do their research overseas instead of in NZ (or the research just not done at all), thanks to this Government’s $162 million cut to tertiary funding in the last Budget.

“If you want to maximise the number of people voting then same day enrolments are a no brainer. But if you want to skewer things away from the poor and the young then you will...

National need to step up and fund #NZ rural hospitals adequately. Things are constantly heading towards third-world service levels. --Maybe large tax-cuts for the uber-wealthy and landlords weren't the best idea eh.

Some pics from Scooter Division Dunedin's Winter Rideout - Wet and Wild Taieri to Waihola... #Scooter #Scooters #Moped

Dunedin rents up 9% already this year… 😳

It's not just #Dunedin car owners aggrieved by the increased vehicle thefts, to the point of taking the law into their own hands - in the motorcycle and scooter community there's been various mumbles about setting up bait bikes to catch thieves.

#NZ healthcare continuing down the shitter "... one of them said that healthcare is the worst she’s seen in 30 years, and that there was nothing they could do for me". --But we gotta pay for those large tax-cuts for the uber-wealthy & landlords somehow eh 🤬

Sadly, the realities for some #NZ students will be even worse than the headline's "living on noodles and no heating".

A cynic might assume this means National/ACT want to close down #Otago's Med School, since there's no financial logic in spending $200 million there, when Otago could train extra medical graduates for a lot LESS money. Because other than pork-barrel politics or corruption, this makes no other sense.

Due to under-staffing when I had a heart attack in #Dunedin, I was also sent to the ward to see if I survived the night. I didn't. But I was able to be revived - and survived. Not everyone is as lucky. --It is utterly disgusting this is STILL happening a decade later.

#NZ progressing along its race to achieve third-world public services. --Gotta pay for those large tax-cuts for the uber-wealthy and landlords somehow though, eh 🙄

Outsourcing to private healthcare providers is the first step of privatisation, which changes our healthcare system to one that puts profits before people 😢🤬

Random track: Chaos UK - Four Minute Warning

Great decision to try and protect an iconic piece of hero architecture at #Otago Uni. --Let's hope the hearing's decision is as wise. #Dunedin #OtagoUni

“We ignored our crumbling infrastructure for decades. But having to pay to fix it made people mad. Now it’s time to ignore our crumbling infrastructure for decades again.”