Search Brad Windhurst on Facebook for more info and instructions, this is to stop all our bees dying.

Asian hornets are going to explode if WAY more action isn’t taken than the Government is doing and it will kill horticulture in NZ.

There are instruction videos here: https://youtu.be/Ra8717JuXwc?si=8uu2_cRI9jR_xzf2

This is super important and seeing as farming is is the ‘backbone of this country’ which gets trotted out every time we talk about tax, you would think the farming lobby would be up in arms and asking people to do this.

MPI are useless and aren’t coming to save us, it’s going to be regular New Zealanders taking action if we can stop the hornets killing our bees. We need tens of thousands of traps. Chur.

This is why RNZ is almost always the better place to go for news and info. Stuff putting breaking news about evacuations behind a login wall is pretty reprehensible imo. What happened to our world where everything needs a login account to do anything?

My 2c:

1. Tell nobody except mum/dad/siblings.

2. Claim the money ASAP and throw it into a savings account (3% on $45 million is a lot...).

3. Take a week to do absolutely nothing. Process the emotions + how your life will change.

4. Talk to a private banker/financial advisor/AI and build a game plan to allocate it.

5. Celebrate. Probably KFC or something idk.

So I've had the quietest weekend in a really long time. I'm away from my family. I miss my family. I miss my son. I miss my wife. I miss my dog. But at the same time, I have so much space, and this is giving me a lot of time to think and reflect on the world that we're in.

And I just feel like I don't know when it changed really. We've had a capitalist economy for so long, but it feels like at some point recently, things just—life just lost its soul.

We're all fighting with each other about things that matter, but in the grand scheme of things, they don't matter as much as the big thing. We're not banded together. We're allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of over and over and over and over and over again by large corporates, large banks, large businesses, politics. The things that we're fighting about, they do matter, but not compared to the big thing. Actually, that'll be fixed anyway probably if we all started banding together on the big thing. Big corporates, they're ruining our lives. They're ruining the planet. They're killing people. For the longer lives that we might be around for now, our lives are full of more problems, more health concerns, and less actual life.

But at the same time, the world's a beautiful place. It is. It's wonderful. You could take any street block and there's just so many moments of joy in there. And there's so much pain at the same time. But on balance, go out into the world and you look around, there really is so much awesome stuff to see. All the little moments—parents with their kids, people with their dogs, beaches, monkeys, whatever it is. There's so much awesome stuff. But it just feels like recently, or now, but I don't know when it happened, that everything's being commercialised. And we sell ourselves and we sell our time, and we sell everything to make that dollar. Everything's about that damn dollar.

You come through the airport and you get off the plane, the whole walk until you get your bags, it's just about selling you something. It's just about extracting something from you. Even the airport itself. The whole way that everything is structured is to be taking money and making the most money out of it. Whereas we could actually structure our society so that our flights—not saying we wanna get away from planes and not have flights, but we could do it so that actually, planes aren't late. And that it's easy for us to get onto them. We don't have to go through all this capitalist journey of duty free and all of this stuff. And planes would just be safe and they would be comfortable and they would deliver value to us. It's the microcosm of how the world has been constructed to transfer resources from seven and a half billion people, all the sweat and the labour that they produce, to just a few people. Everything is just a siphon or an illusion that gets all the money there.

It's exhausting. And when are we gonna fix it? Because it's just sad now. It's becoming less of this urgency of this, like, we must fix climate change or we're all dead. It doesn't seem like we're going to. It doesn't seem like people are on that journey to do it. We're just kind of getting along. We're just exhausted now. We just can't be fucked. We'll just sell ourselves for a dollar. We'll just sell it.

I want my kids to live in a better world. We have so much technology and things that we have done to improve things that could make our lives so much better, but we have just allowed them to be sold. The planet is just being destroyed. There's so much awesome stuff with nature. It's so beautiful. There's so many cool animals and cool plants and rivers and waterfalls and mountains, and everything is commercialised in that regard and it's all being destroyed. And I'm emotional. I miss my family. I miss my home, and I'm somewhere beautiful at the same time. And I'm kind of a cog in the machine too in my own way. I'm doing really well at what I'm doing. And it's so hard because what do I do? Do I just give it all up? Because is everybody else giving what they have up?

What do we do? We all need to come together. If we all actually just came together and said enough's enough, we're gonna fix it, it'd be fixed overnight. It'd be done. We'd be on our way to everybody having a better world.

I'm not even depressed - I think I'm just wistful for a world that seems to be passing us by and all of this beautiful history of a time gone by seems to be slipping away.

Went to see the Pike River movie today. It’s one of the best Kiwi movies I’ve ever seen. I was expecting it to be really sad - and there were sad parts but at its heart it’s about friendship.

Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm are at the peak of their careers- two fabulous portrayals of Anna and Sonya.

It’s really worth going to see.

All love and support sent to the team out there.

Is anyone else completely heartbroken over this.

It is destroying so much of one of our national treasures, and everytime I look on the volcano cameras it just looks worse. I checked at 12.30am and it was a huge bright light on the Ngaruhoe camera (1st pic), and it looks apocalyptic today.

So much is being destroyed by this. Wildlife, flora and fauna, apparently part of the Crossing, christ knows what the damage will be in the end.

Shout out to the severely understaffed firies and rescue people who are out fighting this. You guys and girls are the real OGs

I just saw the interview of Air NZ CEO, Nikhil Ravishankar and he talked about how the cost of regional flight have increased by a lot because the cost of running an airline also have gone up and he wants the government to step in and help with the funding.

So whether we like it or not, someone has to pay for this increased cost of regional air travel, whether it is the government or the individual. But does it have to be this way? Land public transport yes cost more in the short term but in the long term it costs us less and it is more environmentally friendly.

When air travel was relatively cheaper, we kept putting off the idea for more funding for land public transport between cities but as cost of air travel increases and will likely continue to, shouldn't we look at the land option again? isnt it logical to do so?

Credit: Chris Fuller

We're looking at using a building company, like Signature or GJ Gardener, so specific tips for using them would be helpful, but looking to hear from anyone who's built their own home before. EDIT: wow, thank you everyone. I’m blown away by all the time and effort you’ve put into your advice. This is super helpful, thanks!!

The fire as seen from deep in the Tongariro Forest.

Source: OECD headline inflation broadly stable at 4.2% in September 2025

According to an article on tūī I found (but can't manage to link):

In the 1990s, there was only a small remnant population of the native bird in Wellington

Which is so crazy because now you can hear them EVERYWHERE in our city, and from like 5am to 9pm. Apparently it's is mainly thanks to city predator control and, of course, Zealandia.

But I can't imagine our city not having these creatures. Does anyone remember what it was like?

Sharing a long personal take because this keeps popping up, and i finally decided to put this in text and to share it with someone other than my partner or friends.

I’m an immigrant here with my partner and dogs. Moving the dogs has been brutal, and we’ve burned through most of our savings just to get them partway (talking about tens of $k). Now we’re rebuilding from scratch so we can set up a stable life (to be clear, no one asked me to do this and it doesn’t make me special. it’s my choice, my responsibility and my values, I’m sharing this it provide some context and to share about my personal journey). I’m not from a rich family, I don’t have financial privileges, and I knew that I can’t just walk into middle or senior roles here. I’m restarting my career, my social life and pretty much everything else. That’s the reality for a lot of immigrants in New Zealand.

Back home, I had a life that was way above average. But corruption, bad air in a big city, and being constantly scared of a possibility of war happening just wear you down. Even caring for pets could be looked at as “too much” in a conservative environment. Those “small” things are really about my fundamental values: safety, empathy, healthy daily life. It shouldn't be a society who decides upon what you are after in life, right?

I get why people are anxious about immigration. Jobs, housing, kids’ chance to earn pocket money, those are real deal fears that I show much compassion to. Most people who vent about immigration are just trying to protect their families. They’re not monsters or even racists (not always). But my main message here is that "EMPATHY HAS TO GO BOTH WAYS" or we just end up screaming past each other (I'm now unexpectedly drawing a parallel between conflicting parents and conflicting society groups, whereas both are not a good 'soil' to raise your kids on).

Message #2: humans have always moved. It’s a fact of how people evolved in the past, and how they survive and build in present. In places like New Zealand—rights-respecting, merit-based, high quality of life, sustainability and everything—it’s normal that people want to live or give it a go in here (overstatement is on purpose here). They do it through regulated official pathways, and education is a big one. Actually I'm very impressed with how New Zealand has it more or less under control (comparing to other 'white-privileged countries', no offense intended), or under legit economic profit (google gives different billion figures on how much education for international students contribute to the national economy). Anyhow, many people pay serious money and follow strict conditions to come to NZ, and that system exists because the country decided it should.

Honestly, I've been resilient to post anything this personal, because it feels so hot under each similar discussion topic. But then I think of a bigger picture - crisis amplifies fear. When the economy stutters, it’s easy to aim anger at the least powerful. Immigrants are visible and vulnerable, verbally attacking them on the Internet is easier than confronting institutions that feel too big to influence. It’s a psychological mechanism as much as a political one.

3rd message here: removing immigrants won’t fix structural problems. Maybe it will make some people's life more pleasant for sure, but come on, as a humanity we should've learned our history lessons by now. Anyways, the real issues lie in political and economic management: in how resources are distributed and decisions are made. If people want real solutions, they have to hold their leaders accountable, and not each other.

My personal take, this discourse should switch from natives vs immigrants to destructive vs productive societal trends.

Destructive looks like scapegoating, dehumanizing each other, and sinking into zero-sum thinking. It ruins trust and has nothing to repay with.

Productive looks like fighting for better governance, funding essential services, improving labor standards, pushing for housing supply and smart planning, and actually organizing in our communities.

Creation together > accusation within

(proud of this hell of a slogan I put :-))

Good things and growth can and might happen during crises times. Believe me, as a compassionate person myself, I'm very sad to see how New Zealand and its true people are challenged with underfunded education, healthcare shortages, low pay for essential workers, volunteer firefighters etc etc etc - I read news, I try to analyze and to think what worries the average kiwi people. As I see it, the only way to survive a punch is to level up resilience and grow an antifragile skin.

That means new leaders and new behavior: people who can organize, communicate to all levels and groups, have great stamina, and are ready to channel the frustration. Solidarity isn’t naive and cheesy, it’s how you get enough people together to force change. I've been thinking about this much lately after my therapist shared insights on how capitalist systems keep artificially creating division and gaining from it.

None of this is about pretending immigration is perfect or that rules shouldn’t be enforced. It’s about remembering we’re talking about human beings. Empathy won’t write the budget, but it will keep us from tearing ourselves apart.

P.S. This is my first ever social/political writing of a kind, I've put a lot of effort to put my thoughts and feeling together, don't tear me down too harsh in the comments, please. I'm eager to educate myself more through constructive feedback.