X

Sunday 15 October 2023: Some Hotcakes For Thought

Never assign malice to that which can be treated as ignorance. Or incompetence. Seems to be more about the intent (or lack of) behind an action rather than its actual consequences. Of course, for most actions, there aren’t really any consequences. In fact, lets unpack that one a bit. Because surely someone might read that and scoff. ‘No consequences! But I paid my parking fine for going in the wrong place.’

First of all, I said ‘most’. Also that’s a consequence of your own actions. There’s no person to assign malice to here – right? So, does the statement even apply? Unless the ‘individual’ you think is being malicious is the Government.
The Government can’t be malicious, surely?

Let’s step back for a bit and do several things I don’t normally do on this blog.
Let’s talk about politics. I don’t really know why I don’t talk about NZ politics on here. But I haven’t ever set aside a decent amount of page space to actually do this in the ten years of this blog. Mostly because it’s pretty boring in general.

And the second is to include a picture.

Figure 1: https://www.1news.co.nz/tags/vote2023/

I don’t normally do pictures because they’re annoying in the same way talking about politics is. You have to be clear on terms, make sure everything’s in the right and you’ve got the image you actually meant to use.

So, it was election day yesterday. A pretty good day, overall. And the above graph isn’t a surprise. I was going to explain all of it. But this blog has an audience of three and a half; the half being the one guy that knows this exists and doesn’t come here. Because the explanations of the machine is the point, but the mechanics of the machine are not. If that makes sense. If it doesn’t then yay – I’ve made a statement nobody understands, not even me!

In the generalist of terms, cost of living crisis, high inflation and petrol prices being high (the respective companies involved all say this is due to the war in Ukraine and Covid, rather than the Government, by the way) seem to have pushed the electorate to need change. And that’s not necessarily wrong – it’s seemed like this may happen for about a year now, and even in this current state, compromising will need to be made on almost everything. So this is far from a game-ender.

It is a game-reevaluator. If that’s even a thing. But we were talking about malice. See, politics is probably the only field where the statement doesn’t apply in any form, no matter how genuine the application. Because your actions and inactions have consequences on people apart from you. And eventually, the electorate may vote to change that, not because of your actions – but because of your inactions.

Also, on that point, I don’t think incompetence or ignorance should be excused in Politicians. It wouldn’t be excused in surgeons, so are politicians less deserving oof professional accountability? Just because the general public are the ones doing it shouldn’t mean there is less or that it is less respected.

But, perhaps that’s an issue for another day. Or three years time. We shall see.