New Zealand: Land of Promise

I shut this blog down for a year until August last year because the strong opinions written within would have risked having our newborn child taken away from us by New Zealand Authorities who were doing their level best anyway to remove her from us and destroy our family over the best part of 2009 and 2010. This ended in a family court case in August 2010, on her first birthday no less.

I had intended to write a long winded account of our saga that hasn't been finished but it really doesn't do justice to the story and is far too painful to recount so I have abandoned it to write this.

I agonised over what to write on a political themed blog like mine on this blogs return because the experience I skirted around above has profoundly changed me.

I can no longer write about politics with the same passion and conviction I once did because when you deal directly with politicians from all political hues and beurocrats in the way that I did for over a year your views are bound to change.

Politicians are just like you and me but the thing that has changed about them is that every action they take, without exception, is motivated by political face saving. I of course knew some of this before our saga started but what I didn't realise was that these people don't do anything without thinking of the political ramifications first.

The words, practical, helpful, truthful, sensible, moral and doing what is right first simply do not enter the equation.

That has been our experience and I am sure it has been with some of my readers.

With this in mind I am going to change the tack of this political blog and focus on the really important parts of politics. What policies are being put forward that will impact on our lives.

I am sick of talking about who spent this, who slept with who and who is rorting what. It really doesn't matter because all of them do it. Some more than others.

We deserve better from our politicians no matter what form of politics one follows and we must focus on their policies, what they have to say and more importantly the inspiration they give to us as a people as we head towards an election at the end of the year.

Our country should be a great one, it isn't and we need a leader that has got the balls to forgo politics and just do the right thing when it is needed. We are in the midst of a lethal recession and a leadership with guts is needed not a fence sitting crowd pleaser to all.

I thought John Key was that man for this job. He held so much promise and has the best pedigree of any politician in our history but his lack of practical will over political expediency has us mired in shades of grey instead of the Kodachrome colours I was hoping for.

God I am ever so hopeful for our future.

NEW - From Fishpond.co.nz | Think Bigger, By Michael Hill

c Darren Rickard 2011