End of an Era

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

Today Caro and I voted. Voting has actually been open for 2 weeks but it ends tomorrow. 

When I first came to Aotearoa, I took the test to see who I should vote for. I came up with the following result:

Te Pāti Māori 
Green
Labour

I took the test again yesterday and got EXACTLY the same result. I am nothing if not consistent. However, I decided to vote for the local Labour candidate, as the candidate with the best chance of beating National. I cast my party vote for Green though. 

According to the polls, the Greens should get enough party votes this time to get a record number of MPs. 

However it's not all good news. The cost of living thing is a problem here too*. And this has caused people to move to the right. There's a horrible chance we might get the most right-wing government Aotearoa has ever had. 

It looks like the person holding the reins and being the kingmaker is once again Winston Peters of the New Zealand First party. They essentially stand for nothing except a nice life for Winston Peters. But I'd characterise them as the "Grumpy Old Person Party". 

Their policies include things like, "It's NEW ZEALAND and NOT Aotearoa!!" Stuff like that. 

Winston teamed up with Jacinda in 2017 and helped her become PM. Obviously that worked out great for us COVID-wise but he was very much the gooseberry in the arrangement. So he has ruled out an alliance with them this time. 

So we're likely to get a National**, ACT*** and Winston alliance in power. Hopefully they won't be as destructive as the Conservatives because of proportional representation but I'm not looking forward to it. 

Oh well. We had it good while you had it effing awful. At least you lot are about to flip the other way****.

Oh, and isn't Crashy PRETTY in this pic??

S.

* Nothing like as bad as Rishi's though.

** Led by a super-Christian who thinks average people should be able to spend just $60 a week on their groceries. I'm just waiting for the "poor people don't know how to budget" bylines.

*** Kiwi UKIP, essentially.

**** Once Rishi has managed to get a good trade deal with India. For his family, naturally. The UK can get effed.