Socialist Aotearoa

In recent times we have seen a lot of police brutality on a global scale and especially in the US, and then last week we saw similar crimes in New Zealand with two separate incidents within a few days of men being shot by police – one, who was unarmed, died, and the other is in a critical condition.   There seems to be a culture developing among US police that this is a war and that the public are the enemy, especially if you are black and poor. This trend has been continuing for some time now and is steadily getting worse. We have seen many examples of police shooting and killing unarmed black people for no apparent reason and yet we have yet to see a police officer brought t o justice. This year alone police in the US have shot 600 people. It is obvious from the actions of the police that they know they have complete impunity.   As someone who has been on the front line of pickets and protests I have seen this culture developing in NZ. While a lot of police are reasonable pe

Last weekend, we had our first game of Monopoly with the kids in the Carolan household. It was Oisin’s birthday present, and pretty soon both him and his sister Aoibheann were buying up the streets of the old London version, from his cheap 100 pounds fixer upper of the Angel, Islington, to her well appointed exclusive 400 pounds loft in Mayfair. The kids asked what all the green houses and red hotels were for. “Collect all the streets the same colour, and then you can build houses on them to jack the rent up by hundreds of dollars” said Heather. “But that’s not fair, Mum”, said Ois- “houses are for living in. What if we can’t afford it?” Ahhh, that’s my socialist boy! And in a nutshell, that’s why the original Landlord’s Game was invented by socialist Elizabeth Magie . The world is not fair, and Auckland has turned into one big board game of Monopoly, one where everyone does not start equally with fifteen hundred pounds, and the Bank is rigged. The kids are angry- so here’s my propo