thairock
Active Member
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2005
- Messages
- 589
- Location
- Lake Hawea, New Zealand
- Website
- www.shootingandcutting.co.nz
We still have the internet!We need @thairock to let us know what it's like behind Jacinda's Iron Curtain, if they still have the internet there that is.
Look, life here seems pretty normal on the whole right now.
I’m sure we will have more community cases of covid show up in the future but having had that first lockdown in March, which, although people grumbled , was pretty well adhered to by the vast majority of the population, we seemed well positioned to tackle the Auckland community cluster with precision.
Far easier to put out spot fires when the forest fire has had a shit tonne of water doused on it at the beginning.
Will the economy survive? I’m sure it will wobble, however, the government wage subsidy got spending money in people’s pockets and that cash had been flowing around. The tourism industry is hugely important to NZ and there’s talk of the borders being “closed” until perhaps 2022.
The interesting thing is that because NZ’rs generally can’t travel overseas either, they just switched to being tourists in their own country.
I live and work in a big tourist area with both winter and summer attractions and all the businesses that relied on tourism were terrified at the prospect of the death of the industry but here’s the thing, the town has been busier since lockdown ended then at same time of year pre-covid .
The managed isolation of incoming people ( returning kiwis etc. and people deemed important for the economy- like international film production crews etc ) seems to work ( on the whole).
NZ has the locations and facilities that lend well to Hollywood and local productions on its side as always, but with added bonus of now being Covid free in the community, it’s all ticking along very well.
I’m sure there are lots of parts of the country and industries that are or will suffer badly but how much worse if we had rampant Covid cases and constant yo-yo-ing back and forth with restrictions.
I know NZ isn’t really comparable to Ireland in a lot of ways and so it’s hard to say that Ireland should have done what NZ has done, but just reading the Level 3 restrictions for Ireland I was amazed by how half hearted they are and can’t see how they can work to eradicate infections.
It seems evident to me from my perspective here, that Ireland needs to be in level 5 if there’s any hope of a return to a close to normal life for people living there.
Life here for me and my family feels back to normal. That is amazing to me!
Now, on the other topic of NZ and racism ...and I speak from the point of view of an privileged white male resident here, yes there is casual and in some cases systemic racism aimed at “Asians”, ( I dislike how this term is used here in NZ)
Maori and other ethnic minorities. Obviously there was the anti Muslim terrorist massacre in Chch too.
So yes, NZ has a racism problem.
It’s not paradise.
I can say though, for me, it’s a damn good country to live in.
I’ve lived almost half my life here and half in Ireland. I have no plans to change where I live.
I do wish my family in Ireland could have the same Covid-free relaxed lifestyle that we have here though.
I include thumpers in that family too.
Xx