Forgetting the weekday because of a good focus

This is the time of year when I can’t remember what day of the week it is. That’ll happen when there are two weeks in a row that each have two public holidays. This speaks volumes about how different life in New Zealand is from life in the land of my birth, but many countries have it far better than folks in the USA have it. It doesn’t have to be that way for the US, and some want to take it away from New Zealanders—though, yeah, nah, that’s not going to happen.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day (December 25 and 26) are both public holidays, and the following week January 1 and 2 are also both public holidays. There’s also a “trading ban” on Christmas Day, which, despite werdly complicated rules and exceptions, generally means most businesses must close on that day. The other three are ordinary public holidays, but in New Zealand that actually means something.

Public holidays are sometimes called “statutory holidays” (or “stat day” for short) because they’re specifically named in law and have specific regulations. For example, most full-time workers who are required to work on a public holiday will receive 1.5 times their normal hourly pay, and they’ll be entitled to another day off in lieu (as it’s called) at a time the worker and employer agree to. In reality, it’s a bit more complicated than that, with some variations because of a worker’s specific circumstances, however, that’s the gist of it.

Another important thing for workers about the public holidays for Christmas Day and Boxing Day and January 1 and 2 is that if one or both days fall on a weekend, the public holidays are observed on the following Monday, or Monday and Tuesday if both fall on a weekend. For example, in 2026 Christmas Day falls on a Friday, and Boxing Day on Saturday, so the Boxing Day public holiday for workers will be on Monday, December 28.

This same thing repeats the following week for 2027 New Year’s Day and the day after. So, most Kiwis get two four-day weekends in a row—not every year, but many years—which is supremely awesome, and it allows many folks to have a two week break from work while only using maybe six annual leave days (“vacation days” in Americanese) instead of ten. Full-time workers in New Zealand are generally entitled to 20 annual leave days per year, plus 12 paid days off for public holidays.

I mention all that, even though I have several times before, because it make a very important point: Workers’ rights to things like paid time off don’t have to rely on the graciousness or mercy of employers, and that governments can, and most do, enforce workers’ rights. American workers aren’t treated poorly compared to workers in most OECD countries because “it’s just the way it is” or because “government can’t change things”, but, rather, it’s because of weak or compromised politicians who refuse to do the right thing for working people, and instead do only the absolute bare minimum that won’t upset big corporations and oligarchs too much. They do only enough to prevent working people from using the power in their numbers to force change by electing politicians who are on the side of working people, and not consumed by doing the bidding of corporations and oligarchs.

Most politicians in US state and federal governments rely on campaign donations from corporations and oligarchs, directly or indirectly, and so, they vote to advance the interests of their financial benefactors and not the needs of ordinary working people. It’s said that “the love of money is the root of all evil”, but campaign contributions from corporations and the rich are particularly rich fertiliser for those roots, and the rotten fruit that grows is merely the logical result.

Money weakens democracy in nearly every country, and the love of money is certainly at the core of many Rightwing parties throughout the OECD, and that includes New Zealand. When conservatives are in power, we see attempts to restrict workers’ rights and to enrich corporations. But the centrist parties don’t push hard enough to do what ordinary working people want and need.

Most politicians spend most of their time telling ordinary citizens what they “can’t” have. What those things are will vary from place to place, but the tendency is pretty much universal. Politicians on both the Right and the Left do this, but there are difference: To the Right, nothing the people want is possible, but what corporations and oligarchs want always is. Centrist politicians do some things to help some ordinary people, but their difference from the Right is mainly one of degree, and perhaps a bit more humanity. Maybe this will soon change.

The mission of politicians—the people’s representatives—is to do one thing: Deliver what the people want. If something is difficult to achieve, then it’s their job to work how to deliver what the people want, and if there really are genuine trade-offs, then they must be open and honest with the people so they can weigh in on what should be priorities and what really can be deferred. In other words, politicians must do the work their bosses—voters—elected them to do. If they can’t or won’t to what voters want, they need to get out of the way.

I’ve seen signs that things are beginning to change in some countries, and that people are beginning to demand that their elected representatives do what the people want. This is the possible antidote to many governments sole focus on the needs of corporations and oligarchs. Ordinary people far outnumber the oligarchs, and only destruction of democracy can slow this gradual march toward more just societies—which means, it’s still possible for the oligarchs to kill off the infant people’s movement.

In the meantime, people like me who live in countries that respect workers will continue to sometimes get confused this time of year about what day of the week it is because of the time off that workers get at this time of year. But countries like the USA can still catch up. It’s time they did.

Another New Year has begun

Welcome to 2026! I had a good end to 2025 and start to 2026. But that sort of annual transition is so ordinary that it barely seems worthy of mention—which is rather unfortunate for a blogger. Still, there;s always something to mention,

I went out for pizza with my brother-in-law and his partner, and even had a glass of whine, since I wasn’t driving. I was home by early evening, and carried on with my typical New Year’s Eve.

I’ve mentioned several times that I’ve almost always been the only one in my household to stay up to midnight on New Year’s Eve, and that it’s something I’ve done for many, many decades. Nigel almost never stayed up to midnight, but when it arrived he’d call out to me to come so we could share our first kiss of the New Year, mainly because he knew it was important to me.

I found that memory painful for the first few years after Nigel died, and while I still think of it every year, it’s not the source of pain that it once was. Memories like that can evolve alongside us, eventually becoming warm and fuzzy again.

I saw in the New Year, but I was watching the countdown and Auckland fireworks on TVNZ+, their streaming service, becauce the bad weather was causing disruption in the UHF signal. That was fine, but I knew the stream is delayed by around ten seconds, so I was using my iPad to watch the actual time so that I knew when 2026 actually arrived, said “Happy New Year!” to no one in particular, though Leo looked over at me, so I wished him a happy new year—not that he seemed to get what that meant. A few seconds later, I saw the countdown and fireworks on my TV as I took the selfie up top, my first photo of the year. Delayed or not, I was just glad that TVNZ did that that again this year, because there have been years when they did nothing at all.

After the fireworks (a five minute broadcast), I went back to watching TV, fell asleep in my chair for awhile, and headed off to bed. And that was my start to 2026.

2025 was, as I expected, my worst-ever full year of blogging. Part of that is because there were a lot of posts I never got around to last year. I still want to get to those, and, of course, I have all my projects that will be ending this year, so there will be a lot to talk about this year. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, as I’ve explained several times, but I do have have annual goals, and this year that includes doing more blog posts. To be clear, I doubt there’ll be a return to my old one-post-a-day average, but I have a goal of an average of one every other day—roughly 15.21 posts per month. I think that’s a reasonable goal—I’ve done more than that every full year except for 2022, 2024, and, of course, 2025. We’ll see.

New Year provides an opportunity for a reset. Whether that happens or not will be the overall story of 2026. I’m really interested to see what happens.