The Guardian article I\u2019ve put a link to is just a pr\u00e9cis of the original document, which I haven\u2019t read, but I can summarise the summary for you. Essentially, we can all live happily ever after if we tax the billionaires, eat less meat, and put more money into health and education. So far, so fabulous. There is some fine print, though. We have to cut back on our consumerist lifestyles, and realise that having \u201cenough\u201d is all we need, and incidentally way more than many people around the world currently have. I do agree with this in principle, but I have just ordered myself a new Tesla model Y.<\/p>\n Yes, I realise Elon is not the most likeable fellow, and will allegedly soon be in a position to laugh at the aforementioned mere billionaires, but he\u2019s been relatively quiet of late. The memory of him cozying up to Trump, looking awkward in his black T shirt, wielding a literal chainsaw as the head of doge<\/em> has almost faded from view, thankfully.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve loved my model S ever since I bought it as a gift to myself for surviving COVID. However, I\u2019ve had a few small niggles with it over recent years. There\u2019s no camera at the front; the dashcam doesn\u2019t record; the lighting in the back seat is poor; and a couple of times the screen has gone blank and the steering wheel has locked up while doing 100 kph on the motorway. It only lasted a few seconds, and by the time my lizard brain has realised what was happening and the adrenaline has started to flow, it\u2019s resolved, so no harm done. It\u2019s still rather unnerving, though. So, a few months ago, I started looking at what I might get if I sold it. The Trade Me estimate was quite gratifying, especially when Trump\u2019s latest war pushed petroleum prices up. It looked at one stage like I could upgrade at minimal expense. I reckoned without the inertia of a giant company, however. I used my app to ask for a trade in valuation. At first a series of young keen men were very interested, but when they realised I wasn\u2019t going to agree to buy a new car without knowing how much I\u2019d get for the old one, they soon lost interest. Eventually, a few months later, I got his:<\/p>\n You can imagine my dismay. It took weeks of trying to contact anyone at the company who might deign to talk to me, to find out that it was apparently just a \u201cplaceholder\u201d, awaiting formal assessment. Unfortunately, there was such demand for new cars that the trade in assessment team were flat out, and it was another month before I finally got a more realistic estimate. It was disappointingly low. By this time, petrol prices had been so high for so long that everyone who wanted to buy an electric car had already bought one, so demand for second hand EVs had fallen sharply. The estimate I got from Tina at Turners was equally dispiriting, so I\u2019ve bitten the bullet, and accepted the miserable trade in. Mind you, it has saved me from fixing the mysterious scrape on the left front bumper, and the noxious black goo that destroyed the boot lining is no longer my problem, either. Paying the giant invoice will be a shock, but I promise that once I have my new car, I will never need to buy anything new ever again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bunch of smarty pants academics have for once given us some good news: things can get better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3nH","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3359,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/26\/a-youthful-expression-v\/","url_meta":{"origin":13001,"position":0},"title":"A youthful expression – V","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 26, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Doggo; Birb; Boi Dog; bird; boy - or actually virtually any living thing, but most likely young, and probably male. Why? I don\u2019t know. This is the language of social media, and especially memes, and usually sweet and joyous ones. I love English that you can do this. Maybe it\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/29980B48-C143-4A24-AA39-CAB1F733A0EF-264x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5405,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/04\/mumbo-jumbo\/","url_meta":{"origin":13001,"position":1},"title":"Mumbo jumbo","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Upon returning down south to Uni, our daughter declared her intention of dropping her biochemistry paper. It\u2019s arcane and unknowable and just too damn difficult, she said (I\u2019m paraphrasing). The thing is, it was arcane and unknowable back in my day -\u00a0last century -\u00a0as well. Why has someone not done\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8665,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/23\/fear-as-fun\/","url_meta":{"origin":13001,"position":2},"title":"Fear as fun","author":"Interloper11","date":"January 23, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"It\u2019s a boom time for horror movies, apparently. Academics reckon these sort of interests help us learn to deal with the scary shit life throws at us sometimes. In fact, recreational fear may have contributed to \u2018dark copers\u2019 being better with the psychological resilience required to endure during COVID. There\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7675,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/24\/the-ring\/","url_meta":{"origin":13001,"position":3},"title":"The ring","author":"Interloper11","date":"March 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"There are two sorts of people in this world: Those morons that tidy away coasters into hidden drawers so that you can never find them when you need them, and those wise and sensible people who leave them out so that you\u2019ve always got somewhere to put your hot drink\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/B1402E2B-B474-4BF1-9537-47030D639F92-300x202.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10121,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/17\/out-of-touch-with-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":13001,"position":4},"title":"Out of touch with reality","author":"Interloper11","date":"May 17, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"We have one of our offspring living with us at the moment, and last night he was complaining that he had pohutakawa seeds on his skin, that felt unpleasantly itchy. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, so he put one on his finger tip and showed\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/IMG_0057-300x250.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3402,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/03\/overachiever\/","url_meta":{"origin":13001,"position":5},"title":"A stable genius (with apologies to Trump)","author":"Interloper11","date":"October 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, the oldest member of the household was once again very proud of himself this week for solving his workplace whiteboard puzzle ahead of everyone else. It took him two minutes apparently. My daughter and I worked on it for 24 hours with increasing feelings of inadequacy, before giving up.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/E1CB75F5-C9F1-4D5F-B03A-F2643C84F4B0-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_1378.jpeg?resize=300%2C159&ssl=1\")
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<\/p>\n