Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Alfie,
You can lead a horse to water…
But I’m not so sure about sheep.
Back in 2005 a Stuff poll had Destiny getting at least 6 MPs.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Er you don’t care that Assange is an alleged rapist?
In No Place to Hide Greenwald explains why Snowden chose not to take his revelations to the likes of the New York Times. He gives a number of examples of the concerted campaign of character assassination carried out against Assange by the Times and other sources – of which the meticulous Snowden was well aware - from “well before he was accused of sex crimes by two women in Sweden. Notably, the attacks on Assange were carried out by the same newspapers that had worked with him and had benefited from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures, which Assange and WikiLeaks had enabled.”
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How many people on benefits turn 65 each week? Once you're on national super you're no longer counted.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Russell Brown,
He’s really not stupid and he’s very good at weighing the odds.
The contrast between that and the evasions and recitations he makes under pressure really is very striking.
His intelligence doesn't prevent him from behaving as if he's running a 3rd world client state on behalf of his enablers.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Rob Stowell,
That’s a very narrow view of the world- and of human nature.
It is, sadly, the predominent view of many trained in ‘business management’, but it’s not even true for business, let alone a country.Remember the terminal phase of the fourth Labour Government, where cabinet went into a kind of retreat at an Ashburton motel? An imported 'facilitator' attempted to 'team build' the quarreling factions by introducing a form of role-playing, where they pretended to have survived an air crash in the Canadian outback.
Of course it didn't work, giving Muldoon the opportunity to snipe "Bring back the touchy-feely man!" from his parliamentary backbench when things shortly flared up again.
Goofily romantic management-metaphors about achieving through co-operation, with their boys' own scenarios of white water rafting and survival, seem reserved for a cosseted technocrat caste and their betters. Instead the peasants are expected to compete in cutthroat vote-one-another-off-the-island style.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to nzlemming,
Is it my imagination or have we seen an influx of bad faith fanbois derailing conversations on PAS since Dirty Politics was released? It’s almost like there was a deliberate campaign…
They were all over the Dimpost for a while there. They start out expecting to gorge on the imagined low-hanging fruit Slater's assured them was out there, before squealing foul and retiring in high victim mode. And yeah, they're all hes.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Russell Brown,
I saw Bennett on Backbenchers. She’s supposed to be impressive?!?!
I don’t get this either. But the theory is that because she’s seen through reforms at a minefield portfolio like MSD without getting blown up, she must be capable.
The flirtation with promoting the patently gormless Bennett could have been encouraged by Crosby Textor’s past Australian success with Jackie Kelly. Kelly’s 1996 victory in the previously solid Labor seat of Lindsay, and her increased majority after a by-election following a Labor challenge, led to her being groomed as the poster person for ‘Howard’s battlers’, the aspirational working class who’d abandoned Labor.
While Key hasn’t excited the jealousy of Bennett’s colleagues to the same degree as Howard did when showering Kelly with ministerial rewards beyond her capabilities, the contrived nature of how they’ve both been marketed is strikingly similar.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Some good things Key’s done: by supporting them, he more-or-less ended the nasty going-nowhere debate over marriage equality and the repeal of S59. I think the nation benefitted.
While Labour’s reactionary rump on those issues was pretty minimal, it was there. Whether or not they had the potential to become left-right bargaining chips within the Party, as happened with no nukes for Rogernomics, Key certainly killed that possibility.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Jake Starrow,
In a hurry to get kids to sport
Poor old Dad4Justice used to pull that one back when they'd let him in to Kiwiblog.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to BenWilson,
Maybe we should consider just what the first invertebrates thought about law.