Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I think it sad that even men here find David Cunliffe’s message to battered women posing or preening or fucked up or alienating. He spoke to a women’s group and apologised that they were hurt.
I 'd think that most men here - or any that can empathise with whatever moved Cunliffe - will already have experienced a similar personal epiphany. Whatever hope I might hold for Cunliffe isn't about his publicly reiterating my feelings, it's about his making a real change. Negotiating the dastardly media has been part of that since before the days of three time loser Bill Rowling.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to ,
But he totally fucked it up, by alienating the very people that need to come to the table. Men who use blunt instruments and or buckets of money to solve problems.
Nailed it.
Posing as if you're carrying the sins of the world on your shoulders might work for the clergy, but if a politician does it, even for a moment, it always comes across as preening. -
Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to linger,
Looking at the comments (I know, I shouldn’t have) there’s still not much tolerance.
What I mean is that in the Christchurch of ten years ago, something would have been done about visible homelessness, even if the motivation arose from nothing more noble than a sense of civic tidiness. I'd assumed that once cities reached a certain critical mass then a tolerance developed for people reduced to sleeping rough. It seems I was wrong, as the population hasn't grown significantly in the last decade. Somehow I'm guessing that the new ruthlessness is a different beast from the entrenched toytown snobbery that's always been a feature of this place.
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When I came to live in Chchch just over a decade ago I was struck by how little tolerance there was for the kind of homelessness and beggary that was so apparent on the streets of Sydney. Not any more.
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Russell Brown,
A long and thoughtful review of Hope and Wire by Philip Matthews.
Superb.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Steve Barnes,
You appear to have overlooked the most dynamic part of Chchch.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Labour’s problem is it has a high profile coterie of other-generation has-beens and dinosaurs in safe electoral seats who dominate the public perception of the party.
Generational change was the stalking horse for the Douglas 'reforms', which the Party's left happily traded for the nuclear free policy. Like any party, Labour has always attracted career opportunists. It's the emerging Prebbles like Hipkins that are the real worry.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to BenWilson,
coming from the same place I am in saying they’re tired out.
Which seems to me like some parallel universe where Judith Tizard’s mum failed to talk her out of sliding back in on the list, and Louisa Wall, along with one of the most significant pieces of legislation since Key came to power, never happened. Fortunately Labour isn’t quite as monolithic as you suggest, though from the low profile of my local MP you could be forgiven for thinking so. About six blocks from here the Party candidate is putting up a vastly more spirited hiding to nowhere fight against Brownlee than happened back in 2011. Personally I’m glad that no-one’s managed to convince him that the Party’s fucked.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to BenWilson,
I think Labour’s trouble is much deeper than any lack of talent. I think it’s just an old, worn out idea. It doesn’t speak to young people.
You may be right, but it's a very old song. The long-defunct Australian Nation-Review described the upcoming NZ election in terms of a boxing match, with a motheaten Labour emerging from it's corner "in faded pink". That was back in 1972.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Steve Barnes,
