Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: A message from The Fabians

nzlemming

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 12:46:05 +1300

Isn’t that precisely what the party is having trouble doing?

That, my friend, is the bitter irony of the whole piece.

Kumara Republic

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 02:09:01 +1300

The average New Zealander, even many that bothered studying "economics", have not much of a clue at all about the bigger picture, most certainly when it comes to macroeconomics. They rather "micromanage" at their familiar household purse string level, and even run most businesses like that.

I wonder how much…

Marc C

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:31:18 +1300

No wonder there is…

Marc C

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:22:24 +1300

The Fabians do some good work, but I fear, like so many organisations and societies, that have progressive ideas, goals and aspirations on their mind, the reality is immensely depressing. It seems that in too large numbers, New Zealanders simply do no longer care and bother much, whether it is…

Sacha

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:09:11 +1300

have banded together

Isn't that precisely what the party is having trouble doing? Sad seeing these frightened old men pin stuff on any other social group than themselves.

andin

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 20:34:44 +1300

It happened at the end of the civil war the "Reconstruction" as it is so nicely called. Gave rise to carpetbaggers, yes, people walking round with a carpetbag full of money.
The US of EH? got the fourteenth amendment to its constitution.

nzlemming

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 19:58:07 +1300

What the frosty circle of Hell?

Yah, it's a direct quote. He believes that minorities have banded together to take ove the Party, i.e. that it's captive to competing special interest groups who are holding it at stalemate in trying to progress their own agenda. Not completely wrong, but not…

Craig Ranapia

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 19:45:42 +1300

gender-disadvantaged,

What the frosty circle of Hell?

Russell Brown

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 19:30:37 +1300

Colin James has a pertinent column today –

Parts of it are okay, parts of it are odd and even offensive. Where do James, Stephen and the other party members here fit into his frame of angry old lefties and identity politics warriors?

He lays the the blame on "a…

wendyf

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 17:40:27 +1300

Testing

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 12:41:38 +1300

Art Official Intelligence...
Surrealism maybe?
Modernism even?
But no Site-Specific works thanks...
;- )

Greg Dawson

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 12:21:47 +1300

Economics is not paint by numbers

Surrealism maybe?

Jim Cathcart

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:25:56 +1300

A media that's heavily reliant on advertising revenue from the banks, which earn not a small amount from property loans. Turkeys and Thanksgiving come to mind. As I've mentioned before, the orthodoxy will probably remain in place until there's a very big and disruptive event of Icelandic proportions.

Yes, and…

Kumara Republic

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 17:56:18 +1300

Hickey attempted to push the envelope in terms of opening the public' eyes, but it appears he's been largely written off by the media and he definitely irks the mortgage belters.

A media that's heavily reliant on advertising revenue from the banks, which earn not a small amount from property…

Paul Campbell

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 17:05:37 +1300

Don't forget that Hickey was the target of Slater's Dirty Politics smears .... certain people don't want independent economic analysis out there being consumed by the general public

Jim Cathcart

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:39:57 +1300

Rod Oram? Are you serious? Economics is not paint by numbers where you color blue or Red in a minimal degree of shades. Hickey attempted to push the envelope in terms of opening the public' eyes, but it appears he's been largely written off by the media and he definitely…

Sara Bee

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:35:01 +1300

Someone will no doubt correct me, but I was struck, when reading Gore Vidal's Lincoln, about the financing of the Civil War being the beginning of the owning of the US's soul (and latterly other countries' souls) by the banks...

Graham Dunster

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 13:24:26 +1300

Colin James has a pertinent column today – http://www.colinjames.co.nz/labour-not-part-of-the-communities-we-live-in/

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 10:37:44 +1300

Hi Ho Silver!
Rod Oram and Ganesh Nana are largely lone voices in the NZ economic debate.
Lend him your ears:
11:05am Today, Radio NZ 9-Noon Business commentator Rod Oram
Rod Oram takes a look at the falling dollar and Fonterra's results.

Kumara Republic

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 09:59:10 +1300

Economics is akin to anathema for most NZers and the mainstream media and revolutionary voices are largely MIA in raising any debate or criticism. Across the ditch, Macrobusiness has taken up the challenge; yet in NZ, it appears that people are stupefied when confronted with economic issues. Given the precarious…

Kumara Republic

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 09:51:18 +1300

If these divisions in the Labour party are about something irreconcilable, then that’s what should happen now. If the irreconcilable thing is a basic principle or policy, the leavers might get votes for their new party. If it’s just about personal animosity, they won’t.

Sadly, it does appear to be…

Jim Cathcart

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:18:08 +1300

Shulgin

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:23:54 +1300

Mr Brown, at the event will you be going over meth recipes then?.... the shortest route or least precursors?....hope you have a power-point....see ya there...

Joe Wylie

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:19:06 +1300

Gower is of course a synecdoche for the media pack.
True dat. Distinct from, but probably related to, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods female Media incarnate:
"Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn’t she the one who killed her children?”
“Different woman,” said Mr. Nancy. “Same deal."

simon g

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:18:47 +1300

As I mentioned in another thread, we already know there are divisions in the Labour Caucus, but I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near like the Lange-Douglas split of 1989.

So I have a right to ask: how much of what we hear right now is about the party's actual divisions,…

Steve Barnes

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 19:03:01 +1300

Gower is of course a synecdoche for the media pack.

Love that word…Damn, I misread that, I read sycodouche, as in Psycho douche.
But the Brain... you know...
Brian DeMarge...

andin

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 17:39:41 +1300

the delusion that we’re doing anything for the first time
And sometimes it positively feels like we're going circles.
Round and round, same shit, every day ...blah blah blah on & on

BenWilson

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 17:13:04 +1300

Then there's the "Left" microparsing every sentence uttered by whatever guy they don't like and writing splenetic tweets about it. I'm feeling unfulfilled.

LOL. Yup, we should give up this hair of the dog media feast. Labour have now got 3 years to get their shit together. It's not going…

giovanni tiso

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:49:02 +1300

As I mentioned in another thread, we already know there are divisions in the Labour Caucus, but I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near like the Lange-Douglas split of 1989.

This one isn't so much a split within caucus as a power struggle between caucus and the membership, though. Caucus has…

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:45:37 +1300

underground zero…
Mon, it’s so apt dat de ‘Election Debriefing’
is to be held on de basement level…
of The Owen Glen Edifice…

Lost in the Bowen Triangle…
Gower is of course a synecdoche for the media pack.
Love that word…
But the beltway frenzy….

Is Beltway now a synecdoche…

Kumara Republic

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:06:23 +1300

As I mentioned in another thread, we already know there are divisions in the Labour Caucus, but I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near like the Lange-Douglas split of 1989.

So I have a right to ask: how much of what we hear right now is about the party's actual divisions,…

Jack Harrison

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:49:04 +1300

A lot of people seem so concerned about Labour now. As if Labour is sick and needs to get well or die.

Getting well involves media interviewing a wide range of labour wanna bes who seem to be massively concerned the party is not lead by a person like them.…

Stephen Judd

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:41:27 +1300

Right, of course media scrutiny and turnaround and reach and immediacy then was exactly the same as it is now and it was foolish of me to pretend otherwise. I bow to your mastery of the history of technology.

Craig Ranapia

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:38:28 +1300

Gower is of course a synecdoche for the media pack. In Lincoln’s day the telegraph was barely a thing.

Another useful thing history does for the attentive mind is to disabuse us of the delusion that we're doing anything for the first time — and you might want to brush…

Stephen Judd

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:01:57 +1300

Gower is of course a synecdoche for the media pack. In Lincoln's day the telegraph was barely a thing.

Angela Hart

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:01:45 +1300

It may be a temporary glitch but the link from the post to access the Fabian Society doesn't work and their web page is also unreachable at the moment (3pm 29th September).

Hilary Stace

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 14:29:30 +1300

The Fabians is a great organisation. It has kept the focus on important issues like inequality and redistributive economic policy for the last couple of years with regular free talks in Wellington. Serious, informed stuff. They had hundreds at Nicky Hagar's talk a few weeks ago. All run by a…

Phil Wallington

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 14:05:59 +1300

“No more sleaze. No more cash for questions. No more lies. No more broken promises. I say to the Tories: enough is enough! Be done, be gone!”

Tony Blair 1996.

That's what Labour needs to say... and, of course, to live up to the rhetoric — unlike Mr. Blair.

Craig Ranapia

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:07:27 +1300

Abraham Lincoln didn’t have to deal with Paddy Gower demanding he account for every piss splatter in the urinal.

No, he went into a bear bit of a convention as a rank outsider, a bitterly divided party, and a nation lurching towards civil war and still managed to not only…

Phil Wallington

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 12:39:02 +1300

“ economic secu
rity” is a cu
rious excu
se…
for pu
tting the arse
before the torse.

e.e. cummings

nzlemming

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 12:34:57 +1300

Abraham Lincoln didn't have to deal with Paddy Gower demanding he account for every piss splatter in the urinal.

Eloquently put, Stephen.

Stephen R

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 12:08:45 +1300

In part that's because the only other thing I've done with the Fabians struck me as offering the basis of a coherent and credible economic strategy that got us beyond the short-term window of much current policy

I very much enjoyed attending the voyage of a lifetime discussion in Wellington.…

Joe Wylie

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 12:03:40 +1300

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is well worth a look for a masterclass in that art.

Sounds like just the kind of bodice burster Paula Bennett will have been cramming in preparation for her elevation.

Stephen Judd

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:33:57 +1300

Abraham Lincoln didn't have to deal with Paddy Gower demanding he account for every piss splatter in the urinal.

Craig Ranapia

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:21:44 +1300

It would be nice to think that there is more to Labour’s leadership contest than whether Trevor likes David or Grant likes Jacinda or another David likes some other David. Is there?

Well, yes... especially when there's plenty of precedent for perfectly functional political entities being lead by people who…

Russell Brown

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:13:03 +1300

It would be nice to think that there is more to Labour’s leadership contest than whether Trevor likes David or Grant likes Jacinda or another David likes some other David. Is there?

One would hope so.

simon g

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:10:49 +1300

Big Issue: Future direction of the democratic left (or centre-left, social democrats, democratic socialists, pinkoes, choose your preferred label). As discussed around the world, with regard to parties calling themselves Labour or SPD or Democrats or ... you get the picture. It's a grown-up thing.

Small Issue: who gets to…

Craig Ranapia

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:08:36 +1300

I’d totally disagree with you there

Oh, bum. I’d totally disagree with that, because I agree with Russell’s original sentiment.

But the beltway frenzy is outrunning the number of things to actually report, and resulting in Patrick Gower’s ridiculous series of tweets about Chris Hipkins this morning.

Exactly — there's…

Russell Brown

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:07:54 +1300

I may be a Tory, but it serves my interests as a citizen much better if Labour isn’t stuck playing out some political version of the Oresteia.

Of course. But the beltway frenzy is outrunning the number of things to actually report, and resulting in Patrick Gower's ridiculous series of…

Steve Barnes

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:01:04 +1300

The predicament of the Labour Party is simply that National's scumsucking propaganda has left New Zealanders believing that, somehow, Labour had done something so wrong that it is big news. The fact of the matter is that it is National that needs to be looked at. We have been, as…

Craig Ranapia

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 10:47:19 +1300

So even though I’m currently of the view that the obsessing about the predicament of the Labour Party is greatly outrunning the supply of actual news about same

I’d totally disagree with you there, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth thinking about. Not least because, in my view, everyone…

Russell Brown

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:56:22 +1300

So even though I'm currently of the view that the obsessing about the predicament of the Labour Party is greatly outrunning the supply of actual news about same, I've agreed to do this gig. In part that's because the only other thing I've done with the Fabians struck me as…

Public Address

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:56:22 +1300

Discussion from blog post.