Hard News: The Letter
443 Responses
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
examples?
Got a mirror handy?
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
I move we have a royal enquiry into the wine bottle.
I wonder if Winston still has the box it came in.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
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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Meanwhile, an actual conflict of interest. Pity it can't be blamed on any particular political party, though.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
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.
The Truman Show redux perhaps?
Brownlee is looking a little 'Dewey-eyed' -
Steve Barnes, in reply to
Personally I’m glad that no-one’s managed to convince him that the Party’s fucked.
This reminds me of the last time I spoke to Helen Clark. I said the polls were so wrong and judging by what l could see, Labour should have been polling around 38%, this was 2008, she agreed but then said "trouble is, many people not only believe the polls, they tend to follow them"
"like sheep" I said. She gave me one of her withering looks which turned into a look of sad resignation, it was over, the wunch of bankers were at the gate... -
BenWilson, in reply to
Personally I’m glad that no-one’s managed to convince him that the Party’s fucked.
Of course people standing for the Party have to believe that. But that doesn't much influence my judgment any more than Colin Craig's optimism of breaking the threshold influences my opinion of whether he actually will.
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In case any Chchch folk missed Murray Horton's CAFCA Talk at the WEA on Wednesday, new dates have been announced for the suburbs in July:
Who's Running The Show?
And In Whose Interests?Tuesday 1st July @7:30pm Lyttelton
Naval Point Club, Charlotte Jane Quay.Wednesday 2nd July @7:30pm Heathcote
St Mary's Village Hall, Cnr. Martindales and Truscotts Rd.Friday 4th July @7:30pm Riccarton Community Centre, 199 Clarence Street (opposite Windmill Centre)
Wednesday 9th July @2:00pm Papanui
St Joseph's Parish Centre, 133 Main Road North . -
Sacha, in reply to
Don’t be a dick. Stump up some links or you're no better than the Herald.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
This reminds me of the last time I spoke to Helen Clark. I said the polls were so wrong and judging by what l could see, Labour should have been polling around 38%, this was 2008, she agreed but then said “trouble is, many people not only believe the polls, they tend to follow them”. “like sheep” I said.
You know, an awful lot of Tories (myself included) were singing the same fucking song at the same pity party in 2002 -- you know, the general election where all the polls were pointing towards National getting its lowest share of the popular vote in the party's history.
Yeah, blame the "biased media" and the "sheeple" but the ugly truth is even with Corngate blowing up in the Government's face, National was ill-disciplined, ran a lousy campaign with a platform nobody could take seriously while sober at a time where, like it or not, people were feeling generally OK with what the Government was doing. I thought otherwise, but you know what? 41.26% of the electorate felt otherwise at the only poll that counted.
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Now trending on Twitter: #NZHeraldHeadlines
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Sacha, in reply to
'don't be a dick' is the main Public Address guideline for discussions. I’m not the one who needs to do some reflecting.
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I would be more likely to want them to represent me in parliament, if they showed enough humility to acknowledge that some of the 1980s Labour Party was inconstant with basic human dignity.
That's been done already. Must be two years ago now. They finally owned the fact that the outcomes of the 1980s were a terrible failure for a lot of people, and not in keeping with the traditions of Labour.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
You know, an awful lot of Tories (myself included) were singing the same fucking song at the same pity party in 2002 – you know, the general election where all the polls were pointing towards National getting its lowest share of the popular vote in the party’s history.
Good point. However, I do think we could do worse than have a serious discussion about the roll polling, especially the reporting of polls, plays in our political culture. Take that Political Scientist post I linked to up thread, for example. I don't know anything about statistics, so I can't critique the analysis, but it does make some quite interesting points that are well worth thinking over. So, is National support really as high as we are lead to believe? Or Labour really that dead in the water? I've been watching the apparent mainstreaming of the Greens with curiosity, wondering if perhaps they'll take over as the main party of the centre left, but if their support, like National's, really is a solid, largely constant and loyal bloc, then maybe there's some other dynamic at work I'm unaware of.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
‘don’t be a dick’ is the main Public Address guideline for discussions.
I’m not the one who needs to do some reflecting.sigh....
through a glass darkly...
a little charity goes a long way
:- ) -
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
However, I do think we could do worse than have a serious discussion about the roll polling, especially the reporting of polls, plays in our political culture.
Fair enough -- hell, for me the fundamental problem with polls is they all begin with "If an election was held today..." Well, it's not so I struggle to see the point of the whole exercise, and the only poll that actually counts is going on in a country that doesn't allow exit polling. And that's as it should be, IMNSHO: E-Day isn't about the politicians, and the pollsters and the media. It's about the electors.
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Labour's problems are twofold.
Firstly, it is (like all similar social-democratic parties that sold their souls to the dead end of third way politics) in an existential crisis as what it actually primarily stands for. At the moment, it is a comfy establishment party of middle class urban liberal identity politics, concerned largely with social issues and happy with just tweaking neo-liberalism. But it's "brand", and how it likes to see itself, is as socialist party of it's halcyon days - a party of the working class, a radical change agent and a champion of the poor. Which it most certainly is not. The party it likes to imagine itself to be is lean and driven, the party it actually is is plump and flaccid. IMHO Labour desperately needs to work out who the hell they are. Once you all know who you are, you all don't need to be told what you want. And then you can go out and get it, boldly and without timidity.
Secondly, Labour's problem isn't renewal - it is the PERCEPTION of renewal. National came in with a pile of Shipley era hangovers. Bill English, for Gods sake! But it created a perception of renewal. 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. The symbolism of getting rid of, say, Mallard, Goff, King and Dyson is a whole lot more than the sum of four seats they occupy.
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Sacha, in reply to
The party it likes to imagine itself to be is lean and driven, the party it actually is is plump and flaccid. IMHO Labour desperately needs to work out
to the gym! :)
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Sacha, in reply to
"If an election was held today
which is the excuse the pollsters give for discarding all the undecideds.
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Tim Murphy @tmurphyNZH
Donghua Liu - seems like some premature claims of the story 'unravelling' have been going on....https://twitter.com/tmurphyNZH/status/482413071403462656
Unless the Herald has suddenly found evidence for a 100k bottle of wine and 150k in donations, then that story remains unraveled. And even if they have found rock solid evidence for that, they didn't have it when they ran it. So attacking their critics is still lame.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
No, just that they were formed from older existing parties. Also I should correct that Labour was not born in the 30s.
Whigs fo' life, yo. Things haven't been the same since George 3 let the Tories back in.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I agree with some of that. There does seem to be big disparity between its self image and how it is seen from the outside. But there are elements of inevitability to all of this, so I'm not sure that the prescription of going old skool and hardening up is useful.
There are harder core socialist parties around, but they get very little vote share. It's nowhere near as popular an idea as purists (like I think you are) seem to believe. You can disparage "third way" politics, but I have never thought that there were only 2 ways, or 3 or any finite number, for that matter. I agree that wealth disparity is growing and Labour don't seem to have a real commitment to fixing that, but social liberalism advancing is nothing to sneeze at.
In that, they pretty much won the political right over completely. It only really causes any sense of identity crisis because it's been won so completely that the Right do it too. To that extent they lost their identity also, and there are always going to be a small hard core of recalcitrants like Peters who nag at the center Right in exactly the same way that the hard core socialists nag at the center Left. But both have been marginalized.
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The comments under the Herald apoligitorial are quite remarkable. People are not buying it.
Also people don't seem to be buying this- but some of the comments are classic trademe. -
The auction is live and it's currently going for about $7 more than new.
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