Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Actually work up a strategy for dealing with it and getting the message out there in clear and simple terms.
It's partly about making things happen that force their way onto the front page - the anti-cuts march in UK is a good example, or the anti-mining campaign. I don't think Labour has instigated a single extra-parliamentary campaign in the last two years.
I also take hope from the decline in newspaper circulation and advertising - in a few years, the NZ press won't be financially viable. I think then we might see a realignment.
Also, we need media ownership legislation. Why do we tolerate foreign newspaper monopolies telling us how to think?
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Clint Fern,
Anderton may go
Will. He's not standing.
Interestingly, he has backed Megan Woods, the Labour candidate for the Wigram seat. I'm not sure where this leaves the other members of the Jim Anderton Progressive Party (both of them).
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It’s all very well being in denial about media bias, but in NZ we have a daily newspaper monopoly in each city, with the only newspaper you can buy following a clear right-wing agenda.
Most of the time, this isn’t explicit in the Fox News / Daily Telegraph style (except during the last election, when the Herald in particular became a 25 page National party handout).
But every newspaper promotes a narrative – a large proportion of the articles in the Herald/Press/Dom Post are othering, uncritical presentation of government initiatives, promotion of celebrity lifestyles and politics-as-sport. That works directly, and it also sets an agenda for the rest of the media, even RNZ.
Billy Bragg says it much better than me: ”..wake up to the fact that your paper is Tory”
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the very concept of a list MP is the most unaccountable, unrepresentative politician in any jurisdiction outside Libya. Or maybe Zimbabwe.
Four parties got MPs on the list in the last parliament. Eight or nine could have done, except that not enough people voted for them.
Each of those parties selects their list according to some sort of rules. For the Greens, it's one member one vote, for the others a range of schemes.
Voters can choose to vote for a party, choose to join it and participate in choosing the list (if their chosen party allows such dangerous ideas) or form their own. List MPs represent the votes of 70,000 odd people across the country.
How is that any more democratic than someone getting elected by less voters who happen to congeal in one place, like Epsom or Belmont?
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Sacha, there was a draft economic policy put out a while ago…M
I can’t find it – Labour’s website seems to be mostly about Phil Goff’s lifestyle block, which sounds idyllic…
I found this speech by David Cunliffe, which seems to be very strong on the fiscal rectitude and incremental change.
Chants: what do we want – incremental improvements! when do we want them – in due course!Just as a for instance, they talk about stopping money disappearing to Australian banks – but all they have as a solution is giving Kiwibank a bit more scope to expand (they currently have maybe 5% market share – grow that at 20% for three years and they’ll have 9% – that’s still 91% foreign ownership).
Or, in terms of balancing the playing field between earners and asset holders, they talk about removing the LAQC loophole. That still leaves a situation where if I buy a beach house (or lifestyle block) for $2mln, keep it five years and sell it for $3mln, I’ve made a million dollars which I don’t pay a penny of tax on. But work hard all year and make $80k, and I’m taxed at full marginal rates.
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Are KiwiSaver, Working for Families and the Cullen fund the policies of a conservative government?
I'd say that Kiwisaver and the Cullen Fund would fit happily into the policies of a (fiscally conservative) right wing government.
Besides, these are good policies as far as they go, but they're tweaking at the edges (which is why National haven't killed them yet). They're about giving a small, electorally important group (slightly-above-average earners) a little boost, while ignoring the way their living standards are being steadily eroded.
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If Labour wants to reposition itself as a conservative party that merely reacts against National policy
**Re-**position?
[wadja mean I can't embed boldface? Programmer! ]
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
If Little, Goff and King were drawing up the list in 2008 maybe Tizard wouldn't have been on it at all
I understand the mechanism: Labour have moved to the right, basically, and don't want left-of-centre MPs.
But the voters of 2008 voted for the list as it stands, and I think that if Tizard wants to do six months as an MP, she's been elected and has every right to sit. It's ridiculous to suggest she's being dishonourable to do so.
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On Goff: As I might have said before, Goff is going to resign within a few days of losing the next election, if not on election morning. Given that, why not cut out the next eight months?
I think the main problem for Labour is that the centre-left policy core of "better managed capitalism" is failing. This article from Clare Curran kinda illustrates it - she identifies a problem but conspicuously doesn't identify what Labour would do about it.
What *would* Labour do if elected? Restore some (but not all) of National's cuts? Tweak a few programs? They'll still let a lucky few make untaxed fortunes in property speculation, enable multinationals to pay no or negligible rates of tax while shovelling our money overseas and pretend we can keep on with a fossil fuel economy forever.
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On Tizard: The people that voted for Labour were (if they could be bothered to look) aware of who was on the list and where. Effectively, they were voting for that list.
So Tizard is now an elected MP by virtue of being next on the list. Isn't it rather manipulative for parties to pressure people to resign? If they didn't want her as an MP, why was she on the list in 2008?