Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Most Discursive Website, in reply to Gareth Ward,
On the website itself or tracked more broadly across all boards, blogs etc?
The latter. There are more people who discuss online in general than at any other site.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
Yeah, I should have said “perceived as”. I’m sort of boggled by how much the general perception of the Greens has changed over the years, while they’ve basically, in terms of essentials if not presentation, stayed exactly the same.
Foucault noted the same phenomena regarding other groups in society, for example, mentally ill people. They stayed the same but perceptions changed from criminals, to circus freaks to patients. Discourse is all.
Aw, c'mon. The Greens have done a lot to reshape their own image and that started when they chose Metiria as co-leader. Their election broadcasts were, as I noted at the time, Obama-esque in their language. They've played down cannabis reform and consciously made themselves appear less radical and less left-wing.
None of which I have a problem with, but the shift in perception didn't just happen.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I think they’re more “stymied” by the bizarre misapprehension that they can go out and trash the Greens and Maori Party then expect them to come running, tails a wagging, whenever they snap their fingers.
Which is the thing to say, and has been the thing to say for simply ages, but can you actually point to any recent example of the Labour leadership “trashing” the Greens and the Maori Party, over and above the normal electoral contest? If the MP was “trashed” by anyone, it was its own electorate voters.
Whatever else Labour is, it seems to be a magnet for dubious received wisdom.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Emma Hart,
He’d have got clean away with that too, IMO, provided his secretary was a woman.
When you considered the exaggerated outrage over the "privacy invasion" that occurred when he invited 40 journalists over and behaved like no one was listening, yup. It would probably trigger a wave of sympathy.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to James Littlewood*,
By withdrawing, and doing so in a partisan way, Parker undid 6 months campaign work by reverting too soon to politics of personality.
Not sure I buy that either.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
It’s a great sound bite for Cunliffe to be promising to re-nationalise on Q&A, but I think he’s smart enough to know that’s all it is.
I think he rather surprised himself when that came out of his mouth.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Sacha,
However that policy *is* going for the self-employed who Trotter stereotypes as meathead tradies.
Which really, really misses the point. Waitakere Man has a good little plumbing business and fancies a house at Pauanui.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Bradcar,
I guess that’s right (excuse a pun) and we all know the stuff they’ve been saying about Cunliffe for years.
On the other hand, it doesn't speak well of Cunliffe's ability to unite and lead that he seems to alienate so many of his colleagues. And I don't think it's about policy either.
But these things do pass. English was bitching to journalists (remarkably, even to me) about Key even after Key was appointed. I recall predicting Blair vs Brown-style strife, but even though English often makes little jokes about their respective roles, they give the appearance of working together, perhaps because English is simply left to get on with his rather difficult job.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Deborah,
Stewart, Waitakere man is Chris Trotter’s idealisation of what Labour ought to be about – working class men in caps who don’t have any truck with women or gays or identity politics of any sort.
Which is precisely the kind of stupid internal battle for "the Left" that no one else cares about and that Labour needs to leave behind.
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is right where the Greens have cut into “Labour’s” vote*.
There's another thing, though -- and perhaps it was most pronounced in Auckland. The Greens' little hint of laissez-faire was enough to pull over voters who might actually have gone to National. I know of several people in Auckland Central who voted Green + Kaye.
And the Greens' small-business tax policy was both good policy (it's essentially what the Society of Chartered Accountants recommended) and good politics. It promised to make it easier for small businesspeople to pay their taxes. That's actually quite a compelling thing to say to those people. And it's something they're not presently prepared to believe of Labour.