Posts by Bart Janssen
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Do we have the demographics on the voter turnout?
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Tell me how or why does someone vote person Labour and Party National?
The people who need to be asked are those that live in Roskill and New Lynn.
But Labour need to both ask and listen. The answer may not be pleasant but it is important if Labour want to be anything other than just another minor party.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
couldn’t carry the party vote in their own patches
This!
Seriously the Labour party need to get out on the streets and go door knocking right now and ASK and LISTEN. They need to know what message people were giving when they voted for Goff but against Labour.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to mark taslov,
the CGT was either too big a pill to swallow or it wasn’t fully understood.
I don't think it's that simple. Yeah there will be a small number of people who actually would have lost significant wealth to the CGT but far far fewer than the number of voters who turned away from Labour this year again. The farmers may well have uniformly opposed the CGT for purely financial reasons but again it's a lower number than explains the massive failure in the Labour vote.
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Hard News: Decision 2014: Where to watch…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’m sure the “blame the media” meme is going to be very tempting for large sections of the left
Agreed. There is an element of frustration in that. But like it or not the media reflected the actual voters. As amazed as some of us were that the media did not attack JK for his deceptions, they essentially replicated what the voters on the night thought as well.
This Labour party failed. It will take some time to understand entirely why but arguing anything other than they failed is pointless and a waste of energy.
For me there are a couple of key issues they disappointed me with:
The relationship with The Greens was toxic to Labour, too many people I spoke with were simply afraid to vote Labour. Rightly or wrongly they perceived The Greens as dangerous to NZs economy. Somehow Labour has to sort out an environmental policy that stands alone independent of The Greens so that those voters can feel they can vote for the environment by voting Labour without the negative perceptions around The Greens.
The parliamentary team in Labour is hopeless and that needs to change. Too often there were different and irrelevant messages coming from MPs. Too often the spokesperson had no ready answer. They were bad and it showed. Too often it was Julie Anne Genter's transport policy that made sense and too often Russel Norman said it better than any Labour MP. It left a confusion in many people as to what Labour was doing in parliament, what issues were they fighting for, what mattered?
They need to get out and understand what people in my electorate (Roskill) were actually trying to say when they voted for Goff but against Labour. There is a message there that Cunliffe and the party leadership is not hearing.
They failed utterly to attack the policies of National, where were the messages reminding people that this National government sold our assets, and asking what will be sold next, ACC, Pharmac? Whoever came up with the mild and meek "vote positive" failed and they need to be sent to the back of the class.
And yeah a lot of the above is all about perception, you can argue blind that I'm actually wrong about those issues but the problem is people perceived something to be wrong about Labour. Ignore that perception again and Labour become just another minor party again - like it is for the next three years.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to mark taslov,
And sorry Bart
No worries Mark. I was AFK being a yuppie (more correctly a dink since I can no longer be called young) yesterday after voting, so it all went over my head :).
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Sacha,
Character counts.
Yeah character and knowledge combined are needed.
They don't need to be in the same person but the person making the call needs to be able to ask and accept help when they lack the knowledge themselves, that sounds easy but it is incredibly hard to do consistently.
Character is hard as well - to step outside your own personal ideology and truly represent the wishes and needs of everyone (not just the majority).
Somehow I find it difficult to believe a simple popularity contest such as we currently run is up to the task of finding such people.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Chris Waugh,
some group in the US
Yeah both Google and twitter have shown they can follow flu outbreaks faster than the CDC by tracking common phrases associated with flu e.g. I feel like death warmed up and all my joints ache but I'm still going to work to spread my disease to all my colleagues while proving how staunch I am*
*not a real example
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Hard News: A call from Curia, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
enlightened
Hey! Who are you calling enlightened?
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Surely resistance to what is morally wrong can never be futile.
No, of course not.
But the technology is not at fault here. Consider the ability to collect and process large amounts of data. The technology exists and some of its uses are abhorent but the same technology is being used to capture and analyse epidemiological data. And at a density and depth never before possible. We've gone from guessing that cholera has something to do with one well in London to being able to identify that some diseases have genetic origins, that some people seem to be largely immune to cancer, that some drugs cause heart attacks when they are meant to cure. None of that and none of the things to come in epidemiology and genetics would be possible without the ability to collect and process staggeringly huge amounts of data.
Where we need wise and responsible government is to define when a technology should be used to benefit our society. That is not a simple task, it requires serious commited people with access to expert knowledge. People who know when to make a decision and when the decision needs to be canvassed wider. We need a better class of politician. Because the technology is here and it can do tremendous harm but it can also do tremendous good.