Posts by Tom Semmens
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Aaron Cruden was really good. He is a first five eight.
Just saying.
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"Paint me ignorant, but what is the point of defacing the ballot?
It doesn't get counted and just adds to the cost of the operation, so why?"I have to agree with this....
Because, as Denis Welch has so eloquently put it, the question is “…so loaded, so freighted, such an insult to the intelligence, that to address it at all is to allow oneself to be co-opted into a political charade…”
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I don't believe one should dignify this exercise with a formal vote.
Which is my response to this whole nonsense so far.
However, I have voted religiously in everything since I was eighteen. That is because I believe in participating in civil affairs, even if just by reading the candidate blurb and voting. Every fibre in my being revolts at the idea of just not voting.
If it can be confirmed that the number of spoilt ballots is counted and released, I would do that instead.
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Wow, it is good to be reminded occassionally of the small minded ennui and failure of imagination that seems to have Auckland's chattering classes totally by the balls these days.
The Mallard proposal may or may not been a good idea. Personally, I was in favour of it because every now and again it is nice to celebrate our achievements with a bit of monumental architecture. And a properly planned waterfront stadium would have provided just that. A home for professional sports and conferences, big concerts (why not the BDO?) and cruise ships.
But that is bye the bye. The whole thing got shot down by the scorn of a constant Greek chorus who mistake a permanent state of cynicism with sophistication.
Auckland has a vested-interest knocking machine that trying to argue against is akin to arguing with a brass band. Just when you've dealt with Cassandra-like blasts from the Newmarket Business Association's trumpet the trombone of the intellectual snobs who can't stand the idea of the peasants enjoying a game of rugby starts up.
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What laws were they playing under on Saturday? I got the impression the All Blacks didn't adjust to playing a Northern Hemisphere team familiar with the tactics required by their set of rules.
The All Blacks are crippled with injuries, by my rough count ten first picks were not available. There was no leadership and lets face it, a player like Donald is little more than average player who main selection criteria is he the only other specialist first five in the entire professional game in this country. He wouldn't even get a look in better times.
So where is the new talent? Where is our much vaunted "depth"? For example, from Mourie through Jones to Kronfeld and onto McCaw there has always been a great number seven waiting his chance. The All Blacks are increasingly become a house of cards, remove one or two cards and the whole edifice collapses. They are increasingly resembling the Black Caps, where the selectors endless rotate journeymen in the desperate hope one might strike a bit of form on the day and a couple of class players allow them a semblance of respectability.
Everywhere in the world rugby is on a roll. Everywhere except here. Rugby in New Zealand is in crisis. It is the typical New Zealand disease - a featherbedding complacent monopoly in denial with no answers except to blame the customers leading to more and more disinterested disgruntled and just plain bored fans. In the past, the provincial championship & the Ranfurly shield was the breeding ground for great All Blacks who by the time they made their debuts in the black jersey had already been truly tested.
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but, seriously, am I the only person who though there was an element of egregious sexing up going on there?
Well that is true. But if that meme had of continued with a barn-storming National candidate then a Labour win by less than, ohh, say 4000 votes would have had all the talking heads proclaiming Labour was out for the count.
Melissa Lee needed to be blooded as an electorate candidate during a general election campaign before being pitched in the spotlight of the biggest political circus in town. It was just awful how her own party threw her to the wolves.
I also heard Matthew Hooten as late as last week saying the SuperCity is a non-issue to Aucklanders. I think this is plain wrong. I am sure the SuperCity kept at least some National voters at home as a protest. Hooten and the rest of the Wellywooders seem to have a very low opinion of the intelligence of Aucklanders, and they haven't grasped that Aucklanders are quite capable of wanting a SuperCity whilst at the same time recognising a naked power grab by an ACT Party minister with no mandate when they see it.
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One of National's big mistakes was to allow an early win to its online spin meister DPF to inflate expectations. The early media meme was the possibility of an upset to National in Helen Clark's old seat. From then on, anything less than a moderate loss was going to be portrayed by the media as a disaster.
Mt. Albert for Labour was a "must win," while for National is was a "nice to have." Both sides resourced their campaign accordingly. Having said that, Labour ran a faultless campaign with a candidate who kept his ego in check and mouth moving only when relentlessly on message. Making no mistakes is actually harder than than it seems, just ask Melissa Lee.
Despite people saying Russel Norman was the best candidate, David Shearer will be an excellent electorate MP. He knows how to use the system, knows how to get the bits and bobs trivia that interest constituents done and he won't be an absentee MP.
I woukldn't write off Melissa Lee. She was John Key's hand picked candidate who was woefully unready for the political dogfight she was tossed into. Once she made her early stuff-ups she was left to hang out to dry by a party leadership which was disgracefully disloyal to her. She was humiliated and yet by the end appears to have learnt to be humble. She will have learnt a lot. If she has the thickness of skin all successful politicians need she may be back for another go somewhere else.
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Umm, George Darroch is a Green Party activist.
So that explains his occassional dreary and humourless political correctness.
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Some quality spinning from the Nats on this
I don't think it was a brilliantly thought through strategy, more a reaction from people whose instinctive misogyny wanted to blame the victim but whose shit-house rat cunning told them that would be a very, very bad idea.
So they choose the next best target, the victim's messenger.
I suppose the fact that so many people called them on this bizarre benavioural response and that most of the dinosaurs of the hard right are now sufficiently aware that victim blaming is no longer acceptable is two positives we can take out of this whole affair.
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Ali Wiolliams was on the telly the other week and he said the "X" was to open the shoulders slightly to help with movement, or something like that.