Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Cecelia,
Having genuine character is important because a large chunk of the electorate rely on an ‘intuitive feel’ of politicians, rather than an intricate grasp of the policy detail.
Priceless
Perhaps because they relied on the MSM for the information on which to base their decisions.
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Russell Brown,
And Guyon Espiner has responded to the criticism.
It's a reasonable expectation then that New Zealanders get a sense of how a leader lives their own life.
Which is a fair point. Except that for previous leaders there was first a pretty thorough examination of their political positions and policies BEFORE we "needed" to know about how they led their personal lives. In this case 3rd degree appeared to have skipped straight to the, IMO, puff piece.
Quite some distance from examining the cadidate and giving him the 3rd degree.
I'd also note the comment upthread that Jones visited the marae for the opening photo op and left when the actual business was being done, a detail not shown on 3rd degree.
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Martin Brown,
When you’re drunk and tired, you make simple mistakes like that. Sheesh.
Which is fine if you have my job and mistakes are (usually) just lost time and recoverable.
But when you have the responsibility of representing many of the people in the country I prefer to see people who have developed habits that really limit the number of such mistakes. I haven't seen such an indication from Jones.
But sure it's a mistake and folks can learn from mistakes and maybe he has ... now his task is to demonstrate that.
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Russell Brown,
regime change was the price of Republican support
Be careful what you wish for.
I think that has to be the major issue here. It's easy to identify Assad as "bad". It's much less easy to identify who is "good". And an order of magnitude more difficult to ensure that the "good" gain power.
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Southerly: A Blog on Behalf of an…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
as soon as (insert some interest group here) started saying they should have a jury too because…
And you chose to use the most offensive tone possible to make your point.
And if you'd actually read what was written instead of what you wanted to argue against you would have seen people suggesting that some groups might have something of value to conbtribute to the jury beyond their age.
A discussion about the value of selecting juries on the basis of anything other than age should have been possible without resorting to an example certain to infuriate many of the audience here. For you to pretend innocence of that intent now is disingenuous at best.
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Tom Beard,
weird that middle-class intellectuals (academics and teachers and public servants and socially liberal professionals) aren’t considered part of Labour’s core voting base?
+1
It's sure as hell certain National won't represent my values or interests.
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Tim Darlington,
Jones’ use of a ministerial credit card to pay for porn in 2010.
Even if we were to grant him that one (in a fit of wild generosity, perhaps)
I honestly don't give a rats arse about his watching of pron. What I care about was his mind-numbing stupidity to do it on a work credit card which demostrated such a lack of basic common sense that I wouldn't want him anywhere near any kind of responsibility.
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an obligation to offer up their private lives
Because filming the families of politicians is challenging journalism requiring the best and brightest our media has to bring to bear on what is an issue of national importance, or they could send Espiner and Garner.
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Stephen R,
Yeah. I’d agree with that. My current best guess is that the regime ordered it, with second place coming in to “the army did it without telling the political leaders”.
I'd place these two in the opposite order but both well ahead of any other explanations.
There have been incidents in the past where it's appeared as though the military has taken matters into their own hands independent of Assad, opening fire on protestors etc. That may just be plausible deniability at work but it does seem as though the military in Syria are a strong political entity.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Partners in Vacancy, in reply to Russell Brown,
But more importantly: Lorde’s ‘Royals’ has now moved into the US Top 10.
Oresome!
I so hope she can cope with the life she is now enetering.