Posts by Tom Semmens
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Its funny - I didn't see journalists bending over backwards to make excuses for Mike Williams when he got confused over the difference between a loan and a donation.
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I would love to see some proper research done on attitudes to race in NZer's that have moved to Aussie. Not just surveys that ask people if the uppity Maori's getting everything is the reason they moved, but rather something a bit more nuanced about racial attitudes and migration from NZ.
It’s widely believed the Internet is white and speaks English, and to be born white in the first world is commonly (implicitly or explicitly) regarded to mean you have lucked into the premier class of human beings on the planet. Is it possible a lot of white migration to Aussie is partly because the migrants want to live somewhere that affirms their sense of being members of the global ruling empire rather than challenges them to come down a peg and hob nob with the prolitariat of other races?
I don't think it is so much racism as a sense of cultural superiority associated with but not always connected to race, the same sort of cultural zeitgeist that led the Romans to build little imitations of their culture - Colosseums, baths, forums etc -wherever they went.
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Its good to see that in an age where journalists seem to crave power without responsibility, someone has the courage to buck the trend.
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"...Gareth
Working for Families has had that effect though..."
This is the great right wing fraud, the foundation of sand that the nonsense economics of the neo-liberal right are built on. You know what WFF has actually done? It hasn't put economically virtuous, upwardly mobile perfectly rational people into a welfare trap. Whats its done is it has allowed heaps of low to middle income working New Zealanders to start a family.Most people don't want to be CEO. They want job security, enough money to get married and to have some kids in a house they will eventually own - and to squirrel away a bit for a rainy day/reward for their labours.
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I don't think Key is particularly "loathed" by the left. Brash was loathed, because it was recognised he was a conviction politician, a dangerously narrow neo-liberal technocrat and he was completely out of touch with the realities of a modern, inclusive, multi-cultural democracy. Key IMHO is largely seen as a stuffed shirt, a right wing David Lange without the warmth or humour in the job primarily not to lose the next election. No one actually knows what he stands for, except to cover the cracks between the old guard Auckland hard-right MP's and Bill English's country Tories. If National does win this election and it turns out he is a sith lord of the hard right then the National government will be destroyed in 2011. You cannot lie your way to power. If it turns out he stands for nothing, then he'll suffer Lange's fate - chewed up and spat out as the factions fight it out for the soul of the party.
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I'm pretty sure the reason Owen Glenn is so loathed by the Kiwiblog right is that they see him as a class traitor.
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This whole business about Owen Glenn will be now be endlessly commented on by various journalists interviewing each other, as part of the pre-determined Fin de siècle media narrative for the government. That's the hardest bit for me to swallow. Every tiny molehill is going to be relentlessly turned into a mountain by the same people who will then without a hint of irony sanctimoniously lecture Labour about its need to be less accident-prone.
As a party worker, I find this so incredibly frustrating. We've got a mini baby boom going on that tells me more people than ever are feeling prosperous enough to start a family, the economy has had its best growth since the 1950's, unemployment is practically non-existent, the minimum wage and WFF has measurably helped lower income New Zealanders, John Key has been caught telling the Keri Keri District Business Association he'd love to drive down wages and all the plonkers in the media want to talk about is middle class tax cuts, smacking and non-existent "scandals".
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dc_red:
You mean SIR Michael Fay.
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"... and gives the impression that honours can be bought by "rich pricks" if they stump up!!"
I always thought that WAS a reason why we have a honours system - a vapourware way of rewarding people who stump up with real $$$. -
I HAVE been to haka.co.nz to check up on the ELV's, but I obstinately refuse to watch any winter code on telly before my birthday (which is in the first week of March).
It is still warm, and evenings long, outside.