Posts by Tom Semmens
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
This seems to me to be the perfect coming together of two distinct attitudes that have characterised this government from day one. First, an aggressively, retroactive, 19th century view of the environment, where a clean environment is seen as a luxury we cannot afford, and the value “locked up” in namby-pamby conservation measures is to released, exploited and squeezed dry for economic gain, even where that gain might come at the cost of fiflthy rivers, drained and destroyed wetlands and be of the crudest kind to the fewest people and at the greatest environmental cost. Thank Christ we never struck oil under this lot. The second is class-based cronyism, hidden behind a cavalier disregard for the law and US Republican style attack on over-sight agencies. The Key government, like the Bolger/Shipley one, is leaving behind a massive social and democratic deficit of under-funded and under-resourced public sector agencies. This government is increasingly emboldened by having a supine and superficial media that largely parrots the government line. I shudder to think what damage Shipley could have done with a corporate media as captured by pro-government plutocrats as it is now; while actual, third world style corruption, the corruption that festers in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia where the media is cowed and pro-government, is probably now already upon us.
-
Interesting stuff Tom, though I’m mildly disappointed to find no mention of Flaxmere
Flaxmere never existed. It’s been erased and quietly forgotten, like a third world shanty town that offended the sensibilities of the local nobs who peddle Hawkes Bay to the like minded for it’s “lifestyle”. Originally built on “useless” river shingles, Flaxmere is being slowly bulldozed to make way for vineyards and erased from the lexicon. “There is no third world poverty in Hawkes Bay, oh and have you seen Sir Paul Holmes house?” It s called modern New Zealand, which scarily resembles 19th century Britain.
Amalgamation will only happen when the locals are allowed to come up with a plan that assuages the multi-generational distrust between the two cities. My view is a united council with the same number of councillors as now and with a 30 year gerrymander to ensure both the old cities have an equal number of councillors would be a start. Then in thrity years, review the whole thing.
-
Polity: Unity, success: Chicken, egg?, in reply to tony j ricketts,
one thing that troubled me was his use of the Napier/Hastings merger issue, where the more numerous and wealthier Napier doesn’t want a bar of merging with the less numerous and poorer Hastings.
Hastings district has a bigger population than Napier and includes posh Havelock North and much of the local squatocracy in it’s ranks. Animosity between Napierand Hastings goes back a long way, made worse by Labour voting Napier, which was near bankruptcy after inadequate government support for it’s rebuild post the 1931 earthquake from the conservative government of the time (hey Christchurch!) having it’s debts written off by the 1935 Labour government while conservative voting Hatings did not. Then when the Napier hospital was closed Hastings did a nice little dolchstoßlegende and supported the governments consolidation to their ugly little shithole in Hastings.
The whole amalgamation issue though is not just muddied by historic grievances. The long and deep and justified mistrust by Napier of Hastings has been aggravated by the outrageous behaviour of Hasting mayor Lawrence Yule, who clearly sees relatively debt free Napier as the answer to Hasting’s fat debt laden ass. Yule’s approach all along has been to try and use this governments draconian and anti-democratic local government amalgamation legislation to ram through a forced merger. For many Napier residents with long memories (and believe me, we have long memories down there) this is just another short termist dolchstoßlegende from a desperate mayor and debt laden council. Personally, I am going to vote against the local government equivalent of being tied to a corpse and thrown into Hawkes Bay.
-
That speaks to the very different nature of the core Green voter who, more than any other, is characterised by a deep ethical, philosophical and political commitment
Such an airy dismissal for the poor old lifetime members of Labour and National, with their photos of past leaders on the wall, who have crewed cake stalls and handed out leaflets for 50-60-70 years!! Presumably they, like everyone else outside the enlightened Ba’ku of the Green party, are merely brutes whose anachronistic thinking hasn’t left the steam age?
This is the sort of self-reverential tosh that Greens like to imagine about themselves, but it is important self-reverential tosh because it points to a key reason they will never get more than 10% of the vote – they all to often come across to most voters as complete toss-pots.
-
Quite excited about New York based internet stars Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox coming our way in August. A revolving ensemble of 50 musicians and singers doing re-arrangements of modern pop songs as old school genres, of a quality and sass you just never get to see in this country. viz:
or here is Haley Reinhart (one time third place getter on American Idol, the mind boggles given the talentless dross we got here) fantastic cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”.
Bit of thread hijack, but they are a live act and they'll be in NZ.
-
The Glucina attack piece on Amanda Bailey and now the obvious political payback on Campbell live. The Plutocrats must be confident, they are giving up even pretending.
-
Hard News: Mediaworks: The only horizon…, in reply to Sacha,
Personally, I think the dog's breakfast that is RNZ afternoons could do with Campbell. Simon Mercep is OK, but to me his style is more after 10pm.
-
Kathryn Ryan might be worried....
-
If anyone was still in any doubt that our psychoactive drug laws passed and lauded as “world leading” are nothing but a giant con job – a designed-to-fail law that is a smokescreen behind which a cynical government with no intention of ever allowing anything to become legal can hide – then surely the triumphalism and contempt which Peter Dunne didn’t even bother to hide when discussing Matt Bowden’s bankruptcy has removed that doubt.
I have always maintained this new law was absurd and designed to make it easier to ban, not legalise. Bowden’s demise is the final nail in the coffin of the hope of those who sincerely engaged and believed the government. It was nothing but a confidence trick all along.
After watching Dunne’s pleasure in putting out of business someone who he didn’t like I felt queasy and slightly ill. Whether or not you approve of Bowden’s business practices a businessman who embarks on a venture based on a belief the government believes in the rule of law and it’s own legislation who is then bankrupted at least partially by a government that lied all along about it’s intentions should alarm us all.
-
Audrey Young somehow manages to repeat the phrase five times in today’s Herald.
This is an illustration of Keith’s point that objective reporting is never objective. There is no such thing in not taking a position, because not taking a position is a position all of its own. Journalists like Young and O’Brien take sides everyday, because their ambient values align completely with the neoliberal ruling project. They are just too stupid to understand their role as a cog in the machinery of neoliberal propaganda.
There was woman on Mora’s show yesterday saying how she felt sorry for Labour, because Little couldn’t get any ’cut through” on issues important for the left. When Tova O’Brien makes it her job to repeat a government’s childish attack line rather than the substance of a speech, or Mike Hosking’s bullies Amanda Bailey, or everytime TVNZ leads with a story about the royal family instead of unemployment – these are positions, and they are positions designed to reinforce a right wing hegemony.
At the end of the day, journalism in this country is dead. Not under threat, or forced into isolated pockets, but dead. Gone. A cursory examination of the 6pm news on any night will tell you that. As a left winger, I kinda welcome the death of journalism, because with it goes the myth of press freedom and the need to maintain the fiction of a free, fair or balanced media. The other side controls the news. Accept it. Celebrate it. And then realise that means that when or if the left returns to power it wil have carte-blanche to return the favour, in spades.