Posts by Tom Semmens
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I find it extremely depressing how many ostensibly serious news sites are aping the "You won't believe what happens when..." relentless click bait trivia approach of Buzzfeed.
This is just how the internet rolls.
It doesn't mean that serious news doesn't get a look in - take a look at one site that understands the internet like the female orientated jezebel.com, which can weave having a "Cat Loses Valiant Battle Against Slice of Ham" video together with a serious story "Can I be friends with my rapist?"
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I'm really not sure what it is Brewer, Wood, Quax, etc., want for this city.
Tauranga, but with mega traffic jams.
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But it seems to me that the capital infrastructure for Auckland’s million-and-growing can’t all be funded out of rising property taxes. Anyone got any ideas?
If the council came up with an elegant, easy to administer, and fair money making scheme that would raise gazillions, Bill English would simply change the law to stop them doing it.
The Wellington based political class is petrified of Auckland. They are determined to make sure the last ace they have - keeping the legislative boot firmly on the Auckland council's revenue gathering windpipe - is used as often as they can.
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I hear Bernard Orsman has never gotten over being snubbed over some petty matter or another several years ago, and he has a personal vendetta against Len Brown.
In addition, Len Brown isn’t from the Auckland oligarchy, so everyday he is mayor he is the symbol mocks the pretensions of the born the rule Auckland elite that the Herald considers itself to be the mouthpiece of. So you are going to get ongoing shroud waving, hyper critical reporting and over blown half truths until the “right” person is elected mayor. At which point, they’ll stop reporting on anything bad at all.
Think “Democracy under attack” when it was Helen Clark, and hardly a peep (except hagiographies) about John Key and his spy laws.
People forget that for their rates 1.3 million people get their roads fixed, the rubbish collected, the fly-tippers hunted down, the noisy parties shut down, the stormwater maintained, every food outlet rated, the libraries in every suburb, properties inspected, pests and environmental emergencies addressed, pools, local parks and playing fields kept looking beautiful, a whole network of regional parks that are jewels, and on top of that, a whole host of council run community events. Not bad for four-five thousand a year.
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Hard News: Dotcom: Further news of the unlikely, in reply to TracyMac,
I loathe Key, but I think this buffoon anywhere near political power will be worse.
firstly, Scott Hamilton had something interesting to say about this attitude back in May, I commend his comparison of Olaf Nelson with Kim Dotcom as thought provoking reading. He summarises:
Olaf Nelson and Kim Dotcom were both avaricious, essentially apolitical businessmen who were radicalised after being persecuted by a New Zealand state acting on behalf of a distant superpower. A cashed-up, radicalised capitalist is a dangerous enemy, especially when he has a talent for building alliances and making propaganda.
is a pretty good summation to me of Dotcom’s motivations.
Secondly, it seems to me you are suggesting that somehow or another the New Zealand political establishment is deserving of your support. I think our entire New Zealand establishment is pretty much rotten to the core and no longer fit for purpose in a modern state.
So what is Kim Dotcom is a “bad man” who wants to take the whole rotten establishment down to hell him. Good job. They richly deserve each other.
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Internet Mana should be asking themselves whether they’re a serious political party that wants to work in the public interest
They want to see the back of John Key, that is an objective in the public interest.
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Key doesn’t even pretend terribly hard, let’s be honest
I had a discussion with my flatmate about this last night, I asked him why it is Key’s credibility hasn’t been shredded long ago. He observed that Key doesn’t give shit if you believe him or not, and in the modern workplace everyone is completely used to being bullshitted by people who don’t give a shit if you believe them or not. For example, everyone in the room knows in their heart the CEO and HR manager are lying through their teeth when they say the restructure isn’t about headcount and staff feedback is always important, but the CEO and HR manager don’t give a shit if you know they are lying or not. so Key is simply behaving in a way that everyone’s real-life experience of modern organisational management has led them to expect anyway.
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There is another possibility worth considering. Everytime - without fail - the viel of secrecy is pulled aside and the workings of our security agencies are exposed they are revealed to be operating with an insouciant carte blanche in relation to what the public might think or what the law might say. It seems to me at least a possibility that we have things around the wrong way. Maybe our security agencies operate as a "deep state" that does as it pleases in a supra-alliance with the other five eyes spying agencies behind a cloak of near total secrecy, and the pollies frantically try to conceal this fact by pretending they are in charge?
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Labour's problems are twofold.
Firstly, it is (like all similar social-democratic parties that sold their souls to the dead end of third way politics) in an existential crisis as what it actually primarily stands for. At the moment, it is a comfy establishment party of middle class urban liberal identity politics, concerned largely with social issues and happy with just tweaking neo-liberalism. But it's "brand", and how it likes to see itself, is as socialist party of it's halcyon days - a party of the working class, a radical change agent and a champion of the poor. Which it most certainly is not. The party it likes to imagine itself to be is lean and driven, the party it actually is is plump and flaccid. IMHO Labour desperately needs to work out who the hell they are. Once you all know who you are, you all don't need to be told what you want. And then you can go out and get it, boldly and without timidity.
Secondly, Labour's problem isn't renewal - it is the PERCEPTION of renewal. National came in with a pile of Shipley era hangovers. Bill English, for Gods sake! But it created a perception of renewal. Labour's problem is it has a high profile coterie of other-generation has-beens and dinosaurs in safe electoral seats who dominate the public perception of the party. The symbolism of getting rid of, say, Mallard, Goff, King and Dyson is a whole lot more than the sum of four seats they occupy.
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An extraordinary editorial in today’s Herald – a master class of how to wrap a retraction in bluster and bad journalism in pious self-righteousness.
And this from a paper that sees no conflict in one of it's senior reporters, anonymous editorial writers and columnists writing and publishing a breathless hagiography of the PM three months out from a general election.