Posts by Tom Semmens
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Palmer would simply never have done what Joyce and Key did, while they regarded themselves as entitled to do what they did.
I wouldn’t go and get to dewy eyed over Palmer. He was riding point for the bunch of traitorous bastards whose actions directly led to the New Zealand culture we have today, a place where the notion of the dignity of the office of the prime minister and the democratic greater good have been replaced by a man who appears on the Letterman show as a joke on us all and gets away with whining to the police because he sees himself rather than freedom of the press as the most important thing the world. If Palmer thought constitutional awareness was important, then maybe he ought to have not betrayed his entire party and the New Zealand people when he was in charge of it.
I would say the primary lesson that should be drawn from these inquiries is Murdoch, and the Murdoch business model, is unfit to be allowed to own a hand-cranked Gestetner machine let alone own/run a media empire. You can pass anti-freedom and anti-liberty laws restricting what can and can’t be reported on but that just punishes all of us in a free and open society for the sins of a single megalomaniacal Octagenarian.
The fourth estate isn’t like supermarkets chains or tyres franchises or real estate agents because it is meant to perform an important democratic function. It has another, non-profit role that the Murdoch press simple doesn’t want to know about, except when pushing the partisan political agendas of their owner.
The lesson to be learnt is that to have a free media the media must first be free. Media ownership is the key to this to my mind. Strong media ownership laws aimed at preventing monopolies and fostering a strong and critical media is way better than banning the media from reporting on this or that.
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Now the CEO of NZ ltd. has got that beastly diversion of democracy out of the way and he’s been re-annointed, he does seem rather irritated with MMP, he has come back to it a couple of times since the election. I suppose it has dawned on him that it means he hasn’t just been handed a jeweled sceptre and crown and allowed to get on with the major restructing he has in mind. They don’t do things this way in the corporate world you know!
They had a bizarre story on Stuff yesterday as well where they did a vox-pop of people moaning about MMP.
I think we need to have a referendum on the voting system and see what the people think of that German MMP rubbish!!!
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A *WTF* party…
Want The Funding?
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Here is a question. If we abolish the threshold and I set up the Vote For Me (VFM) party and somehow get .085% of the vote and end up in Parliament, will I be fully funded as a party leader or just get the dosh of a single MP?
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How did Obama do it?
He had a gazillion dollars to spend on advertising.
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The mainstream left must realise its own role in any rise of right wing populism in Britain. By abandoning much of their traditional constituency or treating them with disdain, and embracing culturally divisive politics, they have created a space and for the far right to fill.
Tagnetially relevant for this country, I think. It seems the British left is starting to get it’s head around the consequences everywhere for Labour parties when they have disconnected from their working class base, and the need for them to stop worrying about divisive identity politics and bossing everyone beneath them about from lofty heights.
Mind you, wouldn’t it be fabulous if one our newspapers partnered up with someone for a "Battle of Ideas" festival.
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National got 48% of the votes cast, but it only got got a third of the votes of those eligible to vote. This isn’t to minimise Labour’s defeat, but rather to highlight the collapse in democratic participation that has been going on for a while now and is accelerating under Key’s watch. The National party political strategy – refuse to be accountable, refuse to engage, abuse urgency to ram through changes before they can be discussed and rely on building a cult of celebrity around it’s leader – has in my opinion had a direct impact on voter turn out by rendering politics as a disembodied sideshow to brand Key. But it is more than that.
to draw a longer bow, a lot of voters increasingly see replicated in the style, language and behaviour of our elite cadre main political parties the culture of their own workplace, where processes to ensure consultation and empowerment are cynical charades of going through the motions. How easy then to transfer the sense of disempowerment felt at the hands of the authoritarian lip service of the boss class to an assumption the professionalised political class is just the same? After all, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
The rapidly falling turn out should be the main story of this election and the shocking voting statistics from Saturday should be framed and hung over every politicians and journalists desk to serve as the mummy at the feast. But of course it won’t be the biggest story, or even covered that much except as a hand wringing exercise soon forgotten. And that is because the most common affliction of any elite is the dangerous failure for it to recognise it’s own tendency to error. To address the falling turn out would be to address the errors of our elites, with all that implies.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Hebe, now I think you are being a little harsh! I don’t agree that
The old tradesmen-type Labour voters are more likely to be four-door-new- ute-driving pragmatists who vote with their wallet now.
If you actually talk to such people you discover they are just old school Labour. They support gay marriage because they think the government shouldn’t tell you what to do in your bedroom and pragmatically because whatever makes you happy is fair enough. But they opposed the smacking legislation for the same reason – the government shouldn’t be telling you what to do in your own home and personal life.
But I agree with the broad thrust of what you are saying. Socialism has always to me been a liberating philosophy, not a liberal one. Socialism frees you from want and – as importantly – is an ethical antidote to reactionary governments who adopt the moral tone of the capitalist ruling class in their dealing with the vulnerable. It is time socialism reclaimed the language around choice and freedom. And Labour isn’t going to do that when the party is currently occupied by a hostile liberal philosophy that is just as interested as the right in imposing their own tone of morality on the poor.
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I think those people going on about Labour’s list being old and tired are mistaken
I think it also about the tiredness of Labour's political method. National didn't renew after 2002, but they parachute in a new leader and they did clear out the deadwood on their 2005 list. Combined, that gave then the look and feel of a new direction in method and direction.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Paul Williams,
I read reports of National’s party vote being up in the 80% range in some provincial seats. How can you connect with your policies when your brand has been that thoroughly trashed?
You know what? Just for once I want Labour to be on the side of the majority on a social issue. At the moment, the party has got itself into an almost masochistic pride in kicking against the majority. Labour used identity politics to mobilise an activist base to replace the one it wiped out with Rogernomics, but those are not made of the same stern stuff as the previous generation of tribal activisits who either knew tpoverty or came from families that had. National still has those true believers, and Labour now has to get it's ones back.