Posts by Tom Semmens
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The six day war. We’d only just got a TV (so my parents told me) so the impact of Israeli artillery firing I saw must have been mightily awesome for a three year old.
After that, I don’t recall much of the Wahine storm. The moon landing was memorable because all the neighbours came over to watch it on the news and our lounge was full of adults late at night.
And I remember when Norm Kirk died, because I called my Mum at our shop to tell her and she didn’t believe me.
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Simon Bridges: “We are the biggest party, and we are going to use our power to stymie the government, we will oppose, oppose and oppose, and oh my, we will use our muscle on select committies to MAKE THE GOVERNMENT FEEL THE PAIN AND STOP THEIR PROGRAM!!!!!”
Jacinda: “OK Simon…. Well, that puts us in a bind… What can we do?? Ummmm, hang on, is that YOUR signature on the The Review of Standing Orders? Just checking, Bozo.”
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I read this from “…an older male journalist who simply needs to, kind of, update or move on…”
Then I heard Golriz Ghahraman saying we could take 150 Manus island refugees comfortably in the Mangere refugee centre, maybe 250 if we fit out some rooms in bunks and I thought my goodness what a breath of fresh air it is good to have a government of younger people who busily try and puzzle out where to put everyone, rather than tired and cynical old men like Barry Soper who nowadays only see all the difficulties.
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Hard News: And so it begins ..., in reply to Bart Janssen,
If it wasn’t terrifying it would be fascinating.
I always like to remind myself that in both 1935 and 1938, despite the failure of capitalism in the Great Depression and the failure of leadership in the Great War, 40% of New Zealanders STILL voted for conservative parties – and Labour’s margin was only 5% more than the right block.
They are mostly all dead now, but go back 30-40 years and NZ was full of people contemporary to the events who were unshakably of the belief the first Labour government was a disaster for NZ.
The idea that great events and changes are carried out with huge support is a nostalgic myth. What happens is a party with a change mandate wins, and if it is successful then the new establishment that owes it's positions and status to that change largely writes the history. Whether or not you consider that version of the past to be true is often just a matter of political opinion.
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Now, I know we’ve all been chortling at Mike Hosking’s descent into self-parody with his pissed off and splenetic daily outbursts, but should we spare a thought for David Farrar, who by the look of Kiwiblog is also struggling with multiple stages of grief and denial?
I mean, it is obvious that every day he awakens, slaughters a chicken and eagerly scans it's entrails for portents of coalition collapse. He may need a comforting corner when he realises it is just denial.
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Interesting how devolved much of the overseas decision making is on pot. Perhaps we should explore regional options/control of at least some aspects of marijuana law reform in NZ?
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Hard News: All Change, in reply to simon g,
Without explanation, without context, without qualifying in any way, Stuff/Fairfax simply does a cut and paste of the most idiotic and offensive piece yet written about Jacinda Ardern.
And the Queen dinosaur of the FPP era is also getting
in on the act with lazy, old person opinions masquerading as facts in an idiotic and offensive piece ruthlessly debunked with contemptuous ease by one of the more impressive commentators "Swordfish" at the Standard.Linda Clark gave another dinosaur Barry Soper quite a serve on NatRad last week (she didn't name him, but it was obvious whose line of questions about Adern's competence to govern annoyed her - update or get out or words to that effect was her advice).
IMHO, one of the unexamined aspects of an aging population we need to guard against is an unnoticed, creeping cultural senility afflicting those western societies with too many old people hanging on for too long. The reactions of the likes of Soper and Clifton to the election of a youthful 37 year old PM is part of the evidence for that proposition.
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Hard News: All Change, in reply to andin,
Where a woman PM can cause the fucking All Blacks to lose a game!
A pox on all sports writers.And the funny thing is MSM journos still have the chutzpah to sit around and ponderously complain about fake news.
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Hard News: All Change, in reply to simon g,
If the Ardern government runs into serious trouble then National may well be able to get there in 2020 without friends
I would have thought that surely by now the idea of anyone being able to govern alone under MMP would be long laid to rest, but it seems some people like an evil clown staring back at them through the grate when they look down into the political sewer.
National was unable to build a “rule alone” majority despite the extraordinary popularity of Key, the disarray of Labour, an assiduously cultivated new constituency of white middle class greedy home owners reinvented as property speculators and right wing migrants, and an uncritical, largely fawning MSM that gave them a nine year PR honeymoon. The stars are unlikely to align as favourably again for National.
Incumbency alone is worth a few percentage points to the government while if (and this is a mighty big if) they use their power to build their constituency at the expense of National’s North Shore property speculators and authoritarian migrants (because the Key government ruled very much in the interests of only some New Zealanders I feel the new government is perfectly within it’s right to rule in favour of only those who support it as well) they’ll bring plenty of new voters to the polls in 2020.
Mind you, the dinosaur men of the MSM like Barry Soper and Leighton Smith and the plain authoritarians like Garner and Hoskings will make sure this government doesn’t get a honeymoon like Key got. HDPA is pretty pissed today in the paper and the sense of angry grievance from the self-appointed ruling class at NZ First’s dolchstosslegende will only grow. The incessant trommelfeuer of the reactionary classes in the media will go hand in hand with the MSM ’s obsession with binary politics which will manifest itself in constant attempts to find trumped up cracks in the coalition (today over the Kermadec sanctuary, tomorrow charter schools, next week the water tax, etc etc).
If the past nine years should have taught the left anything, it is the MSM is an active enemy. Part of my big if above is how exactly this new government moves to dismantle that right wing media model with a new broadcasting policy designed to increase the variety of voices heard, and allows them to go over the head of the MSM to their constituency. If this to be a real change government, it has to understand that the polarisation of New Zealand means it must use it's time in power to organise and mobilise it's supporters as much as possible.
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How his surly arrogance is ignored by his bosses at TVNZ is beyond me.
It’s not ignored. He is popular…
My spies tell me Hoskings basically calls the shots at TVNZ – threatening to simply walk out if any attempt is made to reign in his absolute editorial control of Seven Sharp. It remains to be seen if a new government may allow his bosses to grow some balls and yank his chain.
Part of David Seymour’s tantrum this morning, from Newshub’s liveblog.
I expect the entrenched right will launch an all out attack on MMP over the next three years as part of their electoral strategy. The neolib right bitterly opposed MMP because they thought it would prevent a tyranny of a majority of the governing cabinet ramming through legislation at odds with the will of the electorate. Once it dawned on them that MMP is a consensus based system designed to prevent radical change to the status quo and thus (perhaps inadvertently) entrenching the “reforms” of Douglas and Birch/Richardson, particularly when you had the two main political parties of the centre left and centre right embracing the new elite consensus, they supported it as furthering their ends. As long as MMP guaranteed the continuation of neoliberalism through “moderate” coalitions of the status quo, it retained the support of the hard right elites in business and their political lackeys.
This election changed that. National has eaten it’s allies. Joyce’s arrogant electoral strategy of aiming to wipe out the minor parties in order to rule alone is in ruins, an abject failure. Unless it can somehow create a new allied party, it will never again rule under MMP. The leadership of the new coalition is publicly saying the current version of capitalism is a failure for many people, and it has a mind to to dismantle fundamental aspects of the global capitalist project – restrictions on the free flow of labour, fair pay bargaining, dismantling the slow privatisation of education, ending Bill English’s insane and cruel public housing free market experiment.
Therefore for the right, the best opportunities for rule that will guarantee the unchallenged privileges of the neoliberal project is now a right wing plurality through a return to FPP. Therefore I expect an all out assault on the legitimacy of this government based on an attack on MMP. The biggest party has a right to govern. Coalitions of losers are undemocratic. The country is being held to ransom by one man 93% didn’t vote for. Coalition talks are for the weak, a strong government known on the night is the answer for the countries woes, etc etc etc.