Posts by Russell Brown
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Um, I don't think that would mean much if Cunliffe ends up getting shredded in the middle of a typically bloody health sector pay round. There is actually a good reason why successive Health Ministers have kept their extremities out of that particular bear trap.
You might also say it's the kind of risk Labour actually needs to take. And it's worth noting that the last two Prime Ministers both proved their mettle in the Health portfolio. If you get out of that alive (as opposed to political roadkill like Pete Hodgson) you just might be up to the big job.
Well, spank my arse and call me Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, RB, but I think both National and Labour are going to have a hell of a time *cough* managing expectations around tax cuts for slightly different reasons. Time will tell, I guess.
It's a simpler point than that. Key made a wild promise: will anyone notice?
Well, I'm equally disturbed by the way Clark seems to keep getting away with avoiding questions too (on the rare occasions they're asked). Let's not forget, a few weeks ago the new big picture was raising the school leaving age. Folks may differ, but I thought Clark was allowed to get away with clinging to her talking points like grim death.
Both Clark and Key's January speeches were fairly empty, and neither camp could provide the degree of detail that you'd expect of something called policy. But Key was annointed the winner by the nation's small club of newspaper leader writers. Go figure.
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If National do go on to win this year, I'm not that bothered. It's not like Whaleoil's going to be Prime Minister. Brash and the people around him really scared me in 2005, but I think National is fairly hemmed in by its promises in 08, and Labour made its own bed by not bringing in enough fresh blood (why Phil Twyford didn't get a good list place is beyond me) and, consequently, failing to reinvent itself after 2005.
Still ... I'll expand on this in a post (probably more than once), but the most underrated achievement of the Clark governments is the introduction of stability. The confidence that produces is an important component of enterprise: people who feel insecure don't leave their jobs to pursue the big idea.
But the freakishly soft press Key gets does trouble me. Okay, let's give him the benefit of the doubt on "I'd love to see wages drop", but surely that tax promise gets headlines. I can't help but feel that the only reason it didn't was because Michael Cullen put out a press release about it.
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He makes a series of "we will" promises - I counted more than 20. Most of them involve spending more money (that's, er, your taxes). If I had the time, I would itemise each one and "fisk" the whole damn speech, but I'd rather this was done by somebody who's actually paid to do this. None of them has. Not even close.
The parties with a chance of leading a government, and therefore of getting their legislative programmes through, should be subject to exactly this sort of scrutiny -- do the numbers add up?
One of the things that bugged me most in 2005 was National's costing of its corrections policy. They were going to abolish parole (a really crass, stupid, headline-grabbing idea) build more prisons, etc, for not that much more money. It just didn't seem to add up.
And the costing for universal DNA testing of everyone arrested (never actually clear, but they seemed to be saying $5m annually) was nonsense -- I did some numbers and it was more like $20m annually. It just wasn't serious policy.
I did call this one right though:
Certainly, the number of those already tested would climb in succeeding years, eventually to the point where only the 40,000 never-previously-arrested people every year would need to be sampled. On the other hand, the cohort from the early 90s baby boom is just now reaching crime-committing age (expect many panicky headlines about an explosion in youth crime in the next three or four years).
They also claimed they'd cover a $350m cut in education spending by cracking down on "the bureaucracy". It was complete tosh.
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And I wouldn't take a Labour Party press release about what Key might or might not have said on KiwiFM as gospel.
By the same token, I wouldn't think they'd fabricate a quote either.
And, in fact, he did say it (to Wallace, not Wammo) here, at about 3.47".
That sort of two to three hundred dollars a month that we would be delivering to them will make a real difference.
In context, he is promising this to people "around New Zealand", with specific reference to the TV makeup person (they aren't high earners) with whom he had been discussing financial pressures. He isn't talking about
So yes, he did promise between two hundred and three hundred a month in tax cuts to "lots of" ordinary income earners. That's a lot of money. Perhaps a reporter could ask him about it ...
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You could well be right - but what a truly appalling way to select the leaders of the country. "Damn the actual legislative program they'll put in place or their policy intent - let's just let them cage-fight it over pointless and irrelevant soundbites"
Which was roughly the point of Frewen's column. He's always bagging the gallery for ignoring the actual legislative process, but in the case of some reporters, I think he's right.
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If Cunliffes' handling of health so far is the best example of Vision and Talent they can come up with they're in huge trouble.
Really? I'd have thought the fact that he drew applause from both Matthew Hooton and Laila Harre on the radio this morning would suggest otherwise.
His handling of the adverse hospital outcomes report -- which could have been a bomb in the wrong hands -- was also very composed. Compared to Pete Hodgson (and that's the second time I've done that recently) he looks in quite good shape.
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FWIW I think Key meant to say 'wages gap' - it seems obvious from the contrxt, but what do I know.
Possibly. It hadn't occurred to me to make it make sense by adding a missing word; or to Key either, it seems.
it does seem like a genuine mistake
Probably. But Key could easily have said so, instead of sliming the reporter, claiming it was a joke, etc, etc. It's his response I've found dubious, especially what seemed to be an attempt to bully the paper into retracting the quote.
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Having two kids whose whole view of the world is determined by their non-standard neurophysiology, I've gained real insight into the ways we are all different, at the core.
It's challenging, and sometimes amazing. But I do know that if an already disturbed 13 year-old loses the plot, the correct response is not to beat him with a riding crop. Bob McCoskrie (who seems to be edging towards an apology) said that was what "any reasonable parent" would do. It just isn't.
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Russell Brown & others have probably never known what its like to be dealing with a child who has severe behavioural problems.
I'm normally civil to people like you, but you're testing my patience pretty sorely.
Yes, as it happens, I do know what it's like. Both my children are mildly autistic and our younger boy, who I dearly love, has been prone to occasional relatively violent, irrational meltdowns for much of his life. It is a major source of stress in our lives, but things are really getting better. They're not getting better because we hit him in some stupid act of retribution, but because we've learned ways of managing his stress and helping him mature.
Russell exactly what would you have done if your own teenage son came swinging at you with a baseball bat?
Defend myself, clearly. But would I then initiate retributive violence? No. That would be destructive and wrong. If I did that, it would be me in need of help.
You and your fundy buddies are displaying a lamentable inability to own up to the fact that you have been the enablers of a pattern of abuse. The woman you all held up as a hero is in sore need of help, and you have spent so long telling her otherwise.
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I just can't be bothered with what, to me anyway, seems to be a systematic undermining of the Labour Party, and the glorification of John Key.
Tom Frewen wrote a good column in Friday's NBR about the gallery's fixation on The Race, which creates its own narrative. The government has announced a lot of policy lately: is it any good? Who knows?
Labour is showing wear and tear all over the place, and the past week's fuss has put Clark in the position where she always looks her worst: fighting fires.
But by the same token, Key's press in particular continues to be staggeringly soft. He's routinely hailed for being basically average.
I think I'll blog this a little more on Monday.
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