Posts by izogi
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Ongoing (and not entirely inconsistent with previous occasions involving the PM), Morning Report has noted that the PM pulled out of its interview this morning, despite going ahead with interviews on TV3 (with Paul Henry) and Braakfast TV on TVNZ, despite RNZ offering to comply with the same conditions of declaring that he'd only just seen the info.
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I think it's sad that a discussion about public health has turned into personal attacks.
Also if anyone wants to talk about ideological silos talking past each other, I think it'd still be a worthwhile discussion. I'd initially understood the food/health policy thing to just be an example of a separate point, but .... well, yeah.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers, in reply to Sacha,
The people who need this govt removed the most have stopped voting.
Just continuing on this thought.
This whole thing questioning the PM's integrity is obviously important, but it's also still a sideshow. There have been any number of other comparable sideshows in recent years, none of which which have made a significant difference to polling or election outcomes. It's not too surprising, either. What's the connection between an individual's day-to-day wellbeing and the semantics of communications between Ministers and a lawyer? Sure it exists, and in the big scheme of things it's significant, but try explaining it in a way that will inspire potential voters.
The government's not likely to change until opposition advocates manage to identify and communicate with people who are allowed to vote, and successfully convince them that their own lives can be better but that they have to actually turn up and vote for it to happen. Then it has to actually deliver.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers, in reply to Sacha,
The people who need this govt removed the most have stopped voting.
Yes. Apparently.
Possibly also people who've never voted.
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[Edit: Oops. I posted to this thread accidentally when I meant that thread.]
Anyway, Mark Weldon has resigned.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers, in reply to Greville Whittle,
It seems that the PM and his mates are very good and providing solid sounding, fluffy, rehearsed answers to patsy questions. but when they are caught on the hop it's another story.
Thing is, it works. Sadly.
I'm as annoyed about this as I've been about any number of previous incidents with this government and this PM. But everyone's not me.
These types of things are significant when people are looking for excuses to vote out a government, but I don't get the feeling that people are looking for an excuse to do that right now. If anything, more people who vote are looking for excuses to keep the government than to remove it, and excuses to keep the government are exactly what they're being provided with by the PM and apologists.
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Lilith __,
I very much doubt taxing sodas (because that is the proposal) will achieve anything at all.
In the past I've struggled to understand how it'd make a significant difference, just because I figured that pricing's so intensely artificial with fizzy drinks that it'd seem so easy for many taxes to be absorbed, but lately I've been reconsidering. If many people who'd often simply buy Coke switched to Coke Zero because, when side-by-side on the shelf, the former went up by $0.50c/litre and the latter didn't, is the tax then useful for causing a behavioural change away from sugar consumption on a mass scale?
Yes, I get that ideally people wouldn't drink lots of Coke of any sort and filled themselves up with better food and drink to begin with! But let's assume that won't necessarily happen overnight because... human nature and stuff.
Also, I get that sugar is in far too many other foods where it shouldn't be, for which there aren't nearly so many immediately available substitutes that can slot into people's existing lives... which is a problem. But does reducing the masses of high sugar fizzy drinks being consumed do something useful towards addressing at least part of the problem?
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Would there be justification in suggesting that the apparent rise in ideological Think Tanks strongly correlates with the state of journalism and the ease of bypassing independent media?
Journalists go to work for Comms teams and PR firms, where the money is. Media organisations struggle to produce content. PR firms and ideological think tanks provide targeted content for media to re-print without serious scrutiny. If media doesn't reproduce it near-verbatim, they give it away for free and unmoderated social media ensures it's shared anyway. In some cases, media even collaborates with well funded ideological lobby groups to produce content, such as Fairfax joining forces with the Taxpayers' Union for that local council spending project several years ago.
I am slightly torn about funded research. There can easily be cherry picking, but sometimes the only way to be heard is to fund the research that might be needed to demonstrate a point you're trying to make. Especially if nobody else is producing the necessary research. It's the lack of rational scrutiny and discussion which often follows that can be most concerning.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to John Farrell,
That reads far too long, complicated and detailed for anyone to care about.
It needs to be clearly expressed in about 10 words. Preferably as a haiku.