Posts by Peter Cox
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader,
Shearer did have some strong moments in that interview though. The fumbling felt like it was around trying to connect his overseas work with domestic issues: 'helping a palestinian through an Israeli checkpoint'? So he's good at helping the 'little guy'. Well, that's nice and all, but it's not really comparable.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader,
Or, wild thought, they could take a stand on what it is they’re about, and sell that, and not make it about personalities at all.
I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. But I think National have proven that you can be extremely popular without the former, as long as you have the latter.
I guess we can probably agree to disagree, but I think the talk of collectives is nice and all in theory, but evidence suggests you're gonna need a strong leadership for people to unite behind.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader,
Personally, I suspect that it comes down to the fact that Shearer comes with an appealing, interesting narrative, where-as Cunliffe doesn’t. A lot of John Key’s appeal is simply based on his story as a came from nothing, high finance mojo. People simply trust him to know what’s going on. They don’t know or care about the details, by and large the average voter has no clue what JK has or hasn’t done re: the financial crises. It’s all just mythologising the leader. They feel safe he’s handling it all on their behalf. All JK has to do is not put his foot in it, and come across as a smarmy arrogant git (okay, well are least not too much), or have an affair with his secretary or something.
You can talk credentials and experience, but that was Goff and the middle didn’t care.
Labour have got two ways to combat that: their own leader with a strong competing mythology, or go negative and try to convince everyone JK is a rich prick. The last three years have been the latter, and it’s not working.
imho.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit,
Caddick remarks on how everyone he talked to was conscious of wanting to do justice to the taxpayer’s investment. Caddick gives the impression he encountered the opposite of a culture of entitlement.
It’s exactly the same at the film and television end. It feels like we’re suddenly all getting painted greedy hollywood wannabes who don’t appreciate what we’ve got, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Problem is attacking art-types is always a good sport for anyone who wants to feel like they’re sticking it to those scumbag elites for the sake of the common man (and nanas, I guess). Not very often you get pompous elitists who think they’re better than everyone else AND welfare bludgers at the same time. Sweet target.
Inspite of some recent disagreement with Chris Trotter, he proves he’s actually a pretty good dude on occasion too with this:
Like so many other populations descended from pioneering stock, New Zealanders place a much higher value on practical achievement than they do on artistic talent or intellectual accomplishment. Artists and intellectuals tend to make most Kiwis nervous…
By contrast, great intellectual acuity and creative power are innate qualities. No amount of hard work can increase our native stock of intelligence and creativity (although it will certainly sharpen the skills we do possess). It’s an inconvenient truth which gives the lie to, and undermines, New Zealanders’ cherished egalitarian faith. That’s why so many Kiwis are suspicious of individuals with too much talent. It smacks of unfairness, privilege and elitism. Such people are not to be trusted.
Don’t completely agree about the innate part, but I suspect most people think that’s the case, so he makes the point pretty well about where the attitude comes from.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit,
Yeah, maybe. That kind of talk just immediately gets my back up.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit,
Maybe I’m being unfair but that thing kinda reads to me like John Drinnan simply just doesn’t *like* the whole damn film/television/music industry.
It’s part of a disturbing culture of entitlement and taxpayer dependency for film, television and music people who believe they are owed a living. So what if Nana has to wait an extra year for her hip operation?
Yeah, we’re all plainly scumbags making poor granny suffer.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit,
The MEAA’s strategy was pretty much exactly what Jackson is saying as far as I can tell also. It’s not technically ‘illegal’ to try to try to get a collective agreement on behalf of employees, but it is for independent contractors. As far as anyone can tell from the public documents, the MEAA claimed to the rest of the international unions that it was black and white legal to collectively bargain on behalf of NZ actors (when signing the ratification of the MEAAs no work order). This is either a gross oversimplification or an outright obfuscation of the reality, as, in reality, pretty much all NZ actors are classed as independent contractors (although, this is a grey area, as NZ labour law is somewhat vague and as to what technically constitutes an employee vs independent contractor). The strategy was not technically illegal, but it seems pretty darn dodgy to me, particularly as NZ actors never really got a say in any of this before it happened. AE leadership seemed uncertain about what was going on in most of their public statements, and much of their membership are still unclear about exactly what happened: ‘all we ever asked for was a meeting’. To some extent I suspect the MEAA’s attitude was ‘the ends justify the means’, which has been, unfortunately, the strategy of rather too many people in this thing, but such is the reality of these kind of actions I guess.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit,
Also, during the interview – while the boycott was on – Walsh and Boyens said that the lifting of the boycott may not be enough to save the production, that the damage was already done and that NZ will have to show that there will be a stable environment for the production.
Yes, that is exactly the point.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit,
Why can't we have sensible people arguing from the left in the media? That really, in a nutshell is my feeling about the whole thing: it's f****ng annoying to agree with something in principle and then have the people who are supposed to be advancing the cause screw it up so royally. And then, apparently, not even learn anything from it.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Which makes one wonder why the CTU (of whom AENZ/MEAA is an affiliate) didn’t consider that a priority for action during nine years of a union-friendly government?
I'm sure they did.