Hard News: Last Words
203 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 … 9 Newer→ Last
-
Nat,
Overheard in a Baker's Delight in West Auckland:
Shop Assistant 1: "I just don't think the election affects me."
Shop Assistant 2: "Um, what about the minimum wage?"
Shop Assistant 1: "Oh yeah, but I don't think my vote will count."
Shop Assistant 2: "How about if there was a 50-50 split and your vote made the difference?"
Shop Assistant 1: "I guess..."I hope she was convinced, and good on her colleague for having the discussion.
-
I'm loath to say this, but I think National will win reasonably comfortably. They remain very, very popular in the provinces, especially.
Labour will lose about five or six seats, which'll be picked up by the Greens.
Maori will lose one or two seats to Labour.
NZ First will get - just and only just - 5%. Mana will only just retain Hone's seat, Kelvin Davis will give him a very close run.
ACT and United Future will perish.
-
The story of this election is going to be a story of the polls. If the polls are to be believed, support has hardly changed for the left/right blocs since 2008 with Labour and the Greens cannibalising each others vote and NZ first – again – flaking off chunks of National’s soft support. But there ciould still just be a joker in the pack if technology has rendered the polling methodologies wrong.
Labour won’t suffer a 2002 type meltdown because Phil Goff is a better man than Bill English, Labour has run a smarter and more imaginative campaign, and Labour has better policies than National while Stephen Joyce sounds like some darkly brooding Tolkienesque wizard, locked up in his tower pouring over polls and focus group results and losing touch with reality.
The day after Goff was made leader of the Labour Party the media decided Labour was going to be humiliated in 2011, a lovely little Goff/English 2002/2011 synergy of ritual media execution followed by (starting with the teatapes) first disillusionment with the government, leading to a cliff hanger in 2014 either way and then a media-led clamour for Labour in 2017, after which the cycle will repeat. For five years we’ve been treated to most of the media being greater or lesser willing participants in being bullied and bribed by the Hollow men into a cult of personality built on negative identity politics whilst lazily regurgitating their long term electoral narrative. It is a charade where the citizens have been reduced to spectators in a horse race reported by a media that is completely decadent and morally dysfunctional, yet we call it “democracy”.
-
3410,
On a One News vox pop the other night I heard a guy say that he couldn't make up his mind between Labour and National, so he was going to give his electorate vote to the Labour candidate and his party vote to National. :P
I guess that's what Labour gets for failing to advise "Party vote Labour" on their billboards. :P
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Labour won’t suffer a 2002 type meltdown because Phil Goff is a better man than Bill English
Labour’s polling right now is down around the level of National's 2002 result. It’s entirely possible that their voters will look at the polls and say “We’re doomed. Fuckit, I can’t be bothered.”
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
I guess that’s what Labour gets for failing to advise “Party vote Labour” on their billboards
Except that they do have "Party Vote Labour" billboards up all over the place.
-
Sacha, in reply to
What's your take on the role of the political opposition parties and movements in driving and shaping media coverage, Tom?
-
Tristan, in reply to
I think question 2 is wrong." Under which system do you vote for a party and an electorate MP?"
correct answer PV!?
-
FletcherB, in reply to
Herald – a quiz on knowledge of the different voting systems
The Herald says I got question 2 wrong...
Under which system do you vote for a party and an electorate MP?
You answered: SM & MMP
Answer: PV
Am I being an idiot, or is it the Herald that's wrong? -
Kumara Republic, in reply to
The day after Goff was made leader of the Labour Party the media decided Labour was going to be humiliated in 2011, a lovely little Goff/English 2002/2011 synergy of ritual media execution followed by (starting with the teatapes) first disillusionment with the government, leading to a cliff hanger in 2014 either way and then a media-led clamour for Labour in 2017, after which the cycle will repeat.
Sounds like the journalistic equivalent of the GI Joe character Destro – selling political artillery to both sides of the divide for fun & profit.
-
Most ironic piece of party advertising: ACT anti-crime pamphlets that have Banks advertising "zero tolerance."
How appropriate...
-
Sacha, in reply to
I believe the word is hypocritical rather than ironic. :)
-
Take a closer look at Horizon Polling. 95% of their 3000+ respondents are picked from the 2006 Census. At the bottom the page in their current (23-24 Nov) results they have interesting stats on landline ownership.
After the election the accuracy of the polls will be interesting given that Horizon has Labour at about 28% but National at about 35% and NZF at about 9%.
http://www.horizonpoll.co.nz/page/187/more-intend-to-vote-labour-gains
I know what I'm voting and it is anyone except National or ACT or UF. -
Fascinating (as Bishop would say, dissecting a dead facehugger in Aliens), listening to Hooton on Nine to Noon. He was obsessively repeating “ so-called asset sales” and puffed up with moral indignation over Labour’s “scare campaign” (this from a man who compared them to the Kahui parents a few years ago). His urgency, and his repetitiveness was quite morbidly interesting – he seemed to be panicked.
Moreover, he generally takes every opportunity to ridicule the Greens and didn’t mention them at all.
Someone sweaty has had a talk to him, obviously.
-
I’ve decided on one thing that summarises my pissed-offness with how this National government acts.
National standards.
It was a campaign slogan rushed into law under urgency shortly after the Key government took office. Avoiding select committee scrutiny was a feature, not a bug, in that process. Had it been considered like any ordinary bill, the government would have had the embarrassing experience of hearing its own officials explain all the problems with what it was trying to do.
Still, it might have been saved. There was still a possibility of using standards to get real, useful data about how kids were learning. Tolley’s office had a chief research analyst who’d been through the British experience and was very well versed in what not to do.
Which, naturally, turns out to be what National did. There was something really contemptuous about the way this was dumped in the final week of the campaign. Schools will be forced to publish their National Standards results – and the government will make no attempt to prevent these data being compiled into comparative league tables, even though they simply are not comparable.
Even though the use of the data in this way introduces perverse incentives that destroy the research value of the data. National’s even going to give “good” schools more money.
And even though Tolley promised a year ago to prevent efforts to compile such tables. Now it’s just going to happen.
I’m disgusted by the whole thing. By the pointless war Tolley has fought with boards, principals, teachers and parents the length of the country. By the fact that they could foist this on the system without even a trial. By her arrogance. By the utter stupidity of defying advice and ignoring experience in favour of a soundbite.
There are plenty of other examples of National ignoring good sense and evidence, but this one seems the most precisely contemptuous to me.
-
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
The day after Goff was made leader of the Labour Party the media decided Labour was going to be humiliated in 2011,
You know what, Tom, I’m not going to slap you around for buying into that bullshit because I was every bit as deep in the river denial the day before the 2002 election. It’s not pretty to watch, but will pass.
What isn’t going to be pretty, I suspect, is certain elements in Labour who going to try and build a Dolchstoßlegende around those awful Greens and Maori Party supporters (**FULL DISCLOSURE**: The Greens got my party vote. Got a problem with that? Tell someone who gives a shit - that ain't me.) and any left-leaning person who dared criticise Labour on any front. Heretics are always more contemptible than infidels, I guess.
-
Steve Barnes, in reply to
Am I being an idiot, or is it the Herald that's wrong?
The Herald is constantly wrong.
Labour will win on Saturday by a large margin. The people of New Zealand will wake from their collective slumber and realise that johnkey and pals are a bunch of rip off merchants and vote for the only real alternative, Labour.
johnkey will run off and go live in Hawaii and the rest of them will go off to Australia because "it's better" and they failed to make NZ a smaller copy of Aus.
Come Sunday the sun will shine, the birdies will chirrup and the bees will be buzzing around with joyful smiles as they sup the sweet nectar of a Labour victory.
If and it is highly unlikely considering the shit they intend to dump on us all, johnkey and pals rule the day it will be because the system has been rorted by the filthy few and we will have to have a revolution. In which case, I will see you at the barricades brothers and sisters. -
I would have voted Green, if they removed all the equivocation from this page and just said that they will not support National on confidence and supply during the next parliament and will consider any legislation against their policy and principles.
As it stands, I'm party voting Mana and electorate voting for Grant Robertson, as he's one of the better Labour MPs and deserves to survive a wipeout on the list.
-
+1 for Tom's 3rd paragraph, above.
-
And what pisses me off about Labour …
Well, I think some policies aren’t well-considered. The Broadcasting policy is a missed opportunity, and removing GST from fresh fruit and vegetables is like to achieve little beyond eroding the tax base. It’ll save my household way more than it saves a household on the benefit or minimum wage.
But mostly … it’s the list. This term was the perfect time to clean out the time-servers and give Labour’s new talent three years to find its feet.
Instead, a badly flawed process may well see Carmel Sepuloni – one of a handful of MPs picked out as the face of the party for the opening broadcast – out of Parliament because her list place isn’t high enough. Others behind her, like Jordan Carter and Kate Sutton, have no show.
In the likes of Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern, Labour has authentic future leaders. They should have had company on this year’s party list and it’s a bloody criminal shame they don’t.
-
Sacha, in reply to
interesting stats on landline ownership
Interesting, thanks. Wonder why higher income earners would have lower rates?
NO LANDLINE TELEPHONE
Horizon Research earlier this year found 6.4% of New Zealanders 18+ do not have a landline telephone at home. This rises to 19.6% among 18 to 24 year-olds; 18.8% for those earning $100,000 to $200,000 a year and 12.5% for those earning less than $20,000 a year.
12.9% of business managers and executives no longer have a landline at home, along with 17.2% of students and 14.6% of labourers, agricultural or domestic workers. 13% of those flatting and boarding and 11.6% of one parent families have no landline at home.
HorizonPoll research finds 95.5% of its panellists have access to the internet at home, 39.3% at work, 19.1% by mobile, 7.3% at an internet café and 8.4% at a wireless hot spot.
-
3410,
Except that they do have "Party Vote Labour" billboards up all over the place.
Yeah, some, but most of their billboards are for candidates and look like this (below).
Note that the second one has been "fixed".
-
3410,
.
-
Sarah King, in reply to
A friend was talking about how she's so pleased with how her son was going at University - "I've got my bubbly boy back, high school was just surviving". I look at my boy who has "survived" his inner city intermediate and wonder if he will fare much better at high school. According to National Standards this "gifted", engaged and engaging child is average at best. Something is wrong here and I struggle to have confidence in the education system.
-
David Haywood, in reply to
Wonder why higher income earners would have lower rates?
Just did a thing on NatRad about this very issue (which seems to have genuinely skewed opinion polls in the US). Annoyingly, I didn't find the NZ landline data until after the programme:
Post your response…
This topic is closed.