Hard News: Limping Onwards
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
ACT disappear – agreed. you can’t imagine National not being willing and able to undermine Hide in Epsom.
Especially if Act continue to poll at half the margin of error, which means that Rodders winning Epsom would not bring any extra MPs National's way. Keeping alive an Act vote that would bring three, four, five MPs for the cost of an electorate is smart.
Keeping alive a single-MP liability for the cost of an electorate seat is very not-smart. -
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Lovely, thanks. I stand corrected.
However, in 2005 you were absolutely correct. If Labour and the Greens had had their voters in Epsom all vote for Worthless Dick, Rodders would've been gone-burger. His margin ahead of Worth was less than the votes cast for either Locke or the Labour candidate.
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Paul Williams, in reply to
Keeping alive a single-MP liability for the cost of an electorate seat is very not-smart
Where's Dunne factor on this spectrum? What are the voters of Ohariu-Belmont thinking?
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Christopher Dempsey, in reply to
However, in 2005 you were absolutely correct. If Labour and the Greens had had their voters in Epsom all vote for Worthless Dick, Rodders would've been gone-burger. His margin ahead of Worth was less than the votes cast for either Locke or the Labour candidate.
Ahhh, yes, that was the other strategy. I actually did that last election, while giving my party vote to the Greens.
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Lew Stoddart, in reply to
It’s just Ōhariu now – but little change to the boundaries or demo. They’re mostly thinking “how am I going to afford fuel for my BMW X5 now that the government is cutting childcare subsidies and public service jobs”, I expect.
But more seriously, it’s a battleground seat. Dunne’s profile has been slipping, and he faces determined opposition from the Nats, Labour and Greens – Shanks, Chauvel and Gareth Hughes, the former two of which were both within a couple thousand votes of him in 2008. Dunne hasn’t covered himself in glory this term; all that reflected from his portfolio (revenue) has been hogged by English, and to be honest there’s not been much glory in a term where the tax cuts have come to a tiny fraction of what was promised. And he hasn’t gotten his income-splitting social-engineering measure passed (and I can’t see it happening in the present circumstances).
Barring exigencies, I think he’ll hold it – but it’s a margin call.
As for the rest of the party – there isn’t one.
L
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Jan Farr, in reply to
A slightly incorrect reading of my position.
Not really. You presented these as alternatives:
what is the best way to proceed?
1) Continue to sit around and bitch about how biased the media is.
2) Actually work up a strategy for dealing with it and getting the message out there in clear and simple terms.
They are patently not. And ‘the Left’, as you so generically put it, most certainly needs to continue to agitate for better media (including: more public service oriented news and current affairs programmes a-la TVNZ7), and get its message out there in clear and simple terms through the media that we have.
If I may add, further, it's always difficult for a party in opposition to get media coverage - I don't remember hearing much about the Nats for most of Labour's three terms - except around elections. As we can see at the moment, it's a piece of cake getting negative coverage - the hard bit is to get the sort of positive media coverage that you want. And I don't think 'get its message out there in clear and simple terms through the media we have' quite does it. I'm sure that's what Labour's been trying to do all along. I bow to those of you who have actually had comms experience - maybe you do have some secret formula. For others I suspect it's easy to view the problem from the armchair. Like, say, flying a plane, or directing a movie.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
If I may add, further, it's always difficult for a party in opposition to get media coverage - I don't remember hearing much about the Nats for most of Labour's three terms - except around elections.
The Exclusive Brethren says hi.
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Jan Farr, in reply to
If I may add, further, it’s always difficult for a party in opposition to get media coverage – I don’t remember hearing much about the Nats for most of Labour’s three terms – except around elections.
The Exclusive Brethren says hi.
Two ticks for me: 1) negative publicity and 2) around elections.
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Rex Widerstrom, in reply to
(Re Collins)
She's got another fortnight before I sic the Ombudsmen on her, but I'm not going to let her get away with that comment.
Good onya. A bit more holding to account of those peddling their hatred from atop their publicly- or shareholder-funded towers of Babel is precisely what's needed.
Which reminds me... not even so much as a "complaint received" acknowledgement from Mr Plod re one M Lhaws, esq, though I do wonder whether this part of his latest bout of flatulence doesn't indicate a visit from the rozzers has been experienced:
..complaints to police by anyone – deranged or not – are proof enough. If not of calumny then some moral weakness.
Welcome to justice... media style. A lynch mob of liberals, but a lynch mob nonetheless...
..if you want to get someone, personally or politically, just roll up to your local cop shop and make a formal complaint.
The police are duty bound to investigate the truth or otherwise of the claim and... damage done.
Am I alone in hearing a faint echo of "Waah waah waaaaah!" in the background? If I'm right, one can only hope a cavity search was involved somewhere.
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one can only hope a cavity search was involved somewhere
Why would they search his brain?
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Why would they search his brain?
Cos he asked nicely? ;)
coat, already on. -
nzlemming, in reply to
But more seriously, it’s a battleground seat. Dunne’s profile has been slipping, and he faces determined opposition from the Nats, Labour and Greens – Shanks, Chauvel and Gareth Hughes, the former two of which were both within a couple thousand votes of him in 2008
One thing you hear in the electorate is that "he's a good electorate MP" which baffles me, and baffles the speaker when I ask him or her exactly what he's done for the electorate. The man will turn up for the opening of an envelope in the community but he did fuck all actually for the community while I lived there. Best thing about moving up the coast was getting out of Dunne's fiefdom, even if it means Nathan Guy as MP.
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Alex Coleman, in reply to
Am I alone in hearing a faint echo of “Waah waah waaaaah!” in the background?
Nope. Though the sheer audacity of Lhaws complaining about media lynch mobs nearly drowns it out.
His complaint seems to be that liberals, boo hiss, outsource their lynching to the police; when everyone knows a proper lynch mob just heads out on to the street and starts dishing out black-eyes to anyone who looks a bit looty.
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nzlemming, in reply to
though I do wonder whether this part of his latest bout of flatulence doesn’t indicate a visit from the rozzers has been experienced
I think someone mentioned on Brian Edwards' blog that a complaint had been made to police (IIRC)
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Rex Widerstrom, in reply to
I think someone mentioned on Brian Edwards' blog that a complaint had been made to police (IIRC)
Ahem, yeah... that'd be by me :-D
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Rex Widerstrom, in reply to
a proper lynch mob just heads out on to the street and starts dishing out black-eyes to anyone who looks a bit looty.
He'd best be careful to enunciate well during his rabble-rousing then. "Looty" could easily be misheard for "loopy", in which case he'd have a burning torch up the jacksie quicker than he could say "Not the face!".
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Paul Williams, in reply to
Why would they search his brain?
Hah!
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Che Tibby, in reply to
This is probably apostasy, but I'd consider dunne. Only because chauvel is about as far from my electorate as you get on the representation scale.
Democracy is still all about reps to me, and an urbane chap in oriental bay just doesn't remind me of the middling classes I take the bus with.
Plus he spams with taxpayer funded letterhead...
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nzlemming, in reply to
Yeah, I know, I was here. I meant that he took note of it there, but it doesn't mean he's had a visit.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Democracy is still all about reps to me, and an urbane chap in oriental bay just doesn’t remind me of the middling classes I take the bus with
And Dunne does? If you don't want to vote for the Shovel, vote for Gareth Hughes. Kid's got chops.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
OK, but this raises a slightly different issue: the implication is that Labour have effectively resigned themselves to at least two terms in opposition. That's probably entirely likely, but it does tend to create a mindset where they may spend the first term coasting, rather than fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground.
That doesn't do much to galvanise the base, or to kick-start the internal reorganisation that might be necessary.
Well, you're stretching my meaning a little bit: I think it is observable that the very short time between elections in NZ means that a government is barely out of the honey moon with both the public and the media by the time the election campaign kicks off, which presents a problem on how to communicate with a public that is naturally more interested in what the party in government is doing. You could also I think make the case that it wasn't exactly the quality of the Parliamentary opposition that led to the demise of Kevin Rudd inside of one term.
That said, if Labour has indeed put up a weak leader in the expectation of losing this election, holding back on more viable candidates for more winnable elections, that would be unforgivable in my view. You owe it to the country not throw an election, period. But we don't actually know that it's what happened, it's speculation - however plausible it may sound.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Compulsory voting is only bad if you don't take deliberate steps to counter the hefty level of disinterest that compulsion engenders.
Also, in defence of the Australian way, it's worth noting that most people have an opinion on politics, but some are too lazy/busy to go to the booth on the day. Once you get them there, a substantial portion vote as if they weren't politically disinterested. Yes, there's still the fraction who deliberately random or donkey vote. You can't stop that happening, but you do somewhat eliminate the "rational voter paradox".
This paradox suggests that the influence one has on the outcome is less than the influence one has on one's own life by doing something else with the time. But given that you have to go there, get a form, and go into the booth, and mark your ballot in some way, or you get fined, you have to really take the rational voter thing to extremes to not at least put one tick on the party you hate least. Furthermore, having been resigned to the awful drudgery that 5 minutes worth of voting every three years entails, a few more people end up thinking about the politics, which is arguably a good thing, civically.
I've come around to it - I think we take our "right to abstain" far too much as gospel - it's not really such an awesome right - if you want, you can random or donkey vote in Oz. And the State interfering in our lives to the extent of requiring a three-yearly opinion from you on something as important as who runs the entire country isn't that onerous.
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Rex Widerstrom, in reply to
there's still the fraction who deliberately random or donkey vote
And those whom I know to have done so (donkey voted) did it to make a "none of the above" statement in the absence of such an option on the ballot.
Which is why I think we should have one, even if we don't make voting compulsory. In fact especially if we don't make it compulsory... because if enough people traipsed to the polling booth specifically to say "a plague on all your houses", it would surely wake up our recumbent political "leaders", even if it didn't contribute as much to the democratic process as we might like.
And it is, IMO, a valid position, and thus one which the disaffected voter has every right to express.
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BenWilson, in reply to
And those whom I know to have done so (donkey voted) did it to make a "none of the above" statement in the absence of such an option on the ballot.
Yes, "casting no vote" is different to "not voting". I certainly heard from most of the people who vote that way there, they felt it very important to tell people. I didn't hear much from those who just voted, where they might have otherwise been too lazy to show up, because that is a sentiment that is frowned upon, even though it's certainly quite widespread.
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Lew Stoddart, in reply to
Ok. How about Orewa? Far from an election as you can get. Gave them a massive polling bounce.
The point isn't that it's easy to own the media agenda from opposition -- it's not. But it is possible. It can be done. Parties just have to find a way to do it. It's their job, after all.
L
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