Posts by Grant Taylor
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Up Front: Reviewing the Election, in reply to Heather Gaye,
I think democracy would be much improved by the active inclusion of young people in the electoral process. Government is for the future as much as it is for the present. We might end up with more positive child and youth policies, even.
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Up Front: Reviewing the Election, in reply to Bart Janssen,
those folks abstaining from the vote do it casually
I wasn't thinking of it being 'casual' disinterest, Bart - more a question of perceived irrelevance. I think Emma addresses this in her imagined campaign message to young people, trying to make it relevant by playing a generation gap dynamic:
. . . But your grandparents do . . .
I wonder whether a lot of young people just don't 'get' politics. They don't see how it is relevant. Most of the post-young people I have met who don't vote (there aren't many of these in my daily life, so small sample), don't do it out of a sense of pointlessness, just a sense of irrelevance, "what's-it-got-to-do-with-me?"-ness.
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The declining participation rate is a really serious concern for some pretty obvious reasons, some of which are probably practical (such as general acceptance of the rule of law) as well as matters of principle. Thinking about how people might get exposed to politics between elections (so that when the big game comes around, they know who the goodies and baddies are, which side they are on, and at least roughly the rules and objectives of the game, etc): I suspect it is mainly through MSM and media for people who already get politics, like Public Address. We know (I think - please put me right on this, if necessary) that younger people don't consume MSM, especially news and current affairs (that antiquated concept), all that much anymore so I wonder if their exposure to politics is about as great as my exposure to sport? I am sure that if I was no longer able to dodge sporty stuff so much, I might develop a bit of an interest in it . . .
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Hard News: Terror panics and the war imperative, in reply to Ken Double,
I have never trusted Key on anything, Ken – but I don’t think America is the issue here, ISIL is.
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My inherent pacifism struggles in a situation like this. I have had the privilege of visiting Syria in somewhat more peaceful times (Israel was attacking Lebanon, just over the hills, rather vigorously at the time but life was peaceful in Syria itself). I came away with a great fondness for the country and its people (based on slight contact, admittedly). I felt very sad later at the Assad government's response to dissent and the destruction of people and culture that has followed. But at least the Assad regime and its various forms of opposition did not seem to have the megalomania of ISIL.
Ambivalence about interfering in the politics of other nations/regions/cultures becomes hard to maintain when this kind of thing is going on.
Arguing from the relatively remote safety of NZ against the international community cooperating in making every effort to stop ISIL seems to me to be isolationist and callously inconsiderate of the lives of ordinary people in the Middle East who are caught up in this obscenity. Especially when "the West" (which we greatly benefit from being part of) has provided much of the fuel for the fire (eg arms and ammunition ).
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Valuable post, Kyle, thanks. As a former mental health professional careerist (Clinical Psychologist, once upon a time), I am only too familiar with the relative neglect of mental health both politically and by the health administration - but I think this just reflects our society's general discomfort with mental health issues. I have seen many individuals and systems within the mental health sector display this discomfort just as strongly as those outside of it!
My experience in the days of ring-fenced mental health budgets does not make me enthusiastic about their return. The distinction between mental and physical health is a largely spurious one and a social construct that I think does more harm than good - e.g the 'mentally ill' have tended to get comparatively poor physical health care and the psychosocial causes of many 'physical health' problems are often missed or actively avoided because no-one involved wants to face them or knows how to deal with them. Providing a(nother) structure reifying this spurious and unhelpful distinction is not good policy, in my view.
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The risk is that the hoopla from one small, rich party will get a good deal of attention and bring some welcome novelty
The thing about all this that unsettles me the most is the demonstration provided by the Internet Party of how much campaign funding matters, even in NZ politics. Given all the hoopla in recent elections about campaign funding transparency etc, there seems to be fairly widespread nervousness about corruption - but the ability to openly 'buy' political influence in this way is also a worry, IMO, even when no corruption (as officially defined) is involved.
I have no idea about how big Labour and National's respective campaign resources are and how these compare with those provided by Mr Dotcom but to my knowledge, no single individual has attempted to buy a political agenda in NZ in quite this way before. (Or was Alan Gibbs' relationship with ACT essentially the same?)
It bothers me - but then, I am fairly bothered by professional sport too. So maybe it's just me.
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Walked from Mt Eden to Oranga via Newmarket and back to visit the kids, enjoying the farm-in-the-city of Cornwall Park along the way. Then sailed to Motuihe with friends on their yacht, swam, fell off the paddle-board a few times, lazed about, chatted, came home, washed off the salt, caught "Her" at the Capitol with another friend followed by a cheap but excellent feed at Spicy Joint afterwards. I don't think there are many cities where that would be one weekend's story. Love this place in the world.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Richard Love,
they are all contenders for the village idiot
Indeed, Richard. It's embarassing. It's a relief we have the reflected glory of Team NZ, Lorde, and Catton to bask in at the moment.
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Euan Mason,
Key has always impressed me as behaving like a CEO rather than a PM. There are some parallels between the leadership of a large corporation and a nation and between shareholders and citizens. Perhaps in the current climate of international finance and global economics, the subtle but important differences between Cabinet and Board, PM and CEO, citizens and shareholders, Constitution (implicit in our case) and Realpolitik are lost to him. These differences may also not be sensed or articulated by many New Zealanders, which would explain why he appeals so successfully to the pragmatism in NZ culture in which a high placing on some leaderboard is sufficient proof of a successful strategy.