Posts by Matthew Hooton
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Polity: On tour with The Boss, in reply to Rob Salmond,
Yeah I know one place Rob, but I never have read anything on Kiwiblog as obsequious about a National Party leader as this.
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And, next week, Public Address will bring you Sia Aston on John Key, followed by Andrew Campbell on James Shaw.
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Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to Sacha,
it isn’t calmly made, let’s say.
It was perfectly calmly made.
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Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I was an informal and it was a protest against the fern’s denigration. Take me out of your maths.
I'm including informals (so your vote) in the 21% who voted against a fern (even though some may have been supporters of a plain black flag with fern).
To check my maths, go to http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/2015_flag_referendum1/results-by-count-report.html
There were 1,527,042 votes received. Of these, 1,204,993 chose a fern as first preference. That is 78.9% - a massive majority.
To put this in further context, in the last general election, there were 2,416,479 votes cast. The votes cast for a fern-based flag represent 49.9% of the 2014 general election vote, more than won by the National Party.
Do you see how haughty and arrogant that makes people towards their fellow citizens when they attack so pretentiously the fern-based designs that so many people chose? And also out of touch with the country in which they live?
I think the fern v Union Jack vote next year will be much closer than most commentators are suggesting. For the fern to lose, turnout will have to exceed that of the 2014 election, and pretty much all the non-voters in the first referendum will need to back the Union Jack.
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Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to Russell Brown,
You, on the other hand, have been on a sneering marathon and it’s lame.
Russell, the entire Red Peak campaign, and you post here, and the reaction and twitter and in the comments here, has been one long sneer against the 79% voters (including informal) who opted for a fern design because they believe that represents them and their country. I confess to enjoying the result.
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Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to George Darroch,
f you weren’t an inner-city latte-sipper,
Excuse me. I do not have milk with my coffee. That is unforgivably vulgar.
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Just by the way, New Zealand has grassy-green or snowy-white mountains. Australia has red peaks. Red peak has no meaning for New Zealand. This whole thing, including the reaction to the vote, is surely self-parody by inward-along out-of-touch Pt Chev and Aro Valley elitists. When it comes to a New Zealand flag, 1.2 million voters cannot be completely wrong. Many of you here, would benefit learning about your country and your fellow citizens. Many of you seem to hold them in contempt.
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Just to make sure I fully understand this.
When a widely respected former governor of the Reserve Bank and more narrowly respected leader of the opposition, Don Brash, made a complaint to the police over the potential burglary or hacking of his office and girlfriend's home following The Hollow Men, the police did absolutely nothing for more than a year, bizarrely even citing the impact on their resources of an offshore Apec conference as a reason why ...
But when a blogger, Cameron Slater, makes a similar complaint to the police about Dirty Politics based on information from Ben Rachinger (!), the police pretty much immediately raid the author of the book's house?
The only reason I can think of for the different response is that the police, being a very hierarchical organisation, and respectful of authority, acted in both cases on what they believed the prime minister of the day might want (which is not to accuse either Helen Clark or John Key of direct interference but to say the police made political assumptions.
I hope someone could point to another (less concerning reason) complainant Slater got better service from the police than complainant Brash? Because, with all due respect to the host here, the alleged hacking of a blogger's server for political reasons is not as serious a matter constitutionally than the alleged interference for political reasons of the leader of the opposition's private political communications.
It would seem to me, that, at best, the two complaints should be treated the same but that if one was to be privileged as a higher priority for police resources it would be the Brash one.
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Polity: Cold, calculated and cynical, in reply to Russell Brown,
"they wouldn't be there if they weren't dangerous, violent criminals"
For many of them, that is true. But it was also true that Lorraine and Aaron Cohen wouldn't have been in Penang Prison were they not drug traffickers. Same for Schapelle Corby. But they received consular and diplomatic support anyway. And when the Cohens finished their sentences, they were quickly kicked out of Malaysia and sent home. As will Corby be kicked out of Indonesia when her parole period ends.
What doesn't happen is that you get sent to some other detention centre after your sentence has been served and kept there. If that happened in the Cohen case, New Zealand would have made strong diplomatic representations on their behalf. As would Australia if it happens to Corby.
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to Bevan,
Read the link at the top of Russell's post.
It explains the Maori and European (British) aspects of Red Peak.Has even a single Maori leader publicly supported Red Peak and agreed with the "Maori aspects" of it, or has this Maori story just been made up by liberal Pakeha from Grey Lynn and Aro Valley working in the design industry?