Posts by Russell Brown
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"I get alone with John Key and {a slight pause} Helen Clark."
Jaysus! Does Wishart know?
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__And I also suspect he has received an assurance as to the future of the Families Commission. I've got no problem with that at all.__
Yes, if things look grim now imagine where we'd be without the Families Commission.
Oh very droll. The commission's big job in the past couple of years has been developing and executing the family violence campaign. Everything I've seen tells me they've done a notably good job at that.
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I think Dunne is being perfectly honest that, in his view, any plausible Labour-lead government will be neither inclined, nor able, to progress the issues he sees as priorities.
And I also suspect he has received an assurance as to the future of the Families Commission. I've got no problem with that at all.
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"Self-fulfilling". What's the point there, Russell? That we shouldn't hear bad economic news, only the good? There's a lot to talk about in the economy, but I'm struggling to imagine an interesting conversation coming out of that angle.
It's certainly an issue for a range of businesses if people who have their health and employment and aren't crippled by debt or negative equity stop spending money.
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Once in a while The Standard can have some genuinely informative postings.
I try and encourage them when they do. Although it should be noted that Lynn Prentice, the author of two of those posts, is not prone to hysteria.
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Or are there other things we should be focusing on?
The Herald's problem is that it has focused for most of the year on things that are now looking relatively trivial.
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Otherwise, why do I think there's a lot of ground being laid here for a great fit of "APN stole the election" sulking if (horrors of horrors) the Government does actually change. And before you get that upset, Russell, I'm not looking at you while I'm saying that.
I should hope not. I do think the Herald's editorial voice is a mess, and that the paper's new practice of digitally altering news photographs and acknowledging the practice in such a modest way is questionable. I think it should leave such satire to the bloggers and try and concentrate on reporting news.
And this is a paper that hasn't left readers guessing in the past. They refused to continue to run Graham Reid's columns unless he agreed to a prominent strapline saying "satire".
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But you're really telling me that if Don Brash has somehow cooked up a National-ACT-United Future-New Zealand First harem of inconvenience, it would have taken with perfect equaminity in these parts? Tui billboard time.
Don't presume upon my thoughts, Craig. On the basis of their undertakings going into the 2005 election, I don't think any of the parties would have committed a breach of faith by going into such a coalition: ie, they couldn't be said to have duped their voters.
The Herald editorial says a "majority" of New Zealanders wouldn't want such a coalition government -- ignoring the fact that by definition a majority has voted for the parties in the coalition, and presumably with their party of choice to be in government.
You can argue that such a coalition would not be suited to troubled times, but you cannot decently say that there's some failure of justice in it happening.
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Their editorial writers really are channelling David Farrar far to much these days.
The fake Labour billboard that takes up half the front page of today's feature section is very weird too. You really have to look for the tiny line of text that says it's a "digitally altered image", and I suspect most people won't do that.
Personally, I think they're really pushing the line, and not in a good way.
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And could someone remind me what the Greens "bottom lines" are again? It seems to me that assuming the Greens are Labour's reliable allies are as ill-founded wishful thinking as that equally fatuous Herald editorial.
I really can't grasp what you're saying. The Greens have:
(a) Ruled out a coalition with National, or supporting National on confidence and apply.
(b) Expressed a desire to form a coalition government with Labour.
They did so by way of a formal announcement, in which they explained the process by which they reached their decisions. They haven't so far as I can see, stipulated any bottom lines, but will want to negotiate "a policy agreement that advanced green policies on a number of fronts".
I suppose it could all go horribly wrong, but it is quite reasonable to regard the two parties as very likely indeed to work together if the opportunity arises.
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