Posts by Tom Semmens
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If you want to read a thought-provoking defence of the bill, Chris Trotter published one here.
I think anything that provides constitutional precedent for regulating the largely unregulated powers of political parties in the MMP environment is probably a good thing, so the amendments suggested above seem reasonable, especially as the waka jumping law reinforces the role political parties already play in our constitutional setup.
I can guarantee the next example of what Mr. Trotter is talking about will be when, post a Labour win the next UK general election, the sixteen to twenty or so Labour Blairites declare that they cannot, in “good conscience”, be part of Corbyn’s radical agenda, that the “interests of the nation” and “stability” demand they leave and form a “centre” party that will “moderate” Labour’s agenda.
The fact that they are a bunch of lying asshats who don’t have the courage of their convictions to resign and hold by-elections but instead cynically rode their party brand back into parliament for another five years of fat salaries, perks and thwarting the will of the voters will be obscured by a farrago of self-righteous indignation whenever they are challenged and accompanied a load of value free analysis, outright twaddle and hypocritical pearl clutching about voter cynicism and political disengagement from their supporters in the MSM.
The above scenario is grimly recognisable to any voter, which is why I suspect if you did a survey the waka jumping bill would be as broadly popular with the general voter as it is hated by the back sliders of the political elites and the political circles of the liberal bourgeois.
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Hard News: On joining the international…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And I’ve just come back from seeing ”Our New President” at the NZIFF, it pretty much confirms my worst suspicions about weaponised disinfo carried out by RT and the Internet Research Agency at the behest of the Putin Regime.
It is one thing to say the Russians try to use aysemmetric warfare and disinformation to influence elections – notably Trump’s victory (and Brexit, if you believe the UK’s chattering classes). That contention is probably indisputable. But it is quite another to contend they succeeded, or even had any sort of impact beyond the trivial. The idea that “Russia” was the primary actor behind a black swan event (Trump’s victory) is arrant nonsense, a stab in the back myth that conveniently serves to deflect from the need for the US establishment Democrats to examine their own disasterous choice of Clinton as a candidate, their complete sellout to big money, their corruption and the utter tin ear they’ve displayed towards their supposed base in the US Electorate for decades.
Like Trump, Southern and Molyneux don’t come from nowhere and they didn’t just make up their constituency. In a dysfunctional and hyper-normalised US political and economic system that makes fakes news a feature of the system they pretend to be the voices of a lower middle class and working class that grew increasingly prosperous in the post WW2 era and whose cultural voice “broke through” to the mainstream consciousness during the Reagan and Thatcher eras, and now finds itself the most affected by the devastating effects of globalisation, neoliberalism and the corrupt co-option of their previous political vehicles into the neoliberal establishment.
IMHO, Southern and Molyneux are a pair of twits, intellectual lightweights who are cunning enough to know their fawning audience and carve a living from pandering to it. But they have an audience. They didn’t succeed in NZ not because we are a harmonious society with peachy race relations, but because the conditions of economic deprivation, illegal immigration and elite political ossification endemic in the post GFC Anglosphere are not as pronounced or even present here. We must never forget we escaped the GFC practically untouched, which completely alters our political landscape, and we an isolated island nation that doesn’t have to contemplate mass illegal immigration.
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This story, like the Democrat Dolchstoßlegende (sorry, Russia probe) or accusations (mainly from the opinion pages of the hysterical Blairite borefest the Guardian has turned into since Corbynism and Brexit) that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semite, got most of it’s legs from a media whose commentators still by and large believe the teleological end point of our politics is bourgeois neoliberalism.
Screeds and screeds and screeds have been written on all three of these topics by a MSM that has utterly failed to notice that in our example no one in NZ (outside perennial fringe dwellers like Slater) really gives a brass razoo about Southern’s and Molyneux “freedom of speech”.
People know a pair of trouble making shit stirrers when they see them, and the population has not been much exercised by the shenanigins that have gone on.
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Yet another thing Americans need to talk about! Nancy Pelosi is 78. Maxine Waters is in her 80s. The US Congress resembles the cadaverous ruling committee of the moribund Soviet Union, I bet the division lobbies smell like boiled cabbage.
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Time to sit up and take notice of the rise of Cenk Uygur, the TYT network and the Justice Democrats. There is hope yet for America!
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Hard News: The next four years, in reply to WH,
do you have any ideas as to what’s causing the occultation?
Mexico scoring a goal?
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Barry Soper attempts following the wounded Metiria Turei to make sure of the kill…
Soper is hopelessly out of touch. His reporting, politics and judgement are mired in the 1990s.
Everyone lives through an era. Soper’s was the neoliberal revolution. Now that era is waning and a new era is dawning, dominated by a new generation. New forces, values and world views are coming into play in ways old men like Soper struggle to understand. Quite often his pieces come across as an old man somewhat bewildered by a state of affairs he no longer recognizes.
Getting old can be a bummer like that.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to william blake,
God that’s brutal, it outlines social engineering toward a class system which is not the old NZ way. Who’s culture have we imported ,and why hasn’t MPI stopped it at the border?
Something psychologically very, very dark happened during the John Key era.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Hilary Stace,
We used to have a NZ Guidelines Group with a team of researchers highly skilled in analysing and grading scientific evidence. This whole saga shows why we need such an independent and skilled team in a public agency so the process cannot be captured by any interest group.
Funnily enough, I have been reading the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry report into the loss of the Titanic (because why? I have no real idea). As far back as 1887 a parliamentary committee chaired by none other than Sir Charles Beresford warned the 1855 regulations were inadequate in requirement for the provision of lifeboats.
However, the Board of Trade was animated mainly by a spirit of light handed regulation, was completely captured by the shipping industry and had, by the 1880s, largely lost it’s expert members in favour of ceremonially appointed stooges of the establishment. And so it complacently ignored all the evidence in favour of self-regulation, refuted expert advice (including that of it’s own inspectors), and attacked it’s critics as Cassandras and trouble makers.
Until one clear, freezing night in 1912…
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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So what the hell happened? Housing NZ refused to comment. And the Group Manager for Courts and Tribunals says the tribunal does not comment or decisions or the evidence offered in hearings.
Andrew Mckenzie has finally fronted up this morning. But he didn't sound particularly contrite. Very cool, very technocratic is our Mr. McKenzie.