Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
All we're getting from Labout is "raising GST is evil, but we're not actually going to commit to anything concrete like repealing it"
Word. The Ax the Tax campaign is what actively stopped me from joining Labour. If that's Labour trying to focus on economic issues, I think they would hurt themselves less by trying to, I don't know, make everyone buy gay lightbulbs.
It drives me nuts.
Under Labour, you may or may not pay 15% less for those nuts.
-
You would think so.
-
being like Labour without all the sneering 'we-know-best' arrogance
So you're saying that allowing gay people to enter into civil unions or protecting children from physical abuse of promoting the sale of energy efficient lighbulbs are things that Labour should feel contrite about? That they are signs of arrogance, as opposed of good government? Maybe that's because how you feel. And I'm happy for you - I'm assuming you're neither a child nor gay, and choose to buy efficient lightbulb because you're not stupid. You also strike me generally as a centrist, so I'm not surprised that you'd want the two parties to not differ by much. This is hardly guaranteed to make your less-Right-wing party win, however. And furthermore, once you've got rid of all those pesky arrogant idealists within Labour, you might find that you are actually left with not a better version of National, but National.
At any rate I must say I find your argument pretty extraordinary coming from the man who no longer than last month wrote a rather splendid satire of Chris Trotter.
-
I wonder what portfolios Anne Tolley will get in her second term . . .
I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. When Clark got elected for her first term, it was on the basis of moving the country far to the left of National. She didn't try to win it by occupying the centre. Your idea that it's only by being more like National that Labour will win has to be tested in reality - it may just as easily be that faced with a choice between actual Tories and Tory wannabes, the electorate will make the very rational decision of selecting the genuine article.
-
Yeah. Labour were voted out partly because the public was 'sick of the nanny state'
Say you, Chris Trotter and Phil Goff. It was the rhetoric that the most reactionary fringes of the Right used to attack the Clark government, but it doesn't make it true. Perhaps the centre-Left lost simply because it had run out of steam and out of ideas. Three terms is a long time to be in government.
And besides, Labour didn't lose all that resoundingly. It certainly had way more votes on election night than it has in current polling, a long time after Goff made his very public repudiation of the evils of social engineering. But regardless, I don't see how pandering to moral conservatives - which is what we're talking about - can be sold as "having listened to the electorate" the way that you have. It's just cowardly. Of course promoting the rights of minorities doesn't get you votes. Duh! But unless you aspire to be National lite at best, it's also a very big part of what defines progressive politics.
(Besides, you also seem to me to fall in the same equivocation as Trotter: repudiating women, children and the gayz to concentrate on the workers could be a tenable political equation if in fact you planned to be pro-worker, but there is the small detail that even on that front Goff's Labour is to the right of Clark.)
ETA: all stuff said best by others on the thread in the meantime. Oh well.
-
The major problem a lot of people had with the social engineering wasn't that legislation was passed to protect children from physical abuse, it was the sales pitch that implied that 75%+ of parents were child abusers.
Perhaps people could take a look at our child abuse statistics and, I don't know, harden the fuck up? Just an idea. But I'm fully cognizant of the fact that many people need to find a bad name for "protecting the rights of people who are not them". And so we're stuck with "social engineering" and "telling Kiwis how to live their lives". Jesus wept.
-
a huge proportion of the Labour caucus are enthusiastic proponents of social engineering and telling Kiwis how to live their lives
Ah, yes, allowing gay people to enter into civil unions, protecting children from physical abuse... when will the madness of social engineers end?
-
That was bloody awesome.
-
I see Sen. Ted Stevens died in a place crash, and is now on the bridge to nowhere...
NO!
-
Ah, well, funny you should say that... I was banging on just last night about the Web as the new home of high end photography with reference to the truly exceptional blog Poemas del río Wang.
Here's the current offering on the choking of Moscow, Stalker.
Here are Tarkovsky's Polaroids.
And here are Aleksandr Petrosyan's photographs from Petrograd.
Some of the best images you'll ever see. Or your money back, as they say.