Posts by Kracklite
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Keir Leslie,
I agree - the individual MPs seem to have done an excellent job - but where is this represented in party policy? What has the party to say about the constitutional outrage of CERA, a lowly minister's "right" to overrule legislation at his perceived convenience? The fact that the party cannot put together an argument that encompasses a consideration of constitutionality is either indicative of a deep moral deficit or an assumption that we don't care about such things.
I am aghast that no-one has articulated a vision of a constitution for New Zealand.
I believe strongly that this National-led government, with its manifold abuses of power (which has been most symptomatic in their abuse of urgency in parliament) has made the issue of constitutionality paramount, and I am amazed that no-one has decided that actually discussing the concept, if not the need for an actual document and supreme bill (after a dedicated and lengthy process) is necessary.
I'm disappointed - but not surprised - that no-one is even talking in terms of the principles of constitutionality and democracy. National certainly isn't - but I expect no better (a fantasy I have is that the old American Republican Party might) - and if they won't, then the opposition should, especially since urgency has been so abused in this term.
MMPs good, but it's not enough. The debate needs to be more fundamental, and more serious.
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No one, and I mean no one, has fought harder to keep the government on the straight and narrow over Canterbury than the Christchurch Labour MPs,
Then kudos to them, but what has that meant in policy for the broader party?
Rather than Goff giving his bloody stupid and dogwhistling to the racists “Nationhood” speech, perhaps is he… and the party could articulate a commitment to democratic, liberal principles, around which they will orient their policies. I despise the libertarian “objectivists” as plutolators (sorry, that’s a portmanteau of “Plutocrat” and “Idolator”), but I do believe in the right to dissent and Goff’s own support for legislation and police action that has been actively repressive is deeply disturbing to me.
I do accept that there have been some people rounded up who are reckless, seditious and dangerous, but I am very disturbed by legislation that enables abuse of power and the fact is that more than just a few dangerous people have been rounded up – there has been a trend to general harassment of dissidents and invasion of privacy and curtailment of rights to dissent… and simple, brutal physical assault and intimidation of ordinary citizens that has happened and has been enabled by laws passed to suppress “terrorism”.
Likewise, legislation against file sharing has been disturbing, and Labour has been too weak-kneed… or just too ignorant.
So I don’t have much time for that kind of aggrieved idealist complaint.
Akshully, I think that idealist issues eventually and inevitably translate into real and immediate issues. They don’t exist in a separate realm forever.
“It couldn’t happen here because we’re good people and we wouldn’t let that happen” is an abiding myth of New Zealand and I think that we should abandon it right away, so the use of “idealist” as a term of dismissal” is… naive, I think.
Joe, really, so Phil’s not as bad as Fraser? “At least X’s not as bad as” has always been a weak argument. Should I have to explain why? Really?
Try this as a thought experiment: append the phrase “At least X is not as bad as…” to a scale of statements or laws that are repressive of freedom of dissent (I don’t just mean expression – anyone can say anything quite safely as long as no-one hears) in some way and see how much nausea you feel.
This is also predicated, I might add, on the assumption that the Labour Party, as an institution, is the only opposition. I do not believe, that as an institution, that it is the only possible opposition. Maybe their time has passed. Maybe there's another institution that can take their role. There is no divine right, no linear continuity guaranteed for one party.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Rich Lock,
That’s been a major motive for my anger with Labour, apart from their astonishing incompetence, over these last few years.
To quote William Congreve’s ‘The Mourning Bride’:
“Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.”There seems to have been no repressive, anti-democratic legislation that they have not made a major show of wringing their hands over… and then voted for, no inquiry they would have “liked” to have seen… but never followed up. Shane Jones’ romping with Destiny’s blackshirts is just the latest episode in their cynical pursuit of the chimerical “Waitakere Man”.
I simply do not see Labour as the champion of liberal principles any more. Only expediency, which is why even their latest policies smack of something their focus groups told them are useful, in marketing-speak, as “Unique Selling Propositions”.
Now that the worst of the Luddites (especially Kedgley) are leaving, and because they’ve behaved like functioning adults, the Greens look like getting both my party and electorate votes.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Sacha,
I prefer to think Pitt-the-delightful-night-at-a-charmingly-characterful-and-yet-unpretentious-eaterie-that-is-yet-to-be-discovered-and-hopefully-will-retain-its-somehow-undefinable-blah-blah-blah...
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Steve Barnes,
we have got rid of National
Chicken/Egg.
Or, for more than one term, you hope? While I view with dread a National-led government for the next three years, a Labour-led government (which is an extremely unlikely prospect even when I am most inebriated) that would come to power would show all of the structural and functional problems that have bedeviled it for the past three years. It is simply in no fit state to govern, or, crucially, in any fit state to continue to govern yet. It should have been. It should have reformed itself promptly, but Goff has shown no ability to make the Labour party a government-in-waiting in all of the years that he has had. He still hasn't. A few nice policies are OK, but obviously the public doesn't have any deep, rooted faith that those policies mean anything. They don't resonate necessarily because they're wrong - I think that they're good - but there's no assurance that they're deeply held, that they can implement them, that they will actually try or be able to implement them when inevitable difficulties arise.
Or… um…
Sidney Harris:
http://www.jenniferjameswright.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/miracle_occurs.jpg
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I can only hope that the next Labour leader after November 27th starts promoting those remaining on the backbench, oversees a new list and foregrounds its candidates – even if they’re not MPs – immediately to get them and their ideas in the public eye is soon and as often as possible.
If NZ politics, despite our constitutional structure, is increasingly presidential in style, then Key might be NZ’s Bush the Younger – the void upon which people projected their desires, but also a bubble that burst in a second. How many of the current Republican Party in the US refer to him approvingly, as opposed to, say, Reagan (though in the current polarised climate, even he would be unable to get the nomination)?
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One thing Labour could have done to prepare itself for 2014 is to promote fresh, new talent up the list. It didn’t.
And
Indeed, you could argue it’s quite symptomatic.
And
I imagine that list positions had been pre-promised to aging hacks in return for not rolling Goff during the last parliament.
And
Like borer all holding hands, hoping the house doesn’t fall down.
The Labour Party now looks like the baby-boomer answer to the gerontocrats of Brezhnev’s Politburo hanging on to power, electing a leader on life support rather than having to face the reality of their own irrelevance. Judging my my readings of Cold War history though, there was a genuine chill of fear blowing amongst them, whereas the sense I get is of complacent smugness and entitlement, hence Jones’ thinly veiled threats to throw his toys out of the cot if he’s not promoted and Robertson’s indifferent shrugs and his fatuous "There's only one poll that matters" on Morning Report today.
Old Russian joke:
Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are on a train. The train breaks down.
Stalin has the engineers shot as saboteurs and class traitors (hello The Standard! ).
The train does not move.
Khrushchev has a bright idea and posthumously exonerates the engineers.
The train does not move.
Brezhnev, with his brilliant insight into the true nature of the situation draws the blinds, sits upright, faces forward and bobs up and down in his seat going, “Choo-choo. Choo-choo…”
I’ve got to laugh, really. I’ve really, really got to laugh.
And to plant a boot firmly up Mallard’s lycra-clad arse on his way out the door.
Hobnailled, I hope.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Islander,
Just to be off-thread, but… what the purgatory, things that don’t seem to matter immediately are often the things that matter in the long term… yes, that was one of the most beautiful films that I have ever seen, because it gestures towards the things that – don’t transcend, exactly – but surpass the ephemera of politics, and remind me that whatever happens, there is something constant that matters across the scale of millennia. In this case, it’s the human urge to record, to make sense of what happens, to reify a connection with the world.
I really wish that a politician would speak of such things in such terms… and not (fear to) be laughed at.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Christiaan,
Well put. Something that has to be said. More than once, more than once in the last month.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to elsketcho,
Well, watching them now…
Key’s (not National’s, because according to that ad, National is Key) is astonishingly lazy.
Act: quaint. Superficially, I agree with their principles, as I agree with all of the principles grouped under the label of “nice stuff happening if you wish hard enough”. They can talk about chocolate and kittens and unicorns… but, by the way, plutocracy is the only way is the only way that I… I mean you… possibly, if you win the lottery… (I forget the rest). Don Brash smiles a lot, I see, and he doesn’t wear a tie all of the time.
Green: Earnest, which sums them up. Earnest, always. We used that as a euphemism for students who were competent but fundamentally unimaginative.
Labour: I have to say, it is a striking move… rather depressing that it took such extreme circumstances to force this apparent rediscovery of heritage and heart, depressing that it took so damned long… and because it has come so late, under such extreme polling disparity, I have to wonder how sincere it is.
It seems to be a quick and astute response to the Occupy X movement – it won’t directly name it, for fear that it might be a mere flash in the pan, or eventually characterised as extremist, but taps into some impulses that motivate it. Risky, maybe, but now only a risky move would have any hope, since the “safe” gestures have been so pitiful/utterly vile so far.
I wish that they’d started thinking and talking this way three years ago. Why now, why so late? How deep, how intractable is that commitment?
Some people are saying it’s about Key’s smarm versus Labour’s policy, but while Labour presents well, their record under Goff is not that of a party willing or able to deliver any more than Key the weathervane populist.
OK, Kubrick’s dead. Werner Herzog, maybe. Cave of Forgotten Dreams showed that he thinks in the long term.