Posts by Kumara Republic
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Who?
Here's a clue: the pundit is a she, and isn't a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn. Here's a selection of her words on Brexit, and Google can tell you the rest. To me it came across as Blairite blame-shifting.
The trouble occurs when progressive parties become the property of Pioneers (middle class liberals). Pioneers don't just disagree with the working class base, they disapprove. They are less likely than others in the potential support base to understand that someone could comprehend the facts yet reasonably disagree with them.
The Remain campaign in Britain was at its least successful when it was run by and for the Pioneers. Fifty six per cent of voters said concerns about immigration contributed to their voting choices in the past election, but they felt it was a subject you shouldn't talk about. They trust Boris Johnson, who fronted the Brexit campaign, not because they agree with him, but because they think Boris is "prepared to say unpalatable truths".
Settlers and Prospectors link immigration to changing demographics at local schools and access to health services. Pioneers make a progressive case for immigration that misses these concerns and drives Settlers and Prospectors to support right-wing populists.
-
Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Alfie,
The New Labour faction is desperately trying to pull off their coup against Corbyn. At the moment their best hope is enforcing a ruling that he'll require the support of 51 sitting MPs to even appear on the ballot paper. This is a bizarre coup, not least because Corbyn’s main policies align perfectly with core Labour party policy.
Opposing Corbyn is Angela Eagle. She backed the Iraq War, voted to bomb Syria, is pro-Trident and abstained on the vote proposing cruel Tory welfare cuts. She's about as far right as you can get whilst masquerading under a Labour banner.
It goes to show that with each passing day, Tony Blair's New Labour doctrine is looking increasingly like a product of its time. Just like "Cool Britannia". The turning point was most certainly the Second Iraq War.
Closer to home, one of its holdouts - a semi-regular pundit on TV & the Web - had the cheek to insinuate that champagne socialists were responsible for UK Labour turning its back on the working class, allowing Brexit to happen and that all Brexit voters were insular bigots. What said pundit was really describing was the aforementioned New Labour.
-
Speaker: Are we seeing the end of MSM,…, in reply to izogi,
I can only imagine this is a strange part of a response to that hate speech issue on the Checkpoint page in Feb, where RNZ was criticisised for not moderating its Facebook presence actively enough.
Maybe there's a budgetary dimension to it as well. Given the deliberate funding freeze of RNZ, a comments moderator would be a nice-to-have.
-
Hard News: The war is still with us, in reply to Russell Brown,
I do like the Daily Rupert …
Rupert the First is easily the latter-day William Randolph Hearst.
-
Hard News: The war is still with us, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
And you're surprised that the thinking, progressive people that form the members and supporters of the UK Labour party don't want to elect another Blairite leader?
To think I had respect for Tony Blair once. But now, the Chilcot Inquiry has reinforced him as a man of his times. And it seems the inquiry is also the knockout blow for UK Labour's Blairite holdouts trying to back-stab Corbyn...
-
Polity: English canards, in reply to Tom Johnson,
Of course, a beautiful home seems to numb social responsibility on average.
I sometimes wonder if Bill English's beautiful home is surrounded with hedges decorated with razor wire, Joburg or Lima-style.
-
Regarding the Blairite ructions in UK Labour, I'm coming to the realisation that it may not be so much a rebellion as it is a last stand. And it seems Brexit has made Blairism even more of a product of the decade that gave us Britpop.
-
Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to nzlemming,
Labour (here and there) needs to give the voters something to vote for rather than count on us voting against the government, and it needs to be something other than “more of the same, with different coloured ties on”.
For me, they already have, and it's closely related to the Future of Work thing.
-
Polity: English canards, in reply to Tom Johnson,
I am sick of this bullshit bizarre framing of who has it the worst in N.Z. It's like English wants us to feel sorry for the Poor old rich taxpayers keeping the lazy poor in beer and ciggies. What a turd of a man.
How can someone like English sleep at night with poverty and inequality growing under his watch. He defends that poverty growth by saying that the rich are doing all the hard work because look, they have all the money.
And did Bill English really believe what he said at the time, or was he just spinning it?
It's a legacy of the mistrust older people now have for National... If you decide you've been let down, it's harder to change your mind.... There's a perception that rich people vote National, and it's true. I hate that. It would do us good to drive some of those people away.
-
I've always interpreted such surveys as an indicator of middle-class decompression and the weakening of organised labour movements. Even then, the rentier class has successfully convinced society's battlers that those below them are to blame for holding them back. Remember the 12 Cookies joke that circulated not long after the Great Recession?