Posts by Russell Brown
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Bizarre Radio NZ headine on James Morning Report appearance.
Failed Labour candidate James Dann threatens to quit a David Cunliffe-led party
"Failed" meaning, presumably, "didn't win Ilam". Just like everyone other than Gerry Brownlee has not won Ilam in the electorate's entire history.
"Threatens" in this context also appears to mean " says he will".
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Slater et al have no ‘moral’ position on anything. They’ll smear someone for being homophobic if they sense it will aid their agenda. Whoever the next opposition leader turns out to be, their partner will be scrutinised for vulnerabilities by these ratbags.
Yep.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to BenWilson,
Robertson’s sexuality doesn’t really seem to me like the issue that could break the left. I don’t think that even the center right is as homophobic as that. The extreme right, sure, but they’re lost, and fuck them, I say. It could actually sit there as the one thing that nobody can slag off. It’s the one thing that any candidate will actually gain sympathy for, when ruthlessly attacked over it. It corners the bigots and begs them to shine the light on themselves.
I've been thinking along the same lines, with the proviso that it's a big ask for Robertson's partner to have Slater et al sniffing around.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Jack Harrison,
Cunliffe was championed early on by Big Russ. He is a great wonk.
He saw through telecommunications reform, which was a historic legislative achievement. He really had a grasp of the detail.
I thought he was the best option when Shearer stepped down, but I can’t see any scenario involving his re-election as party leader which isn’t a complete disaster.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
No, but I think it’s simply shitty – and counter-productive – for any politician (or political activist) to treat voters like they’re selfish rubes and gullible idiots.
If anything, I was suggesting the opposite – the hard path of being straight with voters about the day after tomorrow.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I do think that NZers will reevaluate their feelings about the economy when the housing bubble deflates and dairy prices regress to the mean.
Well, probably. But if the great strategy is “wait until the peasants come to Jesus after everything turns to shit custard” then Labour doesn’t deserve to govern.
The Fabians events I helped with two years ago were basically a critique of these same problems. I was disappointed that the ideas aired there weren't taken up by Labour in a more structured way. Telling people that their short-term feelgood doesn't address long-term challenges is never going to be easy, but it's intellectually honest. It's not expecting the "peasants" to come to Jesus.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
The economy’s not going that well.
No, it’s not but there’s also a good number of people, I suggest, for whom it’s not going badly enough to overcome a small-c conservative aversion to radical change.
That's it in a nutshell. But there is a problem with long-term thinking.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to jh,
Haven’t you heard of the Putnam study which shows diversity is the inverse of civic engagement?
To be fair, we heard of it all the other times you've raised the exact same thing in discussions on this site.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Truckloads of data would be nice. Even supertanker full of anecdotes doesn’t cut it.
But you're kinda saying that if you call people and and ask them a list of questions that's data, but if you front up on their doorsteps and listen to them, that's anecdote.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Carlos DelFrago,
The economy is going ok and compared to many countries around the world we are doing very well, Labour missed this fact and tried to paint a different picture which by far the majority of New Zealanders didn’t believe. I
The economy's not going that well. Easily the biggest influence on GDP growth is the Christchurch rebuild and most of the regions are stalled at best. Our export performance still relies overwhelmingly on world commodity prices (which are now in downturn). We have another property bubble and the dollar is overvalued. (It's significant that Key addressed that last one as a problem as soon as the election was won, and not before.)
But yes, you're right, Labour didn't mount an effective critique on those lines -- although the surprisingly favourable reception for what David Parker had to say at the Herald's Mood of the Boardroom event was worth noting.
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