Posts by BenWilson
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Fully expecting a ring road to be built around Mt Albert Research Centre
It's actually nearly complete.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Paul Williams,
How you combine these three factors to suggest his candidacy was a stitched up three weeks ago and with Hooton is fantasy.
I didn't say Hooton arranged it. That's your concoction there. I'm just suggesting he could have known about it. If that's how it went down. If it did go that way, I'd actually be impressed by Labour, rather than depressed by them. It would show they do actually have a plan, and that their key messages for this election will be built on rather than scrapped.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Yup – not the president of the Phil Goff Fan Club here but what exactly could he have done that would have satisfied you Ben?
He could have held on a lot longer, and driven the process by which the leader was chosen towards a reasoned analysis of their strategy and policies.
Oh, wishful Kool-Aid drinking there Ben. You might as well say Labour "nearly" got back into government in the UK last year, if only they'd been able to stitch up an amusing but improbable seven way coalition.
That's MMP, it's made of coalitions. In the UK they don't have the same system. I know it's hard to get your head around after all these years, but get used to it, it's here to stay.
Labour needs to reach these people and show them that other way.
Yes, but they do also need to show where all these jobs are going to come from, otherwise they're lying. Which is why they needed to actually work that out before they make it their key message. But now it's on Shearer to work out that which has defied Europe, America and Japan.
Flame away.
I'll bite. All of your statements are predicated around Labour being nothing more than a power grabber. You don't care to elucidate a single principle that they stand for in that analysis, and thus it is you who doesn't get what happened to Labour. By trying to stand for more they ended up standing for less. I can't tell from what you said, why I should vote for Labour at all. It's like you believe that sufficient marketing can sell any old lemon. It can't. What Labour needs to make is a better product.
Folk who can’t or won’t shape up should ship out. Yes, it might mean the loss of some old hands. But if that means an influx of young blood, fresh ideas, new people and perspectives, reinvigoration, it’ll be worth it.
Sounds great, when does it start? Sure didn't start today.
I'm not going to take umbrage at your view. It's valid and it may be true. It might also not be what I think it is, and in practice we actually agree. I don't know enough about the discussions on the Standard to know if your jibe at them was fair but it didn't really seem to be axiomatic to me at all.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Paul Williams,
You're suggesting the Party conspired to host half a dozen meetings up and down the country and confected candidates all to cover a deal done between a bloke who works for the Nats and ACT and another who's a former NZer of the Year.
Nothing near so organized, but that doesn't mean that the "contingency that Labour will lose" plan might not have taken considerably higher precedence in their internal planning than the outside shot that they would win. That actually seems sensible to me. It's one possible explanation for their amazingly late efforts.
I think you should be over at that other blog...
Which one?
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That's why the leadership campaign's been based around who's best placed to re-energise the party and extend its base - it's been about tactics since they both agree on strategy.
Yes, it's something that crossed my mind months ago - that their entire approach to this election was "if it's a win, it's a windfall, but really, we're all about 2014". In which case it's good to see there's some decent strategizing going on. Goff really was the caretaker, and the choice to resign long planned, and the machination already all done. Which is probably why the fait accompli for Shearer slipped out of Matthew Hooton's mouth 3 weeks before the election. The result was known, and we're all just being played for dicks.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Paul Williams,
Ben, I think you're grasping at some sort of false malevolence.
No I'm not. I think it was foolish, not malevolent.
You mightn't agree with the tactics, but they're not intended to scuttle the ship as you seem to be suggesting.
I'm not suggesting that. You can scuttle a ship unintentionally, if no one is at the helm while the mates argue over who gets to be the new captain.
I'm going to get over this, of course. It's done, it's dusted, it's Shearer. He'll probably do fine. I look forward to him answering:
I'd want to know would be how they'd talk to people who're not members directly. Shearer's said he intends to do exactly that!
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Alienating the obsessive activist rump who still don’t understand why Labour has been doing badly since 2006 isn’t mad. Embracing them would be.
I wasn't convinced by that at all. For starters, Labour nearly got back into government after only 3 years. Some messages just take a long time to get through, and "Labour is for a flatter society again" might be one such message. They could have started with it a lot earlier, by showing the actual policies, most of which are indeed progressive, but they didn't. There was a sharp rise in the disengaged lost vote this time around. Could it be that people do this when they see no difference between alternatives?
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Paul Williams,
How has this process been worse than any other leadership change? They're usually done behind closed doors.
Which has never made it right. It could have been done in a much, much better way. Mostly, that's down to Goff. His last parting shot, to start off the government after him with a power squabble before the votes are even counted, before National has unveiled it's direction, before detailed analysis of what happened is even available, before their strategy is clear, before their policy is decided. It's all been done in the exact reverse order to what it should be. It's lost the initiative entirely.
I'm genuinely puzzled by the feelings this whole thing seems to generate.
I'm puzzled by how people don't care. It speaks to me that a feeling of disengagement has become so normal, that they don't even notice it. They don't mind that the consultation of them about who will, quite possibly, be the next government of this country, isn't a far more open and inclusive process.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
I can see where I went so wrong...
I don't think you can, even now. There could be 3 or more parties that rise up. Each getting only one percent, without taking it from Labour, would mean a win for a Labour led government, and it would mean they had to take those parties' policies, which are quite different from National policies, seriously. It could mean a major change in direction. Indeed, any kind of change of direction or heart within any of the National-led coalition that we are going to get soon, could tear the government apart, so slim is its majority, and resting on the party of the most unemployed, unhealthy, impoverished, crime ridden demographic in the whole country. You can't hide your head in the sand and say this is just going to be a bit of a rocky ride for National. It's going to be extremely turbulent. I doubt any of us have lived through times that will be as turbulent as what we're staring down the barrel of right now.
Yes, for the well-off, it might not come home very hard, but there's real poverty in this country, a real class divide, and a real sense of anger and frustration. The shocking crash in the number of people voting isn't a sign that they're all stoked about how things are right now. Many of them simply feel politics isn't the answer. Watching Labour pick it's leadership has me agreeing with them.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
You must be a very fast walker :)
You're right, I'm getting memory blur in my old age.
*I guess there's some part of me that just doesn't believe that the office of my elected local representative could be so conveniently located, 11 kilometers away from my home.
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