Posts by Lew Stoddart
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Paul Williams,
Paul, I'm not aware of any other meaningful challenge to the CSM system itself, such as this one. There certainly hasn't been one in the previous decade, though 'first' was probably unrealistic.
Anyway, it's over now. Hopefully the country can get back to caring about shit that matters, like whether Don Brash prefers Burger King or KFC.
L
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Paul Williams,
What a gross over generalisation Lew.
No. If they weren't atrophied and dysfunctional, they'd be able to use their unmandated millions to -- picking one example -- persuade 50 people to turn up to a VUWSA meeting to vote down an ACT On Campus motion resolving that VUWSA submit in support of VSM.
There are exceptions, sure; and this will be a great blow to those student unionists who work hard and honestly. But the bare fact is: a SA that can't gain a meaningful mandate under compulsory membership, or that can't defend their system from the first meaningful challenge, doesn't really deserve to exist.
L
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Islander,
It's very hard to overstate how trivial the debate is in relation to the enormity [sic] of time, energy and political resource expended upon it by both sides.
L
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Yes. The fighting is so bitter because the stakes are so low.
For student unionists, it’s basically just patch-protection. Student unions are atrophied, dysfunctional organs run by and largely for self-promoters, and they understandably don’t want the tap of unearned, unmandated revenues turned off. ACT on Campus is the sort of conveyor belt into the mainline party that they’re so fond of saying SAs are for Labour.
For the ACT and Labour parties themselves it’s the most idiotic sort of symbolic politics – the sort that only serves to illustrate how far divorced their priorities are from those of the electorates they claim to serve, and takes up meaningful amounts of time and resources that would be better dedicated to other causes. For ACT this is basically a given; they are in such a parlous state that they consider this to be a great and noble achievement in service of liberty, and I suppose in light of their other achievements it is worth noting. The parties tonight at which they all compare themselves and their works to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, George Washington, Oliver Cromwell, Spartacus, Galileo, Socrates, Von Tempsky and Howard Roark will be quite something.
The only thing more tragic than this epic triumphalism over such trivia is the single-minded, mastiff-like dimwitted determination with which it has been opposed, giving it credibility and currency it never deserved, and turning the whole affair into, if not a meaningful policy win, then at least something of a procedural coup for ACT. I expect more of the Labour mastiff than to permit itself to be mauled by the yappy spoodle that is ACT on Campus, though perhaps on recent form I shouldn’t.
L
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Steve, if your contention is that pointing out Labour’s failure to perform constitutes ‘bagging’, then you’re an apologist for ineffectiveness.
I want Labour to win. So I refuse to coddle and baby them and pat them on the head and say ‘there, there’ and blame everyone else when they suck. They have a responsibility to go out there and kick arses, and to find ways to do so even though the field might be tilted against them. And if they prefer to piss and moan and complain about how life’s not fair then I will attack them for their childish petulance, and criticise them as space-wasters who’d be better off making way for people who will.
You should, too. if you don’t, you’re prolonging the delusion that such a course of action can work. It can’t. The longer they spend complaining to an imaginary ref about rules that don’t exist, the more their opponents get away with, and the harder it is to recover.
L
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Indeed. One ell on ‘Russel’; wrong twitter handle. Cunning enough impostor to pass the initial sniff-test, but not much more. Might be worth matching the ip to previous activity.
L
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Hard News: Meanwhile in Epsom ..., in reply to Lew Stoddart,
Sorry, I should clarify – both biographies written by Paul Goldsmith are imaginatively titled “<Name>: A Biography”, not both bios of John Banks. The more critical bio of Banksie is by Noel Harrison, “Banks: Behind the Mask”.
L
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Hard News: Meanwhile in Epsom ..., in reply to Che Tibby,
Che, Banksie is incredibly interesting; one of the most interesting pollies in modern NZ history. Son of sly-grogging backroom-abortionists, a genuinely self-made man of strong moral convictions and remarkable character. Also bigoted, racist and intolerant but hey – you don’t have to be nice to be interesting.
L
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As well as authoring Brash’s biography (which I haven’t read), Paul Goldsmith is also the author of the more fawning of John Banks’ two biographies. Both are imaginatively titled “<Name>: A Biography”.
So that’ll be interesting.
L
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Kumara Republic,
If Maori issues and welfare are the biggest wedge issues of the Right, then the most obvious Left ones are probably job stability and asset sales.
Framing, man, framing. It’s not ‘job stability’, it’s ‘an economy that works for you’; and it’s not ‘asset sales’ it’s ‘ownership’ or ‘a stake in your country’ :)
Also, compare and contrast a la Iwi/Kiwi was a good gimmick, but inventiveness and a new iconography is required. They did OK with this sort of approach over mining with ‘yours, not mines’ billboards and so on. Govt backed down, which is good, but Labour failed to drive it home.
Labour’s leadership has to make its mind up on which key issues to pick up on, and fight in a way that’s authentic to them. I hope they already have, and are just sitting tight.
L