Posts by Rex Widerstrom
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Andrew E,
Not sure what 'bittering' is, but surely the pay-off is in the form of better policy and hopefully a better government and better country to live in?
I take Ben's point. There is money available to be spent on communication and policy development and the like. It's the money that's being paid to the Goffice and the numerous other flunkies who are failing abysmally to do their jobs.
So why should they trot home every evening, their wallets stuffed with the taxpayers' dollars, while Labour expects Ben or anyone else to make up for their inadequacies as some sort of public service?
People occasionally suggest to me that I advise one party or another, gratis. I do, to some small extent, if they wish to take note of what I say publicly here and elsewhere. But I do that (amongst other things) for a living. I don't mind a reduced fee from political clients - if I did, I wouldn't do it at all because compared to what corporate clients pay, it's always a reduced fee - but I'll be damned if I'll do it for nothing when dropkicks are taking home a pay packet.
There are sectors of society who genuinely have no resources: the homeless, prisoners, abuse victims and the like. They're the people I do the pro bono stuff for and, frankly, if Ben had any free time he wanted to give I know of at least two groups working in those areas desperate for web development skills, not because they're paying people who can't code a static page but know how to suck up to the boss, but because they have utterly no money.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to BenWilson,
It requires the popular sentiment in NZ to be progressive, and currently, I don't think it is.
Chicken or egg though? Before I wrote the "Howick speech" it looked as though the ideas it contained had traction with about 3% of NZ. The fact that it succeeded in getting the meeja (and our more dimwitted opponents, like Bolger) flapping round and creating free publicity for us meant that a further ~27% came out of the woodwork when they either:
a) were reassured their beliefs sufficiently mainstream so as to need far less courage to state, and/or
b) were so angered by the ignorant dismissal of the ideas it contained by what they saw as the elitist commenariat that they voiced support out of sheer anger.Now of course one might say that the "Howick speech" and the kind of ground-shifting progressive speech about which you're talking appeal to diametrically opposed constituencies, but that'd be because one had assumed the speech I gave Winston to read was some sort of racist rant. It wasn't.
Also, times were different then. What political discourse needed, then as now, was a circuit breaker that changed what people were talking about. The content that did that then wouldn't do it now, because it's progressive ideas which have been forced from most of the debate.
Short version: If someone had the balls to try it, and provided they did it well, I think they'd be pleasantly surprised.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to BenWilson,
there's still the fraction who deliberately random or donkey vote
And those whom I know to have done so (donkey voted) did it to make a "none of the above" statement in the absence of such an option on the ballot.
Which is why I think we should have one, even if we don't make voting compulsory. In fact especially if we don't make it compulsory... because if enough people traipsed to the polling booth specifically to say "a plague on all your houses", it would surely wake up our recumbent political "leaders", even if it didn't contribute as much to the democratic process as we might like.
And it is, IMO, a valid position, and thus one which the disaffected voter has every right to express.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Alex Coleman,
a proper lynch mob just heads out on to the street and starts dishing out black-eyes to anyone who looks a bit looty.
He'd best be careful to enunciate well during his rabble-rousing then. "Looty" could easily be misheard for "loopy", in which case he'd have a burning torch up the jacksie quicker than he could say "Not the face!".
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to nzlemming,
I think someone mentioned on Brian Edwards' blog that a complaint had been made to police (IIRC)
Ahem, yeah... that'd be by me :-D
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Matthew Poole,
(Re Collins)
She's got another fortnight before I sic the Ombudsmen on her, but I'm not going to let her get away with that comment.
Good onya. A bit more holding to account of those peddling their hatred from atop their publicly- or shareholder-funded towers of Babel is precisely what's needed.
Which reminds me... not even so much as a "complaint received" acknowledgement from Mr Plod re one M Lhaws, esq, though I do wonder whether this part of his latest bout of flatulence doesn't indicate a visit from the rozzers has been experienced:
..complaints to police by anyone – deranged or not – are proof enough. If not of calumny then some moral weakness.
Welcome to justice... media style. A lynch mob of liberals, but a lynch mob nonetheless...
..if you want to get someone, personally or politically, just roll up to your local cop shop and make a formal complaint.
The police are duty bound to investigate the truth or otherwise of the claim and... damage done.
Am I alone in hearing a faint echo of "Waah waah waaaaah!" in the background? If I'm right, one can only hope a cavity search was involved somewhere.
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Russian Ark is just incredible. You just can't help watching in the manner of a small child, expecting that any moment the camera is going to take some dreadful pratfal, or that they're going to trick you and insert an edit somewhere. So you sit with your senses heightened, paying more frame-by-frame attention than you'd normally be prepared to invest, and you're rewarded with something akin to a ride on a roller coaster.
But a big, sumptuous, sparkly roller coaster on which everyone is drinking vodka and/or champagne and looking gorgeous. And when it ends you want to go again, because then you know what's coming and you can stop sitting there like a particularly hypervigilant meerkat and can enjoy the ride.
Or that maybe just me.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Islander,
We re-evaluate our views at *every* election, local body or national. Thus far, we have had no reason to change our votes
Then you don't fall into the "non thinking voter" category. I didn't mean to imply (nor, I think, did I) that everyone who consistently votes one way - be it National, Labour or whatever - does so without thinking.
Equally, though, I'd suggest that Labour voters here (and indeed any voters here) are atypical of the majority.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Clint Fern,
I really hope you're right Che, but Winston has been pretty active on the sly
Oh, he's back alright, and not shy about saying so. It's not so much "on the sly" as he hasn't gained enough traction to get much in the way of coverage so far (other than the BOP Times, which evidently gives him half a page a week!).
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Bluntly, I'll vote for whoever the fuck I like, on whatever basis I like. Good policy, tribal loyalty, sex appeal, random choice, pawmistry, whatever.
Do you (and I, and everyone else) not have some moral duty to one anoher to vote intelligently? If our analysis leads us to conclude that John Key is a truthful, visionary leader with a workable plan for the future then fair enough.
But are we not doing a considerable disservice to those who think, and care, by basing our vote on nothing more than "I like the way he smiles and waves"?
Or, for that matter - a mantra I heard so, so often from the other side of politics - "but I've always voted Labour" which translates to me as "...and I'm too intellectually slothful to invest the time and energy needed to re-evaluate that".
Democracy has always coped with the inclusion of the "non thinking voter" of course, but they've tended to be in the minority. Now they constitute a large bloc.
Then there's another cohort - people who, like my parents, used to do their civic duty mindful of their obligation to their peers to have some intelligent basis for their vote, but have been so disillusioned by the mendacity of politicians that they now feel any information on which they might base a conclusion is likely to be false. So they fall back on "we'll vote the way we've voted most often in the past, and hope" or don't vote at all.
I'd posit - with, of course, nothing but anecdotal evidence - that these two cohorts combined now make up the majority of voters. And that's not healthy for democracy or for the nation, nor fair on those of us who give a damn.