Posts by Kumara Republic
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It’s more like this: Hosking’s thoughts are automatically echoed in the Herald because Newstalk ZB and the Herald are part of the same company, NZME, and Hosking is one of NZME’s banner names. The company wants both to promote Hosking and reticulate traffic through its different media assets. (TVNZ is basically an add-on to this.) Over at Mediaworks, an increasing proportion of what you see and hear is also in service of another part of the company – and that will become even more the case when Mediaworks’ events venture gets up to speed. In both companies, commercial radio provides the profits, meaning radio calls the shots. If there’s a conservative influence, that’s radio.
I sometimes wonder if overseas trends of media consolidation have arrived in NZ. It'd be worth a look by the Commerce Commission, if it hasn't already been plagued with regulatory capture.
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Polity: Meet the middle, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I suppose I am a bit late with this news but I am so pissed off that I had to post it somewhere.
Dita De Boni @KeepingMum Aug 9
Hi all. In answer to questions, it is true the Herald has discontinued my column as of three weeks from now. Reason given = budgetI wonder how much of that budget has been diverted to buy Mike Hosking another Ferrari?
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Rich Lock,
I think it probably has more to do with having no motivation (and in fact more or less the exact opposite) to challenge natural human psychology and the existing status quo.
Which is why it often, and unfortunately, takes a Great Depression-grade crisis to push through meaningful change.
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Rich Lock,
This offers one theory. Strays a bit to far over the paranoia line, in my opinon (I don’t (quite) think the system was designed like this by some sort of shadowy billionaire illuminati cabal).
We've been conditioned to blame everyone below us for holding us back instead of those above us, for the simple fact that the delusion that anyone can be a CEO just happens to be a very powerful one. And people generally don't like to admit that they've been on a fool's gold rush.
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Speaker: Saying what we actually mean on…, in reply to ,
Its not difficult to make the mistake of referring to people who live in poverty as a problem that can be read in the same way that rat infestations are a problem.
Irradiating poverty…
Or, taking the "War on Poverty" a bit too literally.
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Sacha,
If Labour do not demonstrate for voters right now that they can work constructively with progressive allies, we will get another term of the incumbents. Labour’s caucus and party are kidding themselves if they imagine getting to 40% this time.
A big part of Helen Clark's victory in 1999 was when she buried the hatchet with Jim Anderton, who had quit Labour a decade earlier in disgust.
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Corbyn and Sanders are basically the Occupy/trade union candidates. Harawira and Dotcom tried, and failed, to do the same in NZ. I’m an avid politics follower, and even I’m having trouble thinking of an equivalent in the NZLP. Cunliffe and Little had the backing of the unions, but they’re not exactly Occupy types. And Corbyn and Sanders have made it clear they aren't for turning.
Is it possible to take a 2-pronged approach, where a Left strategy is pitched to the core base, and a Centre strategy is pitched to floating voters, without both prongs tripping each other up? Or are they mutually exclusive?
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Kumara Republic,
More to the point, democracy in the West is less likely to go down in a hail of bombs and bullets, than it is to rot slowly from within.
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to BenWilson,
The actual destruction of democracy only really happens when free voting is prevented. That might not even be needed by oligarchs controlling the system, if low participation does the job for them all by itself. But it could always leap back into action with sufficiently motivating causes. Only if the actual institution of voting is removed or subverted does the system cease to qualify as democratic.
What the Anglosphere is heading towards is some kind of inverted totalitarianism and/or illiberal democracy, rather than traditional autocracy.
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Rob Stowell,
As those things are eroded, or disappear, at the same time as a class of super-wealthy has emerged, it’s not ridiculous to think redistribution of wealth is part of the answer.
Is that ‘old school class warrior’ talk? Or stating the obvious?And sadly today's hyper-class can opt out of such redistribution when it suits them, simply by flying one-way to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. How best can modern social democratic regimes guard against it? Transparency by the likes of the Tax Justice Network is only the start.