Posts by giovanni tiso
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Danielle,
I am now utterly terrified to visit Canada, the land which apparently makes New Zealand seem 'not very outdoorsy'.
I was in Ottawa for six days and we spent exactly six minutes outdoors.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
so am I wrong in thinking you don't have an accent when you speak? And that's why we'd never guess?
In my hubris (a word that sounds so much better than arrogance) I used to think I didn't have much of an accent, or much of an easily recognisable Italian accent at any rate. Then my first child got into a Bob the Builder phase, and I would read him the books. Hereinafter he called him "Bobba". So that was quite sobering.
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Well, you'd never guess where I am from. And I like it that way.
Although actually, in spite of having lived in Milan for 27 years, I am not properly home until I visit the village where my grandparents lived, where I spent a fraction of that time. But some of my strongest childhood memories are tied to that place. And still, whenever I fly back into Wellington after one of my regular jaunts back to visit Mum, that's where the phrase "you're home now" rings the strongest. The Miramar waterfront, in a car or a taxi: that is it.
Lately to many friends and acquaintances overseas I have been from Christchurch, somehow. Although perhaps they are right in their own way. Emily Perkins' post-earthquake line to the effect that we're such a small community resonates with me.
Seriously lovely post, Emma, by the way.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Lew Stoddart,
Ok. How about Orewa? Far from an election as you can get. Gave them a massive polling bounce.
There is a very obvious reason why Brash's speech succeeded at Orewa. It was designed to shock and it tapped into popular sentiment. I'd love the Left to do this, except in a progressive fashion, but it's not an easy proposition, and you can't really magick away the difference just by saying "it's their job". That's a ludicrous statement really, and I think you know it.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rich Lock,
OK, but this raises a slightly different issue: the implication is that Labour have effectively resigned themselves to at least two terms in opposition. That's probably entirely likely, but it does tend to create a mindset where they may spend the first term coasting, rather than fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground.
That doesn't do much to galvanise the base, or to kick-start the internal reorganisation that might be necessary.
Well, you're stretching my meaning a little bit: I think it is observable that the very short time between elections in NZ means that a government is barely out of the honey moon with both the public and the media by the time the election campaign kicks off, which presents a problem on how to communicate with a public that is naturally more interested in what the party in government is doing. You could also I think make the case that it wasn't exactly the quality of the Parliamentary opposition that led to the demise of Kevin Rudd inside of one term.
That said, if Labour has indeed put up a weak leader in the expectation of losing this election, holding back on more viable candidates for more winnable elections, that would be unforgivable in my view. You owe it to the country not throw an election, period. But we don't actually know that it's what happened, it's speculation - however plausible it may sound.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Leopold,
Extra-Parliamentary Opposition
Or EPO. I'm pretty sure they banned that.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rich Lock,
I don't think the Labour strategists are sitting around doing nothing but complain. But whatever it is they are doing, it isn't working, and they don't seem to be able to come up with something else that might not be utterly laughable a la 'axe the tax.
Ah, yes, but see: they are two fundamentally different arguments. a) Labour complains about the media b) Labour communicates ineffectively. Now Axe the Tax may very well be a pragmatic and perfectly appropriate response to our media environment. In the middle of the first term in opposition you come up with a catchy slogan and a red bus and travel the country hoping to remind people that you exist, knowing that you can do little to differentiate yourself or get people to listen to actual policy. People who follow politics are going to hate it: because they remember it was you who introduced GST in the first place, and because they have worked out you have no intention of actually axing the tax. But it still positions you against raises in consumer taxation in the public mind.
It was crude and it actually didn't work but it was certainly not the action of a party that is unaware of how the media operates or doesn't 'get on with it'. My complaint if anything is that they don't challenge the way that the media frame the conversation more, hard as it must be.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rich Lock,
Again, couldn't think of an appropriate collective noun for 'not National, ACT et al' in a hurry, and didn't want to start using 'us', 'you', them'. Got any good suggestions?
What I meant is that unions, associations, NGOs, political parties, public intellectuals on the Left are not one amorphous whole you can lump together to make that sort of argument with regard to the media. They have different aims and roles. Certainly parties can afford to be critical of the media less than other actors, and they all need to get on with it in their own way, but it's still unhelpful to generalise I think.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rich Lock,
A slightly incorrect reading of my position.
Not really. You presented these as alternatives:
what is the best way to proceed?
1) Continue to sit around and bitch about how biased the media is.
2) Actually work up a strategy for dealing with it and getting the message out there in clear and simple terms.
They are patently not. And 'the Left', as you so generically put it, most certainly needs to continue to agitate for better media (including: more public service oriented news and current affairs programmes a-la TVNZ7), and get its message out there in clear and simple terms through the media that we have.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rich Lock,
You mean, apart from the several people on this thread who have done exactly that, including, amusingly enough, right after my post. Plus the extensive discussion, right here, of Clare Curran's 'Standard' post (which admittedly I haven't read)
What you don't seem to grasp is that complaining of media bias and operating with the media that we have aren't mutually exclusive. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has said the media is biased, let's sit on our hands. Least of all Labour's strategists and comms people. You seem to think that media analysis leads to inaction. Somehow.