Hard News: A week being a long time in politics
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How’s this for an idle speculation:
what if the Act deal is that Key leaves after the electionI'm not sure if 'idle' is the word you're looking for . . .
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A stronger interviewer than Mercep would have invited Joyce to repeat or recant some of the more outrageous things he has said.
Good call. Mercep is a competent enough presenter, but an mediocre interviewer.
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merc, in reply to
Yeah, idly I'd say it's a given because this whole ambitious for NZ thing just got way too hard and I have my photo albums.
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I think Key's fundamental weaknesses are being revealed in the heat of the campaign. Key can be Arrogant, not good on detail and resentful when contradicted. It says much about our supine media that it has taken 5 years for them to report this.
Any candidate who goes into the last week of a campaign complaining about "media bias" is in a losing position, that line may shore up your core support but looks whiney and dishonest to the undecideds,
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Rich Lock, in reply to
I'm not sure whether it's fair to equate the population at large with the denizens of the Trade Me forums .... given those forums' extensive history of flouting court orders, it's not where I'd be going for legal opinions.
Wasn't the point more that if one is (possibly) too close to the action, and thus wants to try to get an idea of what's on the mind of the yer average punter on the clapham omnibus/outside the beltway, then the TM forums are a good place to take the temperature of public sentiment?
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I find the totalitarian circular logic of Joyce the most disturbing aspect of all this. It seems he cares nothing for morals, ethics or common sense in justifying his actions. He just needs the polls. The polls reporting opinion formed by his careful media manipulation and bullying. It a frightening glimpse into the mind of a man where morality is replaced by majoritarian rule, with the majority being where he decides it should be.
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merc, in reply to
You want to see that Day In The Life clip from Campbell, the Tony Ryall head nodding, the tee shirts, it's all disturbing, then there's Act, the teeshirted youths, garrrr.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Wasn’t the point more that if one is (possibly) too close to the action, and thus wants to try to get an idea of what’s on the mind of the yer average punter on the clapham omnibus/outside the beltway, then the TM forums are a good place to take the temperature of public sentiment?
I keep making the point that I don't know or understand what the wider public thinks about all this right now, and I certainly don't need to read the Trade Me forums to know my own mind.
I'm just personally appalled at what has gone on.
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And here's the BoingBoing thread on the past week's events. I feel so proud ...
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merc,
It's funny no one has mentioned the actual words "freedom of the press", does National have that many bots?
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do you think ”things are going well at the moment?”
“If the election was held now who would your party vote be for?”
That's wrong to start with. Voters in polling booths don't get prompted, so if you want an accurate answer, then the "how will you vote" question should come first.
It would be interesting to track the activities of polling firms using crowdsourcing, to see who's polling and how they get their results.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I find the totalitarian circular logic of Joyce the most disturbing aspect of all this. It seems he cares nothing for morals, ethics or common sense in justifying his actions. He just needs the polls. The polls reporting opinion formed by his careful media manipulation and bullying. It a frightening glimpse into the mind of a man where morality is replaced by majoritarian rule, with the majority being where he decides it should be.
Sounds very much like a certain puppetmaster Vice President from recent years, who helped concoct the lie that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
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James Littlewood*, in reply to
Key and Goff's whole relationship reminds me of Muldoon & Rowling. When Muldoon drawled "I think I've just been mauled by a mouse" it didn't matter what Rowling said, how relevant it was, or what use it might have been in the running of a country: the swing voters simply weren't interested.
Same with Goff: his policy regime all year has been nothing but nettles grasped and elephants in the room addressed. Do they care? Apparently not.
What gets me is how any government in NZ, 2011 can get any support at all for the prospect of selling assets.
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Terry Baucher, in reply to
I find the totalitarian circular logic of Joyce the most disturbing aspect of all this. It seems he cares nothing for morals, ethics or common sense in justifying his actions. He just needs the polls. The polls reporting opinion formed by his careful media manipulation and bullying. It a frightening glimpse into the mind of a man where morality is replaced by majoritarian rule, with the majority being where he decides it should be.
Listening to Joyce on Morning Report this morning left me near apopleptic at his smug arrogance. As you say everything is sacrificed for short term polls where the only plan is to be re-elected.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
My comment wasn't aimed at you in particular. One part of Joyce's strategy has been to cast this as a non-issue, with his 81% comments and so on (the other part being heavy-handed intimidation).
I've no real idea if the teapot tapes issue is touching a nerve with 'ordinary New Zealanders' (tm), but the trademe forums are possibly somewhere where I'd look for an answer, if I wanted one.
I already know my own mind on the issue, so I'm not inclined to go diving.
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this could be an area of hotbed torisym
Opinionated grumpy righties are more numerous than opinionated lefties. This doesn't necessarily equate to the opinions of the wider population.
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Tom Semmens, in reply to
Sounds very much like a certain puppetmaster Vice President from recent years.
You mean the one who “creates his own reality”?
I have thought for a long time the influence of the ideological and campaigning links developed between the US Republican Party and National/ACT during their long wilderness in opposition through the 2000’s are in serious need of a Hagaresque investigation.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I find the totalitarian circular logic of Joyce the most disturbing aspect of all this. It seems he cares nothing for morals, ethics or common sense in justifying his actions. He just needs the polls.
Two current Members of Parliament came there after being commercial radio station owners. One is Joyce, the other is McCully. Sayin'.
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JLM,
I'm starting to get really worried about the same thing as Tim Watkin
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
What gets me is how any government in NZ, 2011 can get any support at all for the prospect of selling assets.
Quite simple, really – they don’t. But blow up stories of Bludgers Bashing Babies and Layabouts Looting Living Rooms, and presto – instant wedge politics in a can. It’s an echo of Goldwater and Nixon’s Southern Strategy from years back.
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If trademe forums had existed (did it?) a few weeks before the 2002 election, you'd probably have found a preponderance of rightwingers moaning on about helengrad and the like.
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Dinah Dunavan, in reply to
Any candidate who goes into the last week of a campaign complaining about “media bias” is in a losing position, that line may shore up your core support but looks whiney and dishonest to the undecideds
Unless you happen to be Winston Peters, in which case you look strong and pricipled and the swing voters head towards you in droves.
Not releasing the tapes is playing right into Peter's hands. He is getting way more news time than he might have done otherwise and I haven't heard anyone calling "bull shit" on his pronouncements regarding the content of the tapes. Which makes me think that either he knows the content, or the media is his poodle again.
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Richard Aston, in reply to
the media is his poodle again.
Dinah the media have always been his poodle ( with some exceptions) he whistles and they came running up like puppy dogs eager for some action.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
If trademe forums had existed (did it?) a few weeks before the 2002 election, you'd probably have found a preponderance of rightwingers moaning on about helengrad and the like.
There was a popular NZ forum I used to hang around on for a period of a few years which happened to coincide with both the 2005 and 2008 elections. I used to play a variation on Godwin: how many posts would it take for an entirely unrelated subject to attact a post decrying PC gone mad and the KKKlarke government in Helengrad.
Someone would start a thread asking how to change their oil filter/worm the cat/tie a fishing lure/fix their flux capacitor/whatever, and it was more or less guaranteed that within half a dozen posts someone would post a rantette about how it was so much more difficult these days because you couldn't import the parts required, they were banned, just because all those children in Oaklahoma went blind, it was all the gubbermint's fault, a free man couldn't breath these days without some interfering lesbian peering over his shoulder, and so on. It got highly tedious very quickly, and I gave that particular forum up a couple of years ago.
But it was usually the same couple of dozen or so users every time (out of probably 500 active/semi-active participants). Filtering their opinion as outliers was relatively straightforward. And, possibly uniquely, I met a reasonable number of the other users in real life. Their opinions sync'd reasonably closely to what they were saying online, and were, I think, a reasonable way of gauging 'the public mood'. So, even allowing (and compensating for) the 'angry right winger' element, something like the TM forums, which are active across a broad scope of NZ society, could be a useful way of sniffing the air. Maybe. Interviewing a browser is perilous at the best of times.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I'm not going to change anyone else's mind and vice versa
That seems to be the message of this election entirely. For all the sound and fury, for all the photo opportunities, the polls* seem to show that people made up their minds 6 months ago or more.
It doesn't stop us having discussions.
* But the polls may not be correct, sample sizes are small and sampling is not random so that leaves me very curious about the results of the only poll that actually matters.
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