Posts by Matt Crawford
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I think refusing to stand on the list indicates that that these candidates are not genuinely campaigning for the party, rather acting more selfishly. The electorate are being fed the coded message loud and clear: "this candidate does not necessarily endorse head office".
The template has been set by Harry Duynhoven's campaigns in New Plymouth, where Labour branding was all but absent at times. The message "I do not agree with the list-setting process" has certainly been implicit from various Labour MPs this time around.
I give Rino Tirakatene a pass here - the Maori electorate seats are different and special. I can understand why a candidate may not wish to appear as a general list MP if a Maori electorate has turned them down. -
I disagree with the commentators here asking to that criticism of Labour or the campaign be silenced.
Despite a powerful mandate from the membership to make significant policy change and urgently needed renewel the party has instead chosen to prioritise the protection of poorly performing incumbents.
The key policy plank of the 2014 campaign - free healthcare for people 65+, doesn't seem to have any supporting research showing how this can be implemented, or even why this policy is particularly necessary in the first place.
Caucus and discipline on this campaign is appalling. Trevor Mallard has actively worked to spike several media cycles, and him and many of his colleagues have refused to even stand on the Party list. Only a few months ago a senior Labour leadership figure like Shane Jones effectively defected in support of National.
Labour is heading towards a new historic defeat.
If the Labour membership don't start demanding higher standards of the Parliamentary wing then Labour as a major political party is likely to be supplanted by the infinitely more professional and disciplined Green Party sooner rather than later.
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The worst part about this is the screeching faux outrage from Labour luminaries Chris Hipkins and Stuart Nash.
It's a pathetic stunt. Seeing Labour MPs howling that free speech shouldn't be tolerated in our society or politics is the definition of entitled petty authoritarianism.
The problem is that both Hipkins and Nash are far too wrapped up in the 2015 leadership contest already, and attitude towards the "radical-left" [Greens, Mana, IP] seems to be the key litmus test for their faction.
Week after week this Labour caucus shows just how fucking worthless they have become.
Vote positive is really sticking in my craw this morning. Hipkins' attitude towards political expression especially disgusts me.
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RB - you've anglicised the spelling of Maarten Wevers.
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For some background on Boko Haram here’s a rather readable piece from 2013 http://pando.com/2014/05/17/the-war-nerd-nigerias-inevitable-mess/
Note:
The author is somewhat… problematic in that it is “War Nerd” Gary Brecher, alter ego of one of the Pando writers. He’s qualified to comment in the same way all schlubbs are – overeducated and well travelled, wrapped up in rhetoric and self-loathing. At the very least it will be a palate cleanser to remove the taste of that ghastly Hitchens. -
Hard News: Softly, softly, in reply to Steve Curtis,
Thanks for that NYT update Steve, I hadn't seen it.
What I have seen is a fair bit of discussion surrounding pictures of the type I've attached - essentially pointing out that the "Green Men" non-uniformed Russian-speaking forces were equipped with the type of gear that regulars in the Russian army only dream of.
Whoever those guys were they were very well funded.
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Pilger comes across as completely off the reservation - it's like the decades of investigating atrocities perpetrated on the 3rd world by the 1st has rendered him unable to perceive anything but.
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
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Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war.
It's just bizarre to think that Pilger doesn't see an issue with a country dispatching special forces into a neighbour - such as Russia sending in non-uniformed Spetsnaz troops into Ukraine to start this crisis. The evidence that these were elite forces is pretty well documented - obviously extremely well trained (no slouching, fighting, stealing, or unordered shooting) and extremely well armed - the weapons and equipment they were pictured with, like holographic gun sights, are normally restricted only to a nation's elite unites.The scary thing about this is Ukraine is the only ex nuclear power in the world, disarming post-USSR. Its these accords which Russia have clearly breached - "to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine." Nato really set them up here - despite Pilger's fantasies there was never any chance of Nato ever intervening right next to Russia. Wikipedia has a page!
The message going out to the head of state of every other nuclear or aspiring-nuclear power is loud and clear: get the bomb and never give it up for anything.
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Nice one Ian. The grower is very proud of her micro palm tree. The picture was not quite a still life, but such a bizarre perspective I thought to show it anyway.
A better still life: graft made to rescue a chrysalis that formed the washing line. -
Repotting an adenium
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Sure thing Craig,
I’d say that the Greens have already put their money where their mouth is on that score – at least with things like the Kedgely-Walker members bill, despite its shortcomings.
Labour however is a different story. There’s a deep cultural inertia within caucus with historically minimal oversight from party membership. It’s no surprise then that they play the parliamentary funding game by the established rules and resist change.
I for one was left spewing at how senior Labour leadership jumped at the chance to accept Sky City hospitality last year. It showed how entrenched the compromised culture is within the caucus. No one involved seemed in the least self aware of how they had actively undermined the values they tried to espouse in the house re:sky city casino.
The schism in the leadership vote late last year between members and MPs reinforced to me how out of step with the party membership the Labour caucus has become.
I’m all for addressing the increasing funding inequality – its a direct result of wider societal inequality. Oravida’s latest $30000 donation was more than a 40hr/wk minimum-wage earner will get in a year. Our political system being beholden to a small pool of wealthy elites should be something that outrages all but the 1%.
But it’ll take a lot of external pressure to get Labour to shift on this. Not impossible – just look at the selection of Cunliffe to leadership which would have been unthinkable without constitutional change. Just saying that to any transparent shift in funding or lobbying there’ll be an awful lot of resistance from within the parliamentary wing.
