Posts by Stephen Judd
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Ian: we'd love to, but a) electorate boundaries for the next election are up in the air and b) candidate selection processes are all going to change next year. So any announcement of a new candidate would be moot at best.
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Felix, I paid attention, and as a grumpy delegate I found no fault with the way you covered it (also, shout out to Toby M at the Listener, likewise).
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I agree with Deborah and Scott (it was great to meet both of you at last!) but the Cunliffe manouevring is real too. It's just not the overwhelming will of the party that the commentators think it is.
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The thing about Armstrong’s column, and I speak as a delegate who was present, is that there is no necessary connection between voting for a change that disadvantages Shearer and wanting to knife him, if you believe that those changes are necessary for democratic reasons.
I have no doubt that Cunliffe supporters smelt the opportunity and organised support for that amendment (which was proposed a long time ago, not on the day) in order to further his prospects, but I also have no doubt that many voted for completely other motives. The coverage of the vote in the press elides the number who voted against – it wasn’t a landslide by any means –and the complex motives of those who voted for.
Finally there’s a very significant story in how policy will be far more driven by members and less by caucus owing to the way the new platform document is enshrined in the constitution, and I haven’t seen any discussion of the impact of that in the press at all.
Disclaimer: I am not in either camp. I have other goals in the Labour party than promoting one particular MP as leader.
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I wish I could remember where I read recently -- perhaps it was Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo -- a discussion on how if we want to understand and predict how things will unfold in these matters, a measured analysis of publicly available information from many sources tends to out-perform insider gossip.
Also, can we from now on please refer to Roads of Significance to National? Thank you.
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It terrifies me to think how much of my life has been spent typing comments and reading PAS. Well done, Russell and everyone.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to have made online and offline connections with so many smart, decent people who've enriched my life.
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Angus Robertson,
The columnist has written an opinion piece on the attempted murder of a Pakistani school girl.
A disingenuous summary. The murder is the hook for a serious of increasingly dubious claims about Muslims as a group, culminating in a claim that Muslims attempt to take over Western societies from within wherever their numbers allow.
By the same metric whatever was “exactly the kind of crap that” Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar ascribed to before going on their own killing sprees would also be suppressed.
If by that "be suppressed" you mean I would support making a complaint to the Press Council suggesting that the Times not print it, do you think that would be a bad thing too?
Irony alert – suppressing that “kind of crap” is core to the texts Brevik likes.
Also, do you see the difference between complaining about texts because they consitute racial vilification (my rationale) and complaining about texts because of the ethnic/race/religious affiliation of the author?
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Scott Chris,
I think you’re over reacting.
I think that's a bit rich coming from someone who finds asking a newspaper to uphold their own editorial standards a dangerous step on the slippery slope to censorship.
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And on re-reading, apologies for the extra negative in my first comment up there. I got so excited I read and re-read without noticing.
"overwhelmingly not members of groups that are usually targetted"
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PS: if Michael Cox feels impelled to get the word out and the Times has a change of heart, like everyone else in New Zealand he remains completely free to publish his own fucking racist newpaper.