Let the screaming and tub-thumping commence: Trump!!! Cruz!!! Clinton!!! Sanders!!!

I think Jill Stein is a far more impressive figure than any of them, but the faulty machinery of the US electoral process will ensure her voice is barely heard ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein

Mea culpa: I’m willing to wear Matthew Hooton’s “Elitist” badge.

I think large numbers of NZers have very poor taste in their choice of flag design and their choice of Prime Minister. Further, I think there are robust, non-arbitrary, criteria by which aesthetic merit and ethical behaviour can be reckoned and that the Lockwood flag designs and John Key as PM score very poorly on those metrics.

But … I’m also prepared for John Key’s favoured design to triumph and not greatly concerned about it. It’ll be a fitting, but relatively short-lived reminder of his reign. History won’t be kind to John Key – he’s too clearly up to his neck in dirty politicking and scungy behaviour. He’s this generation’s Nixon or Muldoon.

Let’s go through this process again properly one or two decades down the track when we have a PM who can help pull us together as a nation; not one who helps pull us apart.

Are those of us staring at the microcosm – trying to make sense of two disappointing election results – looking the wrong way, while some irreversible social tide goes out?

Yes, very much this. The contempt I feel for Key and National is nothing against the despair I feel that so many of my compatriots choose to vote for them.

And I think you forgot one: What if the steady stream of migrants to NZ are much more likely to be National/ACT/Conservative voters than not? And what if our current immigration policy settings (and policy on refugees) is deliberately structured to make this so?

And while I'm sure it's not irreversible I'm finding it hard to see a good ending to this social tide's retreat ...

You're missing the point: I've got no reason to doubt Graeme's critique of the examples given by Gordon, and it's a useful critique, but it's also snide, pedantic and grandiose.

Why dedicate a blog-post to this when Graeme could have communicated privately with Gordon or posted a comment directly on Gordon's original article?

I agree with Yoza: Gordon's commentary and analysis is generally superb - this is a peculiar way to engage with that commentary.

I fear wide screen TV's and iPhones will rule the day for some days yet.

The problem is less the hideous bunch of clowns currently in power than the number of our fellow citizens who are enamoured with them. It's not as if Key and co's ruthless "pragmatism", lack of vision and moral-bankruptcy haven't been apparent for a very long time. And I don't see the situation changing in a hurry - there's a steady outflow of left-leaning political/financial refugees together with a balancing inflow of monied conservative-voting immigrants - so things look surprisingly rosy for Mr Key.

And while I respect and admire a small number of our current crop of MPs … really, who in their right mind would want to be part of that grotesque dysfunctional circus?

Agreed - The Panel is ghastly. Even the rare sharp-minded panellist (Brian Edwards, Linda Clark…) struggle to get airborne in that smug and cloying atmosphere.

The super-structure of the show is critically holed. Mora provides space and encouragement for panelists to waffle on endlessly (by and large about things they have minimal insight into) while squeezing those with any real expertise - the invited experts/guests - into the dying minutes of the show.

As to John Key's secret sauce - who really knows? He's smiley, warm - like a children's show host for adults. Whatever the essence of his appeal, his pending re-election reflects as badly on NZers as the re-election of Dubya did on our cousins across the pond.

Russell,

There has been much that has been unhelpful in this standoff, including, I'd argue, much of the commentary posted on this site (15 pages so far), a good portion of which has been simply noise and indignant WTFing.

I understand your frustration at Equity's sometimes haphazard communication but you might like to reflect on the vastly different resources available to the parties to this conflict and the differing mechanisms by which decisions are made. Nor is the flow of information to this site, Helen Kelly's contribution aside, necessarily a good indication of the efforts being made towards resolution.

Galling though it may be to the habitués on this forum, the dispute won't be brokered on these pages; nonetheless, it appears that progress is being made.

Given, as you say, that things are at an achingly delicate point, perhaps the most useful thing we can all do now is to breathe deeply, resist the urge to broadcast righteous outrage, and await developments…

Mick Rose (actor & longstanding Equity member)