The Daily Blog Open Mic – Wednesday – 1st June 2016

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openmike

 

Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.

 

3 COMMENTS

  1. I for one applaud the Alliance as the start of something with potential to succeed. Perhaps we can put aside the endless wrangling on the Left and look for a positive way forward.

    I was disheartened by Chris Trotter’s effort on the Paul Henry show.The Right produce doctrinaire cheerleaders like Michele Boag and David Farrar. We produce snide political “commentators” like Chris, essentially a good man but often lost in a world that is no more, or prey to hysterical hyperbole, Dial-a-Left-in-Name-Onlys like Josie Pagani, or cautious micro-maniacs like Mike Williams et al. In truth the future doesn’t have to be so bleak. There are plenty out there who can agree with much of the Left programme. But the discussion seems so often to get lost in the weeds of process orthodoxy.

    The way ahead is not, actually, a return to powerful Trade Unions and rigid employment laws. The world has changed, whether we like it or not. We have to go out and find new unions, and believe it or not, new unions-in-waiting are out there. We still live in a one-man-one-vote. While that lasts, there is always a wy to make progress. The solution will be way less sexy than some one-size-fits-all magic bullet, but it isn’t a magic bullet we are looking for -is it?

    Here’s a dirty little secret. The most effective and successful socio-economic solution will be the right blend of all sorts of philosophies. There will be some State intervention and some free trade and some capital gains taxation and some private enterprise and some government support and so on. (Just try for a moment to visualize a world where this is not the case. Is this really a world you want to inhabit?)

    In the end it isn’t about all those things. They are just process: a means to an end. What matters are the targets. Once you start to list your targets you will immediately be able to see the embryo of any number of Unions. So what do you want?

    Here’s one: a house. To get a house, the question of whether you are a well-paid young professional, a middle aged tradie or an older sickness beneficiary will make a big difference to how you get that house but a policy that includes all of these people will be complex and subtle and flexible. But as long as they see themselves in the mix, they can all buy in.

    Here’s another one: rivers clean enough to swim in. Who doesn’t want that. Especially people who live near a river they used to be able to swim in. Suddenly Rural New Zealand come into play with common cause with the Left. (Especially the Greens? Not really. Everyone wants a better, cleaner environment). So there you have the beginning of a strategy that can invade the traditional National Party lock. Not everyone is a Marginal Land dairy farmer. But offered a plan that proposes new directions which offer a way out of the current mess for struggling farmers who drank the Milk-bonanza Kool-aid, along with a return to an environment they once knew…..?

    So start with your top ten targets. Say “we will use whatever tools necessary to achieve those target”. Say: “we have no intention of being doctrinaire in seeking those targets”. And then take the fight straight to the National Party stronghold. Encourage National supporters with a conscience to see the light. Do it directly and explicitly. Tell them that when the opportunity comes, they will have no choice but to select the only political movement that can ever produce a country worth living in – for everyone!

    I have no doubt that a party, or party union, aggressively and seductively going forward, rather than simply trying to hang onto whatever rump votes they can, will win in the end.

    This alliance could actually go somewhere. We just need the courage and the smarts to take it there.

  2. Hi Nick Smith; will you switch to Alliance?

    Dont’ we wish as you was in 2004 accused of “irrational” and “paranoid”
    in 2003 remember?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Smith_(New_Zealand_politician)

    I do remember when Nick Smith was a rebel National party almost a Greenie like this;

    Nick you wrote this;

    “Here’s another one: rivers clean enough to swim in. Who doesn’t want that. Especially people who live near a river they used to be able to swim in. Suddenly Rural New Zealand come into play with common cause with the Left. (Especially the Greens? Not really. Everyone wants a better, cleaner environment). So there you have the beginning of a strategy that can invade the traditional National Party lock. Not everyone is a Marginal Land dairy farmer. But offered a plan that proposes new directions which offer a way out of the current mess for struggling farmers who drank the Milk-bonanza Kool-aid, along with a return to an environment they once knew…..? ”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Smith_(New_Zealand_politician)

    The real Nick Smith then in 2008 said;

    “From January 2008, Smith was giving speeches as National’s Climate Change Spokesman. In one speech, he stating there was no question that the destabilising of the earth’s climate, caused by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, was the “number one environmental issue”.

    8yrs ago Nick Smith may then have been known to say this about our dirty rivers now! – we wished we could believe that.
    Nick Smith may turn again to become a rebel if the polls continue to turn sour against this dirty NatZ regime we hope!

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