SOMETIMES, even the most staunch defenders of the system slip up. It doesn’t happen all that often, but, very occasionally, they say things that they shouldn’t. Take Mike Hosking’s recent rant about the failings of democracy. He really, really, shouldn’t have said what he said. It’s just not smart to let ordinary people hear what those at the top of the social pyramid think about the way society should be run.
What did Hosking say? Well, he was giving us the benefit of his deep insight and wisdom concerning the recent local government elections. This is what he said:
“No one cares. Turnout yet again was down. The vast majority of us couldn’t be bothered voting. Not interested this time, not interested last time; haven’t been interested for decades. The elected representatives concerned have failed for a generation to engage us. They’ve failed to convince us that what they do is relevant. It is time to change the system. It is time to get rid of voting for health boards. It is time to vastly reduce council sizes. It’s time for more appointments, less democracy, given that we’ve rejected democracy as a mechanism. We need to stop the moaning about the fact it doesn’t work, and actually start changing it”
Obviously, Mike has never heard the old saying about “the only cure for poor democracy is more democracy”. Indeed, his cure for our poorly performing democracy is to give us less of it. Never mind that the ratio of Auckland city councillors to electors is already 1:70,000! The solution, obviously, is to “vastly reduce council sizes”.
We can only speculate about what Mike would consider an appropriate ratio. One councillor for every 150,000 residents perhaps? That would halve the size of the Auckland Council from 20 to 10. Never mind that this ratio would allocate cities the size of Dunedin, Hamilton and Tauranga just one councillor apiece. After all, as Mike says: “We need to stop the moaning about the fact it doesn’t work, and actually start changing it”
And when Mike talks about change, he’s not kidding. What’s needed, he says, are “more appointments” and “less democracy”.
Just who will make these appointments, and on whose authority, Mike doesn’t say. Clearly, Thomas Jefferson’s argument that governments derive their “just powers” from the “consent of the governed” forms no part of Mike’s new constitution. But, that’s okay, because according to Mike “we” have “rejected democracy as a mechanism”.
Now, given how closely I pay attention to politics, I’m simply stunned that I missed the nationwide referendum on the future of “democracy as a mechanism”. But “stunned” isn’t a strong enough word to describe my reaction to what I can only assume is the fact (Mike Hosking is, after all, one of this country’s most trusted broadcasters) that a majority of New Zealanders voted to put an end to their democracy.
It truly is astonishing, because, to the best of my knowledge, no people on earth has ever done such a thing before. Plenty of peoples – the Greeks, the French, the Americans, the South Africans – have fought and died for a system of government based upon the freely given consent of the governed. But a people voting to reject democracy as a mechanism? Wow! – That’s new!
Speaking of the Greeks, it is interesting to note that in Ancient Athens – the birthplace of democracy – it was considered the height of irresponsibility not to “care” about the processes of self-government. In fact, the Athenians had a word for the sort of citizen who wasn’t interested in the affairs of the “polis” (the Greek word for the body of the citizens making up a city-state – from which we get the word “politics”). The people who declared “not interested this time, not interested last time; haven’t been interested for decades”; the ones who simply “couldn’t be bothered”; they went by the name of “idiotes”.
The word still survives. We use it every time we watch, listen to, or read the words of – an idiot.
I never watch his “show” and i couldn’t give a rat’s A* about what he thinks.
However, I note that in the USA they talk about “No taxation without representation”. Dunno if its in their constitution or what, but its an interesting idea.
So go on, Mike, complete your argument: “No representation-no taxes” extends to local body taxes AKA “Rates”. So abolish your democratically elected representatives, then abolish your locally-elected Councilors’ rates demands.
I’ll enjoy watching you out there every weekend repairing potholes in the roads, seeing you rostered on to do your share of the mowing of lawns in your local parks and gardens . . . . . and all the rest of it.
What an utter gorm.
There are several million Americans who are taxed but can’t vote, needless to say it isn’t in their constitution.
‘(Mike Hosking is, after all, one of this country’s most trusted broadcasters)
According to the report published earlier this year, that probably gives Mike Hosking a credibility rating of about 8%, similar to that of government ministers, and slightly ahead of bloggers.
9. Local government – 12 per cent (down 37 per cent)
10. Corporations and large businesses – 11 per cent (down 37 per cent)
11. Government ministers – 10 per cent (down 49 per cent)
12. TV and print media – 8 per cent (down 40 per cent)
13. Members of parliament – 8 per cent (down 54 per cent)
14. Bloggers and online commentators – 5 per cent (down 43 per cent)
http://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/kiwi-trust-of-nz-politicans-plummets/ar-BBrlP0X?ocid=spartandhp
Of course, as a covert saboteur, Hosking gets well rewarded for talking garbage.
Good to see the authoritarian anti-democratic right being honest for a change.
Classical idiot is Hosking.
Hosking reckons, “It’s time for more appointments, less democracy, given that we’ve rejected democracy as a mechanism.”
He’s a fuckwit who rejects democracy because it doesn’t achieve what he wants it to achieve so he wants us to appoint people to do the job.
No doubt fuckwits like him who know what’s best for everyone.
I’m pleased he has said this stuff. In some senses it sums hm up, it might get to be seen as classic Hosking, the archetypal arsehole Hosking.
The first thing you have to take into consideration is that Hosking , as well as Henry , Smith , Garner and Gower for that matter , are all relatively low IQ no-nothings who have been allowed to inveigle themselves into their various broadcasting roles by companies with certain ‘political agendas’.
So you’re dealing with someone who, despite all the bullshit marketing, is , (as they say in ‘Blackadder’), a bit of a ‘thicko’.
It is interesting to note that we never heard this sort of talk when ‘Banksy’ became Mayor of Auckland.
What Hosking is actually advocating is the ‘law of the jungle’.
Here’s an idea…. Let’s make Hosking Mayor of Auckland
Henry Prime Minister of New Zealand
Smith gets Finance and Social Welfare portfolio
Garner, Education and Maori Affairs
Gower , their media liaison officer.
Give them 3 years …. Failure will result with jungle punishment …. For the human race this equates to a public flogging followed by the placement of their heads in the stocks in the middle of Queen St.
Rotten eggs and tomatoes will be supplied for free to all those who wish to participate….
excellent idea Grant!
Make sure you have the village square stocks there to lock them into so we can aim the rotten tomato’s and eggs at a chained head please.
Your to kind Grant.
Key and his cabinet should be included but face the gallows instead of the stocks.
To kill the snake you have to cut off its head.
As for Hosking in the scheme of things he is not relevant and is talking to people who are just like him and are happy with democracy when it elects a government that is anti democratic and had more people vote against it than endorse it and ignored the MMP referendum result promising changes to make the system fairer and encourage more people to participate.
And runs a black ops operation out the PMs office to discredit and smear political opponents that Hosking hates.
Its a shame as a county that this right wing commentary has such a loud and lone voice and kiwis have bought into Hoskings deluded mad rants.
Kinda like the idea but! Can we have some kind of legislation in place where there’s a provision to have a vote to “Publicly Hang” them for their failures whilst in place?
I’d put money on him turning into a similar character like this guy “Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus,” so he’ll need some reigning in eventually.
It is hardly believable that an ignorant jerk is given air time let alone be allowed to express an opinion AND be paid for his time with our money.
Complaints should be laid and i will do that.
He is highly offensive.
A point about ancient city state Athens. The democracy was only extended to the few in the class that ruled over the larger slave population.
Sounds like New Zealand circa 2016 !!
Sounds like Mikey is a front for autocratic rule. He can rule himself by autocracy if he wishes, but he ain’t ruling freedom and democracy lovin’ me like that or any other like minded person.
So right Robert Glennie, 100%
Mike Hosking obviously feels now a sense of power by using the microphone to extend his twisted belief in authoritarianism.
“He can rule himself by autocracy if he wishes…”
That’s not the only thing he can do to himself if he wishes. Suggestions on the back of a one way ticket, please.
A question: does he really believe this, or is he just taking the piss? You know, seeing what kind of frenzied reaction he can stir up.
That would imply the man has a sense of humour!
Hosking missed something else in his little anti-democracy rant;
* abolish all political parties, sav one. We could call it, just off the top of my head, the “National Party”.
* Have one Leader, self-appointed, for life.
* Have the Army declare it’s allegiance to The Leader.
* Have para-military organisations set up to march up and down the streets. They could wear… brown shirts?
* Replace the Scouts and Brownies with the Leader’s Youth Movement. They could wear brown shirts as well.
Gosh, all this sounds a bit familiar… Where’ve I seen this before?!
The chilling thing is that Hosking would probably love to live in such a society. He’d probably apply for the role of Minister for Propaganda. Oops, I mean, Minister for Truth in Broadcasting.
Meh ,… lets have a wee song then.
I reckon this one from Denis Leary fits in well with the Hosking phenomena …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgpZ0fUixs
Good anaolgy, but I would have thought a more apt one is in existence today. But he’ll need a more ridiculous haircut to become our dear leader, and his son will be the only person suitably enlightened to succeed him. Hail glorious leader Mike Il-Sung.
Hoskins’ narcissism elevates him to an exceptional position from whence he is beyond any ability to reason outside of his self indulgent fantasy.
The political purpose of placing such a lame duck in front of a large viewing audience is deliberate. He fosters and appeals to bigotry and those who just want answers they can latch onto to make life seem simple.
He has many followers who are unable or unwilling to look further than the simple smarmy diatribe Hoskins utters. Us and them , dog eat dog, we’re Ok jack fuck the rest, as long as we wear the blinkers..
Bang on Frank. Mike’s rant is clearly due to left leaning mayor’s being elected. Imagine if Crone or Palino were elected to run Auckland, would Mike have aired the same rant?
that’s what I thought!
It amazes me that anyone in this world has nothing better to do than listen to Hosking, a guy that is an intellectual wasteland but yet has an endless stream of useless right wing opinions.
I suppose with the kinds of opinions he has, it’s almost an advantage to be totally ignorant, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to stick by them.
Soooh, Chris, do you still have hope? Do you still think that we are not heading into a true dictatorship? Some think we already have a quasi dictatorship, given the media bias, the lack of informing and debate that is being offered.
Mike Hosking is preparing us for the real dictatorship, it seems, he is one of the loyal servants of the vested interests of the few percents at the top of the income and wealth pyramid.
He basically says, hey, it is ok to not care, better leave it to your masters to run the show. Shut up, go to work, be glad you have “a job”, and get your earnings to spend at the malls and online on the weekends.
We are nearly there, this “guidance” offered by one such “vocal leader” and “opinion shaper” will be sucked up by many sponge brained people, who will shrug and say, yeah, Mike is right, so is Mr Key, “da best PM we eva had”.
Councils are more or less already run without much honest and true input from the citizens they are supposed to look after, they serve business and listen to the ones that sit at the Committee for Auckland, and the Auckland Chamber of Commerce here in Auckland, they listen to the “experts” at the New Zealand Initiative, the Property Council and others.
The MSM is more or less now just a mouthpiece of those vested interest groups and lobbyists. Also the Taxpayer’s Union has a regular voice through the MSM.
What is “progressive” there, I read some though, it was a “win for the left” in many cities in local body elections. They will soon learn, it is anything BUT that.
I avoid Hosking, its easy. I avoid Farrar, its easy.
I find it a bit harder to avoid RNZ Panel. Recently Farrar was on it.
Recently , this week, he opined that Trump and Corbyn were the result of political parties letting “the public” elect party leaders.
What bs! It was paid up party members who voted for their party leadership, not the public at large. Just imagine what might result if the public got to elect party leaders.
Clearly party leaders should only be elected by by those who know best. Like “born to rule Nationals and fish and chip plotters.
Actually it is recent history that the Labour Party membership regained some elective power, much to the chagrin of he LP caucus(aka as the fish and chip brigade).
Anti democratic urges are very strong among the cowardly bullies that parade as media commentators, presenters, whatever.
We cannot have the unwashed, unanointed masses challenging the rulers of power who fund the advertisements that fund the incomes of the commentators
That would never do.
DISS DEMOCRACY is hosking’s and Farrar’s slogan (and all their mates).
Anti democratic urges are very strong among anybody who gets any power at all. Left or Right.
Those who cry out here for transformational revolution are succumbing to the same temptation.
Democracy, like Chance’s garden, is never “accomplished”, it requires
constant attention.
Hosking is a facile clot, and a dangerous one, unfortunately, I think we can all agree on that, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with Local Government.
Sure, they are not very responsive, but then they aren’t very responsible. They are all totally dependent on the “largesse” of Central Government. They typically have little ability to choose policy beyond the trivial. When they ignore the obvious and attempt more, they are quickly reigned in by ballooning debt.
When local authorities can actually make a difference to the lives of their constituents, we should expect to see far greater participation.
In the meanwhile, Mike is not likely to set even National Party policy on this or any other subject anytime soon.
I’ve never trusted this c$%kwomble.
You might just have had an insight on the political right’s secret plan to “reform” local government – turning it from democratically elected councillors into central government appointed lackeys. We have already had a taste of that with the Environment Canterbury saga. What better way for National to take back control of the countryside from the people and allow open slather dirty farming practices, mining and water-for-sale schemes?
Yep, continuing the trend of recent decades, whereby small local authorities, based on actual communities and personal contact have been combined in to ever bigger ’empires’ governed by ever-more-remote and ever-less-accountable, ’empire-builders’.
The pretext for all amalgamation this was efficiency and effectiveness , whereas we all know that the larger an organization becomes, the less efficient and less effective (other than for the globalists’ agenda) it becomes.
A global ‘New World Order’, run by banks and corporations via puppet governments, for the short-term benefit of a miniscule minority of sub-humans, is the plan.
Fortunately, it’s all unravelling because Russia and China refuse to play the western bankers game.
Totally agree, reduce council sizes by removing the highly paid and ineffective CEO’s and associated dead weight of all the COO’s.
Councils are not businesses. Ratepayers are forced to pay rates – the CEO and executive team don’t earn the money like in a business they legally force the ratepayers to pay them money.
So lets stop pretending the CEO of a council or what have you need some sort of business nous. Businesses earn money and consumers have a choice, Council executive structures fuck up and then expect the rate payers to bail them out.
Don’t blame the elected councillors, blame the CEO structures for the disgusting lack of accountability and poor use of rate payers money from councils.
Councils ARE businesses (NZ is not actually a country in the sense of being a self-governing state: it is a corporate business. Check the history).
Councils are extremely poorly-run businesses because they are monopolies and there is NO ACCOUNTABILTY anywhere in the system and NO OVERSIGHT. Audit NZ: part of the system and part of the problem. Ombudsman: part of the system and part of the problem.
We can DEFINITELY BLAME COUNCILLORS for much of the deplorable state of affairs we witness because CEOs are appointed by elected councilors. And elected councilors re-appoint poorly preforming CEOs because everything connected with local government is rotten to the core.
Two important phenomena are at work here:
1. The Dunning-Kruger effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
2. The despoliation effect, whereby an organization become increasingly corrupt and inefficient because anyone with intelligence and integrity leaves in disgust or gets driven out (usually by the CEO), leaving only the corrupt and the obsequious.
Local government is largely ‘snouts in the public feeding trough’ these days, and little more than that, I’m afraid. That’s why there is so little interest in local government, and no hope for ordinary folk.
If you wish to go deeper into the rabbit hole, you can consider the fact that the entire western world in owned and operated by international banks and corporations, and the most important agenda for banks is to get communities into debt and keep them in debt: hence, local government has great enthusiasm for squandering money and resources on boondoggles and increasing debt levels of communities. And the most important agenda for corporations is expansion of business activities and consumption: hence local authorities continually promote expansion and egregious consumption, and devote none of their energy to conservation or preparation for the REAL FUTURE [of collapse and starvation], which is only a matter of a decade away now
In a sense, people who voted for Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt voted to get rid of democracy (not that I am supporting the army coup). Quite often parties like Communists and Islamic fundamentalists have stood in elections around the world and then having won consider that a mandate for installing their own system of government that isn’t democratic.
Yes EP.
I was interested to see a similar internal contradiction in Hosking’s statement:
“It’s time for more appointments, less democracy, given that we’ve rejected democracy as a mechanism”
i.e. our reason for getting rid of democracy is that the people (demos) don’t want it. But why on earth do you need a democratic mandate for removing democracy?
Hosking’s ‘thinking’ (not the right word) is very confused – it’s influenced by the principles he is rejecting – which tells you something is wrong.
He’s probably just manufacturing consent (for the benefit of those who still don’t know, persuading people to accept policies which are not in their best interest).
Indeed, for decades the prime purpose of the political system and the mainstream media has been to manufacture consent for looting, polluting and widening the wealth gap. So nothing has changed, other than ‘our distance from the cliff edge’ that we will be pushed off shortly.
I like Mike.
He makes the other narcissistic, little pee-pee, arseholes I know pale into insignificance . Cheers for that mike. You make them look good and I don’t have to rub shoulders with you. ( I’d have to stoop down of course ) So, win-win.
“It’s time for more appointments, less democracy”
I wonder if Hosking’s suggestion applies to a left-leaning government making appointments?
My money is that it doesn’t.
Hosking is a closet fascist but on this occassion he’s apparently decided to “come out” and declare himself. What’s the bet he has full-sized posters of Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler on his walls at home?
He isn’t a closet fascist he’s open about it, and he thinks that makes him Mr Cool.
He also thinks he can get away with anything because he is John Key’s grubby little rent boy.
To use the parlance of our times, ‘exploding heads’ all round on this one. Like nobody here has ever used sarcasm, been facetious or God forbid asked a rhetorical question.
Hosking’s verbal ejaculations are offensive, sardonic, dismissive, and deeply biassed. The question is, what can we DO about it? Moaning gets us nowhere. The brand of ‘infotainment’ he peddles (along with Henry and others) can’t really be classified as news or reportage, so it’s not easy to complain to the Broadcasting Standards Authority for inaccuracy or bias.
Just don’t listen to him you reckon? Not enough, I’m sorry; there are enough Kiwis who share his blinkered, entitled world view to keep his ratings up. The only action I can think of is for ALL of us to repeatedly challenge his mind-farts on his fb page. Better ideas anyone? Please?
So now you are rejecting our comments asking for the reasons why you are deleting our comments.
Yeh – thats a smart and mature game plan.
Comments are closed.