The Daily Blog Open Mic Tuesday 31st March 2015

1. I was talking to my elderly mother yesterday and we briefly discussed the Northland by-election result. My mother has a long time close friend who is a real died-in-the-wool Tory, like “John Key is God!”. My mother reported to me that even such a staunch JK supporter was critical of John Key and National’s performance, and that National fully deserved the drubbing it got. A sign of the future maybe? The cloak of invincibility is beginning to become a bit tattered? Watch this space folks!
   Great idea to have a general comment and idea section.

2. I heard on the radio, on the ‘take it with a pinch of salt’ news, that more ‘young people’ were using tablets and smart phones to watch the things they like, rather than television….I’m sure that would have gone down well at TVNZ. RIP TV?

   • My student sons flat has no landline, no Sky and the big TV is only used for Playstation. They stream their TV viewing on their laptops.

3. Reading various opinions from the Left has been a painful undertaking. So many seem unsure whether they are for moderate, incremental change, or for the root and branch eradication of the capitalist system. Either way, the message is most unlikely to resonate with voters, leaving the only option a victory by suicide by pilot, taking the rest of the party with him. (Sorry, a rather tasteless analogy, if apt).

   Here is a suggestion. The provinces are doing it tough, 40% of city-dwellers are doing it tough. Maori and Pacifica people are largely doing it tough. Rather than saying: here is a problem or there is an injustice, we should be painting a concept that a major section of the majority of the country can buy into. “We need everyone”.

   It would certainly be easy to sell the idea that the provinces have to be helped particularly when you explain that the cities clip the ticket on every dollar earned whether in town or outside it. (My suggestion is to ask each region what one government funded development would most help them, then move heaven and earth to make them happen).

   It would also be easy to establish both that when everyone is working the country must do better and that current settings are doing the opposite of using the whole population.

   The end-goal would be to try to create a situation where everyone has a chance to get where they want to go, given time and effort, and where short term reliance on benefits becomes the exception, while educational opportunities, the chance of starting a business and leading a healthy, productive life is available to all. The goal is a system aimed at using economical settings to produce human satisfaction, not the inverse.

   This Neo-humanism is by no means pie in the sky in a country the size of New Zealand and with our natural advantages, climatic and otherwise.

   Nor does it have to use either the eradication of capitalism (writ small) or a depressed acceptance that there is no alternative to the status quo.

   “No one left behind” can be both informed self interest and a blue print for a more inclusive decision structure.

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