Simon Bridges and Maggie Thatcher

By
John Minto
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20
12

When Maggie Thatcher was elected the first female Prime Minister of the UK in 1979 there were many who hailed her victory as a victory for women. The argument went that irrespective of your political views it was worth celebrating the fact that a woman had finally made it to the top political job in the UK by popular vote.

It’s true her election represented a gender marker in UK cultural life but after 11 years of Thatcher as Prime Minister, driving vicious neo-liberal economic policies, millions of working class women had been driven backwards into poverty and daily struggle. Rich men and women became more obscenely wealthy under Thatcher while millions – whole families and whole communities –  were hurled onto the scrapheap of free-market capitalism.

Thatcher’s election was a defeat for women.

Meanwhile, here in New Zealand similar comments are being made about the election of Simon Bridges as the first person of Maori descent to lead a major political party in New Zealand. Irrespective of one’s personal political views we are being invited to celebrate his election as a victory for Maori. Bridges himself has said he hopes Māori can be proud the National Party has elected their first Māori leader.

It’s true his election to lead National represents a cultural marker in New Zealand political life but the policies he is pushing are overwhelmingly bad for Maori just as Thatcher’s policies were a disaster for women.

Should Bridges get elected as New Zealand’s first Maori Prime Minister sometime in the future it will be a defeat for Maori.

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20 COMMENTS

    • Thatcher may well have opposed the TPP for the same reasons she disliked the EU: pooling of sovereignty etc.

      • Thatcher may have dreamt of Bulldogs , fox hunts and the past glory’s of the British Empire and all the little navvy subjects in the colony’s living in mud huts providing her oligarch class with their obscene amounts of unearned wealth ,…

        But the facts are that she didn’t have to make a play of Nationalism to manipulate the working and middle classes because;

        1) She had the convenient Falklands War to drum up patriotism , and ;

        2 ) Her best mate over the Atlantic , – Ronnie Raygun of Star wars fame and her had a good thing going with the Chicago School of Economic boys and ,…

        3) Meanwhile , that meant that she could get on with the task of demonizing and destroying the Trade Unions ,bringing down wages and creating the poverty class the uber wealthy wanted ie the mandatory neo liberal economics of having 5% unemployment.

        Just like Roger Douglas set in motion here and Ruth Richardson clinched the deal by passing the Employment Relations Act 1991, – and by slashing welfare for the very problems THEY and their neo liberalism created in the FIRST PLACE.

        4) The fact is neo liberal economics is GEARED towards globalism, – and that includes FREE TRADE DEALS and the abolishing of trade barriers and the minimizing of the state and regulatory measures regarding international trade . They are impediments to neo liberalism and its creed of wealth for the already wealthy and financial global mobility .

        Meanwhile , Milton Freidman and the London based Mont Pelerin Society circus clowns kept the obscenely wealthy portly and fat off everybody else’s publicly owned wealth by spreading their doctrine of privatizing State owned assets and labour , – while also avoiding paying their fair amount of tax by using such things as offshore front company’s & financial institutions , – as well as making damn sure they kept constant downwards pressure on wages through high unemployment and unbridled immigration for cheap labour…

        So Maggie was quite bloody comfortable , thank you very much. She could afford to sip her Brandy in peace while drinking from her imported glassware from Italy.

        You really need to pull your head squarely out of your own arse, Hooton.

        Read this for a start and answer the charges the far right have brought on themselves for all to see. Then try to explain Brexit , Trump and the global opposition to the TTPA.

        New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
        http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

        And don’t try to bang on about the evils of Socialism and start citing Venezuela when Scandinavia is the obvious touch’e to that little far right wing game of deflection .

        Go on , mate – YOU , – like all the rest of these bogus far right wing nutjobs fall strangely quiet when the historical facts are pulled out in plain sight for all to see to bear witness against your thieving ,plunderous ideology. NOT ONE of you have had an answer for your actions , – barring deflections or changing the subject , straight out bullshitting or bringing up some irrelevant or obscure bedtime time story’s from some bought and paid- for statistician or economist.

        NOT ONE.

        And that tells me you are all full of shit.

    • I’m sure somebody will put it much better than me, but in short – in the process of breaking the (excessive) power of the unions, Thacherism caused a truly spectacular amount of damage to a large chunk of the UK economy, took an axe to public services and privatized off everything she could lay her hands on, causing unprecedented wealth concentration at the expense of essentially all else. Brexit is the UKs final chance to fix the underlying problems, screw that up and the U.K. Might well end up like Detriot. End result. Nubs gana blame.

      • BINGO ! – And you read it first right here on The Daily Blog !!!

        Good spotting !

        And not only that – Kirk was a committed Keynesian economics man. And when the weasel Roger Douglas tried to broach his far right wing ideology’s with our Big Norm , – Kirk turned round on Douglas and said ,

        ” If you ever bring that subject up again I will have you expelled from the Labour party”.

        THAT’S ,… how far to the right this country has gone since then.

        Even Robert Muldoon would be to the Left of the current Green party.

        • We had some fantastic leaders in those days real men we could trust that cared about all NZers

  4. Simon Bridges may be part Maori, but is his heart with the Maori, especially those so disadvantaged, they live in abject poverty and in ghettos in Auckland and Wellington, where it is difficult to climb out of poverty and discrimination?

    Simon Bridges is white at heart, a privileged person of mixed race, who does hardly ever talk about being Maori, he is simply not part of the underclass, he is part of the arranged upper class mercenaries, taking advantage of his ties to Nats and the establishment.

    The man should be bloody ashamed of himself, but he is not, of course, he will use every opportunity to attack Labour and others, thus deflecting from his own wrong doings and hypocrisy.

  5. … ‘ Irrespective of one’s personal political views we are being invited to celebrate his election as a victory for Maori. Bridges himself has said he hopes Māori can be proud the National Party has elected their first Māori leader.

    But the policies he is pushing are overwhelmingly bad for Maori just as Thatcher’s policies were a disaster for women. Should Bridges get elected as New Zealand’s first Maori Prime Minister sometime in the future it will be a defeat for Maori ‘ …

    ——————————-

    Good on you , John.

    This whole Identity Politics crap is a real hangover trope from the 1980’s and 1990’s. It was used as a divisive mechanism to divide and pit groups in society’s one against the other. And both you and Martyn Bradbury are calling B.S on it.

    Its good to see.

    And the other thing I , – and many others I would imagine is this whole thing about saying ‘ Maori think this’ , and ‘Maori think that ‘.

    Again B.S

    That is such stereotypical racism in itself it is unbelievable ! The last time I looked? ‘ Maori ‘ were not clones , and ‘Maori’ were not singular.

    And how the hell can any person , – let alone a politician , known to never let the facts get in the way of a good story – have the right to make such broad sweeping generalizations about a large people group such as Maoris ?!!?

    They are as individual and free thinking as the next person !!!

    Frankly ? , – lumping racial groups all together like that is like saying all African Americans / Blacks eat watermelon and fried bloody chicken and strum banjos !!!

    Or that all East Asians suffer from defective eyesight, wear glasses and have buck teeth , and that all of them still think their Emperor is God , FFS !!!

    So the next time you hear some idiot uppity politician trying to use gross generalizations about a racial group and telling us all what that group thinks in the singular , – call them out and call B . S!!!

    Don’t let the bastards get away with !!!

    They are politicians !!! , – not bloody sociologists or anthropologists !!!, – hell ! , – half of them wouldn’t even know what those professions are , let alone be qualified to weigh in on what people really think !

    Oh , and btw ? – regarding Thatcher and NZ’s Roger Douglas ?

    There’s this :

    New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
    http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

  6. Hey! Fuck off with the ‘ white’ thing! I’m white as fucking snow, so what? What the fuck does the colour of my skin have to do with my sense of empathy, fear, anger, joy, hope? Not one thing!
    John Minto is making an important observation so fucking pay attention!
    Promoting Brown versus white skin colour as being a cause of friction is dangerously divisive at this critical point.
    Do you think I actually prefer the colour of my skin to brown or black? I’m getting bits snipped off me as I age because of sun damage. I’m freckly and I love the beach and the sunshine but when I go to the beaches I take two weeks of baking to go from blue to white. You think I fucking like that? Do you think that, that somehow gives me some kind of societal edge? How about you try it for a while? Swap ya? A full body skin transplant? Make our eyes water, but hey? Beaches! And you? You get to feel Colonial and cool with clouds.

  7. @WK – you are correct – they are full of shit, and are happy to bring down the world around them for the 1%’s gain.

    With Simon Bridges as PM, Maori WILL end up on the scrap heap, it certainly won’t be a victory for them, just look at the last 9 years of Nats/act/Maori party in power – how did that go for Maori, hmmm?

    And yes I believed Norm Kirk to be first Maori PM.
    Good old NZ MSM getting there facts straight every time…yeah right.

  8. Norman Kirk was of Cornwall descent. They are of an older non English population and celebrate their ancestors, King Arthur, Tristyn and Isolade. John Minto refused to accept an award for his fight against apartheid. I think he sees the same deception going on in New Zealand. No Aotearoa bs for John Minto. That was a pun, no Aotearoa means in Maori belonging to the Long White Cloud.

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