Dear Labour,
TDB has been ahead of the curve on a whole bunch of issues. Meth testing hysteria, the smaller ‘rehabilitation’ prison, the true challenge of climate change, dirty politics, mass surveillance lies, the illegality of Hager’s prosecution, Chinese influence inside the National Party, the support party National will create to win 2020, etc etc etc.
You can read it here first or see it in the mainstream 6 weeks later.
One point we’ve been desperate to drive home is how Labour will get screwed by the new Hobbit Law.
TDB told the new Government that they should have rammed the new Hobbit Law through in the first 100 days after it was added to the negotiation list.
Labour didn’t do that.
TDB warned that by not ramming through the change in the first 100 days Labour risked getting played again.
Labour didn’t listen.
TDB warned that National would once again join forces with Peter Jackson and use the Hobbit as another attack on unions and leverage cultural support to stop the Hobbit Law from passing by whipping up public sentiment against the law by pretending the new TV series could be filmed in NZ.
Labour didn’t listen.
Today the mainstream media magically suggest the new LOTR tv series might get filmed in NZ.
Labour are still not listening.
Here’s the play in very clear language so that even the Minister of complacent incremental Workplace relations, Iain Lees-Galloway, can understand it.
National will use the new Hobbit Law about to enter Parliament the way they used the Hobbit Industrial relations fiasco the last time around, as an incredible hit job on the entire Union movement while making themselves out to be supporters of NZ Hobbits.
National will support and resource activists to go into the Weta Workshop to stir up the technicians again and play up the threat that the LOTR TV series won’t be filmed in NZ if the new Hobbit Law passes.
The media will go into meltdown that Labour are trying to pass law that will kill off the LOTR TV series being filmed here, Matthew Hooton will go onto TV to breathlessly tell every political panel show that Labour just can’t help but suck up to their union mates while the rest of the country suffers. Mike Hosking will say it’s proof the Unions have run amok. Kate Hawkesby will ask why does the Left hate NZ made creativity. Barry Soper will ask why the Left hates Peter Jackson so much and Heather Du Plesses-Allan will predict the end of the new Government and the resurrection of John Key.
I bet John Key will make a comment as well.
Iain Lees-Galloway who was too slow to force this Hobbit Law amendment through in the first 100 days will feel huge pressure to kill off the Hobbit Law amendment. Will he fold like a cheap sack of shit?
The inevitability of all of this is the sad and sick part.
As if it’s not going to be shot in Ireland and Iceland anyway.
A much better solution and closer to the vision/setting that JR Tolkien had in the first place (England, not the bloody CGI-ied New Zealand of Jackson). Pity about jobs though but otherwise I couldn’t care less about NZ being the “real Middle Earth” trash.
Thank you, Liminal, you quite right. American tourists come here to see Tolkien’s shires, but the shires were never in digitally-altered NZ, but emanate from ancient gentle English countryside – without all the vertigo, trick camera shots and other liberties which Peter Jackson takes.
I only saw the first Jackson /Tolkien film and declined to see more because of the violence, and my dismay at a well-loved writer reduced to comic strip level which is how my children’s generation see Tolkien, without the beauty and nuances of the original writing, and the opportunity to interpret it all at their own level, not at Peter Jackson’s.
Listening is an oxymoron.
What moron would allow Peter Jackson to do a Hobbit series after the pigs ear that he made of the films! He would turn it into at least 10 series with 10 episodes each. The laws on contracting versus permanent work have lead NZ into a complete mess. This has caused many of our workers to not be paid as they are all unsecured creditors when the major business goes belly up – and no one is training as it is cheaper for businesses to hire fully trained overseas people rather than invest in their staff!
It is not Ian Lees-Galloway’s fault that we have employers who since 1984 have been incentivized to demonise and walk all over their own workforce. But unfortunately for him he needs to change that script fast.
On the Nail!
Yeah. Although I don’t doubt the truth of the OP, I think the fact the Hobbit movies were bloated and pretty average, means public buy in for the next round of union/worker bashing is likely to be pretty meh.
Oh for a return of the excellent management and crew rewards of Xena/Herc.
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