The Daily Blog Open Mic – Tuesday – 20th July 2021

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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.

EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world  and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.

2 COMMENTS

  1. If we could just reintroduce that quaint old idea that public servants are there to serve the public, and politicians are elected to represent that public, we might survive this pandemic, adapt to climate change, and even reduce inequality.
    It’ll take a lot more (or LESS, depending on you POV) than spin, marketing and bullshit before we ever get to that.
    I’m not holding my breath but we’ll get what we deserve.
    Keith Rankin and a few others are doing their best ( https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2107/S00049/inflation-fears-bullshit-costs-and-inappropriate-policy.htm ) although I fear they’re Uphill. Shit. Pushing – “on the back of” self-interest, career aspirations, and the cult of neoliberalism

    • And how better a society we might be if the media also jumped off the back of “ self-interest, career aspirations, and the cult of neo-liberalism”, and embraced minimal standards of human decency.

      It was appalling to see Martin Devlin’s sad hospitalisation plastered through Stuff within hours of his apparent suicide attempt. They certainly didn’t lose much time in revealing a very personal tragedy to their ghoulish readers, even if the publicity may be the last thing which this man needs at a clearly fragile time – and publicity which may be counter-productive to his recovery. This is tabloid gutter journalism, but not a new low for Stuff.

      In January 2020 a 40 year old Samoan father died off Seatoun Wharf in Wellington. The man was fishing for food for his family when his young son fell into the sea.

      Although unable to swim, he jumped in to save his son’s life. He lost his own life in doing so. Pulled from the waves by passers by who performed cpr, and despite the efforts of ambulance, fire and police services who attended the tragedy, children lost their father, and a young wife lost her husband.

      While the various help and support services worked on the drowned man, and while his shocked children and family huddled together in a nearby car, a woman stood filming them.She was taking real time pictures of a terrible family tragedy. A police officer approached and spoke with this woman : she was the one who bought Stuff for $1; following whatever words were spoken, the woman stepped back from the scene.

      The picture which subsequently appeared on Stuff was captioned, “ …an incident near the wharf.” What callous insensitive bastards they are, but that may be the best that yet another law school drop-out could come up with.

      An incident indeed. A family is shattered, and God knows what lies on their path ahead, and the shattering is filmed as “ an incident”, by somebody now described as a mogul and influential person, more’s the pity.

      It would be good for this family to know that a cop, a white cop, commonly portrayed as enemy of brown, stepped forward apparently to establish some sort of boundary between the death of their man, and an avaricious camera which obscenely recorded their overwhelming tragedy as “ an incident”.

      This scenario of an intensely personal catastrophic tragedy being filmed as news fodder, will always haunt me. Many of us could not have borne watching it, let alone taken pictures of it – respect for our fellow humans would be telling us to step back.

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