RICHARD PREBBLE reckons the Aussie election should be read as a harbinger of doom for the Labour Government. It will all be about the cost of living, Prebble says, and that is only going to get worse between now and election day. So, its ‘Game Over’ for Jacinda Ardern, says Prebs, just like it was for Scott Morrison a week ago.
Hmmm.
If Prebs’ analysis is correct, then the complexion of an incumbent government simply doesn’t matter anymore. Left or Right – it makes no difference. The highest rate of inflation in 40 years is bound to evict them from office. They’re gone-burger.
So, according to Prebble’s gospel, Boris Johnson and his Tories must be considered gone-burgers. After all, the UK inflation rate to April 2022 was a staggering 9 percent. That is actually a record for the statistical series going all the way back to 1989. Given the sheer awfulness of that inflation number, we should be rubbishing any prospect of the Conservatives being re-elected at the next UK general election, two years from now in 2024.
Oh, really? Leaving aside the obvious point that a hell of a lot can happen in two years, and ignoring the Tories’ 80-seat majority (that’s right – 80 effing seats!), the state of the parties in the latest round of the UK opinion polls shows the Conservatives an entirely competitive six percentage points behind the Labour Party.
If Boris Johnson can’t reclaim that ground from a constipated prat like Sir Keir Starmer then he’s not the tousled Teflon toff the Brits seem irreversibly programmed to forgive over and over and over again.
No, the Aussie election result wasn’t driven by the cost-of-living stats, it was driven by the widespread assessment of Australian voters that Scott Morrison was a boofhead – and a pretty sorry specimen of boofhead at that. They certainly weren’t all that impressed by the Labor leader Anthony Albanese – who, by outward appearances, had also been manufactured by Stepford Industries. It was just that the thought of another three years of Liberal-National boofheadism was just too much to bear. Painful though it may be for a Kiwi to admit it, Australians just aren’t that dumb.
Which pretty much puts the skids under Prebs’ vulgar Marxist analysis that everything is driven by economics. Most Kiwis know that the inflationary pressures pushing up their living costs are practically all sourced offshore. That being the case, there’s bugger-all Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson can do about the price of oil; or the Russian blockade of Odesa, Ukraine’s wheat exporting port on the Black Sea; or the disruption of Chinese supply-chains due to Omicron; or the ever more serious effects of Climate Change. No. When it comes to deciding who to vote for, Kiwis’ preferences will be driven by factors that have very little to do with Prebble’s dialectical-materialism.
Watching Jacinda Ardern’s performance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, I was struck by just how extraordinarily good she can be when the wind is in her sails. While there’s no disputing that her confidence took a pummelling during the inevitable transition from lockdown to living with the Coronavirus, and that a downcast Jacinda Ardern is no bloody fun at all, there’s equally no disputing the fact that, as we have seen, even prime minister’s moods can be changed.
What may not be all that easy to change, however, is the growing perception that Christopher Luxon is just another tory boofhead, and that his National Party has long since crossed the line separating rational conservatism from the same sort of boofheadism that brought down the Liberal-National government of Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce. I mean Simeon Brown? Mark Mitchell? Are we really supposed to take these characters seriously?
And while we’re on the subject of ineptitude, who the hell was it who talked-up Nicola Willis as some sort of economic whizz-kid? Her recent performances as National’s shadow finance minister have been woeful. Pitted against Grant Robertson, she risks being exposed as just another empty National vessel.
Similarly, I have no doubt that when the election debates roll around next year, Jacinda Ardern will easily outclass Christopher Luxon. Providing she holds onto that poise and confidence she displayed on the Late Show, she has every chance of demonstrating to New Zealanders the foolishness of changing political horses in midstream.
She’ll need something to say, of course. Something over and above simply sounding like a credible and competent prime minister. Thinking about it, that’s what made her time on the Late Show so productive. She had something positive and progressive – gun reform – to hold up to an American audience horrified by yet another massacre of innocents. Something that the Republicans she didn’t name, but who were clearly in her mind, could never hope to match.
The most effective “over and above” policy constellation, IMHO, would be a bold and unapologetic pledge to reform the way the New Zealand state operates. If Jacinda Ardern and her ministers were to explain how ineffective the state has become under the administrative protocols of the past thirty-five years – offering up its pitiful outputs on health, education, housing, social-welfare, transport and Climate Change as evidence – her government’s collective failure to deliver would, at least, be explained. Blend into that narrative the need to improve the delivery of services to Māori and Pasifika, and then top it off with a promise to comprehensively rejig our electoral laws. That would give the PM plenty to talk about: plenty of opportunities to display her hallmark idealism and empathy
Of course Prebs would dismiss all this with a derisory snort. Constitutional reform butters no parsnips, he’d say – especially with Anchor butter at $8.00 for 500gms!
Except, a halfway competent Finance Minister would explain that if Anchor butter’s at that price it’s only because Fonterra and our dairy farmers are creaming it on the international market – and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?
What voters want more than anything else is the sense that an incumbent government continues to be a work-in-progress: that it’s still got plenty of things it wants to do before its through – changes that promise to make their world a better place.
Voters want to know that their leaders aren’t just thinking about them: they want to know that they are thinking, full stop. In sharp contrast to American voters, the electors of Australia and New Zealand still possess fully operational crap detectors. They will not vote for boofheads – or, at least, not indefinitely.
Richard Prebble, tells a really good yarn, quite convincing even, having read a couple of his books back in the day, until what he says is confronted by the facts. Much like the cycle lobby.
But really all it is is white noise and public manipulation from a tribal redundant politician who can’t see his part in it.
Ironically the increasingly fractious situation we find ourselves in today can be traced right back to this man and his friends at Labour in the 1980’s.
Thanks for the early morning smile. Luxon is plain awful, the boring neighbour we try not to answer the door to ( apologies for that end preposition); he and the dog boy of Iraq could be locked in a room with Nicola or Simeon to spend eternity Sartre-like together, played out at arts festivals as a warning to earnest persons searching for the meaning of life and not finding it. What good Nats there may have been in the past, and have gone, kaput, and this bunch are the wilted flowers on the compost heap, they’re finished.
There was a good Prebble, SSC, wrote me a point by point letter, answering each of mine – Jonathan Coleman did the same – but it wasn’t a Prebble called Richard, and it certainly wasn’t about money, it was about workplace stuff which impacts on performance and ergo on everyday people. PM Ardern may be good on the optics and better than the dried out old Nats, but Labour’s practical connectedness to the people needs to be improved upon – and not sabotaged by wokey wokey preachiness from the ghastly Greens.
Yep – there was an OK Prebble – one that seemed to have inherited a brain while the Richard’s intelligence was simply an ability to respond to stimulus – as in a prod, not unlike an amoeba.
As for one or two of the OK gNats, they’re probably grieving at some regular meet at a twee little Khandallah cafe where Chris Finlayson buys the apple pies and lattes.
OnceWasTim: “….a twee little Khandallah cafe where Chris Finlayson buys the apple pies and lattes.”
We don’t have any twee little cafés in Khandallah. And, a while back, I was told that Chris Finlayson now lives in Auckland. So I doubt that he frequents cafés here in Wellington, twee or otherwise.
Yup. Covid kills.
Covid kills governments.
Then the following government will also struggle to survive in a post covid economy with the domestic and international pressures and will also collapse under all of that pressure too.
Look forward to a rapid succession of a few elections in the next few years.
I would guess that the Aussie election went against the Libs just because they’d been in office for a decades and had run out of steam. Arden will go for the same reason.
Sure some bad economic data might be a contributing factor but is not yet a motivating one. Given a year of recession then things might be different.
The natz dirty politics brigade tried hard via the am show to down play Jacinda’s trip to USA like they did with her Japan trip. They also hoped that Biden would snub her. I was proud of her today – no politics, topical subjects and much appreciated by the audience. Its 16 months until the election and only foolish losers like Prebble and right wingers are still salivating over luxon and Willis who are big failures. The only time Pebble looked good was when he and Lange were able to respond in kind to Muldoons comments. He was useless at economics and its no wonder that he and Douglas, Bassett, Quigley, Brash and others ended up in the failed gun-touting Act party. Now Jacinda has a meeting with Biden – is that going to satisfy the Tory times herald readers and Tory Talk ZB listeners. What is the NATZ dirty politics going to promote next?
So the future of the country is based on a personality competition not policies or how those policies will be carried out .
…that have very little to do with Prebble’s dialectical-materialism.
Ho!Ho!Ho!
I really like that one!
May I use it please?
Me too? I think Chris Trotter is a very talented writer.
That was a good read. Something positive about our embattled PM, and Labour.
Grant Robertson has shown his political and financial skills, they are proven even if
you are on the other side.
Jacinda Ardern has done the same, again proven.
Can’t say that about Luxon and Willis.
Small error CT – Russia is not blocking Odesa port. That would be the morally
corrupt Ukraine. Odesa and Mariupol ports are open and protected by Russia
Navy and they are providing safe passage thru Ukraine mine fields for shipping.
This is fact not Western and Ukrainian bullshit. You need to get with it.
Anyone can google Odessa port blockade
Google? The likelihood is that you will get torrents of US/Western propaganda long before you find – if ever- an independent unbiased account.
The Russians are not providing safe passage through the mine fields to shipping – no shipping is leaving the Odessa port. Russia is saying they will allow it only if sanctions on Russia end.
And no problems from mines set but now uncontrolled by the Ukrainians?
Keep up.
Hi Ivan
SPC: GreenBus is correct. Russia isn’t blockading Ukrainian ports. Those ports are indeed mined, but the Ukrainian regime did that themselves. Best not to rely on Western reportage in this regard.
Thank you GB. I like what you’re saying.
I cannot get it: there’s a lot we don’t like about our present government and there’s another lot we don’t like about the possible next government. What we have at the moment may be as good as it gets for now and jumping to the other side seems like cutting off your nose to spite etc. The Ardern bunch may not get it right but I cannot help believing that there is a more genuine wish to help the poor for example, than there will ever be in the opposition.
And anyway, all the comments about housing, poverty, crime, inflation etc are exactly the same in my country in Europe. It’s universal sadly enough.
Over there they’re worse off I’d say with the lack of care for the people during the pandemic over the last couple of years, and now with the war breathing down their necks. New Zealand is the best place on earth and that’s partly because of the government and partly in spite of the government. What’s new.
The night before Jacinda extols the success of the post chch massacre gun control we have 7 driveby shootings. Makes the needle on the bullshit detector twitch for sure…
Well Cricklewood she did point out there was more to do. If find it weird that people keep saying “drive by shooting” like there were actually people shot at. Warning shots fired at a house are obviously not acceptable and concerning but talk about sensationalism.
Sensational! And just scary when three of the four dairies we regularly use have been ram raided or smash & grabbed this year. And the other dairy owner was stabbed last year. And your work colleague heard driveby gunshots in his neighbourhood the night before last. Yes every local I talk to have had their sensations tweaked.
Yeah I wonder if she was even told that had happened.
Or indeed told any of the 12+ shootings in less than a week had happened…
Cricklewood thinks she was. He may need to look at his own bullshit needle which is on critical.
Oh look the police have arrested seven in relation to the Auckland firearm incidents. It’s almost like it’s their job and not PMs
Oh look the police have arrested seven in relation to the Auckland firearm incidents. It’s almost like it’s their job and not PMs
Obviously the drive by shootings were done by licensed and legal gun owners. Not by criminals who ignore Jacinda’s regulations
but where did they get those guns richard?
Same place they get all their perfectly legal meth, licenced meth importers of course.
Where did that Australian get his guns from Richard?
The NZ Police fast tracked the foreign terrorist’s firearms licence and then signed off on the mail order permits to buy many of his firearms plus thousands of rounds of ammo. Was any of those officers held responsible? Was anyone of those charged with either negligence or corruption resulting in the loss of over 50 innocent lives and so much harm? Did anyone even lose their job? The NZ Police armed a foreign terrorist and everything afterwards has largely been to hide their responsibility.
you won’t get an answer on that one standalone
no, got the usual bullshit answers. its like these morons think that there are clandestine meetings, where an inflatable goes out to sea to rendezvous with a submarine, with a captain who speaks with a generic eastern european accent, a trade is completed, and hey, presto, gangs have weapons.
… and this is just one shipment the caught… at the airport…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300530682/nzs-biggest-drug-bust–613kg-of-meth-seized-at-auckland-airport
You should probably know that very few shipping containers are actually searched…
https://www.customs.govt.nz/about-us/news/media-releases/customs-seizes-$176M-of-meth-from-shipping-containers/
Millions of dollars worth of product coming almost by the ton, that needs protecting (as seen by the shootings in Auckland)…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/operation-tauwhiro-united-states-tip-off-leads-to-auckland-drugsfirearms-bust/6LMOXFCMMMPGRO5ZZLDYY4FKU4/
And as to those with Eastern European accents, it was/is common practice for Russian fishing boat crews to offer payment in illegal firearms for goods & services render (friends have been offered this & politely declined).
Oh and just in case you think I’m some kind of moronic, Right-tard or whatever, I almost always vote Greens / Labour, I have post-graduate qualifications, I’ve never owned an AR15 and in the past 10 years I’ve donated more money (currently >1% of my gross income) to charities (Amnesty International, Greenpeace, IHC, Outward Bound, Blind Foundation, Salvation Army, Oxfam etc.) than I’ve spent on firearms or ammunition. I also have a wide range of hobbies, most of which don’t involve firearms. I’ve protested alongside John Minto, Nicky Hager, Josie Butler etc. on a range of issues. I personally believe that lawful access to firearms by properly vetted individuals is a right that enhances life with meaningful & challenging sport/recreation, puts food on tables, controls pest species, protects our wild places and as a side-effect provides a check against hostile invasion & totalitarian government overreach by their mere presence in communities.
I should probably also mention that I will almost always respond to any article/comment that mentions firearms issues in a negative way on this blog, in much the same way as Gaby will respond if you say “Israel, Israel, Israel”, whilst looking in a mirror. If you don’t see any reply or comment from me, it’s usually because it has been moderated out (despite containing no abuse, foul language or personal attacks). I may try multiple times, using various names/emails before giving up, because it largely a waste of my time. I will always try to keep my answers factual, based on what knowledge is available to me, but a lot of things are censored, banned, reacted or just plain covered up (that’s what we do with stuff ups in NZ).
oh so not incensed respectable gunowners flogging off their armouries in a fit of rightard pique then, dick?
well that’s been a threat from some in the gun lobby hasn’t it going into the ‘black market’ that supplies crims.
Easier to import your own, safer too as few shipments are intercepted, plus you can bring in the high capacity mags that were hard to get in NZ, even before they got banned. Reduce the need for reloads when shooting up the neighborhood. Check out the numbers of shots fired / casings at the scene, that’s importation. Safer communities?
Though none of it matters now, things have slid to far now, gun control is what we used to have before the Police gave up & Labour rammed through their failed laws. Now we have chaos. Registration will just add more fuel and it will just get worse from here. You reap what you sow.
As to your Right-tard scenario, they are more likely to have kept their AR for SHTF situations, to protect themselves & their families from dangerous criminals. They are also unlikely to have criminal connections which they could sell to if a fit of pique took them. Of course, since you can no longer keep your AR in your safe and for the purposes of plausible denial, it is better if it is hidden/buried somewhere accessible to the general public. However if it then gets lost, stolen or disappears, you can no longer report it to the Police, since you didn’t have it in the first place, thus it could enter the black market.
“Licenced firearms owners” selling guns to criminals are often criminals/gang members with no criminal record or 501s without the Australian background check. They have been granted licences because the Police haven’t bothered to do proper vetting or background checks, there has been a number of cases where this has happened and these individuals have moved a lot of guns into the black market. People with meth problems or relatives with meth problems will have criminal connections and could provide guns under threat or in lieu of product. Likewise people who have had licences cancelled but the Police haven’t bothered to follow up weather they still had any firearms, might sell illegally rather than have them confiscated.
The problem with the 100000+ lost semi-autos is they are in the grey market presently, but they’ll gradually seep into the black market over time. They are a gift from Labour that will keep giving for a long time.
how likely is your homestead to be attacked by AR toting marauders outside your ‘walking dead fantasies’ well if they’re banned and law abiding gun owners are indeed law abiding rather than selfish little children..I’d say the likelihood is infinitesimally small wouldn’t you dick.?
thanks for the admission that trustworthy upstanding gun owners are supplying the criminal underworld let’s hope prosecutions and harsh penalties (the kind rightards love) ensue for these respectable gun owners.
Here’s a man who valiantly saves his family with his taiaha & AR (no licences involved though, no firearms charges as far as I know, walks on killing one attacker & wounding the other 3)…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kawhia-shooting-wife-describes-terrifying-moment-intruders-broke-into-her-home/2YFUNHHCVXJTPE4BZZCQWPLKIY/
Your faith in the law is overwhelming in a country where illegal firearms possession for criminals is largely free & people get home detention for killing people with illegal firearms (not the above guy, that was self defence so was perfectly legal).
The Police no longer have the resources to enforce the law and are struggling to keep the lid on the most serious offences, have they arrested those who’ve been shooting up Auckland or would you prefer they went after the taxpayer who has his formally legal AR hidden in his woodshed? The Police would prefer the later as there is significantly less risk than going after a heavily armed gang member with a semi-auto with a 30 round mag who will happily gun them down in the street.
my whanau is from the king country, and there is a lot of information omitted from that story richard. like where did a former gang member get a semi automatic rifle from to defend his plantation from? ’cause he didnt get it to defend his family. i’ll give you a clue, it was one of his law abiding tax paying neighbours. the chch shithead got his from gun city, and some how these events are the polices fault? and not policy failure? so the government change policy, and you then you’re still not happy? there is no pleasing you is there?
Of course there is more to the story, generally when you have a criminal defending a crime against other criminals using an illegal weapon, no one is likely to tell the whole truth.
And you know the source of the firearm? You reported the supplier to the Police? Because the Police traced the serial number of the firearm to the shop which sold it & they supplied the name of the original purchaser, who the Police then questioned? Because if it was a licenced firearm owner who supplied it, they certainly weren’t law abiding were they? Were any charges laid by the Police regarding the firearm?
As to Tarrant, he bought many of his guns mail order, so instead of walking in to Gun City & having a chat to a sales assistant, who may have asked him why he need a couple of semi-automatic rifles and 1000s of rounds of ammo, he walked into a Police Station and they signed a form okaying the purchase and confirming he was fit & proper to possess such items, just like they did when they fast tracked his firearms licence in record time.
Admittedly Tarrant is a tricky, because he came to NZ specifically to carry out a terrorist attack, and that means all he had to do was remain in character as a “normal person”, unlike a local who slides into mental illness or extremism and leaves lots of red flags through their daily interactions with friends, family & work colleagues. That said Tarrant left enough red flags that should have denied him a firearms licence, his lack of job/income or suitable referees that had actual had met him, his travel to dubious locations, his squalid/spartan living conditions. If the Police had done their job properly as was required by the existing arms legislation of the time, perhaps much of the carnage could have been avoid, though maybe not. He could have used fire/explosives for a higher body count. He specifically chose to use firearms because he was aware of the legislative effect that would have on New Zealand and that part of his attack has definitely paid dividends and we are a lot less safe as a result. He also kept to himself largely & there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he tried to recruit anyone (I’ve heard comments that he might have had help, but since no one else was arrested I guess not), and these are classic things that are likely to blow your cover, though the Police apparently ignored concerns raised by members of the range he was “training” at. I don’t think that Tarrant was a terrorist mastermind or particularly clever at all, just a angry loser, but he seems to have managed to outwit the NZ Police & security services and that makes it hard to tell whether that was gross incompetence or as others suggest, design (I go with the former rather than the latter).
As to the law changes, adding new laws which you don’t/cant enforce, to replace laws that those tasked to enforce didn’t follow. To tighten up restrictions on the law abiding whilst ignoring those that have no intention of obeying any laws previous or future. Does that sound constructive to you? Or is that just giving the appearance of doing something, whilst actually doing nothing, or even making things worse?
In response to the attack of a single FOREIGN terrorist, who came here specifically to kill & cause chaos, our Government & Police have cemented that chaos into place and New Zealand is in a worse situation than if they had done nothing but perform their duties as they should have in the first place.
“Watching Jacinda Ardern’s performance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, I was struck by just how extraordinarily good she can be when the wind is in her sails.”
Yeah, Adern is amazing when she’s preaching to the choir or has a fawning US celebrity blowing smoke up her arse, but is she any good when she’s on the back foot? No, she is not.
And when she’s back in NZ trying to explain why she has delivered on NONE of her promises to a media that is finally taking the gloves off, she will be a complete shambles. Luxon doesn’t have to be very impressive in that scenario, he just has to be less terrible which won’t be too difficult.
“Yeah, Adern is amazing when she’s preaching to the choir or has a fawning US celebrity blowing smoke up her arse, but is she any good when she’s on the back foot? No, she is not.”
Sorry what’s your background in people person skills?
Oh, I’ve got bachelors degree in “people person” skills, just like Jacinda
You’ve got nothing!!!!!!
Same as Jacinda?
He’s Jian Yang. Former PRC spy in the Beehive. Not the best people skills, and obviously bitter that Jacinda is going to choose Biden over beloved dictator Pooh.
Agreed.
Please list these promises she hasn’t kept.
Oh my God…
Why does the mention of wee dick’s name remind me of someone vomiting blood while bent double defecating with amoebic Dysentery ? Funny that aye? But I guess that’s just me. I can’t help what mental images I get when I hear a trigger word or name.
Wee dick’s a neoliberal criminal. Don’t mention its name or it’ll be back. ( Not that I’m suggesting it ever went way. )
Remember? ‘He’d been thinking’ and now we have homelessness, people living in poverty with hungry kids in hovels they can’t afford to heat and gang warfare raging in Auckland. We had, and still have, a dying social infrastructure being stood on by billionaires and wee dick, tiny wee dick, did that. Him and pig-eye douglas. Little Pig Eye. Tiny wee men. Little men. Small, little, evil men. And I use the term ‘men’ advisedly. Can someone give me a moral reason I can believe for why they’re not in prison? I know why they’re literally not in prison, of course. It’s because they corrupted everything they touched and they’re very, very touchy-feely little things. They’re poisoners. They lay down their poisons before they move in and take and take and take and just keep taking. Small, evil, taker creatures. They’re something inhuman living inside ( barely) human shaped meat packs.
Perhaps David Ike was right?
Hells bells this farming lark produces some fine rhetoric doesn’t it. Country boy the images you produce are less attractive than cleaning up the cowshed after milking. (I have an old Edna cartoon book and the cockie has got his wife on the jobn.)
Yes I remember Prebble “thunking”. He told a story about some guy in Taumaranui in a Railways featherbedded job, employed to daily sweep out the goods shed with no goods in it. Sure not very economically productive but he was a dignified member of society who worked for a living, displayed a work ethic to his kids, could feel part of and contribute to the community. Always wondered what happened to that guy under Prebbles Progress? Dumped on the dole, poverty, depression, alienated from society and his kids thought fuck this and joined an underclass gang. So efficient.
The little men that put an end to David Lange, the little men that lied and lied, the little man that rode with the workers on save the rail campaign. All they were were Margaret Thatcher in drag. I am ashamed they did all the damage we see today under the disguise of a Labour government.
It will take a miracle to save this Government, they either need to pull finger & make good on their many previous promises (unlikely) or they need a really good crisis they can pretend to solve, to distract voters from all the other crises that they have failed to do anything meaningful about. Apart from saving us from Covid, they don’t have much to show for their almost 5 years in Government. Things have gotten progressively worse for most people and the future isn’t exactly looking rosy. National may not have much to offer, if anything, but if things carry on the way it’s going, all they have to offer is a change to beat Labour. There is a lot of pain coming for a lot of people and a sad expression & some Neo-kindness is going to be enough to make it better.
Clowns to the left of me
Boofheads to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.
Not sure about Jacinda, what’s up with that manic grinning while talking about death. I saw her do the same thing talking about suicide, very strange. I see she’s still on about censorship and surveillance as well, not good.
Luxon seems afraid to be forthright about things, his waffling response when asked about cancel culture for example. It looks like a lack of courage or authenticity or originality to most people. Mind you I’ve never heard JA say anything interesting or original either so a bit of a black hole all round. I think I’ll vote for ACT, much more authentic.
Act is the looney gun-touting hill-billy party. Prebble was the dumbest financial spokesperson any party has had. He’s a dinosaur so why does the granny herald waste time and money on his articles.
ACT a party contrived with lies.
Sorry Queeny but Lanour has become the party of lies and broken promises.
Ĺabour I meant. May as well say that Seymour is not kidding with his policies so he can hardly be called a liar.
Well that’s a lie right there.
and when did we last have 18 CHILDREN murdered in a school…it’s one massacre a day in the US…
crinkly wood
Folks
Chris is trottally right! While we are not the same side, I fear the embarrassment of having to support a boofhead could be just too much to bear. So Luxon and Willis better come right quick! Or else I have to support Seymour – I think it’s fair to say he’s definitely not a boofhead, but a smart fox (Bomber’s words not mine!!!). But here is the big dilemma: Does one support Jacinda just because “She’s soooooo nice with her empathic frown but totally useless as a tough boss of a hapless govt and a difficult bureaucracy, and risk another three years or disastrous management? Or do we live with the boofhead and hope a better outcome??? Advice please Bert, Tane, Covid, Countryboy, Yuri…not you Bob, I know what you will say!
Advice, check out Bombers take on ACT’s policies, given you are using Bomber as a reference. So you’re voting for a person and not policy?
I however don’t agree with Bomber and think Seymour is a complete boofhead particularly when he’s dressed in a yellow leotard.
Add to that Ardern has mentioned you as a keyboard warrior, someone who loves to spread misinformation.
Hahaha you got me. Everything you spread here is the truth and nothing but the truth. Folks vote Jacinda. Bert thinks ,she’s the truth’.
Kraut or whichever version he signs his name to folks, thinks Ardern is against us, probably why she increased benefits to record highs. Never mind, coward preaches from the Donald Trump pulpit of truth.
Still waiting for an alternative government suggestion coward and how they will improve the country for ALL?
bert a bijoux pointette old bean…most of the ‘record high’ benefit increases where clawed back by MSD something they were well aware of as they announced them
But they were increased is that not correct?
Imagine if they weren’t.
‘no rise and there would be nothing to claw back no increase in disposable income, with the raise and clawback no increase in disposable income….explain to beneficiaries please what they should thank her for again bert.
Gagarin you have Bert humiliated which is easy to do but thanks anyway.
Enjoyed it but think you need to take it easy on him.
Thank her for not being Nact and having your benefit slashed.
oh right I’m sure they’re suitably grateful she only kicked them in the balls not in the head.
in effect she did exactly nothing for them.
Yes it is the truth, unless you can prove me wrong, but that would take mahi and given your dislike of Maori the word is work.
tit
chardonnay warrior
She is more truth than ACT and their traitors will ever be, and ain’t that the truth
Left or right has not matter for a while now.
There is no difference between L/G or N/A they are both bottom feeders of the same tax payer funded trough.
Jacinda is toast unless they remember that they are PM of NZ not the fiction of Aotearoa but not hodling my breath, they are so open minded their mind fell out some time ago. Fwiw the US can have them any time.
don’t fret for jacinda, aunty helen has a warmed seat for her at the UN where they can be empty, trivial and sanctimonious together…….in luxury.
I’m amazed that Chris just wishes that this government would just say the right things to give the electorate hope of a better direction and outcome for this country. Jacinda shines above Luxon because she’s an orator. She tells believable lies, and many still believe them. Luxon and Willis may be awful to listen to, but Jacinda saying the right stuff makes her no better. In fact it makes her worse because what she says is meaningless if nothing comes of it. I’m thinking that Jacinda being star material in the US would make the underprivileged here have an even more bitter attitude towards her an her government.
I detect the Natz dirty politics team are instructing the right-winger trolls/bloggers/talkback hosts/etc to change the discourse and conversation on Jacinda from positive to negative. Jacinda 10 dirty politics 0.
I’m with you Nik. Have you noticed the obviously coordinated attacks on Grant Robertson that have started since the budget? What these RW regurgitators don’t realise is that a scan of our local blogs reveal the nearly identical comments published under different pseudonyms. In fact, I once pulled Stuff up on publishing identical comments consecutively but under different names.
Chris you must be at your wits end.
About a week you, quite rightly explained that Jacinda wasn’t near ready for government in 2017 when Winston anointed her Prime Minister, and that Covid was the only thing that saved her in 2020, yet here you are trying to make a case that’s she’s just the bees knees?
The country is going to hell in a hand cart with daily drive by shootings, inflation wreaking the lower and middle classes, failed promises left right and centre, obscene spending on ridiculous pet projects and our actual democracy being driven over by her appointed separatists and all you’ve come up with, well at least she’s from our side.
Although it’s she really?
Yup.
I doubt that most kiwis actually know much about inflation other than they’re paying more at the checkout and pump. Where and why inflation is happening are irrelevant, what matters to the man and woman in the street is that they have less money at the end of each week and the paltry $27 a week bump on offer with little to nothing else available won’t suffice to keep people voting Labour. Add to that the consistent and steady decline of polls for Labour and I think old ‘Mad Dog’ Prebble may well be closer to the outcome than the above suggests.
Didn’t they call Richard Prebble ‘Mad Dog’ Prebble. Was he bitten by one some time ago, and is living proof that humans can recover from Rabies? Cultivate him as a scientific curiosity.
And remember that Labour has joined with National in this neolib degradation of every hopeful aspiration that our young country had, following on from another youngish country the USA which was going to show the world how to live and be brilliant at doing it. Hah. One of the systems that have emerged from under a rock in highly thought of business studies is that of the unimaginative, robot-ready one of generic management – one size fits all. Here are a few headings from google indicating what a CEO would need to have to run a business well. Does Luxon fit these criteria?
And then there is the ongoing query in the objective citizen’s mind – is a businessman trained to act to produce profit, and willing to dispense with people workers and embrace machinery of some sort instead because of business advantage including profit, the right sort of person to head our human, organic systems and structures?? Should we bre reading Kafka who applied his mind to metaphysics of which I doubt that we receive more than a few hours of learning in our lifetimes. We might in future move from a mainstream humankind to being ‘streamed’ into different types, the majority being classified by the archaic word ‘wight’ meaning luckless; or going further, in literary use, ‘a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being’.
https://hbr.org/1989/07/six-basics-for-general-managers – Harvard Business Review
The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
https://hbr.org › 2018/01 › the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo-j…
31/01/2018 — We conducted a 10-year study, which we call the CEO Genome Project, in which we assembled a data set of more than 17,000 C-suite executive …
How To Become A CEO: These Are The Steps You Should Take
https://www.forbes.com › christianstadler › 2015/03/12
12/03/2015 — Just over half of Fortune 100 CEOs have a degree in business, economics, or accounting, while 27% studied engineering or science, and 14% law.
The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
https://hbr.org › 2018/01 › the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo-j…
31/01/2018 — The path to CEO rarely runs in a straight line; sometimes you have to move backward or sideways in order to get ahead. More than 60% of …
(It’s interesting how Harvard comes at top of google listings when seeking info on management matters
which seems to indicate they may be premier in the western world in training the sort of managers we have.)
yeah but the dog died after biting prebble
I think Prebble bit the dog…….save rail…..
So in summary, Labour good, National bad, truly pathetic.
Maybe if we give Ardern a third term she will finally deliver on her rhetoric? Yeah, no.
Keyboard Warrior…National good, Labour bad, truly pathetic.
The Natz have inspiring platitudes.. ‘a brighter future’ and their best.. ‘we could be on the cusp of something.. special’
RICHARD PREBBLE scum bastard should be hung for what he and his moron bunch did to NZ
You’ll probably just have to settle for pissing on his grave – and there’ll be a few lining up to do just that. Problem is, the snivelling little shit will probably opt for cremation with his ashes turned to the wind.
If and when that happens, I’ll bet CNN’s air quality update will register a fall. Get your inhaler ready
100%
So you oppose Jacinda’s ‘hate speech’ lectures? Good on you.
Is that hate speech?
That’s in reference to Jay11, OWT and Bert.
i agree with you Chris. if the Govt committed to reform in such a way, it could claw back votes. But I think that the 20 – 30% old time class Labour voters who have been inexorably betrayed by this government, along with those on parliaments lawn, will make this election much harder to win.
Who is going to believe anything this kind and transparent government says after what we have all been through. Lie, Spin, Obfuscate, rinse, wash and repeat.
Labour will have to pry my vote from my cold, dead hands.
Yes Fantail.
What really irks me is her supporters still think she’s marvellous?
Lies,spin,obfuscation so on and so on.
But pull one ponytail.
Chris Trotter,
Well written piece which I largely agree with. Although, you’ve repeated a blatant piece of propaganda.
There is no Russian ‘blockade’ of the Black Sea preventing wheat exports from Ukraine. Rather there are Ukrainian sea mines drifting having lost their anchors, thus no shipping concern can acquire insurance or insurance is prohibitively expensive, to transport Ukrainian wheat. This hasn’t entirely stopped the Ukrainians from exporting wheat, they’re busy trading it with the EU for weapons via rail over land borders. It is also worth recognizing that there wouldn’t been a food crisis globally if western sanctions hadn’t been applied to Russian grains and fertilizers.
Although I am generally a National supporter, I do feel that Chris Luxon and Nicola Willis won’t have enough time to grow enough in their roles before next year’s election and I really can’t see either of them sticking around until 2026.
Why do you think they won’t stick around?
Well keep colbert in America then
Prebble, ay.
I’m sure his family is having a good time of it in his country for the privileged.
?
In the UK the 80 seat majority that the Conservatives won in the last election was from 43% of total votes. Very hard to change government on those numbers.
Major over estimation of the amount of critical thinking the average voter puts into their vote. National are up in poles because they’re something different not because of policy. Like wise, Labor could lose the next election because voters and the media are bored of Jacinda. Not because they’ve given any consideration to policy or the economy – beyond the house hold budget analogy.
I’ve said it before, NZers do not vote on policy anymore. They may have in the past, but in the social media age (which ironically Jacinda says needs to pull their socks up, yet she can’t stay off it??) means it’s a popularity competition.
In 2020 we saw for the first time in MMP history a party win a majority, on a ‘zero policies’ policy (oh they had some but they just didn’t want to reveal them) and NZ said yes!
We effectively just need to count who had the most FB followers and make them prime minister, and the evidence is that the last two elections have proved just that.
Peter I doubt you are right. (I am using doubt in a past- century meaning that isn’t of today. But looking back to past century thinking and writing says much that is worth holding onto as we note that our education hasn’t advanced our thinking processes to what is needed in the modern world! OK we have got democracy, but do we know how to drive it and service it properly. Is it or us, due for a warrant of fitness?)
doubt – Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org › wiki › doubt
The noun is derived from Middle English dout, doute (“uncertain feeling; questionable point; hesitation; anxiety, fear; reverence, respect; something to be feared, danger;”) [and other forms], from Old French doute, dote, dute (“uncertain feeling, doubt”), from doter, douter, duter (“to doubt; to be afraid of, fear”) ( …
And thinking of change, disappointment, loss of hope, clinging on – and the need to decide on an attitude and find a goal which I think is at the base of voters feelings, we might imagine that we are pop stars who have found that their balloon is popped.
A music journalist interviewed some past stars to see how they felt, and what they did. Imagine that NZ is a pop star, with a bright past. (At one time we were listed high as a wealthy nation. Don’t know about it – look it up, learn.)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018843790/nick-duerden-what-happens-to-pop-stars-after-the-hits-dry-up
UK journalist and author Nick Duerden has spent years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet and believes, without exception, they are at their most interesting when they’ve peaked and are on the way down.
Let’s find ourselves a new image, a new goal, and help each other working towards reaching it!
At present there are too many divisions and people who sneer at what others do, finding strength in not doing much themselves and therefore not exposing themselvesto any criticism. (They get their kicks writing to Kim Hill to dumb her down. Listen on today’s show near midday for a snotty one. Tall poppy slayer.)
We are too often sad sacks, not enough goodwill to others. Get off the pot. One of the richest men in the 20th century Howard Hughes got to the stage after he had done all the conventional things, that he spent hours on the toilet. Is that us – or drinking alcohol or some drug? No bloody way.
Not keen on boofheads. I’m not keen on pavlova-heads either, including the one who’s been on the Colbert show is it three times now?
Another sad grumpy old hate Jacinda man – you should appreciate that Jacinda may have saved us old codgers’ lives from Alpha & Beta. But with average of 30 infected coming across the borders each day we are getting as bad as overseas – I hope the right wingers who wanted the borders open apologise in their prayers to the 1000+ who have died from the virus. But be careful of Omicron.
NATZACT are up in the polls because the two Pollsters are biased hard right tory NATZ promoters and influenced by the new Natz dirty politics team. We need some reliable pollsters.
Gloriavale has apoligiesed unapolegitically (artistic choice to spell the words this way, I maintain), and other folk. A trend? Re Jace saying something new and vital.
I can’t say I’ve ever been impressed by Ardern as a real leader. Competent. Majorly. Maybe she can become the UN Secretary General unlike her CV sister Clark. Sure she would be ‘majorly competent’ in that role. It’s not enough in this time. Your essay seems as much about trying to persuade the elite as talking to us low walkers. Poor shit of a situation when that is how we respond to our circumstances from the Left.
Also – a primary factor in dislike of the current government is based on misogyny. Male friends who listen to talk radio and commenters on articles such as this – express a sneering dismissal of Jacinda based on irrational emotions.
CHRIS
May I re-write your headline. See what you think of this: LET’S KEEP NEW ZEALAND A BULLET-FREE-ZONE. And yes, at this rate of crime they will vote for boofheads – at least, definitely.