NO, NO, NO, MARTYN! You’ve got it wrong. Sam Uffindell isn’t being taken out by the Left, he is being sacrificed by the Right. While he remains in National’s caucus, this hapless, inadequately reconstructed, self-confessed bully will be the gift that keeps on giving to Labour, and to all still hoping against hope that Jacinda will hang on for another term.
Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis want the MP for Tauranga gone much, much more than any fanciful confection of hysterical Woke Warriors. Over the next few weeks, National’s leaders will be counting on their friends in the news media to ease the way for Uffindell’s political execution. Luxon and Willis are unlikely to be disappointed.
You are quite correct, however, Martyn, in urging the Left to keep its focus on the manifold injustices afflicting the weak and vulnerable members of New Zealand society. Addressing poverty, exploitation, and all the other afflictions of Capitalism, has always been the Left’s core business.
You are right, too, in pointing out that turning a single, flawed, individual into a scapegoat is an infantile response – morally and politically. Systems call forth the human instruments they need to keep themselves functioning. A good workman doesn’t blame his tools.
That said, bullies are among the most important instruments of the capitalist system. Force and control keep its wheels turning, and making people do things they don’t want to do is the bully’s mission. Like all tools, however, bullies have been the subject of constant innovation and improvement. The tools designed to keep machinery functioning in the Age of Steam would be woefully unsuited to the Digital Age. The bullies of the Twenty-First Century are, necessarily, very different from those who kept Capitalism’s machinery running in the Nineteenth and Twentieth.
Back in the days of Charles Dickens and George Orwell, bullying tended to be a matter of aggressive physical intimidation. But, today’s bully doesn’t punch and kick his victims (or pound on their doors). Confronted with someone unwilling to toe the line in 2022, the bully is more likely to move up close to the dissenter, cellphone in hand, and start recording. The threat of having one’s words and face plastered all over social media is every bit as intimidating as a bully’s raised fist or boot.
But, if Capitalism requires bullies at every level: from the boardroom to the shop-floor; then it stands to reason that Parliament, the political system’s ultimate source of power and control, must have more need of bullies than any other institution. For what is politics – if not intimidation transmitted through legislation? Who better, then, to play the politician, than the accomplished bully?
The important qualifier in that sentence is “accomplished”. The most successful bullies are always the people who wrap dark threats in bright promises. They will offer all manner of good things, if only you will do this small service for them. Such a little thing that they can’t imagine you being so impolite as to refuse. And, of course, you are not going to refuse … are you?
Christopher Luxon and Louise Upston are so keen to place young people in jobs that they will supply them with “coaches” to help them make the transfer from welfare to work. If they make the effort, then there’s a thousand dollars waiting for them at the end of their first year. A small reward for fulfilling their social obligations. Of course, if they were so impolite as to refuse all this assistance, then there would be … sanctions. But, of course, these young job-seekers aren’t going to refuse … are they?
The crucial objective, Martyn, is to prevent the ordinary citizen from drawing a parallel between the sort of crude bullying on display 22 years ago at King’s College, and what Capitalism’s political instruments do every day in Parliament. It is vital that the ruthless exercise of power and control, which lies at the heart of the politician’s – and the bully’s – trade, remains hidden beneath layer upon layer of the softest velvet. Under no circumstances should the past or present behaviour of a politician encourage thoughts of iron fists.
National’s problem is that those it asks to select its candidates have repeatedly failed to ensure that the individuals selected come fully equipped with a properly fitted pair of velvet gloves. Democratic politics can never be about brute force, not when its practitioners profess to govern with the consent of the people. National’s success depends upon its politicians’ convincing the electorate that they, too, can be kind.
Sam Uffindell’s “crime” was that he failed to inform the voters of Tauranga that he had once been cruel. True socialists would not, however, call for his resignation. They would bid him remain exactly where he is: living proof of what can lurk behind Capitalism’s kindly mask.
Everybody is rightfully criticising the National Party’s candidate selection processes. They need to step back and ask why National is the party of choice for so many deviants, liars, and inadequate weirdos wanting to get into Parliament. No other political party has fielded so many misbegotten so-called males as National has in recent history. Either that, or they’re just the dumbos who get caught out, but birds of a feather do flock together.
Don’t forget Judas Collins. Can’t accuse them of being sexist when it comes to objectionable people.
Wheel I haven’t suggested that anybody was sexist, or that the female of the species is necessarily any less objectionable than the male.
Did not mean to imply you had suggested that. Just adding Collins to the pool along with the “so called males”
Well I know that Jenny Shipley was a woman, blokes I worked with told me so. I should have said that National attracts some most peculiar ‘persons’ to its ranks, even more peculiar than the Greens, and that’s saying something. Labour was for the idealists – Nats wouldn’t know the meaning of the word.
And ” the evil that men do lives after them”
Shakespeare
It’s a cute argument but let’s be fair there was someone in the feckless/team left with an axe to grind. All Te Reo and Beltway Willis are doing now is a corporate exit
Some of this shit does come back to haunt people–remember back buster Tony Veitch anyone? It is not always about bullies self pity for themselves after being called out. Martyn has alluded to possible self harm for Sam Uffindel.
The bullied also have their experience. This incredibly sad and valiant piece from ex Listener Dep. Ed. Tim Watkin, ads some perspective to how it can feel for the bullied even many years later…
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/bullyings-long-shadow-is-cast-across-sam-uffindell-and-the-national-party
I’ve always thought that it was relatively simple to keep unemployment at bay: cut the amount of Job Seeker Support right down to $150 per week, plus up to an additional $150 Accommodation Supplement paid directly to the landlord, with quarterly government inspections in conjunction with the landlord where possible. That does not require every individual beneficiary to have a work coach. Start new SoE’s instead. Move away from our nation’s reliance on agriculture and build clean, well maintained, factories with a starting rate of $22.50 and flexible working hours for these citizens.
There were good reports from students about Maori St Stephens college for boy and the girls college Victoria yet they were closed in 2000 for apparent lack of funding and with reports of bullying. What a shame, what a waste. Trevor Mallard was the officiating education minister dealing so wisely with the problem! Apparently St Stephens start went back to 1844.
2000 St Stephens College: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/troubled-boys-school-to-close/VWSK6LDOSI2NZV5ESHK7PO4G4U/
2001 Queen Victoria College: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/historic-girls-school-to-close-gates/N5SZH3SNEZFUAHMYCBWS65JIWY/
2018 https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/teahikaa/audio/2018659584/how-memories-of-her-maori-girls-boarding-school-inspire-artist-maraea-timutimu
2018 https://www.newsroom.co.nz/can-the-great-maori-boarding-schools-return
What happened to the ethos of these schools ? In the early 1900s the country was willing to sacrifice young men in two world wars, and if you got home that was a bonus. But since then you would have thought that we could have adopted policies that brought about upstanding, capable, buoyant and well-tempered men and women. But there was something wrong in the state of New Zealand as shown by Lake Alice revelations…!
In Posh Boys about Uk schools this was looked at. Britain’s Boarding School Problem | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com › article › britains-boarding-sc…
14/09/2018 — Robert Verkaik’s new book Posh Boys is a detailed and damning …
Bullying was not just endemic, it was structural, with younger boys acting as servants for older ones, carrying out menial tasks and enduring whatever punishments their teen overlords could dream up, in the knowledge that eventually they would get to mete it out themselves. They went on to demand similar submissiveness and loyalty from the native populations they were sent out to rule, having been taught to regard them as unruly children in need of discipline.
I think we need a Moral Rearmament before we disappear up our own orifices, like the beasts we become when we don’t manage ourselves, our passions and desires and hates, in a manner that is respectful and restrained. Start now is my recommendation. Talk, talk, blame, blame I am sick of the cringe-making headlines and I think many feel the same.
“Zero for him, zero for you – that is communism”. (Pol Pot)
Who wouldn’t want that! But wait, there’s more!
Comrade Trotsky carefully explains that capitalism is the cause of all bullying!
In year zero, Comrade Trotsky will, with a wave of his hand, cure the world of all bullying! We just need to go back to our glorious twentieth century communist policies!
After all, Comrade Stalin, Chairman Mao and Pol Pot didn’t go in for this capitalist bullying business, did they?
Great stuff.
You are like a woman trying to convince everyone that Trotter said several things that he hasn’t even said.
Your examples of systems hasn’t been a thing for over 40 years. It’s not necessary for you to hold onto those delusions.
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