Curwen Rolinson

The game of vice presidential candidate selection in American Politics is among the single most complex-yet-simple parts of the four yearly quasi-armed-madhouse they call their Presidential election cycle.

In reaction and response to news that the New Zealand Government has gotten a bit uneasy about decidedly sub-standard Chinese steel being put into our own domestic infrastructure projects (and accompanied by fraudulent safety standard certification, no less), the PRC is apparently considering raising punitive “reprisal tariffs” on Kiwi primary produce exports in order to force our government to move to protect Chinese interests rather than our own.

Over this weekend just gone, I was deployed alongside more than a dozen members of New Zealand First’s new, nascent youth wing into the Wairarapa electorate. The mission was simple: train and upskill a group of ardent young people in preparation for the necessary exigencies of what promises to be a thrilling 2017 campaign.

In many countries around the world, statistics about things like the rates of unemployment or crime are used by the government of the day to demonstrate changes in those areas. In New Zealand, by contrast, changes in statistics (as in, changes in what the statistics actually represent) are used instead to obscure a lack of improvement in same.

Due to the obvious importance of New Zealand First to either side forming a government in 2017, from now til the next Election there will be an absolutely huge quantity of political pontification from pundits, politicians, and assorted other somewhat self-important talking heads as to what Winston – or, more properly, NZF as a whole – might do.