Critical analysis breaking down New Zealand news coverage, media framing, and political narratives behind the headlines.
The inability of the Government to force real compromise from the neoliberal bureaucracy and the Wellington elites means sweet fuck all has really changed for the poorest and weakest amongst us, and while there is truth to the argument that it will take a few terms to counter the under funding of National’s 9 years in power, that can only stay true for so long.
How the living Christ can these people be trusted to solve a major social issue like cannabis reform if they’ve never smoked it or it’s some dim memory from their distant past?
It’s like asking the Pope for sex advice!
The need to catch a #MeToo villain has led the mainstream media to legitimise anonymous sources of the kind Newsroom used and in the cultural frenzy to denounce toxic interpersonal patriarchy, has blinded them to the far larger issues of China buying influence and the possibility now that an MP was sectioned by their own Party just as he was about to drop a large amount of dirt on them.
…the use of anonymous sources by Newsroom to smear in the age of #MeToo where accusation is the new evidential threshold and due process is dead was bad enough, to suggest that the full story of National Party complicity in sectioning JLR using leverage from that anonymous smear hit job is breath taking in its audacity and malignant cruelty.
By simply under writing the Parties with tax dollars we immediately remove domestic and international influence so they can do and make policy that is genuinely for the betterment of the country as awhile rather than selfish vested interests.
…soooooooo in light of recent events shouldn’t we be rethinking our relationship with the Saudis? I get the line that is trotted out by MFAT Goons, ‘if we only traded with people we agreed with, we wouldn’t trade with anyone’, and I appreciate the need to build up trade, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut….
National’s economic ‘plan’ was based on rebuilding from natural disasters, massive levels of immigration, dairy intensification to China and a speculative property bubble that conned the middle classes into thinking they were paper millionaires. This fake growth required a subset of workers who were more exploitable than the domestic labour market would provide, hence all these bullshit education programs tied into employment exploitation.
Labour would be sobbing if they hadn’t gained from this meltdown, so they are the anchor party here, the danger for Simon now is what happens when JLR can get himself out of the mental health hospital he’s been sectioned to.
We are in incredibly dangerous waters now. I think it is of the highest importance that IF JLR has been forcibly taken into mental health custody that decision be reviewed immediately to ensure that a terrible wrong hasn’t just occurred.
One of the most interesting things about the remarkable revelations in the current civil war inside National was how a former Communist Party leader now based in New Zealand attempted to buy two Chinese MPs to put on National’s Party list.