The wave of derision, anger and outright fury directed at Bill English when he tried to spin his lines was so visceral that it actually stunned him a couple of times and he turned a lighter shade of grey. I’ve never seen person drown live on TV, but I suspect it looked like Bill.
‘Social Investment’ is a buzzword that is guiding the current National Government’s social policy decisions. What does it mean? What are the implications of increased ‘target efficiency’?
Mediaworks sacked John Campbell for politically motivated reasons because of John’s attacks on John Key, Steven Joyce used to own the company and the National Government once gave Mediaworks a sweetheart finance deal on license fees they couldn’t obtain from the open market.
All of that history helped Bill English win the second debate, it’s up to the voters to decide if a foreign owned media company should be able to frame them up as easily as they framed Jacinda up.
The mostly white male privileged broadcasters cried out that we have been tricked into a no policy debate. Tim Watkins, Barry Soper, Mark Jennings and Toby Manhire, names no one should know, have all clambered aboard tsk tsking with the lack of real debate.
It seems to me that the elite media opinion that the first debate’s civility was boring are just more out of touch comments by pundits lost by Jacinda’s rise and frantically flailing around for a narrative their cynicism doesn’t understand.
Day after day they take the real lived experiences of beneficiaries desperately attempting to live under our brutal neoliberal welfare state and they put them to artists drawings of the beneficiaries.
Most mainstream media journalists are boomers with property enjoying the rock star economy that National have built, they can not comprehend the struggles, pains, hope and aspirations of Gen Xers, Millennials, renters, workers or beneficiaries.
She was confident, she stood her ground, she sold her values. Bill on the other hand grinned inanely because he’s obviously been told to smile more by his media handlers.
Tonight TDB will pick up the Metiria livestream and stream it here live.
TDB will be providing live twitter commentary for tonights first Leaders debate between Jacinda Ardern and Bill English.