Table Talk – Matthew Hooton, Lisa Owen, Simon Wilson and Dr Ella Henry

4 Comments

1. I thought Hooten was rather good actually – a very professional piece of work.

   The object of modern communications is to get undesirable outcomes outside the range of consideration. Hooten rapidly confined consideration of TPPA downsides to Labour’s possible objection to restrictions on foreign land sales, then demolished that straw man as an absurdity, more easy attained by a tax work around.

   So, great communications work, but not especially ethical panel play. And you know, at the end of the day (sorry I couldn’t resist it) the TPPA isn’t 6000 pages long because it’s that simple. It is a massive, tortuous, Byzantine piece of legalese and to suggest that restricting governments’ ability to legislate on that single issue is the only problem with it is frankly ridiculous.

   The TPPA is a massive incursion on our entire system of governance, and the plonker party have, as usual, secured us the worst of all possible deals.

   Mr Hooten would have us accept this as a fait accompli – but it is not. We are a democracy – though many of our representatives are as witless as Gerry Brownlee or as unscrupulous as Peter Dunne. WE do not have to accept a deal this lousy – we can send the worthless Key government back with explicit instructions to change it or dump it right now! That, or punish them as no traitors in New Zealand have ever been punished before.

   NZ MPs swear an oath, and may not fail us at their peril. Better that they do not forget it.

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2. I shall not watch this video. Any discussion where Mathew Hooton, the nact government paid shill is a participant, is just too painful to watch.
   Where the participants resort to the dead cat tactic (see http://thestandard.org.nz/musings-on-dead-cats-and-sick-parrots/) as Hooten does, the debate fails.
   It’s not so much that I disagree with his politics but that his constant derailing of the discussion makes my brain hurt.

   A good satisfying debate depends on the participants applying logic to the argument. It is not logical to claim Jane Kelsey’s report on the TPPA should be disregarded because she hates all free trade agreements. It’s the sort of argument a 10 year old may offer, which we tolerate because a 10 year old’s brain is immature, their understanding of appropriate social discourse is not well developed. Mathew Hooten isn’t 10 is he?

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   1. Agreed. I can watch and listen to someone like Fran O’Sullivan despite vehemently disagreeing with much of what she says, because she articulates her points like a grown-up and doesn’t interrupt all the time.

      Hooten, on the other hand, behaves like a hyperactive toddler in a sugar factory. His smug condescension and insistence on braying over the top of anyone he doesn’t agree with makes me want to gouge out both of my eyes with a dull knife. That and the fact that his relationship with the truth is tenuous at best.

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   2. ‘Mathew Hooten isn’t 10 is he?’

      No, but I suspect he makes his living by being a paid PR lobbyist for the capitalists and the corporates.

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