…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.
Questions, questions, questions: there is still so much that we don’t know about the extraordinary events of the past ten days. And perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the whole saga is how unwilling all but a handful of journalists have been to dig too deeply for the facts the public is so anxious to learn.
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.
The irony is that the same people who were using anonymous sourced accusations to crucify JLR are the same ones demanding no questions now he’s been sectioned – this is so Kafkaesque it’s Orwellian.
…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.
No one is coming out of this unscathed but it has cemented into place Jacinda’s call for a politics of kindness, because the politics of anger and spite serves no master other than discord and implosion.
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.
So you get somebody at TVNZ endeavouring to engage in a nice gesture (which, again, I *do* think is a pretty cool intent here – and should be lauded, up to a point), on grounds that they’ve heard that Auckland City Council is holding a “Diwali” event, and therefore without doing the proper research, they just kinda assume … and ‘get onboard’ by wishing us all a “Happy Diwali” two weeks early across multiple channels.
Who has that acid now? Who is in possession of Ross’ property? His family? The unnamed mental health facility detaining him? The Police? The National Party? What, if any, obligation are those holding Ross’s phone, his laptop, his hard-copy files, under to keep them safe from prying eyes? What, if anything, has been happening at Ross’s home and/or his parliamentary and electorate offices in the time that has elapsed since he was taken into state custody? Has anyone come calling? If so, who was it – and what were they after?