Interesting interview on the Daily Show with David Perlmutter whose book, Blog Wars, looks at the rise of bloggers in the American political environment. Interesting - especially to those of us involved in political blogging in New Zealand.
Since he was unaccountably elected London Mayor last week, we’ve all been waiting with baited breath to see what ‘Nice but dim’ Boris Johnson’s first piece of legislation would be…
Surely it would be something emblematic of his own personal philosophy of life, and indeed, of the wider Conservative Party’s political ethos - a ringing endorsement of individual rights, personal freedom, and therefore a sound rejection of this ‘Nanny State’ mentality that has reputedly been besetting us all since Labour took power.
Oh. Shit.
He’s only gone and stopped me having a beer on Tubes and buses.
Brilliant. I knew these next four years were going to be embarrassing. But I didn’t know it would all start within a week.
I don’t get Stephen Franks. His candidacy started in a somewhat odd fashion and has continued to bemuse. I don’t agree with Franks but I understand he’s a smart lawyer, that he’s a rationalist (of the economic variety) and that he’s reputed to be logical and thorough.
I’ve blogged about Franks attempt to rebrand himself as something other than the ultra-dry conservative and a few weeks ago he was clearly trying to present himself as a real kiwi-joker with his stupidly sexist humour. Initially, it appeared Franks realised his error and offered his apologies to anyone offended - a sensible approach I thought - however he’s now petulently declaiming the so-called wowsers and Labour stooges who dare to criticise him.
My post last weekend of the Danish Road Safety Council’s traffic safety spoof ran into the same culture, abetted by abysmal journalistic standards. With pursed lips the Herald reported ” a storm” erupting over the posting. The storm was one email from a Labour stooge purporting to be from a National voter but not verified when the journalist concerned called me. In all my subsequent email traffic I had only encouragement.
A Labour stooge - how’d we arrive at that conclusion? What evidence does Franks adduce to support his claim? Let’s see if we can follow this compelling logic.
A perfect example of Logic 101 and Lewis Carroll’s soriteses:
Of course this does not cohere with Carroll’s laws, nor is it remotely logical or credible. It is an attempt by Franks to avoid responsibility for his school-boy humour. As the smart lawyer we understand Franks to be, he could verify his claim by simply asking Party HQ if they have a record of an Adam Prouse.
Davey’s weird yank to the Right this Election year continues unabated. This time it’s dog whistling to the Religious Right with a seemingly innocuous post about the Morning After Pill. Of course, as DPF planned, the thread recklessly plunged off-track as a group of males (well mostly) waded onto a discussion about Abortion. Let’s just clear this up: The Morning After Pill is a high-dose contraceptive pill. That’s it. A Contraception Pill. It has exactly the same impact on a woman’s body as regular contraception only, because of the level of the dosage, it’s more likely to prevent a pregnancy from happening. To the religious right, the Morning After Pill is equivalent to abortion because “life commences at conception”. But to the rest of us, especially those who appreciate the biology of pregnancy and how frequently a normal women loses fertilised eggs (zygotes) before they implant successfully - if you were going to talk about the start of a pregnancy, you’d talk about pregnancy being from time the zygote successfully implants itself into the uterine wall. The Morning After Pill is not abortion. It’s just a medical means of upping the chances of either preventing ovulation or having a period even if your partner managed to fertilize an unattached egg.
Agenda on Sunday was awful. The panellists didn’t want to listen to the people they were interviewing (both Russell Norman and David Parker did very well) and had their own agendas to pursue. Jenni McManus was a disgrace. Argumentative and rude, she talked over answers and other questions, and spent half the time making her own speeches as self-appointed representative of the oppressed upper-middle class.
Agenda is meant to be the foremost political interview show in New Zealand; is that really as good as it gets?
I see DPF had a go at working out who in Labour refused to donate to the party. He got this information from the Electoral Commission’s recently published list of donations made to political parties over $10,000. It’s all great detective work by DPF. I wondered whether the same kind of robust and difficult analysis could be applied to the National Party. It was exceedingly difficult (drawing on public information and all), but here’s my analysis of which of the 48 National Party MPs did not donate to their political party during 2007 calendar year (with the same caveat that Davey used that some of these MPs might have donated less than $10,000 disclosure threshold):
So, 48 out of 48 of National’s MPs REFUSED (to use Davey’s words) to donate more than $10,000 to their party - unlike, as DPF helpfully points out, most of the MPs in the Labour Caucus. So, DPF’s point was what exactly?
It’s just dawned on me that another explanation is that some or many of National’s MPs - particularly millionaires like Mr Key - might have donated to the Party through one of the hidden Trusts that National uses to mask its secret backers. Of course, we the public of New Zealand wouldn’t know because these Trust donors have been cloaked in secrecy.
[Zoster adds: It should be noted the Green Party MPs routinely undertake this kind of tithing - much to their collective credit]
Farrar’s ‘Quickest planned trip Ever’ post:
A brief conversation this evening:
Friend: Fancy going on a road trip
DPF: Yeah, why not
Friend: Great.
DPF: How long for:
Friend: Around a week
DPF: Okay. When are you thinking
Friend: Say early July
DPF: (checks diary) Looks good to me
Friend: Excellent that’s agreed
DPF: Are we doing North or South Island
Friend: Neither - England
DPF: England?
Friend: Yep, we can go visit Frithie
DPF: Oh, why the hell not - should be fun
So in the space of five minutes I’ve agreed on a whim to fly to the other side of the world for a road trip. I like having a flexible lifestyle 
- Davey, we get it. You’re rolling in cash because you own a company that does National’s polling and market research. National’s you’re only client (apart from Family First) and they pay you well, so the company runs itself and you can spend most of your time blogging (and you save on costs by doing the polling work out of National HQ).
You’re living the good life on the back of National’s secret donors. Hurray for you.
Davey links to the Salient review of the NZBR’s election discussion on policy at which it sounds like an extensive list of modern approaches to the business of the state were considered.
The Salient review identifies that Rod Deane was there in some capacity, as were the ACT and Labour Party candidates but there was no Nat?
Was Deane there in lieu of Franks?
Is Franks wary of being associated with the NZBR, the major funders of the party he previously represented? What would he have said if asked, as was Labour’s Grant Robertson, for a position on the sale of assets? Would his answer have squared with that of the party’s leadership?
Franks has a difficult race in Wellington Central, possibly made more so by his choice of advisers, but does he intend to face up to the electorate or simply bash out blog-posts? He’s deluding himself however, if he thinks he can pretend he’s not an advocate of the kind of policies being advocated by Roger Douglas, Rod Deane and the NZBR.
Recently, we’ve been giving Stephen Franks and David Farrar a hard time for their stupid school-boy attempt at humour. The point was to expose to scrutiny the kind of foolish behaviour that can and does diminish the appeal of political parties to different cohorts of voters. National has a problem with its image with women. It’s pretty clear they know this and are trying to remedy it (which makes Franks error all the more significant). However, the New Zealand National Party can thank themselves that they don’t have this guy on their team.
West Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell has broken down at a press conference and admitted he sniffed the chair of a female Liberal Party staffer.
Good god! All the more remarkable, Buswell is saying he’ll not stand-down as leader! And it’s not the first time.
Mr Buswell has previously admitted to snapping a Labor staffer’s bra as a drunken party trick and has been accused by retiring Liberal MP Katie Hodson-Thomas of making sexist remarks to her.
Similar sexist acts cost the former NSW Liberal Leader, John Brogden, his job back in 2005.
This is not to suggest that National Party in NZ are guilty of this level of sexism. It does, however, suggest the importance of setting a very low threshold, over which indiscretions are dealt with swiftly.
The federal Liberal party will be aghast at this. They’ve got the Labor government in some strife - West Australia was the only state that didn’t have a swing against the Liberal/National coalition at the last federal election. There was even talk that the current deputy leader of the federal party, Julie Bishop, who’s the federal member for the seat of Curtin in WA may depart the Canberra scene to start the rebuilding at the state-level (WA is the next state to go to the polls).
Update: The SMH reports that federal Liberal leader, Nelson, supports Buswell’s continuing leadership because he’s remorseful. Ridiculous.
On this blog we’ve often lamented how pathetic Opposition can be in their constant naysaying about government performance. OK, we know it’s part of the job of an Opposition to be critical of the incumbent government - but the continual, trivial and sometimes misleading carping can get on one’s nerves. That’s why I was pleased to see Gerry Brownlee in his recent address to the Wind Energy Conference describing the government’s target of 90 percent of energy from renewables as being “laudable”. Gerry, the man who not so long ago described coal as being “sexy”, seems to have been taking trips to Damascus because he’s now onboard with reducing greenhouse emissions by a full 50 percent by 2050. OK, the timeline is pretty cruddy - but at least National now recognises and accepts the need to reduce carbon emissions. Gerry focused his comments on the continued reliance on thermal power generation and the need to move to non-polluting alternatives and how the RMA should be amended to help this process. I don’t want to critique Gerry’s speech because this is a post giving some credit for the Opposition trying to be a bit more constructive than its usual negativity. But I couldn’t help notice that energy only creates 42 percent of emissions. Given seemingly benign power generation like hydro-electric generation can actually produce some greenhouse gases (e.g. from methane producing plants on the edge of lacks), the upshot will mean New Zealand will need to confront its single largest emissions producer - the agricultural industry. We all know that this is a fight over the horizon that will need to be had - but I am just a little suprised the National party is moving into that space. Anyway, to get back to the point of this post - I thought it was nice to see Gerry giving some credit to the government and to see National meaningfully moving beyond its earlier climate change denialism.
