tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post6673837232514842714..comments2024-03-29T00:44:42.046+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: Labour Needs A PlanChris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-53309461890036101642010-03-11T09:09:50.158+13:002010-03-11T09:09:50.158+13:00Anon =
John A. Lee, despite doing much to help th...Anon =<br /><br />John A. Lee, despite doing much to help the Labour Party, was smeared and booted out by Fraser and his henchmen. (Fraser incidentally was Helen Clark's favourite PM.)<br /><br />Just shows you the party's style & methods haven't changed much.Shinernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-60849948485540665052010-03-10T08:16:44.787+13:002010-03-10T08:16:44.787+13:00I was re reading some of John A Lee's books, a...I was re reading some of John A Lee's books, and his Biography last week.<br /><br />Where are the parlimentarians with his drive, passion and committment to their beliefs in our Parliament ??Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-76986490245086800692010-03-06T15:23:43.851+13:002010-03-06T15:23:43.851+13:00Chris
It's still your view, even if you borro...Chris<br /><br />It's still your view, even if you borrowed it from Bruce, may he rest in peace.<br /><br />Another Auckland academic whose name escapes me said, during the 1997 Asian meltdown,: "When Asians do it, it's called croneyism. When Europeans do it, it's called networking".<br /><br />As far as I can make out, there's a heap of 'networking' going on in NZ at the moment, with short term gain for mates helping to drive policy. <br /><br />Sooner or later we will have to realise that our only significant asset is our people. Not our lignite, not our 'iron sands',not our water and not even our clean green image, now sadly undermined both by our own policies and by some of our markets' often misplaced concerns over carbon footprints.<br /><br />Our human capital is just as likely to be growing up with a solo mum in a state house as in a leafy suburb, close to an elite school. It is economically self-defeating as well socially callous to impoverish the mother or fail to provide optimum opportunities for the child to learn and develop.<br /><br />Given his background, John Key should understand this. But I'm not holding my breath, waiting for it to impact on policy.Victornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-12941804874678723212010-03-06T14:00:04.460+13:002010-03-06T14:00:04.460+13:00Hi Chris,
What follows is just one man's thoug...Hi Chris,<br />What follows is just one man's thoughts.<br />Not meant to be anything other than a line of action that may open up a way to change quickly..<br /><br />1) To get the aged and failing Labour Ministers to exit, use the miss-use of money/perks gambit.<br />This will be terribly effective and will certainly get voter approval.<br />May even catch a few extra National members at the same time.<br /><br />2) Fill the gaps with a younger age group of candidates (while allowing the "floor" to have a primary role in selection).<br />This latter point is especially real if the Greens fall over.<br /><br />3) Re-emphasize the fundimentals of the Labour Party from the view point of a 25 year old NZ born polynesian in permanent employment. Not living at home but visiting regularly.<br />Married or partner, but not tied to the Church.<br /><br />4) Make a sharp distinction/seperation of Politics from all other authority figures. <br />eg. Police, IRD, Council, Legal, Church, Unions, Employer groups, Rental home owners.<br /> <br />5) Emphasize the fact that gains follow productive work, and responsibility.<br />Move away from finding some one/thing to blame.<br />Accept complaint as an opportunity event.<br /><br />Painful for some but will work.David Baigentnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-85346583789891663352010-03-06T13:46:04.940+13:002010-03-06T13:46:04.940+13:00I wish I could claim credit for the "capitali...I wish I could claim credit for the "capitalists/Capitalism" formula, Victor, but the kudos for that shrewd historical insight belongs to the late Bruce Jesson.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-26125589445692843712010-03-06T11:39:40.333+13:002010-03-06T11:39:40.333+13:00An excellent article and some excellent responses,...An excellent article and some excellent responses, particularly from Olwyn, Bearhunter and Sanctuary.<br /><br />I was struck during the last election (and in 2005) by a comparison with the loss of power by the centre left in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the resurgeance of the centre right. <br /><br />It wasn't just a New Zealand phenomenon either but common to the US, UK, Australia and much of Western Europe.<br /><br />Much of the step change was just a matter of boredom, both with the old faces and with the Spartan equality of the war years. <br /><br />I'm just about old enough to remember that time and I recall the world becoming suddenly more colourful, interesting, comfortable and 'modern'. <br /><br />Then as now, the Left had a hard job reinventing itself, made harder by the fact that the Right was very cautious about dismantling the Left's achievements.<br /><br />A major difference, as far as New Zealand today is concerned,is the the existence of a Neo-Liberal super-right, its appetite whetted by years of hegemony in the 1980s and 90s. <br /><br />This places the centre-right under a pressure from its own supporters to do more to impose the Neo-Liberal agenda.<br /><br />Another key difference is, obviously, that New Zealand no longer has Commonwealth Preference to keep our economy ticking over. We are on our own in a world which knows little about us and cares even less.<br /><br />The premium on sensible policies is therefore far greater and so is the need for Labour to get its act together and return to a position where it can manage capitalism.<br /><br />Once again, Chris, I'm struck by the wisdom of your view that Labour is better for capitalism and National for capitalists. <br /><br />Croneyism may yet deal the death blow to our under-resource, under-skilled economy.Victornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-29536348409712841132010-03-06T00:15:05.705+13:002010-03-06T00:15:05.705+13:00Sanctuary I cannot help but be reminded of a quote...Sanctuary I cannot help but be reminded of a quote from RH Tawney:<br />"…a large measure of equality, so far from being inimical to liberty, is essential to it … Liberty is, in fact, equality in action, in the sense, not that all [people] perform identical functions or wield the same degree of power, but that all [people] are equally protected against the abuse of power, and equally entitled to insist power should be used, not for personal ends, but for the general advantage."solatnzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13000095601252301344noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-75567791369067848452010-03-05T23:21:39.069+13:002010-03-05T23:21:39.069+13:00Jaysus, only 8% of NZers earn more than $70,000? N...Jaysus, only 8% of NZers earn more than $70,000? No wonder the "trickle-down" effect is weak at the moment.Clunking Fisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18020166717482531977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-52524525508582737012010-03-05T18:10:15.145+13:002010-03-05T18:10:15.145+13:00Sorry, I know this column is meant as positive and...Sorry, I know this column is meant as positive and constructive, but I am increasingly finding the whole aspirational-social progress assumptions problematic.<br /><br />What the post-1935 generations gained in security (after discovering they had "needs") they lost in various crafty ways to eke out a subsistence.<br /><br />My grandfather, who was unemployed for most of the 1930s, my father (who never forgot) and now myself have a thing about vege gardens. Back in those days, most people were poor, they grew veges wherever they could and had poultry. If you look at 1920s photos of Te Aro flat, all those little backyards were full of potatoes, not ornamental flax with pebbles, like they are these days.<br /><br />I don't want to romanticise this too much, but nor should every part of it be dismissed as something people have to "progress from" or "aspire beyond". Many of the working class in those days actually had rich cultural lives, they read Marx, went to the WEA, they could quote Shakespeare by heart, they sang around the piano or played the mouth organ. How many of the working class do this now?<br /><br />Strangely enough, they didn't necessarily "need" the package of state services people now can't do without, let alone the X-Box, flat-screen TV or er... the internet. (Admittedly, some tools are very good: running water, sewerage, washing machines).<br /><br />All this talk of meeting people's needs, expanding the economy - where is it all going? Off into the bright glorious future, where we will become like those Orwell described as "enlightened sunbathers... whose sole topic of conversation is their superiority to their ancestors".<br /><br />Isn't there another way?MBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-1397213884474866372010-03-05T15:45:01.496+13:002010-03-05T15:45:01.496+13:00Does Telecom’s Paul Reynolds really need (or deser...<i>Does Telecom’s Paul Reynolds really need (or deserve!) an extra $6,000 per week?</i><br /><br />The existence of millionaires doesn't really seem like a good reason not to reduce tax rates...those earning 70k a year are a long way off being Paul Reynolds.StephenRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08717556420960471541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-45474939700173742362010-03-05T14:51:50.338+13:002010-03-05T14:51:50.338+13:00As Austin Mitchell so pithily observed in the &quo...As Austin Mitchell so pithily observed in the "Half Gallon, Quarter Acre Pavlova Paradise" Labour wins election campaigns on a platform of "Let's get NZ moving" and National defeats Labour with the slogan "Let's Keep NZ Moving". That was in 1972. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.<br /><br />In terms of how to build an aspirational program, I think this goes back to your observations of how the right has somehow subverted the language of radicalism to serve, at best, a nugatory and limited idea of negative liberty and at worst to simply corrupt language and meaning as a way of undermining resistance to authoritarian capitalism and to allow the perversion of the very meaning of words like liberty and freedom.<br /><br />Labour firstly needs to start using aspirational language - that the left offers freedom, individualism, and liberty in the true meanings of those words - and challenge the idea that freedom and capitalism and two words for the same thing. Everyone knows intuitively that ACT's definition of individualism and liberty are a mean and mocking shadow of what they words mean; Only a fool doesn't grasp that National's talk of free markets and responsibility are a cruel joke to the victims of their particular blinkered and parochial brand of crony capitalism. Yet the left allows the right to almost exclusively use these aspirational words. It may sound silly, but the battle begins by no longer allowing the right a free ride with the English language.Sanctuaryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03107330732524823291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-12133143990609893752010-03-05T13:22:26.883+13:002010-03-05T13:22:26.883+13:00I think the first move Goff to make is to come up ...I think the first move Goff to make is to come up with a strategy group that contains people who actually know what it is like to live on a shoestring alongside all those university graduates who have never worked in the private sector; the ones Labour's policy arm seems to be made up of.<br /><br />Then Labour needs to come up with a workable plan to actually enlarge and improve our economy (a radical idea, I know, but it hasn't been done with conviction for a long time). How it does this is beyond me, frankly, butu I'm sure there are better minds than mine that could work at it. I have my own ideas, but no one listens to the likes of me, so I'll leave it to the "professionals".<br /><br />Once Labour can show that it can provide more for everyone, it needs to (and I hate this word, but however) "re-engage" with what used to be its core constituency. If it can carry both the actual working class along with the wristy-intellectual cadre then it will have a chance. But it needs to realise that the socially liberal policies so beloved of the middle-class left are not necessarily attractive to the working class, especially the Maori and PI elements, who are often more socially conservative than Pakeha (as for the immigrant lumpenproletariat I have no idea what they represent, even though I suspect I am one of them myself).<br /><br />Labour needs to choose its battles carefully - Axe the Tax is a crap slogan and a misguided campaign, for example, and virtually untenable given Labour's GST history. <br /><br />For instance, it could redeem itself in Auckland by taking on the appalling Super City structure thrust upon ratepayers by Rodney Hide. Offer to change that and they'll haul in more votes than they could have fairly imagined after the last election.Bearhunterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06927373498537533968noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-46537651732420029972010-03-05T12:53:24.766+13:002010-03-05T12:53:24.766+13:00One way of doing this, and the way I initially tho...One way of doing this, and the way I initially thought Phil Goff was going to go, would be to seek common cause between manufacturers and workers against the hollowing out (to use the buzz word) of the NZ economy by the investment class. This will not be easy, as many manufacturers and well-paid workers are also part-time landlords, though they are but a small part of the problem. <br /><br />The problem as I see it can occur both left and and of the spectrum. Back in the sixties and seventies, people emerging into the middle classes largely wanted to be teachers, medical workers, public servants and the like. What they sought was security, but it needed a productive base if it was to be maintained. On the right, the desire now is to own assets; land, water and power, and to sit on various boards, but if this is not supported by a productive base the result is the hollowing out of the economy, whereby a few own everything and little else happens.Olwynnoreply@blogger.com