tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post8619549499306029308..comments2024-03-29T00:44:42.046+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: Reports Of Labour’s Death …Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-23947385528780909862022-03-22T22:35:00.795+13:002022-03-22T22:35:00.795+13:00My middle-way medium is the haiku of comments. No ...My middle-way medium is the haiku of comments. No good at saying the salient, nor any long form writing like you. In my dreams I imagine you being pissed off enough at me to not use my idea that Putin is 'the mule' from Asimov's Foundation series. I know you like these references. I can't put a prose poem in the papers about this. sumsuchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03133092096534660472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-72805521424517023352022-03-15T22:51:36.547+13:002022-03-15T22:51:36.547+13:00I can't see Martyn as Jacinda's staunch al...I can't see Martyn as Jacinda's staunch ally. The Standard certainly. Why I've been punt-kicked off. Though they are starting to publish more lefty things there. I'm not in it for the name-glame. Tho' as you see from the last sentence I'm not entirely unhuman, unlike my disembodied Scots presbyterian uncles I can talk about my good acts.<br /><br />Enough about me, let's talk about the WW ll reality, no matter how slower it creeps. We know it and everything is about it rather than these endless not-muches like Ukraine and the pandemic. Now inflation. Will we die by a thousand minor matters? We rationalists who have an obligation to reality. <br /><br />The small points of this time, which come from extended stomachs, don't help the ferocious response to the end of the species needed. Rationalisation is our real motto. But I appreciate your fight for reality. sumsuchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03133092096534660472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-91199487513180535152022-03-14T21:27:35.783+13:002022-03-14T21:27:35.783+13:00So good. That this can't be published on a maj...So good. That this can't be published on a major news outlet is an indictment of us. Remembering how our opinion was preeminent in the media til 2000 or so.<br /><br />sumsuchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03133092096534660472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-599032982709823832022-03-11T16:22:22.993+13:002022-03-11T16:22:22.993+13:00Archduke Piccolo - privatization of public proper...Archduke Piccolo - privatization of public property which does not return profits to the govt. but is forced by political pressure to be subsidized in order to supply goods and services below the costs of them -<br /><br />is economically sound, because private enterprise cannot survive without profitability, and profitability is the crucial factor for sustainable survival.<br /><br />Everything subsidized by govt. to keep the cost of living down is serious, foolish self-deception which leads to straightforward slavery where - like a slave owner - the govt. just feeds you to the extent of what it can afford on what it can take from you. Jens Mederhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17304734497662325275noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-60989948278659861982022-03-11T14:05:28.754+13:002022-03-11T14:05:28.754+13:00"Just as there are no successful businesses r..."Just as there are no successful businesses run by talentless people" ....Well, if you count Donald Trump. Whose only talent seems to be self-promotion. Honestly Brendan, some of your statements are so anodyne that I despair. Firstly of course, I suspect that no matter what a Labour government did you would claim it wasn't successful. Secondly, no matter how talented a Labour politician was, you'd say they lacked it. I mean for goodness' sake you were a great fan of John Key as I remember, whose only talent seem to be hassling waitresses and gambling. Oh of course, and looking cute forgot that. Of course his government wasn't particularly successful either – according to me anyway. :)<br />The Labour government's response to the Covid pandemic is regarded as exemplary round the world. And people who know what they are talking about – unlike you – think so. I'm pretty sure that if a National government had been in power, people like you would have pressured them on the economy enough so that we would have had thousands of deaths. Just judging by the way you people were talking at the beginning of the epidemic anyway. You know – let's keep the country open and all that – let's do what Sweden did and so on.<br />Now unlike you on the whole, I'm perfectly prepared to criticise a labour government when it does things that are in my opinion wrong. Not building enough houses for instance. But it would be interesting to know your criteria for a "successful" government given that the economy of New Zealand – apart from the tourism sector has done extremely well in the last few years. And let's face it, the tourism sector isn't exactly full of well paying skilled jobs.<br />So how about some specifics?Guerilla Surgeonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03427876447124021423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-18137702592513302412022-03-10T22:11:13.981+13:002022-03-10T22:11:13.981+13:00If Martyn was her ally I wouldn't go over ther...If Martyn was her ally I wouldn't go over there.sumsuchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03133092096534660472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-9937914197676082112022-03-10T19:06:30.930+13:002022-03-10T19:06:30.930+13:00Well, we all knew this, didn't we? Admirable ...Well, we all knew this, didn't we? Admirable though Jacinda Ardern is in many ways, she IS a so-called Neo-Liberal wedded to the Milton Friedmanite economic nonsense that has wrecked so many economies including New Zealand's. Milton Friedman and his acolytes had no idea whatever how the real world works and has a Nobel Prize in Economics to prove it.<br /><br />It is my belief that the Big Bux Biz Corporations knew Milton Friedmanite economics as tripe, and took to it BECAUSE they knew it was tripe. When, to go with the wherewithal, they were given the licence to loot and plunder and profiteer from the Common Weal, were they going to pass it up? The 'trickle down' theory was simply a sugar-coated appellation for what was really the 'let 'em eat shit' theory. I can explain that if you want.<br /><br />In this country, Kiwis were robbed blind by the corporates, who accepted public property stolen by an incompetent government and fenced off by incompetent finance ministers. And the price-gouging that followed! Pitiful. I remember being warned well before 1984 by Labour Party members' concerns that Roger Douglas might get the finance portfolio. Bill (Sir Wallace) Rowling, probably the most unappreciated Party Leader this country has ever seen, left the political scene all too soon. His appellation of Douglas and his like-minded ilk as 'nakedly ambitious rats' was dead on the money.<br /><br />The really sad part of the whole Roger 'I Got Milton Friedman's Hand Up My Bum' Douglas and Ruth 'Guess Where Milton Friedman's Other Hand Is' Richardson period of economic vandalism was that most Kiwis knew bloody well they were being screwed, and the people who might have gone into bat for them - the Unions - simply rolled over. 'We're here to preserve jobs', they whined, and couldn't even achieve that modest objective. Then they wondered why members took advantage of the removal of the 'Union Clause' ('compulsory unionism) and kept their subscriptions.<br /><br />In the last five years Labour has had a golden (studded with pearls) opportunity at least to try to tackle a good many socio-economic problems - COVID notwithstanding - and threw them all away. For all the talent the Party no doubt has - in contrast with National's usual line-up of place-seekers and time-servers - Labour lacks the one quality this country wants badly: political courage. Rowling had it (something that even Bob Jones acknowledged). Since he went, the heart went out of the Labour Party. Michael Cullen notwithstanding, it has never really returned. <br /><br />Next term (if this country lives long enough) we will get another somnolent National Party Godelpus maladministration. <br /><br />Bugger.<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Ion A. Dowman Archduke Piccolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15533325665451889661noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-79185687121833073602022-03-10T17:05:23.966+13:002022-03-10T17:05:23.966+13:00As long as National has nothing else to offer tha...As long as National has nothing else to offer than tax reductions, Labour will remain the leader with its innovative and sustainably widening wealth ownership creative policies through a permanent NZ Super Fund (to keep the super entitlement sustainable from age 65) and KiwiSaver policies for extra retirement wealth -<br /><br /> with both being more effective national wealth ownership and economic security creative than substantial wealth ownership creation by an elite only.<br /><br />But unfortunately, a universally higher savings rate based widening wealth ownership based economic policy does not seem to be very popular, as reflected by the unwillingness to even discuss the pros and cons of it (e.g. the KiwiSaver $1000.- kick-start unconditionally to all who have not received it so far, including seniors and newly born babies) - as reflected in the evasive and uninterested attitudes in this subject matter on this discussion forum.<br /><br />So, Labour might feel safer by still being cautious about the innovative "ownership society" concept.<br /><br />So far, a lot has been talked and complained about, with no new socio-economic vision besides what we have had already so far.Jens Mederhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17304734497662325275noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-90809089906820953602022-03-10T16:13:44.847+13:002022-03-10T16:13:44.847+13:00Call me cynical, but I figured this out as soon as...Call me cynical, but I figured this out as soon as I heard the reported come out what it contained. I heard a representative of consumer say it was extremely sound, but – I was out running at the time – I thought to myself they will do nothing, because they are afraid to upset the status quo. They become the party of the status quo in spite of all the hysterical outpourings about Marxism and the like from conservatives. Socially liberal perhaps – that seems to annoy conservatives as well – but economically conservative. That's what I told the only guy in the last 40 or 50 years who's ever canvassed me.<br /><br />Incidentally, I've been looking around for other blogs, given that a couple of my favourite ones have moved to a comment system that reduces the discussion to the level of kindergarten kids. I was deleted for using the word rum for instance, (Funnily enough it had no problem with "sodomy" and "the lash")and I discovered that you can make comments on that MSN newsfeed thing. And it's given me a certain appreciation for the commenters here given the general level of ignorance and spite on that site – maybe it's only the ignorant and the spiteful that bother to comment I don't know - but it's prevalent. <br /><br />Take the story of that woman with five kids who was about to sleep out in a park in a tent because there was no government help for us for instance. Two seconds after it was published somebody was saying "Why has she got five kids if she can't afford to keep and house them?" Honestly, sometimes I despair but I must say the only person who's ever said anything like that here has been Brendan, but I'm pretty sure that most people here will realise that you can actually have kids when you can afford them and through economic misfortune find out that you can no longer do so.<br /><br />Of course that leads me to the next statement which was "Where the hell is her husband blah blah blah? And you think for Chris'st sake, he could be dead in which case don't you think you're being a bit mean? Or I suppose he could have run off – but then is that her fault? Is she supposed to then hunt him down like a dog, put a gun to his head and demand child support? I've known several of these jerks who gone off to Australia never to be heard of again. So I must say in the main, you're not such a bad lot.<br /><br />The racism is fair bit worse there too. :)Guerilla Surgeonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03427876447124021423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-40945641816890463132022-03-10T15:56:26.597+13:002022-03-10T15:56:26.597+13:00"Let’s take another look at Step 1. In the pa..."Let’s take another look at Step 1. In the past, politicians began the process of social reform already knowing what they wanted to achieve. "<br /><br />The past is a foreign country.<br /><br />Jacinda Ardern was elected Prime Minister by surprise. Neither she, nor her low talent high rent cabinet colleagues had any serious idea about what they wanted to achieve in Government, and even less the ability to execute on the agenda they finally agreed upon. Think Kiwibuild, planting one Billion trees, eliminating child poverty. <br /><br />Once you get past the PM and two or three of her cabinet colleagues, the talent pool becomes a puddle. You have the absurdity of Chris Hipkins carrying two or three major portfolios, including Health it would seem, given that Andy the pseudo Health Minister apparently cannot be trusted to front the Covid response.<br /><br />Just as there are no successful businesses run by talentless people, there are no successful governments populated with talentless people. At one level I feel sorry for the PM. She can only work with what the party and the electorate has dished up to her. She has been handed an impossible task.<br /><br />This is on the Labour party to correct. Stop fretting over gender equity, LGBT representation, and every other woke criteria. Select for talent and forget the rest. If there is any lesson for Labour from these two terms in Government, it should be this. I doubt they will learn anything.<br /><br />In a way I'm pleased with this outcome. Just imagine if they had the skill to execute on their middle class Marxist sentiments.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Brendan McNeillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02741263914308842497noreply@blogger.com