Great prospects
Hat tipped to Paul McBeth for this one. As one side engages in some tentative but hugely premature triumphalism, and the other side points the accusatory finger, a sleeping giant awakes. This man — our...
View ArticleHeartless commuters
Image used without permission (but with thanks!), by David Fawcett. Earlier in the week, while having lunch with Pablo and his partner (and a good time it was, too), I mentioned that I’d been meaning...
View ArticleChris hitting his stride
It’s well known to most that Chris Trotter and I have had considerable differences. But despite them, I must say that when he’s on form it can be a sight to behold. So it is with his latest set-piece...
View ArticlePerspective and colonial counterfactuals
It’s hardly the stuff of rigorous historico-social investigation, but Simon Schama sees much to celebrate in NZ biculturalism — particularly in comparison to our Anglo comparators: But it’s the story...
View ArticleI write like…
Via PC, a nifty tool: feed it some text and it tells you who you write like. From a more-or-less random sample of my writing on this site, more than 50% comes back telling me I write like David Foster...
View ArticleCarter’s Par Avion Putsch — politics interruptus
Leaving out the utter incompetence of how Chris Carter’s abortive coup — and I hope I’m the first to coin it the “Par Avion Putsch” — was conducted, his egregious damfoolishness for following such a...
View ArticleJust don’t think about the offspring
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, and so it is that Chris Trotter finds common cause with Peter Cresswell in selectively revising the story of Ngāi Tūhoe to frame them up as our very own...
View ArticleLessons from The Hobbit: more unionisation, not less
The Hobbit saga has been an ugly but edifying lesson in the realities of how industrial action interacts with political posturing and national identity. My own view is that Actor’s Equity did their...
View ArticleEnemies like these
I’m getting used to being vilified by the orthodox Marxist left, such as in the latest round of debate with Chris Trotter and some of his commenters, and to an extent in the response by Scott Hamilton....
View ArticleClass, identity, solidarity and dissent
Recently commenter Tiger Mountain raised the parallel between solidarity with Actor’s Equity regarding The Hobbit and support for the māori party given their coalition with National and sponsorship of...
View ArticleWho are the next generation of NZ Left Thinkers?
I almost choked on my chardonnay when I read over the weekend a quote from Chris Trotter stating that Bomber Bradbury represented the future of NZ Left thinking. Martin is a genial enough,...
View ArticleHard rain’s a-gonna fall
The past week has illustrated in clear terms the New Zealand Labour party’s decline as an effective opposition party. In the opening moments of election year 2011, John Key has stepped up to...
View ArticleA Response to Chris
Chris Trotter has written a response to the previous discussions regarding the Treaty, titled Talking Past Each Other (a crisp description of the comments threads on both prior posts). I would usually...
View ArticleCapital punishment
Do yourselves a favour and listen to this morning’s debate between Chris Trotter and Deborah Coddington on Morning Report. This is (or ought to be) the agenda for this year’s election, and this is (or...
View ArticlePoll dancing
Chris Trotter suggests that frequent and heavily-publicised polls favour the right and result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, depressing support for the left. Bomber Bradbury has made similar arguments...
View ArticleTeapot Tapes poll: political moral suasion
I recently tore into Chris Trotter’s argument that polls are deployed to promote a “spiral of silence”, to demoralise those holding non-majority views, and to deter them from political speech and...
View ArticleFurther thoughts on Team Shearer
These things occurred to me while making my daughter’s birthday cake:* Endorsement games continue, with a range of people from across the political spectrum still out for Shearer; including Goff’s...
View ArticleA discourse on David Shearer and the identity politics thing
For my sins, over the past week or so I have been engaging at The Standard again. It’s been a rather tiresome business (for them as well, I’m sure) but has yielded some lucid moments. One exchange...
View ArticleAgainst “courageous corruption” as Crown policy
It should come as no surprise that I disagree with Chris Trotter’s latest piece about the Urewera raids. Don’t get me wrong — I think his assessment of the operational capability New Zealand police and...
View ArticleLabour: locking in lose-lose
David Shearer says he won’t rule out buying back shares in state-owned power companies sold by the government. He won’t rule it in, either. Why? Does he need to consult his leader? There’s so much...
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