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@JC Given their strategy is the strength of their team it's a minor miracle they are polling above the 5% threshold.
Robertson really does love trucking out the "Wouldn't have happened under Key or English" line to contrast the true strength of the current team vis-a-vis that of 08-17. Like comparing Henry's Blues to Umaga's.
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@nzzp TBF the greens are putting out a lot of policy- its just that they're irrelevant. ACT has a plan too. Cut welfare by 38 Billion and give a 38 Billion tax cut.
The open, transparent, caring and transformational government of Adern don't give two fucks about anything other than winning an election at which they have already promised three years of doing fuck all.
COVID really has been a godsend for Labour. If this election was being fought on how well they have delivered on their 2017 campaign promises Soimon would already be redecorating the ninth floor
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
COVID really has been a godsend for Labour. If this election was being fought on how well they have delivered on their 2017 campaign promises Soimon would already be redecorating the ninth floor
As Harold MacMillan said, Events, dear boy, events.
We've had a brutal few years as a country, but they have played straight into the strengths of Labour. Caring, kind and emotional, compared ot the actual hard business of delivery (even with the Ministries to help). Christchurch Mosque, White Island and then Covid. Looks like we're going to be getting three years of command economy and tax mindsets, which I doubt are likely to drive economic performance.
before we get all doom and gloom, and aside from Covid, remember that economic growth has some downsides, doesn't help everyone equally, but seems to be the way to lift countries out of poverty.
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
Is anyone else totally bemused by the National Party strategy - assuming there is one?
It seems to be fatally flawed to me. Trying to make Collins all cutesy and user friendly. Never going to win that battle. Might as well channel the inner pit bull and go all out.
If it was me I'd be campaigning along the lines of Vote Labour if you want moonbeams and unicorns but not if you want stuff done. Kiwibuild, Light Rail, Child Poverty, Pay Inequality, Secure Borders?
Kiwibuild, Light Rail, Child Poverty, Pay Inequality, Secure Borders
Put the snarl up against the Smile. Probably doomed to fail but at least you'd be trying. All National seem to be trying to achieve is something better than 2002They aren't always pretty but has there been a Corsby Textor campaign which has disappointed to the downside in the past 15+ years in Aus/NZ/UK? Most of the National communications are banging away at the same narrow range of themes which are presumably well researched. Still plenty of time to go.
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@rotated well researched like the $4Billion "error"?
National cannot win this election. Labour could lose it but it would take a monumental gaffe. Cindy has made the election all about COVID. She has to its pretty much Labour's only success.
Collins simply has to win the debate tonight - by a large margin - or people will totally switch off. She has to go on the attack with facts whilst not coming across as a bully. She has to hold Adern to account for their many broken promises. The problem she has is she offers nothing by way of contrast. Both parties are fighting for the centre. Neither have anything remarkable to offer. So it comes down to likeability and Cindy wins by the length of the back straight.
COVID is going to widen the gap between the haves and have nots in NZ because neither party has anything to offer other than we will build some more roads.
I never thought National would win this election. I thought they would lose in 2017 and then spend 9 years getting back. Even when they were polling in the 40's (as recently as February) they had no coalition partner. Now I think they will win in 2023 because the next three years are going to be very uncomfortable for a lot of people.
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@rotated well researched like the $4Billion "error"?
National cannot win this election. Labour could lose it but it would take a monumental gaffe. Cindy has made the election all about COVID. She has to its pretty much Labour's only success.
Well researched in terms of the themes the narrow themes they are chipping away at and the voters they are targetting.
I don't think anyone expects them to win (unless the cards fall perfectly and then there is surprise coalition partner), but I absolutely expect them to surprise to the upside.
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National also find themselves having an ideology that increases the wealth gap further, but trying to provide opportunities for people to close the gap by themselves. Not sure that it the message Covid affected people want to hear at the moment.
Labour's usual 'hold the top back a bit while everyone can catch up' message works a bit better.I was feeling sorry for Goldsmith having to look silly because his staff worked off an old set of numbers but then after assuring everyone it was a one off and everything else was correct, another error was found from the same cause. Collins must be fuming.
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@Crucial said in NZ Politics:
National also find themselves having an ideology that increases the wealth gap further, but trying to provide opportunities for people to close the gap by themselves. Not sure that it the message Covid affected people want to hear at the moment.
Labour's usual 'hold the top back a bit while everyone can catch up' message works a bit better.That may be the message but, like everything else they try, the execution will be poor. They have no idea how to stimulate growth in the short term. In fact a lot of the current actions and plans are anti-growth. Their infrastructure projects are aspirational at best, press releases that don't get any shit done. What have they got, exactly? Road building? That simply doesn't deploy that many people.
Where are the ideas that get money flowing to the people who need it? Not just welfare, actual income.
I was feeling sorry for Goldsmith having to look silly because his staff worked off an old set of numbers but then after assuring everyone it was a one off and everything else was correct, another error was found from the same cause. Collins must be fuming.
Yeah, that's amateur. They had a golden opportunity to nail Robertson's economic fairy tales but have now made the story about them.
I am genuinely fearful that Labour doesn't have the brains to understand the shit they are getting us into and this iteration of National doesn't have the ability to stop them. We have no business contemplating a quarter of a trillion bucks worth of debt with an economic base that is damaged and directionless.
To hear a Finance Minister talking about raiding the Covid recovery fund? It's not a fund, it's debt, you arseclown. A fund has money in it, you've got an overdraft facility. But who's calling him on it? Not National, they're ratcheting up the idiocy. And certainly not the media, they're too dazzled by the kindness. Well let's wait until the misery sets in and see how kind everybody is then.
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How big was the hole National pointed out in the Labour budget prior to last election?
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@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
How big was the hole National pointed out in the Labour budget prior to last election?
11 billion dollars.
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@Duluth Well Ive heard a few commentators recently trotting out the old line that the debt can be rolled indefinitely, and it wouldn't surprise me if he and some of the other pols have been taking notice, especially when inflation and interest rates are so low. But it's a solution for the hard of thinking, and ultimately a "fuck you" to future generations.
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@taniwharugby Great question. Didn't hurt them because a complicit media didn't have the will to nail it. They should be hammering National now, because it's incompetence, but they should have hammered Labour them for the same reason. The inconsistency is stark alright.
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@JC said in NZ Politics:
But it's a solution for the hard of thinking, and ultimately a "fuck you" to future generations.
I agree. It's tempting for politicians because it's an 'easy' solution and it grants them enormous power.
There seem to be a few countries drifting in this direction. Covid is being used as an excuse.
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@Snowy said in NZ Politics:
@JC said in NZ Politics:
ultimately a "fuck you" to future generations.
I thought that was how it worked now?
Just blame everybody that came before you, don't take responsibility for yourself and the trials of your times.
This time they'll be right. If I was 20 now I would be fucking fuming about our generations. We are conniving to bury them in a sea of debt, and while we already know there is a lot of uncertainty about what work will mean, what inequality will look like, how economies will operate, what geopolitics will force them to suck up we are happy to kick our problems down the road to be dealt with by generations with far fewer options than us. And we are making it worse by letting our economy slide into recession so it will be that much harder than it needs to be.
And I'm pretty sure we don't have people in power who are bold enough to face up to the issues, they're more interested in the optics. I don't give a damn if politicians are kind. I'm happy for them all to be bastards if they're honest bastards, and I suspect I'm not the only one.
Now is the time we need people of imagination, not ideology.
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@Duluth said in NZ Politics:
@JC said in NZ Politics:
But it's a solution for the hard of thinking, and ultimately a "fuck you" to future generations.
I agree. It's tempting for politicians because it's an 'easy' solution and it grants them enormous power.
There seem to be a few countries drifting in this direction. Covid is being used as an excuse.
... and that is where the conspiracy theorists live.
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@JC said in NZ Politics:
... and that is where the conspiracy theorists live.
Not the claim I am putting forward. I'm just talking about the opportunity to push this theory. The theory has had it's advocates for years. However there hasn't really been mainstream politicians applying it (at least openly saying they are)
A crisis is a good time for them to push harder for it. A crisis is also when politicians are more likely to change course. That crisis could've been a natural disaster, war etc etc
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@JC said in NZ Politics:
@Snowy said in NZ Politics:
@JC said in NZ Politics:
ultimately a "fuck you" to future generations.
I thought that was how it worked now?
Just blame everybody that came before you, don't take responsibility for yourself and the trials of your times.
This time they'll be right. If I was 20 now I would be fucking fuming about our generations. We are conniving to bury them in a sea of debt, and while we already know there is a lot of uncertainty about what work will mean, what inequality will look like, how economies will operate, what geopolitics will force them to suck up we are happy to kick our problems down the road to be dealt with by generations with far fewer options than us. And we are making it worse by letting our economy slide into recession so it will be that much harder than it needs to be.
And I'm pretty sure we don't have people in power who are bold enough to face up to the issues, they're more interested in the optics. I don't give a damn if politicians are kind. I'm happy for them all to be bastards if they're honest bastards, and I suspect I'm not the only one.
Now is the time we need people of imagination, not ideology.
If you were 20 you'd be guzzling the Cindy kool aid
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@JC said in NZ Politics:
We are conniving to bury them in a sea of debt,
Some of us are trying to stop that.
@JC said in NZ Politics:
And we are making it worse by letting our economy slide into recession so it will be that much harder than it needs to be.
Some of us are trying to stop that too.
I would never call anyone a "boomer" or try and make something a generational thing. We didn't do it in the past, so is it just the entitled young that do that now? Each has to deal with their own issues - wars, recessions, pandemics. This isn't greed, it is a disease and quite possibly bad management.
It is not a whole generation that causes these things, it is circumstance. My family did it tough after WW2. We didn't blame them for Hitler invading Poland.
If you were 20 I 'd be force feeding you concrete. This is the world that you live in, deal with it.
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