Tagged: Alliance Party

Paths are made by walking

New Zealand’s leading public intellectual of the Left, Chris Trotter, seems to have been genuinely unsettled by the defeat of Labour in 2008. Toys have been thrown, and targets targeted.
In an initial attack of post-election spleen Chris railed against those voters who brought in National as ” . . . the men who just couldn’t cope with the idea of being led by an intelligent, idealistic, free-spirited woman; the gutless, witless, passionless creatures of the barbecue-pit and the sports bar (and the feckless females who put up with them); who voted Helen Clark out of office.” (Sunday Star Times, Sunday, 9 November 2008 )
In the same article, Chris then grew left wing horns and charged the corporate media and class society (” . . you can read it on the pages of the right-wing media: the smug certainties of our genteel suburban fascisti – regurgitated to order by publications long-used to dripping the oleaginous phraseology of “responsible journalism” all over the jagged edges of their readers’ class-advantage”) and then rounded up by saying “many of us simply refused to believe our fellow citizens could be so dumb – or so mean.”
Ouch!
The question that remains though is why should the result have been so surprising? Defeat was on the cards, and was hardly a landslide of the type that threw Labour out in 1990 and National in 1999. More an accumulation of errors and the old idiocy of “it’s time for a change” in a two horse race. The “genteel suburban fascisti” were there for the last nine years and did reasonably well out of Labour’s tax cuts, as they will do slightly better under National’s tax cuts. Continue reading →

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Jack Yan on the downsides and upsides of globalization

My friend Jack Yan just posted a thought provoking article about globalization and the relationship between economy, business and society on his blog.
Jack is speaking at an open to the public session later this year at the Alliance Party conference in Dunedin on these very topics – and based on his above article, it should be well worth catching.

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Street Scene Dunedin

I attended an interesting protest action today on behalf of the Alliance Party with a couple of other local activists.

A local disability group called Gutted is asking for better treatment for those with disabilities and their caregivers. It was a small but very spirited demo and made the TV3 news.

Earlier on I had helped out briefly at the Radio One market day in the big hall on an Alliance stall trying to raise some money for the campaign. Good to be getting out and talking to the people. Some of the students were surprisingly up with the play. It’s hard to believe it was ten years ago when I was working at the Critic newspaper down there and fifteen years since I saw BailterSpace play a mindblowing set at Orientation 1990 in that same big hall. Beer in plastic glasses never tasted so good.

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Fear and loathing on the campaign trail

That was the name of the late Hunter S. Thompson’s book on the Nixon/McGovern fight for the US Presidency back in the early seventies. Of course the wrong candidate won then, as is so often the case.
But Thompson’s title has suddenly come to have a new meaning for me.
This blog may have a change of focus for the next few months.
I’ve put my name forward to run for the Alliance in this years general election.
That’s the left-wing party in New Zealand politics.
On Thursday night we have a selection meeting for the two Dunedin electorates. So far we have had a candidate put their name forward for both Dunedin seats – myself in Dunedin North and an old friend Chris Ford who is standing in Dunedin South.
It’s going to be an interesting year. I intend to post daily from here on in, for my own sake as a kind of diary, and for anyone else who is interested.

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