Search This Blog

Monday 20 August 2018

Oh Snap, guess who the new MP for Epsom is?


It does not take a psychic with a crystal ball to see where today’s announcement of the rebirth of The Opportunities Party (TOP) under new leader Geoff Simmons is going to lead for both TOP and ACT.

And I could easily see the voters of Epsom tossing aside one three letter acronym political party in order to elect another and so can Simon Bridges who has said he is “not not open to doing a deal with Simmons”*.

The reason Bridges had to qualify this statement with a double negative probably has to do with not wanting to send David Seymour screaming out the window of his Bowen House office to splatter all over Lambton Quay like human jam, well at least not yet, but if Seymour has not got an icy cold feeling in his stomach it is only because he has not heard the news.

Its simple math folks, Epsom is not voting for ACT because it likes ACT, it’s been voting for ACT because it wants National in power. So, as National has been gifting Epsom to ACT all these years, when it comes to converting percentages into seats in the house or shares of the vote TOPs 2.4% take from the 2017 general election seems like a much better chance of swinging things in a tight race compared to ACTs 0.5%.

And Simmons is being pragmatic about all this indicating that TOP would be “willing to work with everyone” which is less of an ideological pedigree than ACTs economically pure final solution for anyone who is not very rich but that’s neither here nor there when it’s really National that’s calling that shots in Epsom as no one really believes (probably not even Seymour) that Epsom is some sort of politically kinky electorate that gets its freak on for ACTs political program.

And Simmons twitter feed indicates he knows how serious this move is (in replacing Gareth Morgan as the face of the party) by using the old poker term that he  "all in” and noting its “career suicide for an economist”, which is obviously referring to the fact that economists are not seen as congenital liars while politicians are.

ACT has survived for the last few elections only because there was no other alternate party for such a seat as Epsom to be given to and that is due to National colonizing almost all the space on the Right side of the political spectrum thus enforcing its shotgun marriage to David Seymour and squeezing Epsom into the political ghetto its currently inhabits.

With another more popular contender for the seat I’m pretty sure that with Nationals prompting and Simmons trimming his hair they ("they" being the voters of Epsom) could easily elect him should they so desire.

Detractors would note that Simmons ran in the Mt Albert by-election in 2017 and only got third place with 4.6% behind Jacinda Ardern’s 76% but that’s just the point; against Jacinda, who was then riding the rising curl of what was soon to be Jacindamania, he was never going to win but he still polled!

And lest I labor the point too much, David Seymour is NOT Jacinda Ardern(sic) and Geoff Simmons with his economic background** and TOPs pragmatic policy base could just as easily advocate for Epsom as could Seymour.

And with Seymour now desperately grasping at any harebrained scheme or idea to revive ACT (and his own employment prospects) all Simmons has to do to win is not appear in public (or TV) wearing spandex, not utter anything too stupid and avoid any political ideology that advocates an economic death march for 95% of a countries populace (pro tip: getting Morgans face immediately off any TOP promotional material, if not done so already, would also really help things). How hard could it be?

The key point here is that the current coalition of Labour, The Greens and NZ First have functioned as a government and all three have more of an incentive (or political inclination) to stay away from National (especially given the fate of The Maori Party and United Future in coalition with National) while TOP under Simmons (ie not under egomaniac Gareth Morgan) could possibly see the potential of working with National to get some of its own “pragmatic” policy enacted (while not getting too close) and to do that it either needs to hit the magic 5% threshold for the general vote of get an electorate seat .

And we know from past runs by parties at the 5% threshold (think the Conservatives, ACT, Maori and United Future) that such a number is a lot harder than it looks and 4.9% won’t cut it so it’s easy to see TOP opting for an easier (and far more realistic) solution of a gift seat like Epsom than trying to grind it out in trying to win a genuinely held seat or desperately campaigning to get over the magic number nationwide.

Of course we are still two years away from an election, and Simmons and TOP might have their own ideas but if this is not writing on the wall for ACT I will happily stand drinks for any who will take those odds***.



*-Bridges also managed to get in the rather catty comment that TOP could split the Green vote by noting the “divide between the protesters and those who are realistic” which shows exactly what he really thinks.
**-And possibly his background in Improve theater 
**-subject only to my then poverty level.

Friday 17 August 2018

Sticks and Stones and broken bones: four idiots and the things they said.


Guess who used to be a teacher?

Ok New Zealand politics! I go away for a few weeks to attend to my spiritual enlightenment (Kifflom! brothers and sisters, Kifflom!) and this is what I come back to?

I distinctly remember making it clear that this kind of outlandish and irresponsible behavior was to cease (see previous posts) and you lot were to get down to the business of guiding this country forward and representing your constituents rather than disconnecting your mouth from your brains and then blathering forth with the first inane thoughts that came skittering into your mind, like crabs on sheet metal.

I mean what in Kraffs name got into you? Did you think it was appropriate to say those things? So what have you got to say for yourselves?

David Seymour

I know David Seymour is irrelevant, you know that he is irrelevant and even he knows that he is irrelevant and this is why he behaves the way he does.

After his bid for TV stardom failed he has returned to the one other thing that he can do with his life; and that’s spouting random gibberish.

Listening to David on RNZ a few mornings ago it’s clear that Seymore knows he has absolutely no political capital or credibility and all and DOES NOT CARE one speckled olive.

Rebrand ACT, good luck with that as its likely to be effective as Bill Cosby changing his name and going out to a singles bar and with ACT having the popularity of NAMBLA nothing Seymour does is going to change its fortunes because the neo-liberal experiment has failed and we are now living with its ghastly consequences.

So Seymour, knowing this fact, has taken a leaf from the Don Brash playbook and attempted a few beats on the one drum which he thought could not fail to draw some like minded people to the ACT fold and that’s good old fashioned Maori bashing.

Sure its dressed up in the clothes of “fiscal responsibility” that ACT has always deluded itself into thinking was its creed but to anyone except the ACT hard core (which is now really just Seymour himself) this sounds just like a pedophile arguing that they should be allowed to drive the school bus, disgusting, distasteful and just plain ole wrong.

And listening to Mathew Hooton, later that morning on RNZ, its clear that ACTS days are really numbered if Hooton gets his way as ACT will be put to sleep for good come the next election when National cuts off its political air supply in Epsom and makes space for whatever political Frankenstein’s monster it wishes to create.

I would have more sympathy for Seymour at this point if ACTs ideas and policies were not the political and philosophical equivalent of child molestation.

All I can say further about Seymour and ACT is the sooner they die (and Seymour has to go out and get a real job) the better.

Judith Collins

Judith may not have realized it but when she tweeted out bat poo lunacy posing as real news that she was showing people how her feral mind works but then I get the feeling that Collins does not really understand how twitter or perhaps even the internet works given her previous tweets.

It’s not a series of tubes Judith it’s more like the largest unregulated experiment in human history and anything you say or do inside that experiment is recorded and remembered for posterity and then spat back at you when you least expect it.

And again Mathew Hooton, on RNZ clearly does not like Judith with his dig at her about how many votes she got in the recent National Party leadership challenge (that being one by his source) or her chances of ever being leader of National are when he summed up her behavior as that of a spoiled child daring her father (in this case Simon Bridges) to call her out for her said antics, to which Bridges wisely avoided doing.

But Did Collins back down or apologize for sticking her foot up her backside and then dancing the Hootchie Coo in front of the amazed eyes of all and sundry? No she did not and in an absurd display of not understanding how the Streisand Effect works went to double down on her claims by telling Duncan garner that apologizing “would only make things worse”.

Really? Really Judith? Is that how apologizing works?

You have clearly opened a doorway into your mind and your beliefs by tweeting out fact free mental diareha as something you think your twitter followers should know about and then then decided, very unwisely, to try and link it to the Labour party and the PM (and we will get to her later) and instead of admitting your mistake you sashay on like a pig in pink tutu at the first day of school and you think apologizing would be a mistake?

Remember the Orivida scandal? Remember that and all the other grotesque things you have said and done, because the series of tubes does and one quick Google search can remind people of all your acts of political bestiality in your ghastly career and as much as you lust for the throne you will never get it.

Your only hope is that the auto correct will change their search to Judy Collins rather than Judith because otherwise you are only a step above David Seymour as something that has only just learnt to walk on its hind legs but never quite got the habit of appearing human.

Back to your scum pit at once!

Marama Davidson

In your case Marama I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Reclaim the C word?” What the F word are you talking about? You sound like a mid-90s campus radical, you know, someone who does not really have any idea of what they are talking about but will regurgitate any platitude or saying they hear as the faux radical they are.

You are aware of the perilous space the Green party exists in and you’re ok with wasting its valuable (and extremely limited) media exposure on this kind of backwards feminist antics when things like #metoo and equal pay movements are now things.

Worse still you said it at a rally against racism and thereby high-jacked the events agenda with your pointless political grandstanding, you are about as on message there as Seymour and Collins. What in the name of our Lord and Savior Xneu were you thinking?

Ah but of course you weren’t thinking were you and like Collins instead of apologizing you’re going to crystallize your position and be now and forever known as the “C-Word lady” rather than  for anything else meaningful, like for instance the environment, you know that thing the Green party is supposed to be about.

Oh wait, I forgot, this is the “new” Green party, the one that has pretty much sold out its ecological agenda under the queasy leadership of James “anything for the dollar” Shaw and decided that it’s just going to abandon any real pretense to its environmental and social base and simply allow itself to dissolve into a seething mass of radical posturing and empty sloganeering.

Your shallow Marama, very shallow; going out there and shouting profanities is not going to help anyone and certainly not yourself or your party and it does nothing but sell the image that the Greens don’t know what the hell they are doing and need to be treated with the same scorn and disdain that ACT gets, is that what you want?

And for the record it’s not the word itself, profanities come and go and a bad word today is common currency tomorrow but it’s the fact that you seem to think that your use of them is appropriate, or even helpful, to the causes you are supposed to be representing.

The only thing you have reclaimed is the idea that the Greens don’t know how to handle being in power and that your role as deputy leader is just window dressing under the Shaw junta.

Jacinda Ardern

And now to our PM, who in the face of the increasing unrest and industrial action in the desperately overworked and underpaid nursing and teaching sectors (ones where the majority of workers are women by the way Marama!) decided that it was a good idea to not to make time meeting with protesters, only to crap her pants with fear when thousands of them filled parliaments grounds and other public spaces around the country.

Watching your speech to those protesters it was clear you had, as you said, looked down from your window on high and realized that you had screwed the pooch (so to speak) just as Seymour, Collins and Davidson had done. And just like those cretins you could not just go down and hear their demands and show some sympathy but instead thought it was a good idea to go out there and waffle on about how it’s not “us and them” but “just us”.

Really Jacinda, really? I mean REALLY? You have critiqued the teachers for walking away from the bargaining table and implied that they should have held out for a better offer like the nurses did. Is that the way a Labour government wants to run its labor relations?

You had the nerve to front a crowd simply wanting to get paid what they are worth and tell them that you’re down with radical change but that “radical change takes time”. Are you kidding me?

Do you know what those two words imply when put together or more to the point what they implied 30 years ago when it was perfectly OK for the then Labour party to embark on a program of radical economic change in no time at all and damn the torpedoes? Do you even know what punctuated equilibrium means?

However the crowd did not seem down for your panicked platitudes and twitchy hand waving because the only cheers they made where when you referenced them and not you!

It’s clearly an Us and Them situation when you have decided that crisis management style employment bargaining is the way to go rather than just paying what they are worth (especially since you get half a million a year), settling the issue and getting back some respect and credibility for it.

And it’s also clear that when faced with anything less than an adoring crowd you don’t know how to deal with people who have not bought your BS posturing hook line and sinker when they know that you could give them their pay rises and then some if you simply did not spend billions of dollars on a few maritime surveillance planes. Which do you think is the greater priority to them and NZ?

Is this what you mean when you and other Labourites keep saying that you have failed in your messaging because it’s clear that YOU think you’re doing a great job and expect the populace (that would be the Us) to simply thank you for all that you have done in those first 100 days and get with the program.

Well Jacinda, the program is that between 30 years of Labour and National hollowing out this country there is  not a lot left of the socially democratic state that was created by your forebears all those years ago and what we are left with is a government willing to play politics, give the illusion of change by creating a whole lot of committees (often staffed with Labour cronies) and keep on with the same business friendly agenda that National had but with a slightly more oppositional tone to maintain the illusion that you’re not just another lackey for business confidence crowd.

As our PM you have squandered almost all the goodwill generated from the election and done nothing to refill the coffers. You think that you can take a leaf from the Poodle Blair book of politicizing and try and foster a feel good personality cult around yourself and that will be sufficient to compensate for all the other failures to meet public expectations.

Well I am happy to say it won’t and there will be more not less of this kind of stuff (that being strikes and industrial actions) until you actually do what you and Labour promised and implied when you went out there and said “Lets do this!” to the voters.

And of the four you are the worst offender here. The other three are political wastrels and minor players while you are supposed to be something else. But it seems that your star is already on the wane when you can’t even show genuine sympathy for a crowd of ticked off teachers and instead have to use the moment to try and make some demented political point rather than just saying they are worth it and paying them.

It is worth noting that previous PMs of the National party would probably not even have fronted such a gathering so I am acknowledging you had the guts to do that but one individual action, in and of itself, does not change the fact that the government of the day is fundamentally responsible for this situation and if Labour does not address it fully and fairly then they are bad as National under John Key was when they ignored it and refused to front. Is that something you want to be identified with or remembered as?

However as Mighty Kraff has recently taught me that “dinosaurs are a lie that people believe because they are weak” so perhaps I have bigger things to worry about than four idiot politicians and their idiotic comments.