Tuesday 2 September 2008

Let the bullshit begin

The National Party's billboard campaign, now started, is singularly weak.  Not because the issue is not an important one -- NZ's loss of some of its most talented people to the convicts on the western island is a slowly unwinding disaster for this country -- and not just because the the billboard's style lacks clarity or force. See:

               natbillboard1

It's singularly weak because National itself must shoulder a fair share of the blame for the continuing exodus of some of our best and brightest, and not just because they were responsible in the past for the likes of the Resource Management Act and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, but for what people think they'll do in the future -- which in just two words, is very little.

You see, if the Labour Government's campaign against prosperity is what is pushing New Zealanders in their droves to leave in search of something better -- a poll back in May suggested as many as 1 in 10 adult New Zealanders is "fed up with high interest rates, worried about the housing market, and want better wages," and is thinking about leaving the country to get them -- then the National Party's promises and their campaign against their own party's principles is doing nothing to make anyone consider changing their plans -- and I'd suggest National's cheerleaders and their strategists (if such a species exists) reflect on that point. 

If the Labour-led Government is driving them away, then the prospect of a National-led government is doing nothing to arrest the flood.  Ask yourself why?

Emigration isn't a spur-of-the-moment decision -- it's a life-changing decision most people make based on long-term expectations.  For most of the last year those expectations would include the quite reasonable assumption that National will win the November election,  yet that assumption is doing nothing to stem the flow.  

They're not just showing a lack of confidence in what Labour is already doing to the country, they've already factored in their expectations of how little a John Key administration will do to change the country, and they're expressing almost equal lack of confidence in what National will do -- which as we know is to do nothing and change nothing. 

In short, they've realised that Labour-Lite will be just is as bad for their future as Labour was.  And that's singularly tragic.

I'll say no more now, since I said much more back in May.  I'll conclude instead with a line from an excellent piece by one John Gardner, a North Shore voter who's only leaving the country temporarily, but who articulates well the wary plague-on-all-your-houses departing NZers must feel about the politicians who make their lives a misery:

    But come election time and the truth is nakedly revealed. In their heart of hearts they think we are backward infants rather than thinking adults.
   
I'm glad to be freed from being treated with such disdain for a while.

Gardner is returning.  1 in 10 won't.  And National has nothing up their sleeve to stop that besides a billboard.

7 comments:

Dave Mann said...

This billboard summarises the National party absolutely perfectly.

In essence, it simply says "We probably won't put taxes up".

Fuck. What a pathetic non-philosophy upon which to commence an election campaign.

Anonymous said...

Here are the rankings from the World Bank Doing Business project:

Singapore 1
New Zealand 2
United States 3
Hong Kong, China 4
Denmark 5
United Kingdom 6
Canada 7
Ireland 8
Australia 9

"Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1 – 178, with first place being the best. A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is conducive to the operation of business. This index averages the country's percentile rankings on 10 topics, made up of a variety of indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings are from the Doing Business 2008 report, covering the period April 2006 to June 2007."
http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/


Australia anyone??

Anonymous said...

Anonymous

From personal experience I can assure you that your list is Grade F bullshit. It's arbitrary crap. Worthless to anyone doing anything real.

BTW had you considered asking yourself why so many departing NZers disagree with the pronouncements of the World Wank?

LGM

KG said...

Perhaps the person who did that is the one who gave NZ a AAA rating for lack of corruption,lgm.

Anonymous said...

yeah, those rankings are all basically commies:

not a single person who's every actually run a business among them. Here's a sample:

Mr. Ziv has volunteer experience in Israel,
Guatemala, Ghana, Ukraine, Belarus ,and Azerbaijan.;

came to the U.S. as an exchange student at Georgetown University.

Her prior experiences include working on EU accession policy at the Ministry of Finance in Croatia

World Bank with the Rural Development Team. She holds a master's degree in community resource management and extension from Delhi University

social development in Mexico and Chile.

He holds a master's degree from the Universidad del Salvador (Argentina) in International Relations and Conflict Resolution

Her prior experiences include working for the King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau in Amman, Jordan

Sushmitha joined the Doing Business team in 2007 to work with the Doing Business gender initiative in collaboration with the World Bank Group’s Gender Action Plan.

With a considerable focus on the European Union, a Master's Degree in European Union Law and a traineeship with the Legal Service of the European Parliament, Alexandra spent the last two years working for the Romanian administration dealing mainly with institution building EU funded programs.

As a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, he worked on labor law issues and, for the Organization of American States, he led and developed the Mutual Legal Assistance Project.



Anonymous said...

I guess Australian businessmen must be commies then. Here are the annual investment inflows ($m) from that country:
2002:17,816
2003:21,189
2004:29,438
2005:34,274
2006:39,467
2007:47,358
http://www.stats.govt.nz/tables/investment-by-country-tables.htm

Anonymous said...

Perhaps Glenn Jameson has hatched a cunning scheme to help the Libertarianz discredit the National Socialists by providing them with a limp wristed, poorly designed campaign :->