Cartoon by Richard McGrail from The Free Radical
"Something which has puzzled me in recent years is the ... dismissive attitude to the John Key government as wasted years. ... The light dawned when 'The Herald' published an astonishingly ignorant but revealing article by Key on why, if an American he’d vote for Trump. ... In a nutshell Key said ... Trump’s promised tax cuts would suffice to determine his vote.
"The extraordinary thing about Key’s article was its astonishing shallowness. ...
"It was only after reading Key’s article that I finally comprehended [the] steadfast derision for the Key years, specifically the wasted opportunity to make meaningful and desired changes ...
"His likeable affability aided by a wallowing Labour Party saw him able to coast along, enjoying being Prime Minister but blowing the opportunity to make meaningful change. In that sense he served himself and not the nation and ... condemnation has been 100% correct.
"It’s now evident Key saw being Prime Minister solely in the context of a personal career highlight experience rather than any wider desire to build a better nation."~ Bob Jones from his post. [Link added]
8 comments:
Of course we shouldn't condemn Key just because he 'served himself', but because he has such a narrow and unprincipled concept of what's in his interests.
Bob's slowing down. I pegged this back in 2008 as Key became PM.
2008! Ha, what took you so long. Some of us were onto John Boy in 2005. By 2006 we were calling his team Labour-Lite. By 2007 we were already doing cartoons.
That particular cartoon above, from 2007, was the cover for a 2008 Free Radical.
But as you say, Galt alone knows how it took Jones so long to see the light. Serves him right for curtailing his Free Rad subscription.
Mind you, he claims to admire Matthew Hooton, so there are grounds to suggest he's been into full-blown dementia for several years.
Heh. Well I think I've linked on here to my 2008 Kiwiblog comment before, but since you're linking... :)
what is National going to do should it win this November beyond babysitting the institutions of Labour and the Left. Nursing those things along, tiring all the time and steadily losing votes simply by being in Government and getting blamed for the insanities of those self-same institutions. Until the day comes, one or two election cycles down the road, when a revitalised Labour gets back into power and gets to push forward some more. Ratchet Socialism at its best.
Although I see that it was more a slam of National than Key, but at that point I didn't distinguish the two of them.
Still don't for that matter.
@Tom: Nicely done. And there's nothing like a good old Friday afternoon pissing contest. Cheers!
A pissing contest over who was the most negative the most earliest. Are you sure that’s a good thing?
To the extent we have a degree of control over events, and can identify a negative then change it to a positive, identifying a negative early is useful. But when we have no control, does highlighting the negative perhaps lead to over-emphasising its importance in securing agency in our lives?
@MarkT: Yes. Probably. (I think you just pissed on our pissing contest.)
Fair point. You could either say I pissed on your pissing contest, or I joined in but tried to change the rules.
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