Pincer avoided
Hmm, I just beat the Government to it.
Just after my last post, Steve Maharey put out ‘National’s PC policy backfires’:
National’s policy of ‘PC Eradication’ has already started to backfire horribly, says Steve Maharey.
“Less than 24 hours after National’s Wayne Mapp launched his assault on political correctness, his own party has contradicted its new policy,” Steve Maharey said.
[snip]
“Wayne Mapp is not off to a good start. He, or his Party leader Don Brash should explain to New Zealanders with a disability where National stands on this issue.”
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October 27th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
So called “political correctness” is actually political incorrectness as it is usually challenging a double standard status quo. But when your backers control the media industry you get control of the lexicon among other things.
Most things deemed by the higher lords of commerce as politically correct and echoed around the media circuit as such are usually things that essentially are challenging authority. By ending political correctness they are essentially wanting to end logical debate.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
The whole thing is farcical. You can’t make [seemingly] joke appointments and maintain an air of respectable conservative leadership. Maybe in the wake of some suitable minor scandal, but not this soon after a loooong election campaign. No one is in the mood for politicians trying to be funny.
October 28th, 2005 at 6:58 am
People who use the term “politically correct” are just insecure. The term *itself* is just the sort of waffle they purport to criticise!
How about good, sensible concepts like: “its wrong (because…)” or “its stupid (because…)” or “i disagree (because…)” ….?
Oh woops… sorry… that requires forthrightness, clarity and rigour….
October 28th, 2005 at 8:57 am
Got to stop this groupthink, guys! The Gnat’s strategy is doing this is shurely clear:
- to keep a gadfly buzzing all around the Gummint,
- to keep themselves in the news,
- to goad ever-innocent Greens and others into expending much time and energy (think of the bandwidth needed for all these page loads - is That sustainable?) on the topic when they could be doing other things.
Seems to be working, too…
October 28th, 2005 at 10:58 am
he he, yes lets have some triple bottom line accounting on whether the environmental benefits of getting this information out there into the public consciousness is more important that the negetive effects of all the electricity that is used up by having computers turned on, sending electrons around the country. I would argue that:
1) a webpage is a very efficient form of transmitting information, as opposed to people who use formatting in email messages and then when they reply to an email they don’t trim the quoted material and consequently the size of the email ballons out to 20 or 40 times the size it needs to be thus filling up disc space, and wasting precious metal resources needed to buy new hard drives and CDs for backups, and also taking longer to download, costing people data charges.
2) the electricity usage is very very minor and the real environmental costs with having a popular blog are that people spend less time with their families, or gardening, or working, and more time reading blogs. Mind you, you could say the same thing about TradeMe - don’t get me started on Trademe, I reckon its’ popularity is responsible for a breakdown in the fabric of NZ society (e.g. less volunteers for charities), and it is a reason why our economy is down the tubes (no-one doing any work at work).
October 28th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
hmmm, I had thought that the Maori Party negotiations would have a positive effect; by showing how far backwards the Nats were prepared to bend on their Maori-bashing pre-election stance.
It has been funny seeing the Nats fall over themselves to keep quiet whilst the ‘nats for treaty’ lot had a go at convincing us how compatible they and the MP were (did anyone else see the Willy Jackson thingy?). Now that a govt is a done deal it’s time to ramp up the populist appeal again. 3 years is a pretty long time to try and maintain it though…
Sorta reminds me of Brash’s trip to the Wananga; he was invited for a feed inside (clever move on the Wananga’s part…) where he gave a fawning speech to them, and then proceeded to bash them to the media outside (the original plan). Hilarious! What a creep…
October 28th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
heh it seems to me that the flip-flops continue
October 29th, 2005 at 10:54 am
Nice one Stuey!