Talking over the Silence.

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Pacing these halls
Trying to talk over the silence

If I was to describe what I do, or at least the way it sometimes feels, then talking over the silence wouldn’t be a bad way to do so.

Not that there aren’t other voices saying the things that I am, it’s just that when you look at much of the mainstream media, it’s pretty quiet.

Lots of you say you’re thinking the same things too. But most people are being told other things and if you keep listening to a certain point of view, and only that point of view, then pretty soon it can become yours.

So as usual I have some things to say today, a few issues with the messages otherwise being received. Usually I’d cover one or two things but today a few headlines grabbed me, so I figured I’d write about a few more things that usual, just a bit less on each.

Which is a very long winded way of saying that today’s newsletter doesn’t really have a theme, other than the general insanity of it all, it’s essentially my thoughts on some of the news of the last 24 hours. See how we go, let me know if you enjoy this sort of thing or would prefer something a little more solid holding things together than it just being stuff that happened on a given day.

Oh yeah, I should just add there will be a paywall later in this newsletter. As a reminder if you’re a Gold Card holder, a student, or on a low income, you’re most welcome to take advantage of the special of 20% off, either annually or monthly.

If you’d like to subscribe at the full price, which is still less than $2 per week, then please click the following button instead 🙂

Political Polls.

Last night we had the first One News poll of the year. I know many people are quite cynical about these. As I’ve written in the past, I generally have confidence in the polling methodology, my main gripes are with the way that questions are asked, and the way the results are presented.

The message, or spin that is extracted and given prominence. Even though the narrative often reflects a change smaller than the margin of error.

However I think some polls have credibility issues. Namely the one run for the Taxpayer’s Union (TPU), a neoliberal lobby group opposed to taxes and government spending, and in favour of electing ACT. They also receive money from the Atlas Network, who you’ve probably heard of recently.

Quite frankly the the overlapping interests of Atlas, ACT, and the TPU, cast serious doubts for me as to their motivations for presenting a poll. None of these organisations seem otherwise keen on the public receiving clear and accurate information - so why would they start now?

Quite frankly if the TPU told me the sun was shining outside I’d definitely go and check, and I’d probably take an umbrella.

So let’s take a look at the recent run of political polls. The five run this year, including the one from last night, to see how ACT fare in polls run by the TPU, compared to all of the other polls.

Rather favourably as it turns out. Where the other four polls each had ACT receiving 7-8%, the TPU poll saw them almost double to 13.7% support. Hmm, can you remind me again what product the TPU is selling?

Other than that there wasn’t much to get excited about in the poll last night. The results were pretty consistent with other recent polls, and besides which it’s so early in the election cycle that really, who cares?

But that wasn’t discouraging Maiki Sherman from making a meal of it as she seemingly auditioned for the top job, now that Jessica has been rewarded with a plum role over at John Key’s ANZ.

I used to feel a bit sorry for Maiki over the way she was always referred to as the “deputy political editor”. It seemed so unnecessary to even mention job titles to the public, but after last night I totally get it.

I’m not going to go into the details, you can watch the full segment here if you’d like to. But it was a very poor collection of half baked reckons, and the conclusions presented felt insulting to the intelligence.

Somewhat disturbingly, I wasn’t the only one that thought so:

The main theme pushed by Maiki was how bad the result was for Chris Hipkins, which seemed a bit harsh considering that nobody really pays much attention to the opposition over the summer period, unless there’s a scandal.

I can’t recall anything particular outrageous from Labour recently, or in fact anything much at all. Which I guess is kind of the point, but you do need to keep things in context.

Well, not you, but Maiki ought to. Unless she simply wants to be the next Jessica. I’d been hoping we might get someone less obviously enthusiastic about the National Party. I hope that being so isn’t one of the selection criteria.

Labour’s Leadership.

So to our second subject, the leadership of the Labour Party.