I have made up my mind. The General Election is just a few weeks away and I have made up my mind. A protest vote this time. This is my first experience with Facebook coming into an election and honesty, it scares me. 25 years as a radio talkback host still didnt prepare me for the outpouring of hate and scorn from the extremists in both Labour and national supporters. I do appreciate that these are the minority and that most people on the Left and the Right are far more moderate. By comparison, talkback was much more easily controlled and you never allowed the extremists to have too much time on air. But social media promotes some sort of misguided entitlement that people are allowed to say what they want, about who they want, without any sense of fairness or reaction. Apart from the extremists on both sides I also have serious reservations about both major parties. 1, Labour is hopelessly disorganised and with the possible exception of David Parker and David Shearer, appear to lack any serious ability at the top levels. The infighting, back-stabbing and a lack of a clear vision make Labour a non-contender. David Cunliffe is not a Prime Ministerial wart on a bum. Shane Jones could have been a winner — but the wankers couldnt see that. 2. National. The Real John Key is masked and I dont really know what we are dealing with. I despair at the cosying up the the US that has destroyed decades of neutrality and highly regarded international independence. The widely held belief from the right that Key and National have guided NZ through a difficult patch and we have a rock-star economy is hollow. The dairy boom was the saviour, but I see no sign that we have understood this was temporary and we have plans for when the boom ends — like now! And I think claiming the Christchurch earthquake as economic growth is obscene. 3. Kim Dotcom Schmidt. He will go down as a man who wrought huge changes in New Zealand. I am not a fan of him per se, but I think his arrival here and the subsequent way we have dropped our trousers and bent over to accommodate the US interests — both political and business —is sickening. Conspiracy — that he was allowed a soft passage into NZ because he could be more easily extradited to the US from here than some other countries? It looks more and more like that. However, if I support Kim Dotcom Schmidt to any degree its because of the way in which our authorities so quickly dropped the NZ way of doing things and embraced pure Americanism and Hollywood in dealing with the man — the raid to arrest him was New Zealand being hi-jacked. I think the fall-out from the KDC affair will be a dramatically changed NZ political landscape So, I have made up my mind. I probably wont place a candidate vote, but I will most certainly place a party vote — and it will be neither Labour, nor National.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 02:08:31 +0000
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