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Vox pop

Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, October 21st, 2008 - 81 comments
Categories: activism - Tags:

Spotted in central Wellington:

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81 comments on “Vox pop”

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  1. Tim Ellis 1

    Well. I wonder if that vandalism was just some tagging by apolitical teenagers, or if it was conducted by people with strong anti-National Party motivations?

    I don’t think encouraging the publication of vandalising other people’s billboards is appropriate.

  2. Tane 2

    You might want to have a word to your mate Davey over at Kiwiblog then Tim.

  3. Scribe 3

    Desperate times, Tim, call for desperate measures.

    You might want to have a word to your mate Davey over at Kiwiblog then Tim.

    Oh, the old “he did it, too” line.

  4. Daveski 4

    Tim – LOL – I think it’s called leading with your chin :)

    Easiest knockout blow of Tane’s boxing career

    I try to hang on to the ropes at all times.

    Captcha – ex mistake :)

  5. Felix 5

    sub-prime minister. heh heh.

    “I don’t think encouraging the publication of vandalising other people’s billboards is appropriate.”

    I’ll get my people to work on figuring the sentence of other people’s meaning and get back to you.

  6. Tane 6

    Oh, the old “he did it, too’ line.

    Na bro, it’s the old “quit your selective moral outrage” line.

  7. Rex Widerstrom 7

    Very clever line, spoiled by the fact that most people (who, we must remember, aren’t political tragics like us) will look and think “bloody vandals”. These are the same people who sit in graffitied bus shelters or walk past it on walls or perhaps have had their own properties defaced.

    Eliciting a degree of sympathy for your opponent isn’t smart politics however you try and spin it. And the “they do it to / selective oral outrage” defence doesn’t alter that fact one bit – it just means some of your opponents are as dumb as the clown responsible for this effort.

  8. Felix 8

    Rex I disagree. I think a lot of people love to see politicians ridiculed and don’t see this as vandalism – hell a lot of people see the billboards themselves as a form of vandalism.

  9. Ianmac 9

    The Clip is showing over on the Press site. One quick response was to use the same format for “Helen no tax-cuts. Helen have tax-cuts.”

  10. Hoolian 10

    There would be plenty of moral outrage from Clinton for us to all gorge on if it were Helen Clark, or that Grant Robertson guy.

    ‘Who’s Roberston?’ I hear you ask.

    Meh, probably a no body.

  11. Ianmac 11

    OOps I meant the other post: John-John.

  12. vto 12

    What does it matter. I think most people see any billboard, vandalised or not, as being mostly bullshit and spin.

    I saw one today in my town which said something like “kiwisaver, kiwirail, kiwibank – keeping it kiwi, vote labour”. Not sure if it was a labour one or a national one.

  13. Lew 13

    Rex: I agree with you in this particular case, but I disagree in principle.

    Well-done defacements (such as redding out the `ey’ on Sue Moroney’s billboards) is the sort of thing which will elicit more chuckling than shaking of heads. The point is that it can be done well – it just usually isn’t.

    By the same token, defacement can be both well done and still be a bad idea from the defacer’s perspective. For example, in one photo I saw on KB, under a National `Get them into training, not into trouble’ billboard, someone had tagged (in a pretty good approximation of the billboard graffiti font’ `”HERE COMES TROUBLE.” While well-done, this is just the sort of threat the billboard was supposed to evoke, and it reinforced rather than undermined the board’s message.

    Incidentally, I’ve always thought Trace’s cartoons particularly powerful for their propaganda value, and that’s clearly in effect here. Compare to the traditional Nazi image of the Jew – this is a fairly typical example: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters/derjude.jpg Not that Trace’s cartoons are particularly anti-Key – his caricatures of everyone are equally nasty.

    L

  14. Matthew Pilott 14

    I saw one today in my town which said something like “kiwisaver, kiwirail, kiwibank – keeping it kiwi, vote labour’. Not sure if it was a labour one or a national one.

    Really? I thoiught you followed New Zealand politics. Where are you from?

    There are some great sites if you want to keep up with politics in NZ – but I admit they’d be hard to find for someone overseas. Try all the party links at the bottom right of this site, or google search for ‘stuff’ or ‘NZHerald’. If you go to the NZ google site you’ll be able to choose pages from NZ only – hope that helps. And it’s great to see people from overseas take an interest in our election!

    P.S it was Labour – the National Party will undermine those three things listed at every turn. Maybe I shouldn’t have given that away to you, hope you don’t mind!

  15. vto 15

    ha ha mr pilott it was my weak attempt at a piss-take. maybe i should just get back to work..

  16. insider 16

    I saw a couple of vox pops over the weekend that you guys don’t seem to have caught up on. One showd 51% support for National and another 50% from memory. Surprised they haven’t merited the multicoloured pie charts and insightful analysis given to polls like the last Roy Morgan one

  17. Daveski 17

    Interesting point about KiwiBank given a potential coalition partner for Labour has proposed selling it.

  18. John Stevens 18

    Well at least JK has his real face on billboards unlike the airbrused version of that hag Helen. You can’t be too proud if you have to use a different picture of your leader.

    That is mis-representation for you.

    [lprent: Hi JS. Welcome to the world of moderation. Why? Because I'm tired of you, you look like a good candidate for my troll project, and I want to add notes to your comments to assist you in coming to terms with the wonderful world of net and the sysops who run them. They get upset when they have to read too much of this trash.]

  19. Tane 19

    A few reasons insider. Those polls don’t say anything they haven’t been saying for months. I also doubt their credibility. I’m also very busy, so very selective over what I spend my time making multi-coloured pie charts for.

    Not sure why I should have to put up with people constantly telling me what to write on my own blog though.

    [lprent: You don't. Who should I ban?]

  20. Anita 20

    John Stevens,

    Have you looked at the John Key on the billboards and compared it to unscripted TV footage? The airbrushing on the billboards may be more subtle (and presumably expensive) but it’s still airbrushed.

    Tane,

    How will we survive the lack of multicoloured pie charts after the election? :)

  21. Joker 21

    Tane,

    Please read the about section.

    It is not ‘your blog’ it is a group of like minded communists blah blah blah… want to set the world straight on the evil semitic bid for global domination through the money markets blah blah blah.

    [Tane: Um, just because it's a collective doesn't mean I don't have a stake in it.]

    [lprent: Yes you do. I think most people have seen the rough end of my writing style (is there any other kind?) in comments and posts. I wouldn't have these server performance issues without the posters..because..I'd..have to..write..more....posts. ummm...... Is there anyone including me who'd want that?........]

  22. Tane 22

    Well, there’ll still be polls I imagine… though I guess they’ll be sort of an academic exercise three years out.

  23. randal 23

    Anita, yes they, the gnats, have had to do quite a bit of work on keys loose wig!

  24. insider 24

    Customer focus Tane, customer focus :-)

    And anyway, you said re the RM poll that “The next round of polls should be very interesting” and now we find they are not interesting at all…

  25. Matthew Pilott 25

    Ok vto you can be a kiwi again! just being a smart-arse myself!

    John Stevens – I was saying you can tell whether a National supporter has any intelligence based upon whether they mention advertising photos as a trust issue. I think most people would now agree I’m right, thanks for piping up. Now, back under your bridge!

    Not sure why I should have to put up with people constantly telling me what to write on my own blog though.

    Because they cry so much when you’re mean?

  26. Anita 26

    Tane,

    Oooh – poll regression sets, poll accuracy analysis, coloured graphs of coloured polls superimposed on other polls. Colour coded colour coding!

    Suddenly December is looking exciting! :)

  27. Tane 27

    You’re right, though it’s sounding more like SP territory there. I’m happy to help make it look pretty though…

  28. Phil 28

    Oooh – poll regression sets, poll accuracy analysis, coloured graphs of coloured polls superimposed on other polls. Colour coded colour coding!

    That sounds eerily similar to death-by-powerpoint… do you work in middle management?

  29. Daveski 29

    PowerPoint is now de rigour in secondary school, especially social studies.

    Perhaps JK has a point about standards ;)

  30. randal 30

    Its not hard to spot the hawkers and barrow boys and the 10 for a dollar with one free guys round here. they all trying to sell everybody something like tighter underpants and socks with built in garters but keys will never fly. hehehehehe!

  31. Anita 31

    Phil,

    I was thinking more of double sided tightly bound centimetre thick reports full of tiny tiny graphs and 20 column landscape tables full of 6pt numbers to 4 decimal places :)

    Then, you see, I could get out my trusty fluorescent highlighter flags and stick several on every page and write cryptic notes in pencil in all the margins.

    (I work as a consultant :)

  32. Rex Widerstrom 32

    Lew comments:

    Well-done defacements (such as redding out the `ey’ on Sue Moroney’s billboards) is the sort of thing which will elicit more chuckling than shaking of heads. The point is that it can be done well – it just usually isn’t.

    Oh I agree the truly funny, well-thought-out ones can be good. But I see even fewer of them than you, it seems, as redding out the ‘ey’ is just so obvious. I mean the poor woman would have been getting that since about Standard 1 I guess, like I got T-Rex etc (apologies to the T-Rex, who I haven’t seen around lately because when I do I always do a momentary double-take and think “I didn’t comment on this post!”).

    The ones that riff on the theme of the opponent’s signage but start from scratch seem to work best. There was a site around that let people play with “iwi/kiwi” ones that produced a few that would have been worth printing onto corflute. When I last looked at the site that allows you to do the same with the current Nat effort there didn’t seem to be a similar standard (probably because the raw material is so dull) but many were better than this ghastly effort (*Sorry, I can’t recall the URLs of either, though someone else might).

  33. Jeeves 33

    A banker…with a big Jewish nose? Gosh. That’s original.

  34. gomango 34

    Its a catchy line but Key at either bankers trust or Merrills had nothing to do with sub-prime mortgages, cdo’s or anything similar. His background is fx and short term interest rates – the reason he did so well at merrill lynch was the way he retooled their loose, proprietary trading culture into a rationally managed customer driven business with less proprietary trading, more flow franchise business. The tarring of “Key is responsible for Merrill Lynch etc blowing up” is kind of ludicrous, that’s one of the largest confusions of cause and effect you’ll ever see. A more relevant argument is how does his time in a management role at an investment bankqualify him for a political career. Personally I think quite well – very few businesses are more political, ruthless, unforgiving, competitive, soul destroying (in terms of hours, family stress etc) – politics is probably the only thing similar. Of course in the good old days (until last year) it was all worth it for the money.

    The caricature of Key is a little bit offputting too, as previous posters have pointed out its very classic 1930′s national socialist propoganda – could almost have been lifted directly from a nazi poster. Imagine if a similar racial stereotype of a “dumb hori” was posted – almost all of us would recoil in distaste.

  35. Akldnut 35

    gomango The tarring of “Key is responsible for Merrill Lynch etc blowing up’ is kind of ludicrous, that’s one of the largest confusions of cause and effect you’ll ever see.

    The tarring of Clarke by Key on numerous occasions (Way too many too quote) as being responsible for all the of the economic woes we are facing (adding in the effects of the current international crisis) is more than kind of ludicrous. Now thats one of the largest confusions of cause and effect you’ll ever see.

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