ACT’s performative FedFoke virtual signalling

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, February 1st, 2024 - 11 comments
Categories: act, farming, uncategorized - Tags: ,

Leaving aside the party politics for a moment, can I just say as someone who does housework, lives in the country and wears gumboots most of the year, this image is cringe af. You take your dirty boots off at the door, ya numpties.

The image is from an ACT party tweet that says,

A new annual tradition began in Parliament today, with Mark Cameron winning special permission for rural MPs to wear gumboots in a show of solidarity with farmers.

https://twitter.com/actparty/status/1752592689470885890

The party that champions the culture war rhetoric that calls liberals and lefties performative, virtual-signalling wokesters, is engaging in performative, virtual-signalling FedFoke-ism.

But hey, if you want to send a message of solidarity with the model of industrial farming that is intent on destroying the environment, two pairs of dirty boots on some nice lean carpet might just be the trick.

Meanwhile, if I want to watch someone playing at being a farmer, this is more my style. We miss you more than ever John Clarke.

11 comments on “ACT’s performative FedFoke virtual signalling ”

  1. Dennis Frank 1

    Well, it may backfire, if the Speaker didn't notice their infringement of the parliamentary dress code and it now gets brought to this attention.

    Legalist commentators may prefer to examine the relevant text of that code to assess conformity but seems obvious to me that the two ACTors are non-conformist. I seriously doubt anyone will venture to claim they are in conformity with official requirements.

    Could be Gerry will give them a bit of a telling-off, and the blatant pitch for farmer votes will piss off Nat loyalists all over the place. All good! smiley

  2. Robert Guyton 2

    The Speaker allowed that?

    The Speaker refused Nandor's request to wear a kilt…

  3. Anker 3

    Silly, but not really worth worrying about

  4. Mike the Lefty 4

    But notice that they are still wearing ties, which no farmer does whilst working on his/her land.

    So like all ACT's political stunts, they only get it half right.

    Sloppy work from a coalition party that thinks being in government is just a big laugh, man!

    BTW, ACT's policies, under the great Rogernome, were responsible for a big increase in farmer suicide rates in the 1980s, a fact that ACT would like nobody to remember. When I challenged then MP Gerry Eckoff about it in 2003 when he was parading around the country on his "fart tax" jaunt, he first tried to beguile me with fatuous compliments, and when that didn't work he tried to change the subject and finally just walked away..

    Any farmers that think ACT works for their best interests are seriously deluded.

  5. Darien Fenton 5

    I just thought what a couple of dorks. And then I thought, how did those gummies get through bio security at the airport? Because they sure as hell don't farm in Wellington. I also heard Asst Speaker Barbara Kuriger say something in the Parliamentary prayer about rural communities and thought what about the animals your son treated so inhumanely and who you tried to get off by abusing your position as an MP with threats to MPI.

  6. Corokia 6

    It's been a while since I commented here at the Standard, but I can't stay quiet on this! Gumboots on carpet! Totally unacceptable.

  7. newsense 7

    I would like to say a prayer for all those who have been affected by the floods and whose infrastructure has not been repaired 1 or two or three years later.

    I would like to pray for those who took out rapacious mortgages to get on the ladder only to be told their land can no longer be built on.

    For those who can not get insurance or won’t be able to soon. For those paying 50% or more of their income in rent or mortgage payments.

    To those who unsuspecting have bought on flood plains, because we’re still consenting there. Because brownfield development is now ‘woke’ and cannot be discussed with arguments and sanity.

    To those who listened to the faux-victimhood of these cringe inducers who have told us for years there was no climate change and they shouldn’t have to do anything about it. To those who will be paying higher taxes and rates to cover the rural sector who have not had to contribute through any government or market process to meet climate costs.

    I mean the government is evil.

    Riddled with tobacco lobbyists and odd obsessions, it’s hard to imagine if they give a f about NZ in ten years time. There are no policies that I can see that show any kind of long term thinking.

    Certainly there’s no sense in which we look up to these fat, smug pricks as the humble hardworking golden kiwis we once held in high esteem. They are just the same as any other exploiter and rent extractor.

  8. No-Skates 8

    A lack of empathy means they struggle to understand others motivations beyond what they're capable of.

    Why is the free market the best system? Because they can't understand anyone else being motivated by more than greed.

    Why are they so reluctant to trust others? They know they can't be trusted.

    Why do they believe everyone is simply pretending to care?

  9. Obtrectator 9

    Probably the silliest stunt since David Shearer's one with the fish. Hope it has an equally devastating effect on the perpetrators.