Blue Dragons

Written By: - Date published: 5:08 pm, August 28th, 2017 - 30 comments
Categories: national - Tags:

Did anyone else notice this from Mark Jennings’ Newsroom account of Blinglish’s launch:

A hundred or so young Chinese wearing blue T-shirts with “Blue dragons” written on the front marched in to the stadium in a highly-organised fashion.

I randomly asked two of them why they had come. They seemed to find the question confusing but told me they were overseas students.

Were National padding their audience with foreign students to make themselves look popular (especially with non-old white people that general frequent their meetings)?  Seems an interesting response to their complaints about Labour’s US interns…

Also from that story:

The local Chinese media had a strong presence at the launch and Sky Kiwi (news website aimed at Chinese under 40) reporter Sophie Song told me her story would focus on English’s well-rehearsed, and soon to be well-reported, one liner “hardworking New Zealanders are not an ATM for the Labour Party”.

Song said this line would resonate very well with the Chinese community who believed in hard work and saving rather than spending.

She expected most Chinese would vote National.

We get apoplectic when Mike Hosking incorrectly tells people they can’t vote for the Maori Party (and can’t apologise about it properly – I like this idea that TVNZ should have weekly MMP lessons on Seven Sharp as a way of putting it right); but there’s a lot of media out there that goes unscrutinised as it’s not in English.

Some of it may be good; some of it may even be in the left’s favour; but evidently at least some of it is biased right.  And reaches out to large audiences these days – Sky Kiwi has quite large readership, so can influence a lot of votes.

I’m not sure how easy the answer is, but I’m hoping left parties are well engaged with ethnic media too, and are getting their alternative visions out to all communities.

30 comments on “Blue Dragons ”

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  1. Unicus 1
    28 August 2017 at 5:41 pm

    It may come as a surprise to Ms Song that many New Zealanders are deeply offended by the claim that Chinese people somehow have a monopoly on hard work and responsible saving .
    This kind of ethnic sterotyping is as unwelcome as it is untrue and encourages Chinese people to inaccurately make disparaging assumptions about other minorities in our nascent multi- ethnic society .

  2. frankie and benjy 2
    28 August 2017 at 5:44 pm

    I’ll keep an eye out for other ‘smoke and mirrors’ as Bill tries to hide un-electable truths.
    stuff has an article about Bill blowing a lot of smoke on the radio

  3. ropata 3
    28 August 2017 at 5:46 pm

    But according to National Party policy

    Hardworking kiwis are an ATM for rich immigrant landlords.
    New Zealand assets are an ATM for wealthy foreign investors.
    Auckland property is an ATM for speculators and land bankers.

    Bill you goddamn hypocrite

    • tracey 3.1
      28 August 2017 at 6:21 pm

      10b for roads

    • WILD KATIPO 3.2
      28 August 2017 at 7:24 pm

      And up until he got caught out , – lazy buggers like the Dipper thought the NZ tax paying public was an ATM for him.

      Eh , Dipper.

      So just piss off and don’t try and bullshit us all about Kiwi workers being too ‘ drug addled ‘ to work , you racist hack.

      We all know the reason why you import immigrants by the boatload into this country with your shitty low wage economy. We all know why you prefer rich immigrants who will vote for you instead of some poor refugee bastard who’s had his family bombed to shit , we all know why it makes you look good in the eyes of home owners to have a speculators market false economy and a housing crisis to create demand ,…

      Your sickening , Dipper.

      And soon , you will lead your shit party to its second defeat under your non – leadership.

      • Don't worry. Be happy 3.2.1
        29 August 2017 at 12:12 pm

        ….and now Lifeline’s funding will be an ATM for his good lady wife, Dr Mary English.

      • patricia bremner 3.2.2
        29 August 2017 at 11:38 pm

        Wild Katipo, A really great vent!!! Couldn’t have said it better!! We are enjoying letting it all out!!!

        Here’s mine …
        So follow that horrid slimy leader who saw the writing on the wall why don’t you
        Bill and your rotten band!!! Piss off!!!

    • AsleepWhileWalking 3.3
      28 August 2017 at 8:04 pm

      + 1000000

  4. feijoa 4
    28 August 2017 at 6:04 pm

    EXACTLY Ropata
    Hope Jacinda reads your comment

  5. greg 5
    28 August 2017 at 6:14 pm

    rentier class is screwing over working people vote labour and stick it to them new zealand homes for new zealanders

  6. Nic the NZer 6
    28 August 2017 at 6:25 pm

    It should be highlighted that Bill English statement about using citizens as an ATM is clearly not something he takes very seriously. By the definition of GDP accounting if the government is running a budget surplus then the non government is running an exactly matching deficit. That is the government in surplus is taking income and potential savings away from the non government sector of the economy. If the non government is going to maintain or grow GDP in this case it must therefore do so on the basis of getting deeper into debt. Given the decade long government obsession with budget surpluses its hardly a surprise that NZers are deeply indebited.

    • Stuart Munro 6.1
      28 August 2017 at 7:02 pm

      While that may be true, the frequency of very low quality government spending decisions ($100 million for a tent in Dubai, where, since the property collapse that will buy you a hotel) and frank instances of corruption (of which CERA is a paragon) make the whole austerity paradigm a cruel and empty farce.

      It is quite possible to have good rightwing governments – scrupulous and hard working ones. This is not such a government, and the frequency with which they lavish assets on their undeserving accomplices, assets accrued by generations of better citizens, tells the truth of what they are – a tawdry pack of thieves.

  7. Dv 7
    28 August 2017 at 7:16 pm

    1.6billion for SCF
    Kaching!

  8. grumpystilskin 8
    28 August 2017 at 7:23 pm

    Have a look at the “about us” on the website where the copy says:
    “Members of the Blue Dragons stretch across a diverse range of ages and locations, but are united by a single desire – to build a better future for themselves, their families and our country.”
    Sounds good, now look at the photos and tell me how many of those people are of a diverse age range. If I had to guess I’d say they are mainly students and under 25 at the most.

  9. the pigman 9
    28 August 2017 at 8:24 pm

    Bill’s line is very cute. Of course, it’s not actually his, having been deployed by another prominent Crosby Textor client (Gina Rhinehart) in 2013:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/10063295/Australian-government-using-miners-as-ATMs-says-Gina-Rinehart.html

  10. Psycho Milt 10
    28 August 2017 at 9:53 pm

    …Sophie Song told me her story would focus on English’s well-rehearsed, and soon to be well-reported, one liner “hardworking New Zealanders are not an ATM for the Labour Party”.

    Maybe Ms Song could spend a bit of time on an in-depth investigation of where the National Party gets all that money it’s spending right now while it’s the government. “Gasp! OMG! Nats using hard-working NZers as an ATM!”

  11. Draco T Bastard 11
    29 August 2017 at 12:24 am

    Song said this line would resonate very well with the Chinese community who believed in hard work and saving rather than spending.

    well then, those people in the Chinese community need to look at National’s actions. They’ll find very little hard work and lots of spendthrift ways.

    There’s a reason why Blinglish is called the Double Dipton.

  12. Joe89 12
    30 August 2017 at 10:09 am

    What do you all make of this? It is in response to Mai Chen’s Superdiversity Stocktake:
    The distinctive feature of the New Zealand economy is that land is an important input into the productive process. This is obvious with the agricultural,fishing and forestry sectors but it also applies to international tourism. In a simple model of the New Zealand economy where the supply of land is fixed, and New Zealand’s isolation means it is not a ‘natural’ location for the production of a broad range of internationally traded goods and services, then an increase in the labour supply through large scale immigration will reduce the
    marginal product of labour. As a result:

    Real wages will fall

    Owners of land will benefit

    There will be an outflow of ‘native’ labour in search of higher wages in Australia

    The economy will be bigger, but average incomes will fall

    Resources will flow into low value service production.

    This conventional model of the impact of an increase in labour supply is obviously a simplification of a complex reality, but we think that the fixed factor effect is important enough to be considered in any discussion or analysis of the impact of immigration in New Zealand. The official analysis, however, almost entirely omits it. There is a tendency to follow the international literature, where omitting the impact of fixed factors of production is a simplification that doesn’t matter very much, without thinking at all about how New Zealand could be different.

    http://www.tailrisk.co.nz/documents/TheSuperdiversityMyth.pdf