Bryce Edwards: Just another political simpleton

Written By: - Date published: 1:33 am, November 5th, 2018 - 68 comments
Categories: Abuse of power, blogs, broadcasting, Dirty Politics, making shit up, Media, newspapers, Politics, spin, The Standard - Tags: , ,

You have to wonder about the actual abilities of Bryce Edwards. There is a reason that I seldom read his waffle about politics in various publications. That is that he shows no particular nuance or understanding of politics or political debate as it works outside of broadcast mediums.

Instead he appears to prefer to simply write bullshit that is shaped around his own biases and simple minded bigotry. As far as I can see he never seems to attempt to actually understand real political debate. Reading his output, it is pretty clear that he hasn’t got a clue about politics except in some very specific historical perspectives. It just reads like fairy stories to children or some poorly written sitcom plot.

Bryce Edwards is mostly noticeable to me in the way that he just seems to shunt everything into narrow silos of some kind of predetermined frame work. It rather reminds me about why New Labour was unable to be even remotely useful before it folded into ignominious in-fighting. I really have a problem with political silo people like many who were in New Labour including Bryce who just seem to unable to work together.

In short, in my view, he is about as useful to political debate in this country as his equivalent on the right – the equally simple-minded Mike Hosking – who does the same thing without the same education. It just seems to be a characteristic of some people who comment with bothering to do the work to actually understand what is really going on. It always feels like just someone being mind-numbingly lazy or being particularly stupid spinning for pay.

Take this for instance, in an opinion piece about Kiwibuild. “Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: The Political left is turning against KiwiBuild“.

Even the pro-Government blogsite, The Standard, is publishing criticisms of the scheme – see: KiwiBuild doesn’t fly.

Yeah right. That characterization is a blatant misrepresentation of how the site and the people writing in it actually operate. Bill wrote that post – “The Standard” did not.

It explicitly implies some kind of political editorial line. But even an intellectual idiot should have realized by now that the site doesn’t operate that way. After all we have been doing much the same for the last 11 years. It isn’t exactly new.

Posts are put up to provide a starting point for robust debate and they sure do. That post was not that unusual – it has 212 comments as I write this and they are just about covering the spectrum of ideas on the topic. It was a debate starter coming from one persons view on Kiwibuild.

We’ve had about 80 authors write posts here and the only real characteristic of them is that they tend to be leftish and extremely diverse in their opinions. We simply don’t editorialise much beyond who gets given a author level login. We seldom kick off authors once they get a login and in the only actual case it wasn’t for viewpoint, it was because they started wasting every other author’s time with lousy feuding behaviour. Even then they will eventually get their author privileges back if they can show other authors that they’re unlikely to waste my time and theirs (yeah I’m looking at you TRP).

This diversity is pretty apparent in the 23,00 odd posts that have been put up on my servers. The people who comment have an even wider spectrum of views.

Who gets to write the starter posts for comment is usually based on recommendation from someone already writing for us. Or it could be someone who has demonstrated that they know how to write interesting pieces for discussion – a lot of our authors get given their login based on how they have commented here. It sure as hell isn’t from some adherence to membership of any particular party or ideology. It is becasue they’re interesting when they write.

Authors, once they get a login, get an almost complete freedom to publish their own posts and their own content. The only time that I or any of the other ‘editors’ (ie: someone with privileges to fix other author’s omissions like tags or images really bad grammar or spelling) will actually get interested in the content of a post is if it breaks the law somehow, or leaves us open to civil actions, or if it starts causing too much deliberate disruption within the author and commentator community. In the latter case I will sometimes cut the Gordian knot if it starts wasting too much time or starts sucking up too much time in moderating.

We have advocates for principles that underlie the movements for labour, greens, liberals, command economies and free markets and just about everything else that could vaguely be lumped together as leftish.

Bill, who wrote that post, isn’t exactly a fan of the Labour Party either here or in his homeland. This isn’t hard to discern. You just have to press the link on his handle Bill and read his posts. When we gave him his author login it wasn’t because he was a Labour Party member or supporter. Far from it – he is invariably a critic of the party and government (no doubt he will inform me if he has ever actually supported them in his writing), and that is what I expected him to be.

He had the author login offered was because he was described to me as being a semi-anarchistic contrarian who knew how to write and who wouldn’t get too upset at rejection of his ideas. That he would provide a area of opinion writing that we didn’t have and that he wouldn’t run out of expressible opinions in a hurry…. And he is certainly all of that.

He also fitted our rather general criteria for authors as has been expressed in our about for the last 11 years – something that Bryce Edwards appears to have never deigned to research.

What’s your political ‘angle’?

We come from a variety of backgrounds and our political views don’t always match up but it’d be fair to say that all of us share a commitment to the values and principles that underpin the broad labour movement and we hope that perspective will come through strongly as you read the blog.

That doesn’t mean that I or even many of the authors here would actually agree with Bill on most of his expressed opinions. What we do tend to agree upon is that his ideas are something up for debate.

So in defense of Bill, I’d have to say that in accordance with our about, he writes for himself on this site. I suspect that he’d be pretty aggravated to think that he was writing as a Labour supporter 🙂

Who are you?

We’re a cooperative who saw a gap in the New Zealand political blogosphere and decided that we should have a go at filling it here at The Standard blog site. We write here in our personal capacities and the opinions that are expressed on the blog are individual unless expressly stated otherwise (see the policy). We do not write on behalf of any organization.

I suspect that Bill isn’t particularly interested in having us to agree with him. In fact, if I had to guess, Bill would probably be pissed if his ideas actually ever came to fruition. Because by then he’d have moved onward and would be critiquing his earlier self.

Personally I certainly don’t agree with Bill on much. I’d be a conservative voter by natural inclination and after a lot of reading on the rather depressing history on rapid societal changes. But I was granted rather too much intelligence, curiosity and education to believe that market forces were useful for sustained strategies like building coherent transport networks or housing or even just raising a kid to be an adult.

Businesses seldom manage to look more than about 2-5 years. That is my view that having spent my working life in the private sector and especially after studying business when I did an MBA has only reinforced. I also think that bureaucracies are often a dead-weight pain-in-the-arse that get in the way of innovation (hey – I’m a computer programmer). Which makes me politically a liberal in the English political sense and a reluctant but ardent socialist.

The point is that any site that contains both me and Bill writing posts will never have a common editorial policy except for procedural mechanics about how to operate the site (and we usually disagree there as well).

Now that leads me to my opinion of functionally dimwitted political ideologues broadcasting their own simple-minded personal views as if they were gospel. Just like Bryce Edwards and Mike Hosking routinely do.

As far as I am concerned they are classically simple minded authoritarian freaks who could only thrive in broadcast mediums. Which is why I don’t think that I have ever seen either of them engaging with people who coherently critique their viewpoints. I suspect that they are both have rather fragile egos and really wouldn’t know how to handle any real criticism from people who are living the sharp end of the life that they are trying to explain. Both appear to live lives divorced from anything that would make them grow up and see the other points of view.

Neither of them appears to be capable of understanding how to debate real political ideas in the robust manner that this site was designed to provide.

Perhaps Bryce at least could pay lip service to trying to understand those who can do robust debate and not to try to point to editorial controls that simply don’t exist. At least with him, I’d have some hope that he’d be flexible and broad minded enough to try that.

Based on what I have seen and heard, I think that Mike Hosking  is too self-entitled to be capable of attempting even that simple task.

68 comments on “Bryce Edwards: Just another political simpleton ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Antoine 1
    5 November 2018 at 1:48 am

    A good reminder of what the Standard is all about

    A.

    • lprent 1.1
      5 November 2018 at 4:23 am

      Raucous? Inclined to disagree?

      It certainly isn’t there for inane propaganda. It is there for robust debate and not for the simpleton theories.

      • Antoine 1.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 10:13 am

        I meant, a platform to rant at people

        A.

        • lprent 1.1.1.1
          5 November 2018 at 12:06 pm

          After all it isn’t like the broadcast and broadsheet media don’t do this. I see it literally every day when I have a look at the Herald or Stuff websites.

          I hold journalists and opinion writers up to same high standards 😈

  2. patricia bremner 2
    5 November 2018 at 3:58 am

    Bryce tries to appear even handed, but his fudging of facts and use of provocative adjectives and phrases when mentioning the left are very obvious. Give me Brian Fallow any day.

    • lprent 2.1
      5 November 2018 at 4:16 am

      What annoys me is that he appears to have written the whole piece based on a particular inaccurate thesis and then carefully avoided inserting the details that would throw that thesis out, or given anyone the information required to assess the veracity of it.

      All he had to do was to write “Bill at The Standard” and anyone who’d ever read a few of Bill’s posts would have known exactly what perspective the post was coming from. It wasn’t from someone who is known to support the Labour Party a lot. I get the impression that Bryce only thinks of people as lumpenproletariat rather than real people and then wishes to speak for them. Just goddamn stupid.

      Whereas if it’d been “mickeysavage at The Standard”, it has a whole different context.

      And then the comments… There was a reason why there were 200+ comments. It was because there was a whole lot of differing opinions to his thesis. “some support” at best.

      I have noticed Bryce falling back into that dishonest habit again recently about this site. This time I had a bit of time to reverse the critique. I will try to make sure that I continue to make the time and to extend it out of this site to find out what else he is fudging.

      I agree about Brian Fallow or a number of other opinion writers. I can pretty well trust what Fallow writes even if I disagree or have quibbles about what he is saying. But I certainly don’t have to proceed to to dig down to find out if he is spinning the sources.

      Time for me to stop debugging and hit the sack. Nearly midnight here.

      • Carolyn_Nth 2.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 8:48 am

        All he had to do was to write “Bill at The Standard”

        And there lies a big part of the problem with the way Edwards reports on posts at The Standard. He doesn’t recognise pseudonyms.

        If I recall correctly, he will give the “real”, offline name of a TS author if he knows it. He may refer to micky savage’s posts by micky’s name actual.

        See here on that.

        Where Bryce wrote:

        For example, writing at The Standard, Greg Presland argues that Southern’s message falls into the category of “hate speech” and “Freedom of speech does not require us to let her in to insult local communities” – see: The extent of the right to free speech, and Far right Canadian activist wants to come to New Zealand to insult local communities.

        Whether it’s Bryce or the Herald’s decision not to recognise anything that looks like a pseudonym, I don’t know. But that is part of him/them not understanding online debates or the internet generally.

        • marty mars 2.1.1.1
          5 November 2018 at 11:25 am

          Totally agree. This is where the old thinking cannot deal with the new thinking. I doubt he will change because his media profile is based upon everyone knowing his name – no name no pay.

          • Carolyn_Nth 2.1.1.1.1
            5 November 2018 at 8:34 pm

            I expect it’s more the kudos or name recognition that motivates many academics to write opinion pieces – not the money so much as they are fairly well paid by unis.

        • greywarshark 2.1.1.2
          5 November 2018 at 8:21 pm

          Or human rights. If people can’t express a negative or positive, opinion that is out of line with the accepted wisdom, there can be a lot of flak. for that person and perhaps family.

          Many of the early suffragettes in NZ wrote under a pen name so there could be thought on the frowned-on topic of women having votes and personal rights as well. But stick to a pseudonym should be the rule and the media are arrogant and high-handed to take away this valuable and needed right.

      • patricia bremner 2.1.2
        5 November 2018 at 11:02 am

        Iprent your first statement sums up his approach. Selective truth, is a lie.

  3. Sanctuary 3
    5 November 2018 at 6:26 am

    IMHO, Edwards is a bit of a political anachronism. He is the classic 1990s liberal lefty academic who goes on a journey from Marxism to the liberal radical centre and takes a whole lot of emotional baggage along for the ride.

    • Kahu 3.1
      5 November 2018 at 11:12 am

      He used to be a Revolutionary, now he’s the token “lefty’ commentator groomed to take Chris Trotter’s place lol. An example of sad degeneration from far left to apologist for middle class left liberalism, gradualism/incrementalism. I could see him as a labour candidate in the future.

  4. Ad 4
    5 November 2018 at 6:55 am

    We are the closest site to the government and you’re going to have to get used to this stuff for a couple of terms Lyn.

    • lprent 4.1
      5 November 2018 at 11:32 am

      I was used to this with Labour and the Greens and NZF in opposition. I didn’t tolerate it beyond a very limited extent then.

      It certainly doesn’t mean that I’m going to be bothered about doing the metaphorical crotch-kick to fools now. It is educational for them. Helps to stimulate their synapses into making new connections.

      After all there is a reason that search engines were invented. It was so that you could find out what kind of fool you’re dealing with.

      I feel a kind of duty to make sure that objections to this kind of behaviour get on the permanent record 🙂

  5. Ad 5
    5 November 2018 at 6:57 am

    Plenty here write off the BBC, Guardian, Washington Post, and others with a near-century commitment.

    It’s ok to accept where we are.

    We have a very small niche and an ideological spectrum that only looks wide to us.

  6. Ad 6
    5 November 2018 at 7:01 am

    Many of our writers and commenters are closer to policy and government gossip than all other outlets.

    Only main problem isnt how we are perceived; it’s lack of good writers to really intercept the feeds well.

  7. Tricledrown 7
    5 November 2018 at 7:40 am

    Bryce Edwards blows which ever way the political wind is blowing shown in the JLR saga one day he says 1 thing then next mini he contradicts himself.

  8. Wayne 8
    5 November 2018 at 7:59 am

    LPRENT

    It is no different to the Herald having different journalists and opinion writers. On The Standard most of the article writers refer to the Herald collectively as if there was a hive mind. Even though it is not.

    In short, stop whinging. All the article writers on The Standard are left, that is what The Standard is about.

    There have been several left writers on different left blog sites, as well as The Standard, complaining about KiwiBuild, along with lots of commenters agreeing with them. It is perfectly reasonable for Bryce Edwards to report that.

    Because Bryce Edwards is an extremely regular commenter on the news media, he necessarily has weekly reports on the flow of politics, as much as he does the deeper outcomes. Yes, that is a bit different to many political scientists whose rarely comment on current matters, but he hardly deserves the level of attack that you have unleashed.

    • Sabine 8.1
      5 November 2018 at 8:19 am

      So you see no difference between a newspaper for sale up and down the country with paid for ‘opinion’ writers and The standard which is a blog, with volunteer writers that is only perused by people who found their ways here?

      As for the Herald, they have both Hoskins and his wife Hawkins peddling the same ‘opinion’ and they get paid for that ‘opinion’. Please point to where the Standard does the same?

      Me thinks you whinge to much Wayne, one would hope that Bryce Edwards who gets money for his words is man enough to stand a bit of criticism, and besides, being paid does not mean people have to like what you say. It just means you get paid, not that your words have more value.

      • Wayne 8.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 9:16 am

        The Herald also has Simon Wilson, John Tamihere, Brian Rudman.
        The issue here is notwhether people get paid or not, but rather they ascribe a particular viewpoint to a publication.
        I am sure Bryce can stand the criticism. However, IPrent didn’t just criticise him, he went much further into basically a personal attack, for instance “simple minded authoritarian freaks”, “never deigned to research” among many such attacks within the article.
        Sure people have free speech, but in my view there is no need to stoop to personal attacks, at least not in the primary article. There is enough of it in the anonymous comments.

        • lprent 8.1.1.1
          5 November 2018 at 2:50 pm

          That was perfectly deliberate. He has done exactly the same thing before. Been told about it via the og Improved. Reverted.

          So he gets the consequences via the search engines.

          This time I want to make sure that the lesson sticks. I could be nice about it. But that doesn’t seem to work. And frankly honest opinion isn’t a personal attack. It is my opinion.

          If it carries on, then I am perfectly prepared to simply keep escalating my criticism of his writing until Bryce stops bullshitting about this site for his own gratification.

          I have done this before numerous times. I don’t think that any of the recipients have liked the consequences of my personal attention.

      • Carolyn_Nth 8.1.2
        5 November 2018 at 11:09 am

        Most newspapers don’t pay opinion writers. So, basically, much of it is people who put themselves forward to provide their opinions for free.

    • lprent 8.2
      5 November 2018 at 11:47 am

      It is no different to the Herald having different journalists and opinion writers. On The Standard most of the article writers refer to the Herald collectively as if there was a hive mind. Even though it is not.

      Bullshit. Try and find an instance outside of the editorials – which are truly anonymous. What you will find is that where a name is used our authors will use it. I know that I do. I know that all of the main authors do – because that was a standard that I insisted on a long time ago for precisely the reason you are describing.

      The ‘hive mind’ stuff is invariably related to who they pick to write for them and what stories they choose to publish. They have actual editors who do spike pieces, which we don’t.

      There have been several left writers on different left blog sites, as well as The Standard,

      Sure, and that just requires “Bill at The Standard”. Even cub reporters are taught that. Exactly like we’d say Fran O’Sullivan, Bryan Gould, Cameron Slater/Whaleoild, David Farrar, or whatever handle happens to be on a piece.

      Apart from anything else it means that the person writing the article and the editors are insulated from exactly the type of educational attack I just made.

      …but he hardly deserves the level of attack that you have unleashed.

      Why? If the boy doesn’t get a rap over the knuckles then he will just do it again. I have explained my displeasure at people doing it before in pretty much exactly these kinds of terms. My author history is lettered with such posts.

      Why should Bryce Edwards be any different?

      It costs me little apart from a little time away from my debugging (and I needed a break anyway).

    • Stuart Munro 8.3
      5 November 2018 at 1:16 pm

      Bryce has no professional responsibility, as a political scientist, to draw accurate distinctions in his field of supposed expertise Wayne?

      You Gnats are like the Microsoft joke – how many Gnats does it take to change a lightbulb? None – they’re trying to usher in a new dark age.

  9. Gosman 9
    5 November 2018 at 8:46 am

    From what I can tell Edwards was trying to point out that Kiwibuild has critics even among sections of the left where support for Labour is usually strongest. It was possibly clumsy way of making his point and could have been made more nuanced but does it detract from his central point?

    • lprent 9.1
      5 November 2018 at 11:52 am

      If you’d bothered to read the post rather than making a complete dick of yourself, you’ll notice that I never even bothered mentioning Kiwibuild (except in the titles of the pieces)..

      That wasn’t the point of the post

      • Wayne 9.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 1:08 pm

        Hey Iprent, I reckon you should dial back the insults.

        • lprent 9.1.1.1
          5 November 2018 at 2:52 pm

          Why. In case you hadn’t noticed, I am annoyed about this.

          And Gosman was doing a classic diversion swerve away from the topic of the post into the topic he prefers to spin.

          He can do that on Open Mike. I am not interested in him doing it on my post.

          • Wayne 9.1.1.1.1
            5 November 2018 at 2:56 pm

            How on earth do you say Gosman was doing diversion? His post was right on the subject matter of your post, even if you don’t agree with his viewpoint.

          • Oddjob 9.1.1.1.2
            5 November 2018 at 8:51 pm

            I love how the left attack each other when they are sick of attacking everyone else.

  10. Pat 10
    5 November 2018 at 8:54 am

    “Bryce Edwards is mostly noticeable to me in the way that he just seems to shunt everything into narrow silos of some kind of predetermined frame work.”

    well thats par for the course for journalists…..and why most avoid talking to them unless they must. I expect that those that visit this site understand the nuance ……most of his readers will do what is usually done done and see what they want to see.

  11. te reo putake 11
    5 November 2018 at 9:15 am

    Bryce Edwards gets paid to criticise the Labour Party from the left. Josie Pagani gets paid to criticise the Labour party from the right. What they have in common is that they are pitched to the listening or reading public as ‘ lefty insiders’ when they are nothing of the sort.

    Regarding Edwards refusal to use the names authors choose, I think that’s just his own personal foible. It’s about power and control; by refusing to acknowledge a person’s chosen name, you dehumanise them and belittle them. It’s the same shit that used to happen at border control with Ellis Island refugees. Polish name that’s hard to spell? Congratulations, you’re now called Smith. African name? Congratulations, you’re Barry now.

  12. Bill 12
    5 November 2018 at 10:45 am

    If Bryce doesn’t like the absence of a surname, he could just say “a Standard author” or some such.

    Anyway…

    Apart from denying my existence, and then resurrecting some idea of me in an awful and weird pro-government matrix type thang by promoting the idea of “machine code” as a thinking person with opinions, I thought his piece was quite perceptive and informative. 🙂

    • marty mars 12.1
      5 November 2018 at 11:21 am

      I think it would be great that individual authors are known and not The Standard as a homogenous entity. Authors can stand by their opinions and others can disagree or agree as per their thoughts.

    • lprent 12.2
      5 November 2018 at 11:55 am

      Yeah – after all it was the same line you were espousing.

      But that wasn’t really the point of my post was it?

      (Reminds me, I must find some time to write a piece on naive and unrealistic expectations on a program that will take at least 3 years to get moving. Right now, the publicity is about National’s program as all of the residences up now were financed and start to be started built about 2-3 years ago.).

      • Bill 12.2.1
        5 November 2018 at 12:08 pm

        Yes. It was picking up on some of the same elements I’d sign-posted, and so funnily enough I found myself being in broad agreement with his piece. I thought that was reasonable enough to be throwing in there as an afterthought to my comment 🙂

  13. Siobhan 13
    5 November 2018 at 10:48 am

    Agreed, It was nice that it was a piece by Bill that whatshisface referenced, clearly exposing the fact he has no concept of what Bill believes or that Bill is usually at loggerheads with a good percentage of TS regulars.

    Also interesting that Martyn Bradbury gets quoted. The man who has been blacklisted by the supposedly and undeservedly perceived as Liberal, RNZ, is now quotable on the National Party Propaganda tool Granny Herald.

    Maybe we are going the way of America where the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Pilger, Robert Fisk etc are more likely to appear on pieces at Fox than the Liberal MSM.

    The odd, and very dangerous, convergence that is happening as traditionally perceived Liberal/Left wing Parties and Media lose control of the narrative and disconnect from a large number of struggling voters.
    With the mean minded, reactionary Right Wingers, Politicians and Media, taking up the slack.

    A dangerous, and rather depressing, situation.

    • gsays 13.1
      5 November 2018 at 11:55 am

      Good observation Siobhan – “Maybe we are going the way of America where the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Pilger, Robert Fisk etc are more likely to appear on pieces at Fox than the Liberal MSM”

      I was eluding to this (far less eloquently) yesterday.

      Also I think the potential disconnect from voters will get worse here, a la brexit and trump, before it improves.

      Allow voting for 16 year olds.

  14. Kahu 14
    5 November 2018 at 11:18 am

    The right’s quite happy to support left voices against Labour when Labour’s in power coz any mud’s good mud. Leftist criticising/critiqueing Labour from rightwing newspapers platforms are nothing more that “useful idiots” for the capitalist elite/establishment.

  15. Delia 15
    5 November 2018 at 11:24 am

    I used to read Bryce, now I just scroll on by. I agree he misrepresented the Standard with his blog.

    • Chris 15.1
      5 November 2018 at 11:32 am

      He tries so hard to give “thought-provoking analysis” but the best he ever manages is obviousness. Most of the time it’s just shit. You get better commentary at the pub.

      • tc 15.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 3:53 pm

        just another ‘owned’ commentator doing what’s required of him. He knows exactly what TS is but chooses to smudge it for his own purposes.

        Give he’s been pinged before about TS’s position and continues to do so one could say he’s being deliberately deceptive/lazy/disengenuous etc.

        That or his memory is soo bad he shouldn’t be writing at all.

  16. Dennis Frank 16
    5 November 2018 at 12:45 pm

    Nothing wrong with your rant from my centrist perspective, and I agree that correct attribution of opinion is preferable to over-generalising, and I appreciated your in-depth explanation of this site’s function & culture.

    Bryce has become less incisive in his analysis in the past year, sometimes even shallow. However upon reviewing what he wrote, I thought it fair enough. There’s sufficient evidence reported to sustain his thesis that the left are indeed turning against Kiwibuild. Obviously leftists who support it will disagree, but that just makes for a divided left – nothing new.

    Folks are noticing that the current govt is serving the interests of the middle class rather than those of the working class. As expected. Labour angst that it is not adequately catering for the latter is to be expected too. Since the govt has been providing significant improvements to the quality of life of the working class in the past year makes the complaining seem unfair, I agree with this sentiment. Government housing policy attempts to cater for both classes, so the criticism is perception-driven due to policy outcomes not yet fully delivering suitable realities for those struggling.

    Bryce was a marxist in an earlier era according to his online wiki. That’s probably why his analysis was framed to cater for both classes, as well as readers who lack class-identification. He transcended the antique frame, and converged on the social reality we all share…

    • bwaghorn 16.1
      5 November 2018 at 12:57 pm

      There is a better then even chance that 40% of kiwibuild buyers voted labour /greens so isn’t labour giving at least some of its support what it wants?
      That’s how democracy works innit?

      • Siobhan 16.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 2:45 pm

        If that’s your logic, then I guess Labour is giving a very small percentage of the population, who are voting entirely for their own and their children’s personal/financial self interests, exactly what they want…a hand up to the property ladder. A little nudge to help revive the property market, and to ensure there are enough property owners in the market who can afford to upgrade to the baby boomers houses as they start selling them off.

        Not sure that’s Democracy at its finest.

        And I’m afraid that’s not how Democracy works in the long run. Its more the slow death of a once noble idea.

    • lprent 16.2
      5 November 2018 at 3:00 pm

      I had no problem with him referring to the post. I had a problem with him referring it as being some kind of editorial position by The Standard.

      I do this for pretty much anyone who tries to spin The Standard as being anything more than a program running on one of my servers. Because that is all it is. Read the policy.

      This is a place for individual voices. It isn’t any kind of corporate entity.

      • Dennis Frank 16.2.1
        5 November 2018 at 6:08 pm

        Yes, I understand. I’d be surprised if he does see it as a corporate entity – rather than a collection of disparate leftist voices (as per the about page). Reading the reports as evidence of a generic leftist `party line’ is old-fashioned since conforming to orthodoxy is traditional leftist politics – maybe even more so than traditional leftist splitting!

        The site design is a good balance of individual views, reducing group-think, allowing folks like me to agree & disagree when it seems appropriate. We’re all in co-evolution, and the diversity of opinion has an upside of clarifying common ground when participants focus on that. Disagreements can also elucidate issues – polarising need not be inevitable, if we retain goodwill. At a time when social media is making political culture toxic all around the western world, providing a positive alternative is a damn good idea.

        • lprent 16.2.1.1
          5 November 2018 at 6:24 pm

          ….I’d be surprised if he does see it as a corporate entity – rather than a collection of disparate leftist voices…

          I had to conclude that it was a deliberate choice for the spin. So I made a deliberate choice to individually provide him a good reason to not do that in the future.

  17. OnceWasTim 17
    5 November 2018 at 1:00 pm

    “You have to wonder about the actual abilities of Bryce Edwards. There is a reason that I seldom read his waffle about politics in various publications”

    You’re not alone. He is merely an aggregator – which is probably why he’s become the lazy MSM’s rent-a-voice.

    • OnceWasTim 17.1
      5 November 2018 at 1:16 pm

      Btw, Bryce has probably never had a couple of original thoughts he could rub together – which is another reason a lazy MSM use him as a rent-a-voice.
      The fact that he’s described as having ‘research’ interests in politics just shows the sorry state tertiary study is in. Apparently ‘research’ can now just mean read and regurgitate, and don’t forget to tick that box on the way out when you turn the lights off.

  18. SPC 18
    5 November 2018 at 1:22 pm

    “Even the pro-Government blogsite”

    Pro left wing blog site would be more accurate, pro government – if it were the only left wing party in the world that could herd cats.

    “The Standard, is publishing criticisms of the scheme – see: KiwiBuild doesn’t fly.”

    This is nothing but the truth. You have misinterpreted it as The Standard has editorialised, when all he wrote was that it was publishing criticisms.

    As for what Edwards writes and the Herald publishes, it is just an overview/summary of commentary on a topic from around the blogworld. Something Edwards looks over as part of his day job. There is in fact little, if any, personal opinion contributed.

    • lprent 18.1
      5 November 2018 at 6:34 pm

      It is exactly the same thing. Publish is a verb that implies will.

      The Standard doesn’t publish (it is a dumb machine). Each author tells the dumb machine what to do and when to do it. In so far as there is a action to publish – they do it.

      About the only thing that I or someone else with privileges usually does is to sticky a post to the top of the site.

      Usually that will either be the most interesting post, the one getting to most traffic, just because the top hasn’t had a change for a while or often the one with the best graphic / excerpt.

      • Chris T 18.1.1
        5 November 2018 at 6:54 pm

        “About the only thing that I or someone else with privileges usually does is to sticky a post to the top of the site.”

        Didn’t realise that.

        Assumed it was automatic, by post volume on each within a time frame.

        Mind you. I guess it would be all over the show, swapping and changing every 5 minutes and frankly to annoying to set up, when someone can just look

        • lprent 18.1.1.1
          5 November 2018 at 8:18 pm

          I did make it automatic a long time ago. But I turned it off for pretty much that reason. I had figured out the heuristics including the dampening. But then I decided that yes I could do it, and that I shouldn’t.

  19. Booker 19
    5 November 2018 at 2:12 pm

    I used to read some of Bryce’s pieces – at least during the Key days it offered something a bit more neutral than the pro-National media. But yeah, now he seems to have become another one of the small pool of “go-to” political commentators that the MSM relies on, and is quite clearly pushing a line – one that really doesn’t seem that different from the rest.

    I work in science and there’s a big emphasis on conflicts of interest- to the point that even if you don’t think something is a relevant conflict you still list it for transparency’s sake. In this case we have political commentators but none of them put out there who they vote for. I’d like to see it become standard that media figures list their votes for at least the last 3 elections.

    • A 19.1
      5 November 2018 at 5:07 pm

      That’s a fair call. Shows potential bias up front.

    • lprent 19.2
      5 November 2018 at 6:27 pm

      The authors here will usually tell everyone who they are voting for and why. We usually do a combined post.

      The choices are usually predictable. But sometimes there are a few gotchas.

  20. ianmac 20
    5 November 2018 at 3:57 pm

    Bryce prefers to put the point of view of the Right wingers first in his Political Roundup. He gets as many as possible then like an afterthought shuffles a few token Left minded folk at the end. Even if it might be a favourable issue for the Left he still loads up the Right.
    David Farrar might be writing Edward’s column for him?

  21. newsense 21
    5 November 2018 at 4:29 pm

    So he should change to ‘was published on TS’ or a ‘a contributor has posted on TS’.

  22. A 22
    5 November 2018 at 5:05 pm

    Wait….I’ve been reading and commenting on a pro government site?!

    Lol

  23. peterlepaysan 23
    5 November 2018 at 8:52 pm

    Bryce Edwards, like assorted media “commentators” are simply school play ground show offs (aka bullies).
    They are playing “look at me, are’nt I clever”.

    I cannot recall reading anything he ever wrote that was worth thinking about.
    In fact I gave up reading anything he writes some time back.

    He is a nonentity.

  24. Muttonbird 24
    5 November 2018 at 9:22 pm

    Dr Edwards’ best work is the cut ‘n’ paste Political Round-up and that’s not saying a lot because, let’s be honest, one of his first year political students could do a better job at that.

    It’s when he strays into opinion pieces that he really comes unstuck. He has such an appalling political radar that he has backed Simon Bridges’ handling of the JLR fiasco more than once in the past two months.

  25. R.P Mcmurphy 25
    6 November 2018 at 7:48 am

    he does have a groovy haircut!

  26. Philj 26
    6 November 2018 at 8:01 am

    Unfortunately, Bryce has ‘ turned’, a bit like RNZ, and has lost my trust. I do agree with him that the government Housing policy will never satisfy the MSM presstitutes. The current govt can never win in the MSM. Somehow he reminds me of Clare Curran.

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