Dirty Politics does not work any more

• mickysavage
• 3 years ago
• Categories: blogs, covid-19, Dirty Politics, Judith Collins, making shit up, Media, Politics, you couldn't make this shit up

Remember Dirty Politics?

When information was fed to the Whaleoil blog which acted as a pipeline of crap to the media and good people were smeared for political advantage?

It worked well for a while.  It is one of the strangest experiences of my political activism that the book Dirty Politics blew the lid on the behaviour before the 2014 election but John Key and National still won.

In a world where morality mattered they should have been shown the door.  But politics is an interesting phenomenon.

Slater still runs a blog, a reincarnation of the Whaleoil Blog designed to avoid paying out to Matt Blomfield damages following a successful defamation claim based on the fact that Slater had been paid to unjustly smear Blomfield’s reputation.

This week Slater’s blog published what it considered to be a  coup, a video showing Dr Siouxsie Wiles sitting at a beach and talking to someone.  A subsequent uploaded video is accompanied by the song “Great Pretender”.  It also shows Wiles’ friend swimming in a very calm Judges Bay.

In another post Slater has revealed who the friend is who I am not going to name.  It seems that Slater has recovered well from the stroke that he says left him unable to defend himself in court and is back to his old ways.

The allegations are that Wiles is a hypocrite and has been in breach of lock down rules because she:

1. Was away from home.
2. Associating with a friend.
3. The friend went swimming.

Slater must have thought that he was onto a good thing.  But, dear reader, there was a problem.  Slater’s comprehension of what happened and his bald assertions based on a short video were totally wrong.  Not surprised I am.

Wiles has responded in a series of tweets essentially saying that :

1. She had gone on a bike ride for exercise and was entitled to do so.
2. Her friend, who lives alone, was part of her extended bubble and meeting and being with her was within the rules.
3. She conceded that the swimming was not permitted but also stated that she was not her friend’s keeper.  To be fair the rules would have allowed this sort of swimming under level 3 lock downs, just not under level 4.

Just like the old days Slater has shopped the story around to the media and a few reporters have been asking questions.

This is all typical attack the person and not the message stuff from Slater.  His insistence that everyone should be absolutely perfect is weird, he should check out a mirror some time.  He is accomplished at jumping up and down and creating a public stink and making the discussion all about him.  But his only mode is to damage.  Smashing peoples heads into the ground is not the way to have a mature discussion on how to handle the pandemic.

Judith Collins jumped into the fray by calling Wiles a big fat hypocrite paradoxically first in a Zoom meeting with National’s Pacific Sector.  They must have hated it.  Way to treat someone whose contribution to our so far successful repelling of the Covid pandemic Judith.

Collins seems to have a thing about perceived obesity.  Just before the last election she decided to fat shame large parts of the population.  From a Radio New Zealand post at the time:

National Party leader Judith Collins has described obesity as a weakness and says people should not “blame systems for personal choices”.

She was asked about her view on obesity during a radio interview yesterday and was today asked about that by media on the campaign trail. She said people who were obese needed to take some personal responsibility.

When told that some had called her comments heartless, Collins said: “Do you know what is heartless? Is actually thinking someone else can cure these issues. We can all take personal responsibility and we all have to own up to our little weaknesses on these matters.

“Do not blame systems for personal choices.”

Toby Manhire has this outstanding column where he urges Collins to act like the leader of the opposition and not like a pseudonymous twitter account ending in random digits.

His conclusion:

You can understand why National MPs might shrink from the idea of another destabilising leadership change. You can understand why those who see themselves as potential leaders might have been calculating that it would be best to wait until after the next election.

But when the door is unhinged so far from its frame that it’s flown to another dimension, when your reputation as a party is so rapidly corroding, when your leader appears glued to the dirty politics poison of years past, when your leader is indistinguishable from a pseudonymous Twitter account ending in six random digits, when the country remains in a serious crisis that demands serious people, we’re fast arriving at a point where National demanding anything but change at the top is not just foolish, it’s irresponsible.

Grown adults and our leaders are dealing with a really tricky pandemic and trying to keep Aotearoa covid free.  Collins and Slater have been shown to have nothing to contribute apart from toddler like behaviour demanding that they be noticed.

Collins leadership has shed any moral right to the office.  The only question is when she will be removed.

As for Dr Siouxsie Wiles can I thank her for the outstanding work she has done in protecting us.  It is so heartening when I go out for exercise how everyone knows what the rules are and are sticking to them.  Her education of the public at large has been an outstanding contribution and its success shown by the hope that unlike other advanced nations throughout the world Aotearoa may be able to beat back the current Delta infection.