The praiseworthy and the pitiful is our weekly post on the little things that caught our eye but didn’t lead to a full post. This week:
Tracy Watkins’ new blog A best of the political journos’ blogs I reckon. Watkins has been responding to comments, showing a bit of a sassy side, and her pieces aren’t too long. Funny (and sad) thing is that the best writing we se from the political journos is often on their blogs.
Vernon Small pieces on the Dom and Independent on global recession B+ First political journo I’ve seen trying to get to grips with the geo-political ramifications of the global recession. He correctly points out that the outlook for the Anglo hegemony is not good, he doesn’t look at the other side – the economic and political power that China will gain, right now they’re the only ones with lots of money and they’re using it to buy up major firms and resources in the rest of the world. Points off for writing “double plus bad”, correct Newspeak is ‘doubleplus ungood”‘.
National: “taking the sharpest edges off the recession” C All the Nat MPs are saying as often as possible that their policies are doing this. It’s one of those brilliant spin lines. It sounds good but what does it mean? What are these ‘sharpest edges’, are the policies really going to take them off, why not all the edges? No-one asks, of course. Wait for this to be picked up like ‘rolling maul’.
Hide attacking Auckland Regional Council for losing money on Beckham. C Higher points because its good, if petty, politics but ultimately a bad mark because, if you’re one of the few who still cares about our constitution, you won’t like seeing a Minister looking over a council’s shoulder and criticising their individual and minor spending decisions.
Bill ‘eyes on the ball’ English: “this Government is not preoccupied with all the details” F He goes on to explain that he doesn’t need information because he is too busy making decisions. Any idiot can make a decision, good decisions require good, detailed understanding of the situation.
Key and English when asked about conditions for bailing out firms “there would be a very high benchmark”, “there would be a high hurdle for any assistance” F-. Um, those.. those aren’t answers and we deserve to have them.
Tony Ryall justifying canceling pay-equality inquires because they will “generate an additional form of remuneration pressure that is unaffordable in the current economic and fiscal environment” Mega-fail Arguing sexism is necessary to save money. That’s a new low, almost a sacking offence I would have thought.
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