Last year, we had The Standard Week as a regular feature on a Friday. We might resurrect that if there is popular demand but, first, I’ve been talking with some of the others and we want to try out a new Friday feature . Every week there are little comments from politicians, media, bloggers, and commenters that are awesome or really awful that deserve some recognition but don’t warrant a whole post. Enter ‘The Praiseworthy and the Pitiful’. Every Friday, we’ll grade some comments that caught our attention with some brief responses. Now, we can’t be everywhere and we’re all about democratising the ‘sphere, so if you see anything you think is praiseworthy or pitiful, send it through to thestandardnz@gmail.com
Garth George: “John Key, take note: It’s past time for you and your team to show us convincingly that your Government can govern.” A+ don’t expect to see George making the good half of this list too often but he hits the nail on the head here. He was the only political commentator this week who seems to think it’s the job of the government to govern well and the media’s job to expose it when it is not.
Phil Goff: ‘Kiwis would not blame the Government for the recession’ B+ In politics, it’s hard not to take the easy jab, and I’m glad to see Goff has risen above trying to blame the Government for the recession.
Pita Sharples: “A tradition as explorers and entrepreneurs enables Maori to develop their growing asset base in innovative ways,” C The man’s got good rhetoric but does it mean anything? When push comes to shove, the Maori Party has sold out the interests of the Maori working class, despite their fine words.
Colin Espiner: “I know something like 80,000 people around the world lost their jobs in one 24-hour period. (How many didn’t lose their jobs though? Several billion?)” D-The threat is not everyone becoming unemployed, its a large number of people becoming unemployed. The UN is projecting 50 million people to lose their jobs this year. 50 million is about 2.5% of people employed worldwide who now won’t be producing wealth and will need support from others.
John Armstrong: “Having slammed the door shut to working with National a mere three months ago, the Greens now want to reopen it.” E Green policy never changed, they were always open to working with anyone to advance their polices and still are (see here).
Colin Espiner: “people were still making stuff and others were still buying stuff” F- The problem is that economic activity is decreasing, not that it has stopped all together.
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