In the post I linked to below by Clare Curran she complains that people in the UK are marching to protest their government’s cuts, while in New Zealand there seems to be widespread public indifference to the prospect of English’s ‘zero budget’.
Curran’s hypothesis is that our media is rubbish and too pre-occupied with scandal (apparently the UK media is above such tawdry concerns).
I have an alternative hypothesis: let’s compare the opinion polls for the two main parties in New Zealand and the UK for the last thirteen months:
The blue line in the UK poll is the election date. I think this speaks for itself, and I guess Curran would say this is because the UK media is so fair and high-minded – but my alternate hypothesis is that in the UK they have a competent opposition party, while Curran and her colleagues are Really. Fucking. Terrible. I know this isn’t very constructive, but to stop being Really. Fucking. Terrible they need to acknowledge that they are, and make HUGE changes to the way their party formulates policy, and strategy, and communicates with the media and the public.
They seem to be stuck with Goff. Fine. Then they need to change something else. Maybe they should hire someone from the Australian or UK Labour Party to review the election loss and debacle of the last two years and have them make recommendations on how to reform the party. Maybe they should just replace King and run the party on more of a co-leader model. I don’t really know.
I do know they can’t just drift towards electoral oblivion moaning about how mean the media are. The country needs an effective opposition and we’re paying these clowns a huge sum of money to perform this role. They have an obligation to the rest of the nation to do their fucking jobs.
And what have they got to lose? Listen to people, not pollsters. Advocate for the disposessed and disadvantaged – there are thousands of them
Comment by Kerry — March 27, 2011 @ 10:21 pm
Well, it probably helps that the UK conservative party has announced that they’re tripling student fees and massively slashing health and other government services… National are bad but they haven’t really done anything on that scale yet.
Comment by LucyJH — March 27, 2011 @ 10:24 pm
Very true. What is worse in Curran’s case is the fact that she has been so ineffectual against Joyce’s CFH bill. If it is so bad, why can’t she seem to persuade others the same? It just highlights the fact that Labour is struggling internally, which most opposition parties tend to do, especially in the first term as such. Notwithstanding (excluding the Hugh’s saga), without Goff, I reckon Labout could have a real shot at winning the Nov 26 election 2011.
Comment by Andrew — March 27, 2011 @ 10:25 pm
I have another theory. They’re all really shit. They’re just incompetent. We have fools in government, but we have fools in opposition who can’t tackle the fools in government because, well, they’re fools.
And we have a media made up of fools who don’t want to spend any money to find anything out, who don’t know how government works, think that investigative journalism is either slapping on a tiny video camera or sticking in an OIA request for credit card statements and who think that in order to know what’s going on in government you have to be best mates with politicians.
On the other hand, the UK broadsheet media journalists generally have degrees from top-flight universities, have worked in the civil service, political parties or in the business area they write about, give themselves resources to properly investigate stories and, most importantly, don’t feel the need to wrap up an investigation within three days.
There’s also the idea that when National announce their cuts, you have a whole subsection of the media who nod sagely, while announcing that it’s good for the country and this is the way forward; when the Conservative Party announced their cuts, there was an effective translation of what this would actually mean in the media. I’m sure as fuck that Labour know exactly what these cuts mean for the country – exactly what Curran said in her post on Red Alert.
But no-one reads blogs, and a lot of people think Paul Holmes is astute. But he’s not. Like most of them, he’s just a mouthy old vadge who’s spent his life only ever listening to himself.
Comment by Dizzy — March 27, 2011 @ 10:27 pm
And I have to wonder if lauding the UK protests is a good thing when they turn into riots with massive damage and arrests?
Comment by The Double Standard — March 27, 2011 @ 10:39 pm
Maybe they should hire someone from the Australian or UK Labour Party to review the election loss and debacle of the last two years . . .
Not from NSW hopefully
Listen to people, not pollsters.
Funnily enough that’s exactly the opposite of what Julia Gillard has always done. It’s only worked for her thus far because her opposite number the Mad Monk is such a political grotesque.
Comment by Joe Wylie — March 27, 2011 @ 10:59 pm
The UK opposition is competent. hahahhahahhahahahahhaaha. Bullshit.
Your graph illustrates only that the UK government are taking on vested interests in the form of a huge and unsustainable public sector. Ed Milliband is a donkey. I have more respect for Phil Goff, even now.
Comment by Phil Sage — March 27, 2011 @ 11:10 pm
Dizzy, pound for pound the NZ media is way ahead of the British. It’s just that the British media has way more pounds.
Same probably can be said for the political establishment.
L
Comment by Lew — March 27, 2011 @ 11:30 pm
Lew how is the NZ Media pound for pound way ahead of the British!?
Comment by david c — March 28, 2011 @ 12:19 am
National also help themselves by backing down every time their policies turn out to be slightly unpopular. The UK government obviously doesn’t feel they have that choice.
Comment by gazzaj — March 28, 2011 @ 5:10 am
“9.Lew how is the NZ Media pound for pound way ahead of the British!?”
Whilst I wouldn’t agree with Lew, I guess the way the UK media seem oblivious as to what it means when an estimated 75% of all laws passed in the UK in recent times, stem from EU directives, says something about them. I mean, why does a country pay to have two governments? Which one has real power and which one is a simple waste of taxpayers money?
And are they REALLY cutting spending? A look at the numbers seems to indicate otherwise.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/8408929/All-the-talk-of-cuts-hides-a-real-rise-in-Government-spending.html
Comment by Clunking Fist — March 28, 2011 @ 7:45 am
Danyl says “my alternate hypothesis is that in the UK they have a competent opposition party”
That may or may not be true, but what is true is that noone in the uk wanted this current government. The conservatives were sleeping walking to victory on a wave of discontent with the then labour govt. Somewhere on the journey, cameron began to speak and the public began to notice that he is a twat. So, vote for a party headed by a twat or vote for the shower of shite who have just about finished fucking everything up, but just need a little more time.
Comment by Clunking Fist — March 28, 2011 @ 7:53 am
dont forget unique impact of disaffeted lib dems returning home, and some grubby tory scandals too alongside austerity
Comment by k.jones — March 28, 2011 @ 9:24 am
Dizzy, pound for pound the NZ media is way ahead of the British. It’s just that the British media has way more pounds
Comedy quote of the day.
Somewhere on the journey, cameron began to speak and the public began to notice that he is a twat.
Just people were starting to see that Key was capable of twattishness to compete at the highest level, Goff decides that this is a game in which he holds all the Aces.
Comment by The Fox — March 28, 2011 @ 9:27 am
David C, Fox, and so on: go and read Nick Davies’ book “Flat Earth News” and catch yourselves up on some of the details of the practice of ‘phone hacking’, for just two pretty basic exhibits. Not to say that the best of the British media aren’t orders of magnitude better than the best of NZ — just that there’s an awful, awful lot more than that to the British media ecology.
L
Comment by Lew — March 28, 2011 @ 10:07 am
That may or may not be true, but what is true is that noone in the uk wanted this current government.
Guess they shouldn’t have delivered a hung Parliament, silly little peasants.
Comment by Craig Ranapia — March 28, 2011 @ 10:09 am
UK government are taking on vested interests in the form of a huge and unsustainable public sector
More unintentional humour. More like acting on behalf of vested corporate interests. For the last UK election the Tory party was largely bankrolled by incompetent city financial institutions that would have crumbled into the Thames if they hadn’t been on the receiving end of extremely generous corporate welfare. Nice to see them repaying in kind.
Comment by The Fox — March 28, 2011 @ 10:40 am
Not an excuse for Labour being useless, but our media here Is. Fucking. Rubbish
Comment by max — March 28, 2011 @ 10:48 am
I generally agree with Danyl’s frustration with NZ Labour, but the UK comparison really doesn’t work here.
As K.Jones says, it’s really about the third party Lib Dems. That’s why the graph on the right stops well short of 50.
A chunk of the Lib Dem vote was lost as soon as Clegg signed up with Cameron. Another chunk has been lost once the cuts have come in.
Just being Not-Lib-Dem has been enough for UK Labour to go up in the polls. NZ Labour doesn’t have a pissed off third party vote looking for a new home … any home.
Comment by sammy — March 28, 2011 @ 11:43 am
Craig @ 16 “Guess they shouldn’t have delivered a hung Parliament, silly little peasants.”
Aye, they really wanted to tick one of the following boxes:
– none of the above
– anyone but Brown, Cameron or Clegg
– all of you go back and try again
– hang yourself from the nearest street light
– lets try the Belgian idea for a while
But the electoral commission seems to have forgotten to add them to the ballot. Some folk even toyed with the idea of protest voting the BNP.
They even got a reasonable turnout:
http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
Comment by Clunking Fist — March 28, 2011 @ 12:50 pm
sorry, premature posting:
They even got a reasonable turnout:
http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
Which indicates that folk actually cared what happened.
I guess the only way forward from here (in the absence of the existing political parties morphing into something that the people want) is for new parties to form. Of course FPP doesn’t lend itsself to nurturing this too well.
Comment by Clunking Fist — March 28, 2011 @ 12:53 pm
I have no view either way on the relative merits of the UK and NZ oppositions, but it’s worthwhile to point out that the UK media environment is much more diverse than NZ’s. I can’t agree with Lew’s ‘pound for pound’ sentiment. UK newspaper consumers have the choice of tabloids, quality papers, right-wing, left-wing, and centrist papers. TV viewers have a strong BBC that sets a good example for analytical coverage of events (sure, it’s not perfect, but TVNZ’s feeble offerings pale in comparison).
It’s easier to do the work of opposition – pointing out flaws in the logic of government policy – in an environment that permits more complex political discussion. NZ’s media occasionally do a good job in explaining complicated policy issues, but generally they prefer to hunt in a pack and all pick over the bones of the latest scandal. How many times have you watched a NZ political story develop and thought, ‘yes, but what about everything else that’s going on?’ Well, that’s what you’re stuck with.
Comment by Ethan Tucker — March 28, 2011 @ 9:42 pm
I’m with Ethan on this one. The rest give a new meaning to the word ‘sublime’.
Comment by Galeandra — March 28, 2011 @ 9:56 pm
Ethan, as I said: there’s much, much more of it. So of course some of it’s better, and the best of it is the best in the world. But most of it is a great deal worse.
L
Comment by Lew — March 29, 2011 @ 12:36 am
Of course FPP doesn’t lend itsself to nurturing this too well.
Certainly not, but it was endlessly amusing watching the British media (and the Australians, for that matter) having a collective brain-bleed at the idea of a coalition government. Party like it’s 1996!
Comment by Craig Ranapia — March 29, 2011 @ 7:28 am
But most of it is a great deal worse
Nope I’d have to say that NZ TV is probably the worst I have ever experienced. There is absolutely no concept of public service broadcasting here. The British tabloids are an easy straw man to throw things at but I see equally poor tabloid values permeating through both NZ’s piss ant newspaper environment and more importantly the appalling mainstream TV news.
Comment by The Fox — March 29, 2011 @ 9:08 am
Our highly concentrated media ownership may be partly to blame (and anytime Radio NZ wants to rediscover its cojones is fine by me) but…the fact remains the Opposition are, indeed, Really. Fucking. Terrible. We have the dimmest government that I can remember and no one is prepared to pick them up on their outrageous and frankly dangerous idiocy. With the honorable exception of some in the blogsphere, of course…
Comment by donna — March 29, 2011 @ 2:16 pm
yes, it makes you wonder what we are paying them for. WTF do they do all day while the Ministers are tied-up with officals? Perhaps they are one of the non-core services that the govt could axe in order to save some money?
Comment by Clunking Fist — March 29, 2011 @ 4:23 pm