Tuesday, September 06, 2005
No questions please – this is a photo opportunity
Helen Clark spoke at the University today, to a large and docile crowd.
I was one of the only people who asked her a question she didn't like answering – about the fact that many people, especially the elderly and low income families, have trouble paying their power bill. Why won't Labour take back the power into public ownership?
Could all the big talk about social justice just be so much election PR?
As you will see from the photo above it was a pretty big crowd – but fairly uncommitted, despite the fact the Labour Party had filled about twenty thousand balloons, to fit in with the hot air theme.
What has happened to today's students that they will regard cutting the interest (but keeping user pays education) as somehow "radical"? Is it because we've been trained after a generation to accept the unacceptable, and to allow ourselves to be gulled by agenda-setting rulers?
Even the journalists were saying what a flat crowd it was. One said to me, isn't it strange how the only questions were from the left? (I think he was referring to me).
No sign of National, a few ACT dudes with their bad yellow banner . . . bad colour choice, especially next to the pale and spotted complexions of the ACT boys.
I talked to a few people in the crowd, but apart from the celebrity factor there didn't seem to be a huge amount of interest in the actual election or politics itself.
Meanwhile a gaggle of press gallery journalists waited patiently and eventually filed up like a row of dutiful ducklings after the PM.
What a laugh!
- posted by Victor @ 4:00 PM
Comments:
<< Home
"What has happened to today's students that they will regard cutting the interest (but keeping user pays education) as somehow "radical"? Is it because we've been trained after a generation to accept the unacceptable, and to allow ourselves to be gulled by agenda-setting rulers?"
It's called hegemony. For years students have been told by politicans that free education is impossible. The dominant (user-pays) ideology has won this battle - the interest-free policy is just to keep us happy.
It's called hegemony. For years students have been told by politicans that free education is impossible. The dominant (user-pays) ideology has won this battle - the interest-free policy is just to keep us happy.
Sadly, Bren you're right. Of course it's Hegemony. Gramsci would have a field day with the various ways in which the New Right has imposed it's own value systems over that of social democracy.
I have notes from a lecture given by Bruce Jesson in 1988 in which he notes that despite the onslaught of New Right ideals that the Social Democratic tradition is still predominant.
I think 17 years on it would be fairly evident that the New Right has won the hegemonic debate in that it has managed to make it's own vision predominant. The Alliance as the party that promotes the social democratic vision is fighting for its survival, (its policies, deemed as too far out by the vast majority) while others, including the Greens, have brought into the new/liberal right hegemonic vision.
New Zealand: The Country in which the Left died....
Post a Comment
I have notes from a lecture given by Bruce Jesson in 1988 in which he notes that despite the onslaught of New Right ideals that the Social Democratic tradition is still predominant.
I think 17 years on it would be fairly evident that the New Right has won the hegemonic debate in that it has managed to make it's own vision predominant. The Alliance as the party that promotes the social democratic vision is fighting for its survival, (its policies, deemed as too far out by the vast majority) while others, including the Greens, have brought into the new/liberal right hegemonic vision.
New Zealand: The Country in which the Left died....
<< Home
