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