Poor old Pop-Up Leader: nothing but green and yellow jellybeans
Diary of the last twelve hours
7.15am
It is well known about us, the noisy people of Aotearoa, that we are frank, uncompromising and, unlike the demure Australians, blunt to the point of rudeness. We don't care who might get upset, we just come right out and say it.
Spare a thought, then, for the Pop-Up leader of the opposition right now, having all those people stopping her in the streets, bailing her up in the Koru lounge at the end of another godawful day. You just want to pour yourself a big dirty chardonnay, but no, they’re all up in your face telling you god what a dog's breakfast you're making of this Judith honestly call yourself a leader my 6 year old could do a better job and what did you think you were doing prying Don’s crypt open to get his speech notes how did you ever think that was going to work?
As if. When the nice lady from the cover of Time says, of us: This Is Not Who We Are, she flatters the national image. What we are largely is quiet people who will do anything to avoid a fuss. A legendary bFM promo for Hard News had a pair of cafe diners discovering, beneath the lettuce leaf of their salad, something truly disgusting. The promo joins them as they inspect the plate: It can't be. Surely not. Is it really? Is it….. Yes, it’s, it’s...dog shit! Right there under the lettuce.
They are naturally and viscerally disgusted and boy are they ever going to have words with the management and they keep right on fuming up until the waiter reappears to ask the customary everything alright with your meals guys? Obligingly, ingratiatingly, they tell him: oh all great thanks!!”
When Judith Collins avers that her leadership is hunky dory because she has had all these people stopping her in the street and the Koru lounge to tell her what a good job she’s doing, what she means is they are saying “oh all great thanks!!” That's how we are here, not wanting to make anyone unhappy, not wanting to tell someone they're doing it all wrong. You save that for telling to the polling company who passes it on to Tova who is not at all afraid to tell it to Judith and adding: you're dog tucker mate. When I say we don’t know how to be cold, I don't mean every last one of us.
The Koru lounge, what polling data is it good for? I’ve watched people in that place sucking up to politicians and you have truly not seen tragic ingratiation until you have seen some guy standing alongside John Key as we all watch One News on the big screen and he offers some man-of-the-world-like-you-mate commentary that he imagines John-top-bloke-to-have-a-beer-with would like to hear.
We have been getting these tales from the street from Judith Collins this morning because there has been a TV poll saying the Pop-Up leadership is looking so terribly crook that, well, if it were an Irish Setter by now you'd have called the vet, said your tearful goodbyes, and there'd already be some flowers on the freshly mounded earth.
So long faithful pooch with some really weird habits. RIP.
The analysis has been pretty much of one voice - if you leave to one side poor old Colonel Trotter calling, plaintively, once more, nuuuurse! - and that one voice has been saying:
Cynical politics promoting racial division still attract a following, but alienate in much greater numbers and that’s bloody heartening to see
This party is woefully out of touch and empty of ideas
Judith Collins is not the person to lead them to victory, but fear of the revolving door probably means she's staying in the job
All the same, let’s look around the room and ask if there’s a possible replacement, honestly we keep doing this and it's like eating all the jelly beans except the green and yellow ones, then looking in the bag again and again for a decent one
If you want to have this analysed in more lofty terms you could turn to Morning Report with Ben Thomas doing his cerebral opining but in the end it comes down to the same thing: nothing but green and yellow ones
One final thought: If the National party do ever locate a clue and some sort of vision and someone charismatic to lead them and articulate it, I offer them one small suggestion to make them seem at least a little like they have at long last found their way into the 21st century and want to share the good news: don't call it your Launch, or your Policy Announcement. Call it your Agenda Reveal Party.
8.35am
Feeling like the worst kind of bystander as the horror goes on and on forever in Israel and Palestine.
I don't know if it was ever as real as it felt but at the time of the Oslo Accords there was that moment after shaking Arafat’s hand, when Rabin declared: We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears ... enough! I bought that, really felt it could be a new beginning.
It took almost no time at all for some murderous zealot to kill Rabin and for all the promise to evaporate, if it ever existed.
I don't purport to have anything much to offer here, I just want to quote other people whose sincerity and heart I admire.
One is a reader of this newsletter. I won't name him because he wrote this in a protected tweet, but I'm trusting it’s acceptable to share it:
I cannot help thinking that exile and sorrow and oppression made the Jews, was transmuted into identity across two millenia, and there is the most horrible irony that in hankering for what other ethnicities were doing with nationalism, we are destroying ourselves.
And someone else wrote:
That’s how Gazans live. Without medical treatment because Israel prevents it. Without electricity much of the time because Israel prevents it. Without the ability to fish in the Mediterranean ocean because Israel prevents it. Without an airport or seaport because Israel prevents it.
11.35am
Catching up on weekend messages. Belynda tweeted to me and reader Russell: This is so damn cool! Would love to see them rolled out in Aotearoa. I feel like you might be down with this vibe too. I agree. Very cool.
The future has so much cool stuff in it, I really don’t know why people are so leery of it.
Roll up your trousers, I want to firehose a bit of history of what people were saying down the chute and sweep us forward into the future.
What people were saying Item One
The year before it opened
This Northern busway is just PC social engineering trying to tell us what’s good for us, no-one will use it.
Today
This Northern busway needs way more parking spaces, I can never get on, too many people are using it, why didn’t they think ahead?
What people were saying Item Two
Today
This cycleway stuff is just woke social engineering, trying to tell us what’s good for us, no-one will use it.
Ten Years From Now
This cycleway across the bridge is crammed with bikes, why do we only have one lane when there are fewer and fewer cars every day?
4.20pm
I have to make a playlist of these tracks because I’m no longer sure what’s had a spin or not. But never mind if we’ve had this one before, it’s bloody magic.
Yeah that Agenda reveal party is a cool idea for the Nats, especially if it involves blowing things up. The farmers party ought to have at least one member who’s handy with the old gelly.