Nice piece Sapphi. It’s extraordinary how much dysfunctional behaviour, misinformation, and downright bullshit a nation’s people will tolerate. Seymour is morally bankrupt, ideologically driven, and empathy challenged. When these traits are combined with his complete lack of integrity it makes him dangerous to democracy as we know it. He is so far away from being an acceptable Deputy Prime Minister the earth may well stop turning in protest. How did Seymour get here? Easy, he conflated carefully selected social, economic, and political issues into a toxic mix that spontaneously combusted. It’s Trumpian-by-design.
Nice work Sapphi. Depressing read though, he is a master at bs and deflection and simply hogs so much air time it is relentless. Meantime, the good guys…if that politician exists, well they do in my book anyway, are on the opposition, working for the people, and how much air time do they get? Not nearly as much as a fair and balanced media should be aiming for. Keep up your info rich articles, good to be armed with a counter factual when we come up against the stupid clickbait stories that NACT1 supporters spew up. Kia kaha!
Some great observations Sapphi. However I'm beginning to realise that Seymour along with the angry toilet brush, thrives in the oxygen of publicity. I believe it is high time we removed his oxygen and watch him wilt away
Thank you Sapphi - I am a boomer & have watched this past year with growing trepidation. Davey certainly posts a prodigious amount of propaganda - decided I should follow him on FB to be aware of some of his disgusting disinformation. He seems to becoming bolder & even MSM give him a disproportionate amount of oxygen without challenging his latest ‘fact’.
👍💯👏 No lies detected 🔥 I posit that SOME of the problem is as you point out, how the information/media space has changed so dramatically. We all used to get our data from the same sources (by & large) like Radio NZ news (not a far right milliionaire funded racist misogynist based fantasy radio programme) , 6pm news on TV (not partisan clips on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube etc) , subscribing to The Press etc (not X-crement et al) etc etc. We had blatantly false "entertainment" publications that most people knew were untruths, but wide access to largely "reliable" information we trusted to judge a politician's ravings against, & journalists who called them out if they "misunderstood" (lied 😱) plus the Editors/owners were interested in being seen to be impartial and factual, with "opinion" pieces being clearly labelled as such.
🤷Whatever the reason, a lot of journalism these days is stenography - playing a clip of Seymour lying his a$$ off instead of saying "Seymour misrepresented..... By saying.... when the facts are..." or just quoting him without correction or context. Unfortunately it is time-consuming doing our own research as you do here, and we readers do by finding voices like yours to keep us aware, so 👏👏 for doing your bit 💜🫂 (And heaven help us when he is Deputy PM, but that might unfetter Peters to go after him ⁉️😁)
Considering the "system" of politics we, and the USA, and many other countries have, it seems a swing to the Right that is not based on any actual evaluation or consideration of the needs or wants of the common person (man or woman) - but aims to promote and support the rights and privileges of the "deserving, rich, and sorted". The "trickle down" idea has never worked and never will - the Right will never relinquish their position or status in society - or their money. WE need to ask ourselves how we, in NZ and the USA, managed to elect politicians who favour the direct opposite of the "best for all" concept. We need to consider the effect that has achieved that result - if we fail to evaluate the cause of the effect, there will be no change. Guy DeBord posed the concept of the Spectacle as the influence that is defining our response to present day politics and
miss-information. We are being diverted by all the media outpouring of simplified and miss-information.
The Right have numerous organised groups, Atlas, Business groups and similar that are not directly aligned with any political concept while the Left seem to have none - other than various partisan groups Labour Greens etc - the Right are very well organised but the Left - perhaps disorganised! A non-partisan Left or People based group seems to be sorely needed if we are to have any unified coherent voice of opposition to the concepts of the Right.
Despite that they somewhat are, the Right don't even need to be highly organised, since they own the status quo by virtue of the permanent staff of the lead agency- the Treasury-being captured by Neoliberal ideology and being un-removable. Since they are Governor-General's appointments they can only be dismissed by the GG or at the end of their (5year?) term, and that will never happen because the GG is meant to be apolitical.
The paid-up membership of NZLP seem to be somewhat like the 'supporters club' of a sports team; preferring to leave policy to the parliamentary caucus and just do door-knocks and leaflet-drops. The ones that I know are so old and rich (though they would deny they are anything other than 'ordinary') that they have typical 'boomer' concerns of their own ie maintaining 'boomer' lifestyle into old-age.
NZLP doesn't publish it's membership, but it seems most likely not more than about 15,000. Should be pretty easy to capture and convert it to something fit-for-purpose in theory, but I suspect the old-guard would get wind and bring about a parallel to the Starmerite expulsions in the UK. It's a shame MANA destroyed itself by a combination of poor choice of bedfellows and a coercive Maori Language policy that was bound to irritate the Pakeha working class; it could have dragged Labour to the left in the way that ACT has dragged NAT to the right in a way that the simpy Greens and wantonly antagonistic TMP could never do.
Great write up. The problem I have with Seymour is that he talks about wanting to have a mature conversation about matters, such as his ToW principles bill, but then denigrates those who express an opposing view to his, and his stunt this week to drive a tractor up the Parliament stairs after being told he cant, reeks of arrogance of a man who advocates for property rights, and yet tramples on the rights of the Speaker (who manages the property rights of Parliament), and essentially is saying its one law for me, one for everyone else.
Your reference to Guy Williams and comedy, especially the role of court jesters and poets in historical times is interesting. Once upon a time in NZ we had McPhail and Gadsby, who repeatedly took politicians of all stripes (particularly Muldoon) to task every week. In these political times we’ll never see a show like that again, particularly from TVNZ…
You’re not wrong… the BBC shows that could be accused of doing that in the UK were all chopped… Have I Got News For You still just barely hanging in there…
Nice piece Sapphi. It’s extraordinary how much dysfunctional behaviour, misinformation, and downright bullshit a nation’s people will tolerate. Seymour is morally bankrupt, ideologically driven, and empathy challenged. When these traits are combined with his complete lack of integrity it makes him dangerous to democracy as we know it. He is so far away from being an acceptable Deputy Prime Minister the earth may well stop turning in protest. How did Seymour get here? Easy, he conflated carefully selected social, economic, and political issues into a toxic mix that spontaneously combusted. It’s Trumpian-by-design.
Nice work Sapphi. Depressing read though, he is a master at bs and deflection and simply hogs so much air time it is relentless. Meantime, the good guys…if that politician exists, well they do in my book anyway, are on the opposition, working for the people, and how much air time do they get? Not nearly as much as a fair and balanced media should be aiming for. Keep up your info rich articles, good to be armed with a counter factual when we come up against the stupid clickbait stories that NACT1 supporters spew up. Kia kaha!
Some great observations Sapphi. However I'm beginning to realise that Seymour along with the angry toilet brush, thrives in the oxygen of publicity. I believe it is high time we removed his oxygen and watch him wilt away
Good idea Mike!!
Thank you Sapphi - I am a boomer & have watched this past year with growing trepidation. Davey certainly posts a prodigious amount of propaganda - decided I should follow him on FB to be aware of some of his disgusting disinformation. He seems to becoming bolder & even MSM give him a disproportionate amount of oxygen without challenging his latest ‘fact’.
Keep up the great work Sapphi!
👍💯👏 No lies detected 🔥 I posit that SOME of the problem is as you point out, how the information/media space has changed so dramatically. We all used to get our data from the same sources (by & large) like Radio NZ news (not a far right milliionaire funded racist misogynist based fantasy radio programme) , 6pm news on TV (not partisan clips on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube etc) , subscribing to The Press etc (not X-crement et al) etc etc. We had blatantly false "entertainment" publications that most people knew were untruths, but wide access to largely "reliable" information we trusted to judge a politician's ravings against, & journalists who called them out if they "misunderstood" (lied 😱) plus the Editors/owners were interested in being seen to be impartial and factual, with "opinion" pieces being clearly labelled as such.
🤷Whatever the reason, a lot of journalism these days is stenography - playing a clip of Seymour lying his a$$ off instead of saying "Seymour misrepresented..... By saying.... when the facts are..." or just quoting him without correction or context. Unfortunately it is time-consuming doing our own research as you do here, and we readers do by finding voices like yours to keep us aware, so 👏👏 for doing your bit 💜🫂 (And heaven help us when he is Deputy PM, but that might unfetter Peters to go after him ⁉️😁)
Considering the "system" of politics we, and the USA, and many other countries have, it seems a swing to the Right that is not based on any actual evaluation or consideration of the needs or wants of the common person (man or woman) - but aims to promote and support the rights and privileges of the "deserving, rich, and sorted". The "trickle down" idea has never worked and never will - the Right will never relinquish their position or status in society - or their money. WE need to ask ourselves how we, in NZ and the USA, managed to elect politicians who favour the direct opposite of the "best for all" concept. We need to consider the effect that has achieved that result - if we fail to evaluate the cause of the effect, there will be no change. Guy DeBord posed the concept of the Spectacle as the influence that is defining our response to present day politics and
miss-information. We are being diverted by all the media outpouring of simplified and miss-information.
The Right have numerous organised groups, Atlas, Business groups and similar that are not directly aligned with any political concept while the Left seem to have none - other than various partisan groups Labour Greens etc - the Right are very well organised but the Left - perhaps disorganised! A non-partisan Left or People based group seems to be sorely needed if we are to have any unified coherent voice of opposition to the concepts of the Right.
Despite that they somewhat are, the Right don't even need to be highly organised, since they own the status quo by virtue of the permanent staff of the lead agency- the Treasury-being captured by Neoliberal ideology and being un-removable. Since they are Governor-General's appointments they can only be dismissed by the GG or at the end of their (5year?) term, and that will never happen because the GG is meant to be apolitical.
The paid-up membership of NZLP seem to be somewhat like the 'supporters club' of a sports team; preferring to leave policy to the parliamentary caucus and just do door-knocks and leaflet-drops. The ones that I know are so old and rich (though they would deny they are anything other than 'ordinary') that they have typical 'boomer' concerns of their own ie maintaining 'boomer' lifestyle into old-age.
NZLP doesn't publish it's membership, but it seems most likely not more than about 15,000. Should be pretty easy to capture and convert it to something fit-for-purpose in theory, but I suspect the old-guard would get wind and bring about a parallel to the Starmerite expulsions in the UK. It's a shame MANA destroyed itself by a combination of poor choice of bedfellows and a coercive Maori Language policy that was bound to irritate the Pakeha working class; it could have dragged Labour to the left in the way that ACT has dragged NAT to the right in a way that the simpy Greens and wantonly antagonistic TMP could never do.
Well said Sapphi
Great write up. The problem I have with Seymour is that he talks about wanting to have a mature conversation about matters, such as his ToW principles bill, but then denigrates those who express an opposing view to his, and his stunt this week to drive a tractor up the Parliament stairs after being told he cant, reeks of arrogance of a man who advocates for property rights, and yet tramples on the rights of the Speaker (who manages the property rights of Parliament), and essentially is saying its one law for me, one for everyone else.
Your reference to Guy Williams and comedy, especially the role of court jesters and poets in historical times is interesting. Once upon a time in NZ we had McPhail and Gadsby, who repeatedly took politicians of all stripes (particularly Muldoon) to task every week. In these political times we’ll never see a show like that again, particularly from TVNZ…
You’re not wrong… the BBC shows that could be accused of doing that in the UK were all chopped… Have I Got News For You still just barely hanging in there…
Excellent article Sapphi. I’ve missed you. Hope you had a restful and relaxing break. 😊
The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He’s been sprung but what can we do about it!You are great!!!!❤️