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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 35]
On Why Sport Just Doesn’t Seem To Be So Important During A Pandemic
Friday, 9 October 2020, 10:56 am | Gordon Campbell
During a pandemic, what role does sport play? That question suddently looks more complicated than it had first seemed. Back during the first lockdown an audience starved for sport had seemed willing to watch any game anywhere featuring a ball ... More >>
On Last Night’s Debate, And Beyond
Wednesday, 7 October 2020, 10:47 am | Gordon Campbell
It really hasn’t been a good week for Judith Collins to be wheeling out her Little Me impression of Donald Trump, yet the similarities have been striking. There’s been (a) the need to project an image of strength above all else (b) the interruption ... More >>
On Four-year Terms Of Parliament, And On How The US Courts Are Dismantling Democracy
Monday, 5 October 2020, 12:58 pm | Gordon Campbell
Last week, the issue of four-year parliamentary terms surfaced again. Infuriatingly, it is being discussed purely in terms of its convenience for political parties. They’d get so much more time to enact their policies, free of scrutiny or sanction by voters ... More >>
On Debates As Game-shows, And Why Mixing Politics And Religion Is A Bad Idea
Friday, 2 October 2020, 11:58 am | Gordon Campbell
Political debates have dominated the week’s campaign cycle, here and elsewhere. Routinely, leaders’ debates ( and polls) are the roadside diners and comfort stops on the otherwise featureless landscape of an election campaign. They’re useful ... More >>
On The SFO’s Investigation Of New Zealand First
Wednesday, 30 September 2020, 10:55 am | Gordon Campbell
On one level. New Zealand First has been the agent of its own misfortune. The New Zealand First Foundation handling the donations at the centre of the Serious Fraud Office investigation was reportedly (a) authorised by the NZF party’s board More >>
On Whether This Election Is Already A Foregone Conclusion
Monday, 28 September 2020, 11:21 am | Gordon Campbell
Currently, this election looks like being a no contest. The weekend’s Newshub poll has the centre left enjoying a roughly 57-36% lead over the centre right. Labour is on 50.1% and the Greens 6.5%, while National remains in the dreaded 20s at 29.6% More >>
On National’s Rampant Pandering To The Farming Vote
Friday, 25 September 2020, 11:26 am | Gordon Campbell
What on earth has happened to the political parties n the centre-right? Once upon a time in the US, the party of Lincoln was a respectable political party before it devolved into the cult of Trump. Here at home, the National Parry used to be able ... More >>
On Last Night’s Leaders Debate
Wednesday, 23 September 2020, 10:05 am | Gordon Campbell
Do political debates change voter intentions, and cause voters to switch sides? According to a 2019 Harvard Business School study conducted across 61 elections in nine countries involving 172,000 respondents, the answer would seem to be a resounding ... More >>
On That $4 Billion Hit To National’s Economic Cred
Monday, 21 September 2020, 11:04 am | Gordon Campbell
National released its economic and tax policy last Friday. Weirdly, the plan was announced right at the end of the news week, when whatever impact it managed to generate would be likely to dissipate over the weekend. Well…. that now seems all for the ... More >>
On Tourism’s Endless Sense Of Grievance
Thursday, 17 September 2020, 11:37 am | Gordon Campbell
Sad that a once in a century pandemic should have come along before the government had a clearly thought out plan for rescuing all the firms and saving all the jobs in the tourism sector. Sad that the government now looks like it was making up the ... More >>
On The TransTasman Tinkering With Covid-related Poverty
Tuesday, 15 September 2020, 11:04 am | Gordon Campbell
On September 25, the government’s Covid-19 rent freeze will expire. A fortnight ago, the Commerce Commission (in response to a complaint) sent out a letter warning landlords not to continue trying to reach a a consensus on social media as to what ... More >>
On Campaign Politicking
Friday, 11 September 2020, 12:28 pm | Gordon Campbell
The microdoses of policy that get released on the campaign trail are not meant to be ego-shattering psychedelic events that transform our concepts of political reality. They’re meant to merely tickle the pleasure and pain lobes. Thus it was with the ... More >>
On Saving Small Firms, And Disowning Peter Thiel
Wednesday, 9 September 2020, 10:59 am | Gordon Campbell
According to Business NZ, over 97% of New Zealand firms employ only 20 or fewer staff. One of the political myths about such firms is that they’re forever groaning under the yoke of excessive regulation, with the dead weight of compliance all but ... More >>
On Trump’s Current Chances Of Re-election
Monday, 7 September 2020, 12:33 pm | Gordon Campbell
By now it seems clear that National have no fresh ideas to offer for how New Zealand could avoid the Covid-19 economic crisis. As in the past, National has set an arbitrary 30% ratio of government debt to GDP that it aims to achieve “in a decade or so,” ... More >>
On James Shaw’s Spectacular Own Goal
Wednesday, 2 September 2020, 9:29 am | Gordon Campbell
The apology by Greens co-leader James Shaw was certainly comprehensive . He’s so very sorry that he’s let down not only you, but you and you as well. If you missed out, chances are he’ll be stationed somewhere down Lambton Quay later in ... More >>
On The Challenges We Face In Securing Covid-19 Vaccines
Monday, 31 August 2020, 3:47 pm | Gordon Campbell
The early wave of Covid-19 vaccines appear unlikely to deliver a complete shield against getting the infection, as (say) a measles inoculation comes close to providing. They seem more likely to resemble a flu vaccine. Meaning: they will reduce (but not More >>
On The Royal Commission’s Needlessly Secretive Inquiry Into The Mosque Attacks
Tuesday, 25 August 2020, 11:42 am | Gordon Campbell
Can’t recall the author – Oscar Wilde?- but during the Victorian era there was a popular short story about a Moghul emperor who spent years building and re-building a shrine to his dead beloved, only to find that her coffin became an irritating design ... More >>
On Kneejerk Negativism, Cardi B, And Linda Manz
Thursday, 20 August 2020, 2:21 pm | Gordon Campbell
Yesterday, Victoria recorded 216 new Covid-19 cases and twelve deaths. An inquiry released a couple of days ago found that 90% of Victoria’s second wave of case s have been traced back to a family of four quarantined at a Rydges hotel in downtown ... More >>
On The Sorry Plight Of The International Education Sector
Tuesday, 18 August 2020, 12:00 pm | Gordon Campbell
Tourism and international education have been two of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. They’re both key export industries. Yet the government response to them has been strikingly different. Tourism got a $400 million boost in this year’s ... More >>
On The Election Delay
Monday, 17 August 2020, 12:37 pm | Gordon Campbell
Hi, team. While the majority of the team of five million has gritted its teeth and obeyed the rules throughout the Covid-10 crisis, a sizeable minority has blamed the ref for their every discomfort. Why can’t the government make the virus go away? ... More >>
