Poor Old Mike Hosking
Poor old Mike Hosking! In today’s Herald, such is his visceral antipathy to our current government, that he is reduced to wrestling with himself in trying to understand how it is that despite its many failings – in his eyes at least – the Labour government is somehow ahead in the polls.
He comes up with two answers. The first is that large numbers of people – pensioners, working families, parents with children, the low-paid, among others – are about to receive increased financial support from the government. In his jaundiced eyes, this is the government trying to “buy” electoral support.
He does not see that the alleviation of hard times is at the essence of the government’s responsibilities, a perspective entirely missed by those who resent this generosity of action and spirit. A government that refused to help in this way would be justifiably lambasted for its hardness of heart.
His second explanation is that the polls are in any case wrong. This is surely the last refuge of a scoundrel. The polls are supposedly an unerring guide to public opinion when they produce results that are congenial to Hosking but are to be dismissed if they have the temerity to suggest an electoral outcome that is not to his liking.
Have to do better, Mike!
2 Comments
I don’t think anyone understands my exact age-peer. Summat wrong with him, don’t think Nat MPs like him even. Squirrely.
Listened to him in the 90s defending, defending, endlessly the Mother of all Budgets cuts to beneficiaries on Talkback.
Not sure why I’m here except you’re the grand man of our genuine Left, missed the bullshit rogernomics thing. A vital person. I’ve begun to be afraid to say my truth on Bowalley Rd and TDB, the supposed Left blogs here.
For fun, my socialist great grandfather was disallowed from the upper chamber for his inability not to swear about things. Gave a Labour Day address on RNZ in the early days, both his Chch kids leaning in to the radio , and sure enough he broke into ‘bluidies’. They laughed their guts out.
Socialists aren’t likeable people mostly, and he turned even his working class sister into a Tory. Two gens of my family voted National, and granddad and his brother went off to WW l, despite him I assume.