On
the news this morning that National will push ahead with asset sales despite
the referendum against it, the standard Left response has been typified by this
tweet:
so National only subscribes to democracy if it wants to?Isnt that closer todictatorship stuff.co.nz/national/polit…
— dave(@caffeine_addict) March 11, 2013
To
which I have been studiously replying:
@caffeine_addict Yes. But why will the Greens and Labour find the solution to be even bigger, more powerful government?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) March 11, 2013
I
have yet to have a single response to this contradiction?
The biggest argument against the left on this is that this government was elected on a platform of asset sales.
ReplyDeleteNational won, they lost, eat that - as Dr Cullen once said. National won, UF and ACT support it, move on. Unless the left wants the same accusations thrown at it
Yes, but unbelievable we now have to fund an expensive non-binding referendum which National say, prudently, they're going to ignore. I can't remember the circumstances of non-binding referendum coming in, but it's stupid. Labour / Greens are managing to waste yet more taxpayer money, and they're not even government yet.
DeleteNot much in the way of logic to really see there.
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely correct to point out that a representative democracy is not the same thing as democracy, because the representatives don't really have to do what they were elected to do. Even pithy to point that out in just one word. But then in the very next sentence you revert to them being of the same form and assume that both the parties of Labour and the Greens both have and have to subscribe to your own rather narrow vision for them. No, not really under any form of logic which is strong enough to support this being a contradiction.
There's up or down, Nic, freedom or statism. I know which side of that equation Labour and Greens lie.
DeleteBut yes, 'pithy': it was good, wasn't it, for 140 characters :)
What was wrong with stopping the conversation at 'Yes'? Had nobody mentioned the last Labour-Green's government for the last couple of weeks?
DeleteHow do you know?
Why stop at yes, when Greens/Labour, if not the instigators of the referendum, have put huge resource of time (and so money/opportunity cost) into it's completion.
DeleteDo you think Labour and Greens from when they unfortunately win in 2014 are going to instigate small government, less taxation, less intrusion, et al ad nauseam?
Oh, and the second part of the answer is I've got an agenda, which I thought rather obvious in here.
Delete