New home at victorbillot.com

This blog is now deprecated.

I’ve now got my site at www.victorbillot.com which includes all the contents of this one.

Paths are made by walking

New Zealand’s leading public intellectual of the Left, Chris Trotter, seems to have been genuinely unsettled by the defeat of Labour in 2008. Toys have been thrown, and targets targeted.
In an initial attack of post-election spleen Chris railed against those voters who brought in National as ” . . . the men who just couldn’t cope with the idea of being led by an intelligent, idealistic, free-spirited woman; the gutless, witless, passionless creatures of the barbecue-pit and the sports bar (and the feckless females who put up with them); who voted Helen Clark out of office.” (Sunday Star Times, Sunday, 9 November 2008 )
In the same article, Chris then grew left wing horns and charged the corporate media and class society (” . . you can read it on the pages of the right-wing media: the smug certainties of our genteel suburban fascisti – regurgitated to order by publications long-used to dripping the oleaginous phraseology of “responsible journalism” all over the jagged edges of their readers’ class-advantage”) and then rounded up by saying “many of us simply refused to believe our fellow citizens could be so dumb – or so mean.”
Ouch!
The question that remains though is why should the result have been so surprising? Defeat was on the cards, and was hardly a landslide of the type that threw Labour out in 1990 and National in 1999. More an accumulation of errors and the old idiocy of “it’s time for a change” in a two horse race. The “genteel suburban fascisti” were there for the last nine years and did reasonably well out of Labour’s tax cuts, as they will do slightly better under National’s tax cuts.

Alpha Plan video from the archives . . .

Dunedin Election Blog 2008

My new election blog for 2008 is online. I’ll be posting on this for the duration of the campaign – see you there.

Stop the Stadium March, Dunedin

Campaign trail “08″

I have been selected to stand for the Alliance Party in the 2008 general election for the Dunedin North electorate.

More information as it comes to hand.  I haven’t decided yet to blog on my campaign on my old election blog or just keep it all here.

I’m pleased to represent the democratic socialist viewpoint.

Red Sun in the West

David Kilgour at Arc, 13/9/07

I ventured out last night to the Arc, which is under “new” management (again.) It’s a good space but has struggled. I’m out of the loop with music at the moment as I have been engaged in different things in the last few years.

David Kilgour was playing a solo set along with the duo version of White Swan Black Swan . . . or is that Black Swan White Swan.

Anyway the Swans did a decent opening set, I liked the piano/guitar combination. It was actually surprisingly mainstream. Some of those retro sounds were very eighties indeed.

Mr Kilgour had a battle on his hands with guitars that detuned themselves and technology that wouldn’t play ball. His songs are completely suited to the electric-acoustic guitar and voice format. He decided to take things west with a laptop and backing tracks; definitely worth a try, but it just seemed to confuse the sound rather than adding much. That said, he pulled it all together with a last number where everything seemed to work and when it did work, it was good. Of course. First night of the tour and all that . . . I just wonder whether going back to the man and six strings format would be the best option for these analogue melodies.

The audience was sparse to say the least but made up for quantity by quality. After the Clean’s stonking set at the Regent for the Dunedin Sound thing a few months back, you would think the place would be packed. Glad I went anyway.

Red Moon, Lunar Eclipse

Sicko

Went and saw Michael Moore’s new film Sicko last night. Well worth it – it’s his best yet.

A searing indictment on corrupt plutocracy running the modern day USA, as well as an important compare and contrast between the free market system and more social systems in other nations.

My concern is that New Zealand is going down the American path. But as the movie shows, there are plenty of Americans angry at the system as well.