Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Jim Anderton

Politics

Normal service resumes?

After an extended break, I’m back and hope to provide some useful commentary on ACT in the election campaign. From now on I will try to make posts more timely and topical and move away from the extended, but irregular analysis pieces which I preferred earlier in the year. Expect Douglas to Dancing to be more concise and follow the news agenda more closely from now on, although I’ll still try to provide original material and comments not available elsewhere (the unique selling point of any blog). I can’t promise daily updates, but will attempt to provide commentary at least...

Politics

Conference 2008: Douglas number three on the list?

The main news to come out of the conference was that Sir Roger Douglas is to stand in a constituency seat, probably south of Auckland. The Herald on Sunday suggests Hunua, which is the renamed Port Waikato electorate with slightly altered boundaries. However, I think it possible that ACT will put Douglas in the entirely new south Auckland electorate of Botany – which is without an incumbent MP. But remember, this is an MMP parliament. Constituencies might be important, especially as the “lifeline” for a small party, but it’s the party list which matters. Indeed, even if Douglas goes into...

Politics

ACT’s “harsh feel” – the name change debate

I think ACT has got that harsh feel to it for me, like I find it quite a hard word to say, oh it sounds German, with the greatest respect to the German people. It sounds like “Achtung!”- “okay!”, whereas we want something warm – Rodney Hide, 30 August 2007* The one major fault I would have if I were one of Hide’s advisers with his on-air performance on Radio Live today was that he scarcely mentioned the word “ACT” in his programme. Now, maybe he was trying to be fair and not use the air-time as a campaigning vehicle,...

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