10 November 2008

World weirdly thinks National/ACT is conservative

so says CNN, so think how little you really learn about other countries from such media, when it gets this all so wrong.

Imagine a US party leader who was atheist, who led a party with openly gay members, which doesn't have a party position on abortion and who had a previous leader who was a woman who went along to a gay parade.

Funny how ACT isn't mentioned either - too hard for them to comprehend?

CBS does it too because both relied on a rather poor Associated Press article.

The Observer calls it conservative too

The BBC does a reasonable job though

The Times has an odd article with assertions like: "He surprised many when he took over the leadership of the party in 2006, after his predecessor Don Brash led National to a humiliating defeat." Who did he surprise? How was Brash humiliated taking the party from 22% to 38%? Although much of the rest of the article is quite good.

The Independent describes John Key as "a baby-faced former currency trader" but the word conservative is for "two small conservative parties, ACT and United Future". It gets it wrong twice saying "National and its allies had secured 59 seats in the 120-member parliament"

5 comments:

ZenTiger said...

If they are going to call National/ACT conservative, the least they could do is to say the "conservatives" ousted the extreme left government and have categorically rejected the communist elements controlling the party and their Green coalition partner.

Unknown said...

I disagree, I think calling National a conservative party is a correct terminology.

In my opinion a conservative party is one that seeks to represent those who are opposed to government legislated social changes. National and sister parties represent those who do not support changes such as the Child Discipline Act. Conservatism is not about moving to the right it is about staying still.

Even if the conservative party in New Zealand (National) is left of the conservative party in the United States (Republican) it is still conservative. We have a different society! We aren't Americans. And just because our liberal party is further left than the Democrats that doesn't mean they are extremists.

New Zealand is politically more left than the US. And perhaps I'm just patriotic but I believe that happens to make NZ the best place in the world to live.

ZenTiger said...

I disagree James, especially:

Conservatism is not about moving to the right it is about staying still.

There are some core values Conservatives have, and some that overlap with Libertarians.

I'm not interested in John Key staying still. There's been years of damage that needs to be unwound. You don't fix it by staying still.

mikemathew said...

NATIONAL SECURITY Congressional Capitulation On Spying For the past several months, the White House has been aggressively pressuring Congress to expand the administration's spying powers and update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The administration-backed legislation, which expands the powers of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Bush hailed the bill, which he signed into law yesterday, because it would give the Director of National Intelligence.
_______________________________
mikemathew
exposure marketing

Anonymous said...

ACT isn't a conservative party - not in NZ terms anyway. They're radicals - like the Libs.

Nothing wrong with that, but they're not conservative.
The last real conservative govt NZ had was probably Muldoon.

As for ACT being "conservative" - the fact of the matter is that on every important policy ACT is to the left of Barack Obama

Guns. Nukes. Healthcare. Education. Invasion. even Global Warming. ACT to the left of Obama every time. if Obama campaigned on the same policies he has in the US - he'd be decried as a rightwing nutter here.

New Zealand is politically more left than the US. And perhaps I'm just patriotic but I believe that happens to make NZ the best place in the world to live.

no you fuck, it makes you a commie.