Up the creek without a Paddles

Let’s be honest (I can be now; I am no longer in politics or advertising), nobody likes whingers. Even whingers whinge about whingers. Whingers are the people who incessantly moan and complain about almost everything their, usually narrow, view of the world cannot comprehend.
In New Zealand they were, in past times, most commonly the “whinging poms” who came here  and complained about most everything and did it most vociferously to the point that New Zealanders of my parents’ generation—New Zealand born—questioned why Poms came here in the first place and, more aptly, why they just didn’t go home. In fact, some did go home. The others? Well, they just stayed and ran the Union movement and New Zealand Soccer. After both failed eventually, Poms settled down and with the support of some New Zealanders were content to whinge about the arrival of bludey (sic) South Africans and how stuck-up “Maories” were.
To be fair to the Poms it was then mostly pakeha New Zealanders who were more vociferous in those complaints. Me? I couldn’t care. Don’t care. Maybe, I wonder why we pakeha always get a lower case whereas Maori get a capital, but who cares—the League season is resuming soon. The Warriors are mostly “Maori”—see what I did there?
So, what has the new election result produced for us? In the eternal battle of them and us, the Us has won. The problem is the Us—the self-styled downtrodden and victims—the delusionals, have no idea what do now that they are in power. They never expected to be there and didn’t train for it. Even worse, they no longer have someone else to blame for it. They are it. They have to take the hit. New Zealand’s former opposition parties, now governing parties, are floundering.
And, you see, that is where the problem is. Labour, Greens, NZ First are whingers. Perpetual whingers. And like most whingers they do it best from the sideline, where they feel safe. From my time dealing with them in local politics I know that the last thing whingers want to do is actually go onto the field and get roughed up in the scrum. Same with national politics. Put simply, this nation’s whingers—and there are a lot of them—don’t have the guts or the acumen to do something about what they are complaining about. And when they are forced into having that real power, as Labour et al are, they are terrified by it.
They will be the first to nurture the birth of the Bring Back Bill movement.
Which brings me to Gareth Morgan.
Gareth Morgan is not a whinger. But he is a complainer. A complainer about cats. I don’t like cats. I am a dog person. Some say you can be both. I don’t believe that. You are either a Laphroig drinker or a Lagavulin drinker; a Holden fan or a Ford fan. You cannot be both. Gareth and I are not cat fans.
But Gareth Morgan’s capitalising on the death of the Prime Minister’s Paddles is unnecessary, immature and insensitive. Also unimportant and unworthy of comment by Fryday. Except that it illustrates another aspect of New Zealand that is unsavoury—our willingness, our hunger, to get entangled in minutiae. Gareth is what he is, and I am not quite sure what that is. But why the media give him any air-time and why we suck it in also defy explanation or definition. In this Kadashian world of ours is this the definition of news? Is Seven Sharp our benchmark for current affairs? Is this week’s “Good Sort” as good as it gets?
If it is, God help us.
Not that I’m whinging, you understand.

Political Parlance

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In 1975, when I was working at Colenso Advertising on the infamous Dancing Cossacks Campaign for Rob Muldoon, I was asked how I could reconcile that with having worked for Labour and Norm Kirk in the previous election. My rather glib reply was that it was just Kentucky Fried Chicken, another Colenso client I was being paid to promote. Ideological or political preferences didn’t come into it. Ten years later I was helping out David Lange—the Carl’s Burger of New Zealand politics at the time.

All those campaigns had political slogans, but despite being involved with them the only one I can remember today is Labour’s 1972 clear and explicit statement: “It’s Time (for Labour).” It was spot on. It was time: time for a change, time for fresh thinking, and time—for the first time—for many of the baby boomers to have their say in how the country was run, and by whom. It was also the time, by the way, that Kentucky Fried Chicken came up with the resonate and resilient “Finger Lickin’Good.”

However, those days are gone, and having a look at the current election and its campaigns I have to question whether so too are the days of political slogans. 

I mean, do we really need them? Do they really mean anything? Moreover, do we really believe them? To me, they are little more than patronising pap with about as much credibility and substance as the once ubiquitous but now long discredited (thank God) company mission statement.

Political slogans had their day and had their effect: “It’s Time” was great (and right for The Left), “I Like Ike” from America arguably better. But, the last effective New Zealand political slogan I can remember was Winston Peters’ Northland by-election pitch “Send a Message to Wellington.” That obviously resonated with the Northland Electorate, but having been sent, the message, like the man, is now largely redundant.

However, our political parties persist with meaningless phrases patronising every one of us.

They are not even very good. Let’s look at the current batch. National’s “Delivering for New Zealand” might as well be for a courier company; Labour’s “Let’s do it” sounds like a rallying cry for American GIs in the Vietnam war, which is somewhat ironic. Neither has substance or relevance to New Zealand politics.

The National one in particular lacks imagination and vision and makes me, at least, long for those far off days when Cossacks danced across our screens. Please don’t tell me the National Party paid somebody to come up with “Delivering for New Zealand.” 

But, the core question remains: why do we need political slogans at all? Shouldn’t, couldn’t, the political parties learn from their corporate contemporaries, KFC included, and dispense with them entirely?

I think so.

When it comes to political slogans, let’s NOT do it. 

It’s Time.