I can forgive David Farrar his many knee jerk and subjective demerits for I’ve always admired his tenacity and energy in getting Kiwiblog up and running. He’s campaigned bravely on some important issues. He was cutting edge in that what ever he wrote about in NZ politics, it was written from an extremely knowledgeable perspective, and usually left the mainstream media struggling to catch up.

I’ve lately seen some criticism from left wing contributors to the site that it is putting National party propaganda first and blogging second. Well of course Mr. Farrar wouldn’t be alone in this, and why not allow him at least some discretion. If he likes the Nationals so what, he can do what he likes. Its his blog and in terms of objectivity he’d have to be far ahead of the Standard. And of course there is no point in comparing him with Red Alert which is through and through Labour Party propaganda and like all such left wing outfits, professes to care for freedom of expression and be a facility for it, but harshly punishes anyone who strays from the party line.

The essence of blogging though is that since the mainstream media has so completely abrogated their own responsibilities in the area, we have become the watchdogs. So its disappointing to see an instance where the media (NZ Herald and Stuff) highlight something from a report and Kiwiblog ignores it. Like a reversal of the normal roles.

I’m talking about the recently released report by The Savings Working Group. Some phrases from the mainstream media’s reporting-

Stuff

a Government-appointed working group, which this morning raised alarm over New Zealand’s “depressed economy”.

“If the sudden collapse doesn’t occur, what we’re left with is ongoing, slow decline, continuing deterioration. … That’s been going on long enough now that the implications are pretty serious. “I would describe it as slow death by strangulation.”

NZ Herald

“stern warnings that New Zealand’s indebtedness to the rest of the world – currently at 85 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) – places the country at dire risk of a Greek or Irish style financial crisis.”

“the Government should act immediately to stabilise the country’s net foreign debt at below 90 per cent, and over the next decade work to reduce “to a more manageable 60 per cent to 70 per cent”

Mr Farrar presents the findings of the report in an extremely bland and non urgent manner that one could be forgiven for thinking was an attempt to downplay criticism of Bill English and John Key. TrueblueNZ is one blog that won’t do that. Key and English are fiddling while Rome burns. We’ve criticised them before for doing nothing and we are going to go on doing it.

I see plenty of press announcements where cronyists are appointed to NGOs and boards and commissions just like everything is all hunky dory. I see English indulging the loony Nick Smith and his idiot Blue Greens in all kinds of detached from reality measures that are really going to exacerbate our limp economy. I see Key poncing about making infantile statements about who he thinks is “hot” when he should be getting some kind of practical and ideologically based message out to the public on NZ’s parlous economic position and what should be done about it. A communicator of ideas he is not.

We don’t need bloggers going soft on these bumbling socialist fools, we need to shake them into action. The report from the Savings Working Group emphasizes that action is urgently needed. So, sad to see NZ’s foremost blogger do a backflip. Always thought he would do better than that.