Shane Jones leaves the Big Red ‘L’
The undisciplined, waffling misogynist?
If the New Zealand National Party was looking for a break from the unrelenting pressure bearing down on them as a result of the Oravida Scandal (brought about by the actions of the current Justice Minister Judith Collins, although she has changed her story so many times, you could be forgiven for thinking she was Minister of Corrections) it came in the form of the unexpected departure of Labour MP Shane Jones, ditching his party for a government job with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the country gears up for this year’s election.
As reported here at Stuff.co.nz
High-profile Labour MP Shane Jones denies the National Party had a hand in his resignation, despite Jones crossing the political divide to take a job created for him by the Government.
This is an usual event in New Zealand politics and there will be flaming keyboards beneath the frantic fingers of all manner of journalists and writers hard out to get their spin on this story out to the critical eye of New Zealand readers.
Opinion on this decision will swing from strong support to severe criticism for the Jones Boy’s, because it involves both sides of the political spectrum, the heat of an election campaign, and the question of how damaging this is for the Labour Party Shane leaves behind, after a decade as one of their ‘news making’ MPs.
It’s no secret that there is a prominent clique of feminist crusaders in the Labour caucus, that view Jones as somewhere down around dog level and won’t be sorry to see him go – those sentiments being echoed promptly on one of their supportive blogs.
Feminist sympathiser and blogger Danyl McLauchlan (who blogs here at the Dim Post) today called the Jones Boy an “undisciplined, waffling misogynist”
Undisciplined: Yes, you have to agree with that, he was a fish out of water when it came to being a bloke in the girls brigade party that Labour has become, and he didn’t toe the line.
Waffling: No, you couldn’t call him a waffler, he was definitely one of their more articulate speakers, even if a little Latinate, but at least you heard from him and not a pre-arranged sound bite rolled out in some pretence one hopes will make you look real.
Misogynist: That’s pretty much standard for any male who doesn’t fall into line behind the feminist faction of the left leaning political parties. They seem to attract more than their fair share of rabid ranters who have a very narrow view of how their ideological society might look and it certainly has no room for a smart ‘bloke’ like the Jones Boy.
He’s leaving and while some will call this a cop out, I say good on ya mate, go and do something worthwhile, you were wasting your time waving the ‘Big Red L’.
I call it the ‘Big Red L’ for a reason and here’s why.
The New Zealand Labour Party is no longer the Labour Party that we grew up with. It is a shadow of it’s proud past, undermined by what another of their blokes Damien O’Conner described as a “gaggle of gays and feminists”.
When I saw the results of the Stuff poll asking about the affect Jones’ departure would have on Labour (along side the above linked article if you want to vote) it was no surprise.
Yes, they’re in complete disarray
558 votes, 71.1%
No, they’ve got other talent to fall back on
47 votes, 6.0%
People leave their jobs, no big deal
180 votes, 22.9%
Total 785 votes
The country is fed up with a party of self-interest groups that spit bile at each other and do little more than wave a Big Red L in the hope of getting elected. We’re not fooled, we know what you really are, and come election time my prediction is a big fail for Big Red L. (The 20 plus per cent that saw this as just a change of job is another story too.)
At least the Jones Boy didn’t forget who he was when he got amongst the current core of this party and I have no doubt he saw them for exactly what they are – a party that’s lost its identity and is campaigning on a brand, a label, and a political party needs more than a piece of cardboard with the Big Red L.
If you were the Jones Boy would you have bailed from the Labour Party?
Is the Labour Party sinking because the New Zealand public is seeing feminist politics for what it is?
Is the departure of the Jones Boy the wake up call for Labour to cull its feminist relics and get men back on board?
Do you rate Labour as anything more than a coalition hopeful in the coming election?
The untold told about Shane Jone’s departure from the reds.
Comment by Ashish A Naicker — Wed 23rd April 2014 @ 2:42 pm
As Jones would say – there are too many geldings in Labour.
Comment by Downunder — Wed 23rd April 2014 @ 6:29 pm
A good opportunity for some media attention to Labour’s abandonment of men’s interests, the men who still contribute the vast majority of hard, dangerous, dirty LABOUR required to maintain our privileged lifestyle.
Comment by Man X Norton — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 8:46 am
Women who don’t agree with Labour Values must be cleaning their bathrooms while their men go out to hunt.
Helen Kelly (CTU)
It looks like a faction within Labour are trying to position Labour as ‘the women’s party of New Zealand. As you say when it comes to men’s interests this creates an interesting position for the unions.
Comment by Downunder — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 8:56 am
As far as i can tell, Children’s and Men’s Rights have been ignored by Femily Court and Politicians alike for the last 20 year’s under National, Labour and Green governments. Please correct me if i am wrong.
Does any one have any idea what we can do to change this as we seem to have made no progress at all?
Comment by Sane in an insane world — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 1:22 pm
2014 – 1980 = 34 years. That is the maths, but if you judge it from the upturn in men’s suicides, it started about 1976. Presumably, that is when the familycaught$ judicial activism started affecting large numbers of fathers.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 2:30 pm
To #5, “Sane in an insane wrold”: The Greens have NEVER been part of a government.
This little story simply manifests (once again) how the two big parties represent the rich and powerful. Unless you belong to that group, voting for either of them is insane.
Comment by Pete — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 4:25 pm
The Greens have played an interesting game:
Following the 1999 election, Labour formed a coalition with the Alliance Party, and gained support on matters of confidence and supply from the Greens.
Following the 2002 election, Labour formed a coalition with the Progressive Party, and gained support on matters of confidence and supply from the Greens, and United Future.
Following the 2005 election, Labour formed a coalition with the Progressive Party, and gained support on matters of confidence and supply from the New Zealand First Party and United Future.
The Greens signed an agreement to abstain on votes of confidence and supply, giving the Labour-led Government a majority. The MÄÂori Party also abstained on confidence and supply votes but had no formal agreement with the Government.
Where the Greens abstained they traded legislation such as Sue Bradford’s anti smacking law.
I agree that the Greens have never officially been part of a government, but they have been by default and you can also see that by the individual legislation they supported in the 2005 government such as the prostitution reform and the civil union legislation.
Listening to Shane Jones’ recent comments I take them to mean that Labour has become such a feminist hogwash that the situation is now reversing and Labour is becoming a clingon to the Greens and he stated quite clearly he was not prepared to support this.
I think there is a lot more going on here than Shane Jones taking a job as Ambassador of Fishy Affairs in the Pacific.
Comment by Downunder — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 5:09 pm
Thanks Downunder #8 in answer to #7 correcting Pete. I could not have put it better.
Comment by Sane in an insane world — Thu 24th April 2014 @ 8:38 pm
#8 “Where the Greens abstained they traded legislation such as Sue Bradford’s anti smacking law”.
There is no need for trade if you have support even the whole house.
Actually, what you didn’t mention is that the Greens provided National with a vote of confidence and supply in the previous term and for the first time they actually achieved something: the 100M home insulation scheme.
Comment by Pete — Fri 25th April 2014 @ 10:05 am
That’s my point Pete, the Greens are much more involved than they appear to be because they operate as a support party.
Because they do not enter into any formal coalition agreement you don’t actually know what they’ve agreed behind closed doors, some of which may be policy rather than legislation.
The Bradford Bill was a bad example as it ended up being taken over by Labour and National making a compromise on the wording, effectively high-jacking the end result from the Greens, that’s politics for you.
Comment by Downunder — Fri 25th April 2014 @ 11:02 am
The 5% threshold for a party to get into parliament is not democracy. What are the other party’s policies anyone? Is anyone going to change:
1. The 5% threshold to % of seats?
2. Get rid of the human and children’s Rights abuse of ‘Protection’ Order’s given without any conviction for harm committed against the children of parents unjustly hammerred by them?
3. Bring in a 50/50 shared care automatic if no conviction of harm to your own children? This will save billiions of $ and tons of child abuse of taking Dads away from them.
Comment by Sane in an insane world — Fri 25th April 2014 @ 3:58 pm
#12: Good policy suggestions. What party will take the plunge and start announcing some pro-family, pro-justice, pro-father policies?
We should remember though that Judith Collins pushed through the recent law change to remove the Bristol clauses, so now fathers’ contact with children should not automatically be impaired by protection orders related only to female partners.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Fri 25th April 2014 @ 6:23 pm
None of the political parties except for maybe the Conservatives are able to attack the femnazi propaganda head-on. However, if you take the list of policies and compare the total impact, I believe, overall, the current Government, i.e., National is the most fair. Labour is full on feminist now, without Shane Jones.
Comment by Ashish A Naicker — Fri 25th April 2014 @ 7:03 pm
Looking at how badly the Labour Party handled the Jones’ exit there is obviously little communication amongst the various factions – makes them look like a bunch of bumbling fools rather than a governement in waiting.
I can only see this leading to an increased number of non voters, who no longer have a left leaning male-friendly, family-friendly place to put their vote.
Comment by Downunder — Sat 26th April 2014 @ 9:23 am
Dear Downunder, thank you for your analysis.
The last few elections, I have voted on who I was least scared of. I resent having to drop to that type of vote decision making, but in the lack of broad sensible policies and parties campaigning on brief and carefully meaningless ambiguous statements of their “policies”, then what else can a poor voter do?
Rhetorical answer: Shouting at [cutting it very fine…M] politicians doesn’t seem to have done any good?
The brief and meaningless policy statements reminds me of the Commerce Commission prosecuting telecom and appliance companies for misleading advertising. Pity they can’t disable dishonest advertising in the political sphere.
The only conclusion that I can draw, is that all of the parties need the public to contribute sensible, clearly written policies, for them to run with.
After the Republicans fell to pieces, I tried to support the Kiwi Party, who slipped under the waves as silently as a nuclear submarine. The Conservative Party claim to be family friendly, but it seems they are – but in the same way as Act Party used to be?
I am badly confused.
Oh, to have Screaming Lord Sutch and the Loony Party back again….
I guess natural people need to put more money into the political parties, to try to buy back control from the Beer Barons, Internet Moguls and Sky High Gamblers.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sat 26th April 2014 @ 11:13 am