17 January
Wow. If you ever needed to know how utterly boring the landscape is in New Zealand, especially during Parliamentary recess, the fuss being made over Kim Dotcom's new "party" is unbelievable.
While I am one of many who supports Kim Dotcom is his fight against illegal search, seizure and arrest, the idea of him running a political party is beyond absurd. The man himself is a buffoon, switching between Anonymous and Chè Guevara as suits his style, when is reality, he is in it for the bux only.
Sure, he throws parties for Aucklanders, but only so he can show off to his cadre of pals.
Have you ever seen him in person when he's not aware of the public eye on him? He travels with a retinue of bodyguards and hangers-on and is every bit as arrogant as his enormous PR spending would lead you to expect.
Now, he's attempting to start a political party.
The farcical nature of the attempted launch is a guide as to what the whole idea is about; a party had been planned in Auckland, but was cancelled because a nasty conflict of interest was leaked at the last moment. For an organisation really intent on making a political statement, that kind of thing is plain nonsense. The party has no manifesto, no economic policy, and is bereft of ideas, apart from its policies on the internet and freedom of speech.
I could forgive any party a scratchy start, and I would certainly not give my backing to any genuine political party that stood for freedom of speech and from spying - the Greenmunists already do that, and I couldn't be said to be all that supportive of them.
In the past couple of months, we've seen media oozing over Colin Craig and his fresh-faced Kiwi "I'm just an average Kiwi dad making my way on the world, and by gosh, I never make my mind up on anything I didn't see with my own eyes, like the moon landings and UFOs." schtick. The man is a gibbering idiot, yet hundreds of hours of journalists' wages have been booked up to coving his drivel.
The chances of Colin Craig winning anything in the election is highly unlikely, and that's with the benefit of a high public profile and one election behind him.
Dotcom, on the other hand, has nothing behind him except a criminal history for hacking, and a massive history of running download sites. Now, I have no problem with people who breach copyright, copyright being one of the world's massive barriers to redistribution of wealth, but it's pretty obvious that it is illegal and doing it on the scale Megaupload was is like sitting in front of the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a sign saying "I am going to kill Barack Obama" - it is going to be noticed very quickly, and by some extremely heavy cops.
I will take bets for any amount you like that not only will Kim Dotcom not win a seat in parliament, but that his country vote languishes under 1%.
Our political world is so bereft that even the stunningly repulsive Brendon Horan made mutters about his own party and made the front page of newspapers.
Note to all news media companies: for god's sake, next year, just give all of your political reporters leave from Christmas through to whenever the major clowns start their state of the nation speeches.
Key should be in a good mood and fine form when he returns; golfing with his bestie, watching cohorts of nonsense politics by the loony left and right, hardening the desire among the voters to retain the status quo; lovely stuff.
Copyright © Alan Charman