The Dim-Post highlights the yawning gap between National's rhetoric on the economy (borrowing is bad! Spending is bad!) and its actions (borrowing and spending). The summary:
The point I’m trying to make here is that almost every statement Key and the Finance Minister make about the economy is nonsense, pure disinformation dipped in hypocrisy, sprayed with drivel and then airbrushed dry with horrible fucking lies. That’s not part of the conventional wisdom though, especially among political commentators who all have Bill English as a straight-talking dour, fiscal, prudent conservative instead of a big-spending, big-borrowing outrageously dishonest hypocrite who vomits out floods of obvious lies every time he opens his mouth.
It’s a big problem for the opposition. In macro terms National has done pretty-much what Labour and the Greens would have done – with some obvious exceptions like the tax cuts – but pretended that they’ve done the opposite, and warned the country that Labour and the Greens are going to introduce fiscal policies which are basically identical to National’s but which National warns will destroy the economy. It’s all such a gigantic, egregious yet successful lie that countering it is all but impossible.
Getting us to accept this reversal of reality and its never-stated hypocritical "its bad, except when National does it" rules has obviously been a great achievement of National's spindoctors 9and a great failure of the opposition's). But it doesn't serve the public well. Politicians aren't interested in that - they're interested in winning elections - but surely the media should be?
