Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking does right by his National Party mates and Seven Sharp puts the boot into the poor. I was sweating the small stuff yesterday which I am want to do on occasions.
First up, this tweet from Newtalk ZB's Mike Hosking really rankled me for its smugness and arrogance:
Dinner at St heliers bay bistro Arrived a bit after 6. You can't move for people Brilliant food Lovely service So much for the recession.
Presumably Hosking drove to his select little bistro in his Maserati (approximate value $200,000).
In this smug and self-satisfied tweet Hosking, sitting with the wife in his crowded up-market bistro, makes light of the struggles a great many New Zealanders are facing today. He dismisses the rising tide of unemployment and the growing level of social and economic inequality. The ugly statistic that tells us that some 270,000 children are living in poverty means nothing. 'So much for the recession' glibly tweets Hosking, pouring another gallon of hair gel over his head and preening himself in the bathroom mirror. He might as well tweeted 'let them eat cake'. Paul Holmes may have gone but his right wing politics live on in Mike Hosking.
And we can be certain that Hosking meant what he tweeted.
Last month he was the MC was at John Key's State of the Nation speech.
Hosking made his own views well known. He told the Tory gathering that:
'I’ve done my own state of the nation. As I see it, all things considered we are doing pretty bloody well. We box above our weight. We have bright prospects for the future, so long as you keep them in Government,”
When later asked whether it was appropriate for Hosking, as Newstalk ZB's breakfast host, to publicly endorse the National Government and its policies his boss, Dallas Gurney, retorted: 'So what.'
Given his support for the National Government there can be no doubt that Hosking will be 'attenuating the positive' for his National Party mates in the months leading up to the next general election.
But Hosking has many political allies in the media including TVNZ's dismal Seven Sharp.
Last night Seven Sharp did a piece on tenants who wreck their flats and houses. The story was prefaced: 'Do tenants have too much power in this country?'
This is the kind of right wing tabloid bilge that just stokes up the bigotry and prejudice against the poor. But that didn't stop the soporific Alison Mau pontificating about banning people from renting accommodation permanently. This is a extreme 'solution' to what is only a minor social problem but that didn't stop her from suggesting it. Mau is one of those presenters who competently learns her lines but her grasp of a subject is merely based on what she can turn up on the internet in the two or three hours before going on air.
What is more than annoying is that Seven Sharp has done zero stories on the extortionate rents that are being demanded by landlords for sub-standard housing. In my neck of the woods (the eastern suburbs of Christchurch) the exploitation of tenants by bloodsucking landlords is a major problem. Nor has Seven Sharp had anything to say the lack of any government commitment to social housing and the lack of affordable housing. No, it prefers to stick the boot into the poor again because they think it might help the ratings.
Perhaps Seven Sharp would like to do a story on the survey that the Tenants Protection Association (Christchurch) Inc. is presently undertaking on the rising costs of residential rental properties in Christchurch and the Canterbury district post-earthquakes, and the effects these rising costs are having on tenants. The study is also investigating the quality and standards of rental housing.
But it won't of course. Alison Mau and her two cronies will probably end up with Mike Hosking at his Helier's Bay bistro where they will share jokes about the 'so-called recession'.
