I stand for people not politics.
Yet Colin Craig seems to on closer inspection to just stand for himself.
Colin Craig has publicly said that he’s considering whether he should stand in Epsom against his local government nemesis John Banks. Despite my earlier reservations and comments on Banksy prior to his joining of ACT, he is now a confirmed ACT candidate which means he is now on my team. And contrary to others who have seen fit to bag ACT, I am a team player.
Anyone seeing fit to criticise ACT who should know better will come to my attention and be dealt with in kind on this blog. I am sick of the toy-chuckers who deal with the Party then when they don't get 100% their own way run off publicly to have a cry to waiting reporters. It doesn't do them any professional credibility in their own businesses to piss on what may be former clients, and it does them no political credit either. If you don't like it, shut up and leave the work to the hard working loyal people in the Party trying to get on with the job.
I have many problems with Colin Craig:1. Never trust a man with a beard. Bob Jones taught us all that one and it makes sense. On second look it's not even a beard, it's a proper muff dive.
2. He's insular and weird:
He doesn't really understand why people need to travel to foreign places, so he doesn't. When people get back from abroad and tell him about their travels, "my first instinct is not to get on a plane". He prefers to read books about other places. 3. He's determined to pass judgment (but says he doesn't) about what people do in their bedrooms as witnessed in this
interview with Michelle Hewitson where Colin Craig made the older John Banks look like a positive liberal:
In the space of an hour-long interview he's probably managed to lose the votes of the following: homosexuals, anyone who has had sex before marriage, anyone who lives with anyone before marriage, anyone in a de facto relationship. 4. A Preachy Christian. Who doesn't actually go to church. How sweet. More contradictions.
Apparently, Craig is not happy because ACT and National have allegedly come to some arrangement that will see both parties profit from the current electoral system to shore up the centre-right vote.
Craig doesn’t like Banksy, which is evident in the way he bleated to the
Herald on Sunday to cast aspersions. He suggested that his entry into the Epsom fight would result in a split in the right wing vote and, more importantly, Banksy and with it ACT's demise. That sort of belief just goes to show he doesn’t understand his possible competitor or, more importantly, the Epsom potential voting demographic. He’s already lost by going public. Battling discreetly is an art not a science, and lots of Epsom residents know their art very well.
Craig also bitterly misinterprets John Boscawen's follow-up for campaign funds. Anyone who has ever dealt with Boscawen understands fully his determined nature. He will be back and is never afraid of a "no".
It’s true that Banksy has on occasion proved that accumulating many years of public service, some meritorious, others not, stacks of ethically earned loot (on Vicky Ave, where New Zealand’s beer barons were nurtured and still reside for three month stretches, owning a few pubs is a highly ethical pastime), and living honestly will gain you a certain margin of support from the Epsom voters. However, it is often the case that New Zealand voters do not follow the money, especially when the "rotten boroughs" they live in, such as Epsom, place such an emphasis on coffer-lining. What may seem to be a contradiction is clearly not: witness the fact that Epsom voters ‘distribute’ zillions, trying to cover up the fact that wealth is being made in their names, noblesse oblige rules on the Northern Slopes, if you are to believe the Auckland Bridge Club’s finest. Bansky has always been aware of this vital and decent trait. It doesn’t hurt that other people know he knows and practices it too.
Take the retirees who hold the place together and provide leadership. They are typically Nats, and have been so since the ark. Their children follow in their footsteps, and many of them are only a small portion of a mortgage away of cementing themselves back into the electorate. Banksy is the man the elderly will support because of all the good things he’s done for them in the past, which in Epsom terms is nothing, but that can be a sign of reliability in the honourable and faintly perverse world of National Party politics. The old boys and girls love reliability. These pillars of the community may be dwindling in number statistically but they lead the younger up and comers in the electorate in terms of politics.
And who don’t they love? Property developers and managers, who, in their gin-tinged eyes, spend a lot of money going bankrupt and blaming everybody else for their demise. Big property development is not an honourable pastime. Could anybody be worse? For sure, religious property developers, whether faintly fundamentalist in their leanings or otherwise, are far worse! Digging and filling in holes is one thing, and you’ll be damned for that whatever else arises. God may get an outing down at Trinity Cathedral on Sunday, but by Monday mammon is back in charge of the neighbourhood.
Least of all a religious property manager from the North Shore. Good heavens.
By far the weirdest bit of Craig’s rant was the admittance that he just wants to enter the race to split the right-wing vote and stop Banksy. This snide, cynical approach does not bode well for his future political aspirations. Even his fundamentalist friends will blanch at the thought of their pew-buddy seeking revenge for revenge’s sake, because that must be what is going on here.
However, the Electoral Finance Act, a shameful effort by Labour and National to haul in the little parties by restricting free speech, will bring Craig to a halt sharpish. After all, what sort of ad (let alone stream of ads) will he place in Granny Herald with the $25k the Electoral Commission will allow him to run his entire Epsom campaign? Not a big one, that’s for sure.
Not to worry. Craig loves polling, he lives by it and craves the empowerment that comes from being "informed" and claiming evidence for every bowel movement as supported by "a poll". Before announcing his Auckland Mayoral candidacy last year he polled the entire Auckland region, and by doing so determined that everybody loved him. And it’s true, some did, 42,598 in fact. But Banksy, who was roundly criticised for focusing his efforts rather too much on the old Auckland City region, and for not adopting the shotgun approach favoured by Brown and Craig, attracted 171,542 followers, or 36% of the final return. Not bad for a narrowly-focused campaign. He still lost but where did those votes come from? Well, from around the old Auckland City area, and especially from Central Auckland’s eastern suburbs such as Epsom. Where did Craig get his votes from? In a city of over 1m electors, (almost 50% of whom did not vote) who knows or cares. Statistically speaking, it’s possible that not a single person in Auckland has a neighbour who voted for Colin Craig in the 2010 mayoralty race. That chance would be even rarer in Epsom.
But life moves on. To counter the controlled expenditure "issue’" Craig says he’s thinking of starting a new party. Its role will be, I suspect, to support his depraved attempt to self-immolate in the name of Epsom democracy, hardly a worthy cause in an electorate where so many of the locals singularly and ruthlessly rule other peoples’ lives from boardrooms, surgical theatres, and barristers’ chambers.
My advice to Craig is simple, if you wish to polarise your way into political anonymity take over another party and save yourself some time and money. There is currently a grand opportunity.
I hear New Zealand First is looking for a new crop of wealthy supporters, as the last lot paid the price for not getting legal advice before signing the cheques.
As the judiciary and their wealthy past-clients continue to move lock, stock and barrel out of the racing industry, NZ First’s principal funding source, I’d be surprised if Winston hasn’t already asked you to shout him a whiskey. In fact, with your developer and property manager's keen eye, you may have already seen in NZ First an opportunity that only you could take advantage of.
As Winston will have no doubt told you, everybody loves him, so you’ll have something in common with the great politician. I sense a great political pairing is within your grasp.
Forgetting all of the above howeverEven if readers write the above off on the grounds of my total lack of objectivity on the matter the largest contradiction with Colin Craig remains this, he wants to split the Epsom vote to prevent Banksy winning which may prevent ACT forming a coalition with National by who knows? One seat, which in turn may lead to Labour forming a coalition with the Greens ....... who will then bring in Capital Gains Tax .....
Won't he be then just loved intensely by everyone in the property industry? And in Epsom.
"Success" in Craig's contradicting campaign of vindictiveness will turn him into a centre-right social leper in his own community.Just a thought for Mr Craig over there in North Shore. The election between centre-right and centre-left may just be this close.
Now try push polling it.
Michelle Boag
Hekia Parata
