LET THEM EAT CAKE

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'.