The Nation and Q+A review

Ratings
Ratings are looking good, 151 090 viewers for Q+A and 61 900 for the Nation. TV3 and TVNZ would both be happy with these ratings. How NZ on Air decides which one to fund next year will be interesting, my guess is that they will fund both.

The Nation
They are brilliantly using their duel timeslot to incredible effect these days. Yesterdays 11am was the Chris Carter interview and a really brilliant in depth discussion between Metro Editor Simon [Collins Wilson] and media guru Brian Edwards about Paul Henrys meltdown. Sunday 8am it was a their local body election special.

C&R got crucified in Auckland and the shift to the left is beyond 'I hate John Banks', as it is obvious throughout all the elections, Simon [Collins Wilson] points out that there is a social movement happening beneath the national media radar that suggests something profound is happening.

And I think that something profound is the recession. Labour Party voters stayed at home in 2008 making it one of the lowest turn outs ever, many first time voters felt John Key was newer and fresher than Aunty Helen whom they had grown up with most of their lives and people who voted Labour in 2005 but voted National in 2008 thinking they were getting 'change'. Well that 'change' is being played out and no ACC counselling for rape victims, bennie bashings, National standards that benefit the private education industry, mining on conservation land and tax cuts that benefited the rich funded by a GST rise paid by us all and those Labour Party voters who didn't vote, first time voters and voters who shifted from Labour in 2005 to National in 2008 are now much less favourable towards the National Party.

The brain fart cheapo telephone polls that claimed Brown and Banks were neck and neck are the very same one claiming National has 50% support. There is a movement that is not being reflected in these polls and it is being missed by the national news radar.

The lie that South Aucklanders are too lazy to vote won't has been shown the door. They note that there has been a massive shift to the left.

q+a
Dr Jon Johansson of Victoria University is back on the panel with Auckland Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Michael Barnett and former Labour MP and Black Fern, Louisa Wall (she is VERY good).

Len Brown is being interviewed, he is sounding more statesman by the second. I agree with everything that he has to say about public transport except the pointless train between the airport and central Auckland, I'm 1000% against that.

Len is solid against this crazy case of electoral tampering of as many as 1500 votes.

The panel are debating, right wing Michael Barnett desperately playing down the reality of the win for the left wing, both Wall and Johansson point out that there has been a real change towards the left.

Chris Carter doing his best not to get booted out by the Labour Party, his disloyalty is just jaw dropping. It was his attempt to lead a coup that was just so stupid that has placed him where he is now, yes he should be pissed for the way he was treated over that crap perception he was a Gay luxury lover, but to continue to slash at Goff's leadership is astounding. Kick him out. Kick him out hard.

Wall argues that Key needs to be attacked for his reaction during the Paul Henry interview and Johansson notes that no other PM would have simply sat through that interview. To be fair to Key I think he was just reeling, yes he should be attacked for the amount of time it took for Key to come out after the interview to be critical of Henry but honestly I think Key was just shocked during the interview.

Wall notes that Paul Holmes had the insight to note he was wrong, yet Paul Henry doesn't believe he has done nothing wrong and that's the problem.

The Labour Party conference is next weekend, I shall be blogging from it.