As a Parliamentary Candidate, you are a public face of your party, with the sole purpose of advancing the party’s policy and campaign in your district and more broadly.
As a blogger, you see yourself (ideally) as a citizen-debater, critiquing all comers – including your own party – and supporting things you agree with, while opposing things you don’t.
These two roles are not particularly compatible. One risks being reduced to a sort of shell-blogger, which is unsatisfying for the reader and the author. Alternatively, one risks creating an unintended and undesirable headline, possibly unintentionally, which is unsatisfying for the author (but quite possibly satisfying for the reader).
How to resolve this dilemma? I am not sure in my case it can be resolved. The energy one has for campaigning is very focused in the role of being a candidate, and it is not focused on writing for a blogging audience. I have no desire to turn this blog into a blow by blow account of the Hunua campaign, which is sort of an obvious out from the “what to write safely about” problem.
What I’ve decided to do instead is just try and cast forward, and write a series of posts in the next few weeks leading up to polling day about where New Zealand needs to go in a range of areas: the economy, welfare system, education, health, infrastructure and so on. Obviously given the timescales and my role, these aren’t going to be policy announcements: just a few thoughts for the record. There’ll also be a few posts on the broader political situation, because that is what I am often interested in.
I find, reviewing the content and the comments here at Just Left, that I do not enjoy the adversarial, nasty spiteful tone that is endemic in the comments – and which sometimes as a result infects what I write as well. The echo chamber effect is tedious and not worth the effort. Once upon a time, a few years ago, I was well used to punching back in the blogging sense. I’ve moved on, or tried to, and this site shows I have some way to go. It’s time to make some more progress.
Thus the different approach as noted above. I intend to give those of you who come to read what I write something a bit more interesting and upbeat. I hope that those of you who choose to comment will offer me the same courtesy. We’ll see how it goes.
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