The Election Strategy of Social Credit

Ever since I was a kid I can remember people readily agreeing that all the politicians and their parties were much the same, that the ranting and raving up on the Hill were pretty irrelevant to our lives, that politicians said and did things just to stay in power... One could have been excused for imagining that the New Zealand public was under no illusions about Parliament and the people who inhabit it.

For two and a half years out of three, it's almost true. These days, even truer. Most of us, most of the time, don't entertain the notion for one minute that those 92 people up there have either the wit or the control over the forces in the economy and society generally to be able to get us out of the economic crisis, improve living standards across the board, or whatever it is that each of us want from Government.

Yet in the last six months of each three years, we spend an awful amount of time and energy treating very seriously the attempts of those 92, plus double their number and more, to convince us that they really can do it.

Or am I being to simplistic? Perhaps we hope for lesser triumphs, something to be calculated in degrees rather than leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, the fact remains that come November, for whatever reasons, a staggeringly large number of us will commit our hopes to paper and a new selection of representatives.