I like how Labour MPs have got a blog. Though I have always thought that eventually it would undo some of the MPs. It will never undo Daffodil, nor Clare Curran, but it will others.
The key issue about blogs for MPs is restraining themselves. For me to call someone an asshole is nothing, for an MP to do so is still considered appalling, even if the person on the receiving end is an asshole.
And so we come to Raymond Huo. No one knows or even cares who he is, he is just another quiet, un-important, scum list MP. Until the other day when he fawningly, felched the Chinese government in order to have a swipe at Russel Norman. It was not unlike his clumsy attempt to bestow the Labour Party mantle upon Looney Len Brown.
Now his blog post has every chance of causing a diplomatic incident, because the Chinese government are humourless f*cks when it comes to discussing both Tibet and Taiwan. Huo’s post, though supportive of Chinese internal politics unleashes blog commenters who get to say what they think.
Chinese diplomats in New Zealand think they still are in China. So, though they want Huo’s post to remain they will have been lobbying strongly for an even tighter moderating policy on Red Alert. Of course some may say I am making shit up, but I have seen directly what happens when someone upsets the Chinese Embassy. Phone calls are made to party presidents, to senior MPs asking for retractions etc. Mark my words this will have been happening here, in order to shut down debate in the comments.
For Russel Norman’s part he was extremely silly to go shouting the Free Tibet line. I have done it myself, but again, I’m not an MP, plus I bothered to look into a little bit more of history, especially after taking an interest in the life and times of Genghis Khan. It is of course a nonsense today to suggest to free Tibet to go back to what it once was. It is likewise to nonsense to suggest that China somehow already did that more than 50 years ago.
One thing some MPs forget is that though they may have private thoughts in some matters they need to be mindful that while it is ok for a private citizen to say out loud those things it almost never is ok for an MP. I’m not against freedom of expression, far from it, but sometimes it is best to shut up.
Raymond Huo hasn’t helped Labour at all, in fact he has probably contributed a goodly amount of support to the nutters in the Greens, all through his willingness to push the Chinese lines. Refreshing though his post is, there will be some now who think that Labour are Chinese ass-kissers.
We have already ceded Fiji to the hegemony of the Chinese, let’s not send New Zealand that way.
