And finally, I have worked for three years to build stronger channels of open communication between politicians and people using the internet as a medium. Labour developed Red Alert, the first MP's blog where Labour MPs write freely their thoughts on issues and allow the public to comment and engage with them. This is revolutionary. Many MPs are also using Facebook and Twitter to communicate directly with people. I have helped to lead that change.
Ah; Red Alert. We haven't commented there since Clare Curran banned us on 26th September when we made a cheeky, playful comment on a thread by Clare parodying John Key in the "nek minnit" genre. What we said was this:
Phil Goff sold $9b worth of assets in the 1980's; nek minnit...
A number of commenters came to our defence, claiming that Clare over-reacted, which of course we believe she did. She replied thus to one of them:
Clare Curran says:Jem and others: Inventory2 was banned for several reasons. He was personally offensive and he lied. A number of others who comment regularly in a similar vein are running close to the line and are on notice.
Now, history will forever record the FACT that the Lange/Palmer/Moore Labour government sold 17 assets between 1984 and 1990, for a total cost of $9.49 billion. Indeed, we have chronicled those sales on Keeping Stock. So quite where the personally offensive comment and the lie is, we're not quite sure. But Clare Curran promotes the doctrine of owning the message, and if that's the message she took from an inoffensive and ironic comment, good on her.
So we reckon that it's a bit rich that Ms Curran rates Red Alert as one of her crowning glories. Just read the two pages of comments in the thread we've linked to above, and count how many have either been censored or have seen their authors banned. That's Clare and Grant Robertson putting the "own the message" doctrine into practise, and shows that Labour was at that point (and probably still is) a long way from understanding the message that the public owned and sent to Labour in November 2008, then repeated on 26/11/2011 (with a 27% explanation mark).
And as for being the MP who encouraged other MP's to campaign via Facebook and Twitter; when one looks at the efforts of the like of Trevor Mallard, Sue Moroney and Darien Fenton, it's not something that Clare should be boasting about.
