Chris Trotter writes today in The Independent Financial Review (page 25) that Michael Cullen is fighting a battle he cannot win. Trotter lays blame on Helen Clark and Heather Simpson (H1 and H2 - H3 is now running as the Labour candidate for Wellington Central and seems to have jumped off the ship just in time to avoid Trotter's criticism) for miscalculations over the misuse of Parliamentary Service funds and the Electoral Finance Act, Steve Maharey is blamed for the anti-smacking stance , and Cullen takes the blame for failing to improve productivity, and failure to properly fund state broadcasting. Trotter's world view is very different from ours and we would not agree in any way to his suggested policy prescription on productivity, but we do agree that performance has been very bad under this Government. The broadcasting issue really comes out of left field. According to Trotter
"No social-democratic government can survive for very long without at least one branch of the news media in the hands of someone other than private sector capitalists"
