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I’m not a supporter of name-calling and much prefer to see debates and arguments focus on facts rather than personal attacks on individuals. While loosely held personal opinions or nick-names can sometimes be mildly entertaining, they can become tedious after constant repetition.
There’s also a side of me that likes some formality for titles and positions: “Mr” Peters rather than just “Peters” for example. That doesn’t reflect my personal views about the person but simply respect for the role they hold, which comes with the title even when the holder may not be worthy of it.
Perhaps we should all take a minute to consider the absence of standards and principles in everything we do these days that brings us to what can often be described as, at best disrespectful terminology and at worst downright abusive.
Can we wonder in light of those disappearing elements of respect and self-control, why we are living in a society that seems to have so few standards?
Cam’s article about the use of COL did rather get me thinking as did the many and varied comments from readers. (Welcome back by the way – it’s good to see your perspective back in print again).
I’ve often used the acronym myself and I’d like to think it’s not because I’m lazy, arrogant, churlish, ungracious, boorish or ignorant (though I probably qualify for all of them at times I’m sure), nor because I don’t understand the workings of MMP. I’ve used it because it fits for this particular grouping of individuals. Frankly, I don’t think we could rely on them to successfully run a booze-up in a brewery without messing it up and if we look factually at their successes since 2017, well, I can’t think of any.
So in the context of the Oxford Dictionary definition of loser:
“a person who is regularly unsuccessful, especially when you have a low opinion of them.
“She’s one of life’s losers.”
“He’s a born loser.”
I have to concede it does seem to rather fit. We have a government comprising three parties, which is, of course, a coalition, and the measure of their success at anything would seem to be at the negative end of the scale, which in many minds would qualify them as losers.
However, our language is blessed with such an evocative vocabulary that we can stay above trendy acronyms and tell it like it is while maintaining standards and principles that make us serious commentators rather than trendy, social media name-callers, and I’m all in favour of that.
A final point: Is Ms Ardern the duly elected Prime Minister of New Zealand?
At the completion of vote counting, no party had a governing majority hence there was no Prime Minister or government elected and the election process was completed.
Ms Ardern is indeed Prime Minister and the government is the government.
It is an interesting system that we have don’t we?
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