Maiden Speeches Summary
November 29th, 2005 at 8:54 am by David FarrarTracy Watkins has a useful summary of all the maiden speeches, along with some awards.
The only issue I would take with Tracy is where she has criticised several speeches as parochial. The traditional maiden speech has always been heavily parochial where MPs talk about their electorate, their constituents and the issues for their electorate. Now with MMP this doesn’t apply so much to List MPs, but one should hardly be surprised that those who ran in a seat, talked a lot about that seat.
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November 29th, 2005 at 11:07 am
I also had to laugh when Tracy showed her yoof in complaining that the maidens were too parochial. I may be wrong, but I don’t think most people are inspired to get involved in politics by grand ideological notions or tribal party loyalty. It’s (yes Tracy) the small parochial shit that may bore the sophisticates of the Press Gallery, but which I find makes MPs endearingly human rather than party-line automatons.
Vote:November 29th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Was it mere coincidence that Tracy comments on parochial speeches all happened to be Nats, while she made so such sneer about several Labour Party maiden speeched flashing their parochial Union ties.
Vote:November 29th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Sally – No surprise, Watkins has always been a lazy lefty hack.
Her anti-Bush bleatings during the US presidential elections were the pits too.
Vote:November 29th, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Vanity publishing. Who does she think she is rating speeches. I would like to hear one from her in front of 120 others and on air. The simple fact is they all spoke well, as you would expect.
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