Gather round the camp-fire, folks. Let me tell you about the Ice Age era of the fourth Labour government, when mean, sabre-toothed tigers like Richard Prebble ranged at large within the Labour caucus. A being so mean and fierce that - legend has it – he once made Michael Cullen cry. So while Labour MP Dr Gaurav Sharma may (or may not) have suffered cruelly at the hands of his colleagues one thing is clear: former Labour whip Kieran McAnulty is no Richard Prebble. If you can be bullied by the likes of Kieran McAnulty, you might need to have your hand held while you cross the road in the political traffic.

That doesn’t sound like the forthright Dr. Sharma, does it? No shrinking violet, he – but a former WHO intern, Fulbright scholar and MBA graduate of George Washington University. He seems entirely capable of standing up for himself. Ultimately, we may never know for certain whether the real problem here is Dr. Sharma being bullied by his Labour colleagues and by the staff of the Parliamentary Service, or – alternatively - Dr Sharma’s staff being bullied by Dr Sharma himself and refusing any attempts at mediation. Reportedly, a pause has been put by the Parliamentary Service upon new hires to Dr Sharma’s office until such time as the good doctor agrees to management counselling to help devise better ways for him to communicate with his staff if and when he has issues with their performance.

One reason we might never know the truth is that Dr. Shamra has not so far offered any evidence that can be investigated and tested – not in his original op ed in the NZ Herald, and not in his subsequent 2,600 word Facebook post either. One thing is clear though. Dr. Sharma has chosen to launch a serious attack on his own party, including allegations about other Labour MPs misusing taxpayer funds. Just when National was on the ropes over the bullying allegations related to Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell, Dr Sharma chose to go public with his own accusations of bullying against his colleagues. He has done so, to repeat, without offering any evidence beyond his own say so to back up these assertions. Whatever beef Dr Sharma has with Labour, he seems to be showing no loyalty to the party that provided him with a platform for his political career.

Why, at this point on the political calendar, has Dr Sharma expressed his grievances publicly? True, it is possible he may have felt goaded beyond endurance. Yet there is another possibility. Following Dr Sharma’s example, I will offer no evidence to back up the following conjecture. Hamilton West, the seat that Dr. Sharma won off National’s Tim Mcindoe in 2020, is well known to be the weathervane seat of New Zealand politics. In 17 of the 18 elections since the seat was formed, the party that has won most seats nationally has also won Hamilton West, with 1993 being the sole exception.

Why might this be relevant? In the electorate, Dr Sharma has a majority of 6,267 votes. On paper, he’s safe as houses. Yet since he is the MP in the most reliable bellwether seat in the country, Dr Sharma– like the rest of us – would have seen that recent poll where National and ACT together could form a government. If Hamilton West is to once again be the bellwether, Dr Sharma might well be feeling himself in some danger at Election 2023. With the tide possibly going out on Labour, could self-interest be motivating Dr Sharma to consider running in effect, as a quasi-independent in Labour name only?

Meaning: He would be planning to run both for - and against – Labour, as a hard working local MP, as an insurance scheme for next year. If so, he might well be hoping to retain some centre left votes, win some new centre right votes and earn some sympathy votes from swing voters for standing up to the powers in the Beehive. Yep, he’s just what we all need: another Peter Dunne. As I say, this is pure conjecture.

Liz Cheney, au revoir

Talking about political careers going down in flames… This week will probably see the Republican Party take its revenge upon Liz Cheney, a party moderate described by the Atlantic as “the Congresswoman from the state of reality.” Up for re-election in this year’s midterms, Cheney is running well behind a Trump-backed candidate in the primary that will select the Republican candidate for the sole Congressional district in Wyoming. Between 2019 and 2021, she held the third most powerful House position in the Republican Party. Her chief sin? Denying Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and denouncing his attempted coup in January 2021.

Cheney was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Capitol riot, and since Jan. 6 she has emerged as the face of a small group of Republicans on Capitol Hill who continue to push back against their party.

She is not going down without a fight. Her father, the former vice-President Dick Cheney recently issued a strong endorsement of her daughter, praising the courage she has shown in denouncing the GOP’s abject surrender to the Cult of Trump. Yes, we’re now living in a world where Dick Cheney in a cowboy hat is the moderate voice of reason…

Plus Ela Minus

Ela Minus is a Colombian electronic musician based in New York. After years playing in an emo band in Colombia, she studied jazz drumming at Berklee, where she learned to design and build synthesizers. Her killer 2020 tracks “dominique” and “el cielo no es de nadie” combined EDM and shoegazey elements in a way that perfectly evoked the early lockdown blurring of time, when days and nights spent in creative solitude made even dance music seem ethereal to the point of detachment.

She has now joined forces with DJ Python on the EP “Pejanos en Verano” ( Birds in Summer…” Reportedly, both of them share an appreciation of Leslie Winer and her 1990 album Witch. Winer was a former Vogue model, one time Grace Jones collaborator and sometime associate of William Burroughs, and Witch can lay claim to being the very first trip hop recording – a pioneering status that’s more commonly attributed to either Smith and Mighty or to Massive Attack’s Blue Lines album. Here’s a link to Witch.

But back to Ela Minus. This new track with DJ Python hasn’t entirely shaken the lockdown melancholy (“All the days that never happened/ and the nights that didn’t exist”) but overall, there’s a pointedly optimistic feeling to it…

For old times sake, here’s her “dominique” track from mid 2020. Wryly, it conveys the feelings of focus and dislocation that can arise after spending a lot of time at home alone, with only music on your mind…

And for similar reasons, this sister track is great, too…

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