Kevin Roberts has a new post up on his Herald blog, "From the Edge". What a load of bloody waffle. To think in the 80's and 90's people used to take the man seriously. Mind you they took neo-liberalism seriously too. Perhaps Roberts is due…
From Linley Boniface in the Dom 0n Monday: ...My kids love hearing about the teacher who used to soak his strap in warm water every morning; about the uncle who was regularly caned on the back of the legs for refusing to get a haircut;…
The Tories are throwing all the muck they can at Goff. Trying to get him to back off on the Worth thing. Their latest is that Labour is spinning out this presentation of texts to Key to drag the issue out. Thought I would take a leaf…
Richard Long, Fairfax's in-house media adviser to the National Party, recycles an old line in today's DomPost. Today it's "honest John". Two years ago, just before he was rolled, we posted how it was "honest Don looking like Mr Magoo". "Honest" John's starting to look…
Lynton Crosby of the political spinners Crosby/Textor, who 'advised' both John Key and Don Brash, has finally given up on trying to pursue a unwinnable defamation case against Nicky Hager and Radio NZ.The case appears to me to have been started largely as intimidation by…
The Herald asked this morning whose word was more credible on the Worth issue, John Key or Phil Goff. Their political editor Audrey Young has just answered the question for them. "One politician was bound to be deeply embarrassed today, Phil Goff or John Key.…
There was nothing in the Budget for productivity. Education, the foundation of producitivty, was actually cut when you take into account inflation and population growth. There was a bit more for a few more roads but shaving a few minutes of the commute has no…
Red Alert, the Labour MPs' blog, has a list of upcoming meetings on the supercity. Mt Albert - 5.30pm Tuesday 9 June, Owairaka District Primary School, 113 Richardson Rd, Owairaka, hosted by Phil Goff and David Shearer Waitakere - 7.30pm, Wednesday 10 June, Kelston Community…
Until now, Melissa Lee's only remaining selling point in this train wreck of a campaign has been that the party she's standing for is currently in Government. As she said in her press release yesterday: 'I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can…
I never seen a government crash so quickly, so hard. The Standard was saying before the election that Key was a two-faced facade and his government would push a rightwing agenda. The media chose to ignore the signs. Too caught up in the fun of…
At his post-cabinet press conference, John Key continued to determinedly fly in a death spiral over the Worth affair. The journalists asked some probing questions on the sexual offending allegations and while Key still refuses to give us the full story, more details are emerging:…
The Irascible Curmudgeon writes some really good posts. So without apology we republish this little gem on spin and the art of re-writing history. John Key follows the same style - as evidenced by his shifty stories on when he knew about complaints against Richard…
Saw this strange article from NZPA last night. National may be behind in the polls for the upcoming Mt Albert by-election, but nationwide it still maintaining high levels of popularity. The latest nationwide Roy Morgan poll recorded unchanged support for National with 52 per cent…
From Lee's presser yesterday: "I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key's Government.' Melissa, you're not a minister. Only ministers are members of government.
Six Degrees Could Change the World This is a documentary detailing the possible effects as temperatures rise throughout the world degree by degree. We are shown deserts spreading out across West/Central America (Stretching from Texas up into Canada) as rains fail to reach there. New…
The Minister of Agriculture David Carter really outdid himself in the house last week. First he completely dodged and didn't address the question put to him by Sue Kedgley on the use of sow crates. Next, clearly feeling the pressure he had a National backbencher…
Well it is that time again. We just rolled over the 3000th post on the site. Number 2000 was in November last year, so it took 7 months - not bad considering that it took 6 months coming up to an election last time. The…
As if denying Aucklanders the chance to have their say on the super city wasn't enough National now seems determined to tell them who their mayor's going to be too. It's absolutely unacceptable for the PM to be endorsing John Banks as the mayor of…
One of the most tedious and predictable right wing electoral tactics is to try and whip up a frenzy of fear about crime, especially violent crime. Mix in some "fear of youth" dog whistling for extra impact. Last election National were guilty as usual. The…
It was remiss of me not to post on this last week. June 4 marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Pictured above is "Tank Man" - an unidentified protester who briefly halted the progress of the Chinese tanks on June 5 1989.…
While the mishandling of the Worth scandal grabs all the headlines, the mishandling of the supercity process is still grinding on. And Aucklanders aren't fooled. A ShapeNZ poll released on Friday shows that Aucklanders want more consultation, want a government that really listens, want a referendum,…
Is its business leaders. There's Keys, the Fyfes, the Weldons. Who all spend so much money to look good on the covers of magazines. Who expect us to love them. They want to be hailed as messiahs or Atlases carrying the rest of us. These…
Call me old-fashioned but the Worth scandal doesn't really interest me much. In fact I'm of the opinion that Goff and others should just STFU about it now and let process take its course or risk having some of the unpleasantness of it rub off…
On Q+A this morning, Phil Goff was asked by Paul Holmes for more detail on why John Key wasn't surprised when he took the sexual harassment complaint against Richard Worth to him. According to Goff, Key said that he had been aware of rumours of…
The Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure has a post with this wonder title about the type of victim bashing that the some of the right have indulged in this week. Notably tsmithfield from our comments page. Here are her answers - pretty good considering…
There's still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I've tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us "The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible…