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Key and McClay sorting out their lines

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, May 4th, 2016 - 16 comments

On the nobbled IRD tax haven review Key has been sorting out his lines. Then he had to feed McClay his. The concept of just telling the truth probably never occured to either of them.

NZ – The underarm bowlers of climate change

Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, April 23rd, 2016 - 18 comments

NZ under the Key government has hit new depths of ignominy as per capita the world’s biggest climate change cheat. And we plan to keep using the fraudulent “credits” we have purchased.

Trying to spin the Hagaman donation

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, April 21st, 2016 - 122 comments

Little is doing his job. Dirty Politics Farrar is spinning like mad. The real questions are – who knew about the donations, when did they know, and were they involved in awarding the contract?

Gould on Nats’ sleaze and corruption

Written By: - Date published: 10:29 am, April 20th, 2016 - 138 comments

Bryan Gould has some choice words on the latest Nat donations scandal.

The whiff of corruption follows McCully around

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, April 19th, 2016 - 89 comments

There is a clear conflict of interest in the Niue resort case.

Panama papers – the dark side in a nutshell

Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, April 15th, 2016 - 77 comments

terrorism civil liberty and tax evasion

Christchurch, keyisms and this state we’re in.

Written By: - Date published: 3:18 pm, February 24th, 2016 - 86 comments

There was a gathering in Cathedral Square in Christchurch on Sunday the 21st of February.

A one and a half hour recording of the event was put on youtube. Speaking begins at around 13min.

New Zealand drops down World corruption free index

Written By: - Date published: 8:14 am, January 28th, 2016 - 21 comments

New Zealand used to be rated as the least corrupt country in the world.  Over the past couple of years we have dropped to second and now to fourth.  The cynical way that the Government handles OIA requests is the main reason for this occurring.

Jarrod Gilbert is tilting at windmills

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, November 27th, 2015 - 38 comments

The Official Information Act is now moribund and access to information beyond its scope is granted only to a chosen few and under strict conditions.

Nats campaigning with public money

Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, November 26th, 2015 - 45 comments

Campaigning with public money. Politicising the public service. Cabinet club is cash for access. This is a corrupt government.

Power Corruption and Lies

Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, November 13th, 2015 - 78 comments

A National List MP has been snapped trying to heavy the Housing Ministry into funding a lift in her personal profile. Remember John Key’s ‘higher standards in Government’? Nick Smith’s Ministerial office apparently doesn’t care too much about about such trifles. Worse, the Housing Ministry has been caught trying to cover up for the Tories by redacting an OIA request. Here’s your Brighter Future, folks. Enjoy.

Diesel Bomb

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, October 1st, 2015 - 37 comments

Last Friday I wrote a post on Volkwagen gaming NOx emissions. This is a follow up.

NOx-ious shit all around.

Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, September 25th, 2015 - 109 comments

Been trying to get my head around the implications of Volkswagen’s rigged diesel performance tests. Predictably, and unlike most stories covering this, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse for the financial woes the company might be facing.

Bugger the Truth – Getting elected means fooling the poeple

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, September 19th, 2015 - 34 comments

So, its is not that the voters are idiots, as some suggest the Left are claiming, it is that the Right deliberately lie and mislead to get a vote, on false pretenses. It is the Right who constantly treats voters as gullible idiots, And a media, strangled by shrinking budgets and reduced personnel with less and less time to research rather than regurgitate. Couple that with an increase in non-journalists hogging the space set aside for reporting and elucidating news events… what chance the voter?

Charter $chools

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, August 22nd, 2015 - 20 comments

Today’s Herald has an excellent piece on charter schools – School cash flows to owners’ pockets. What a surprise!

Money for nothing and the sheep are for free

Written By: - Date published: 8:36 am, May 29th, 2015 - 38 comments

The legal suit offered as part justification for the Government paying $11 million to a Saudi businessman was apparently “off the table” at the time that Cabinet agreed to the payment.  So why was the payment made?  And why didn’t Murray McCully tell this to Cabinet or to Parliament earlier?

Sheepgate

Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, May 28th, 2015 - 103 comments

It has emerged that the New Zealand Government has paid money to a Saudi businessman allegedly to settle a legal dispute that does not exist but more probably to persuade the Saudi Government to enter into a free trade agreement.  Update – and maybe there was a threat of legal action but because of the actions of National, not Labour.

Sky City redux – the house still wins

Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, May 27th, 2015 - 101 comments

Sky City has managed to persuade the Government to allow it to build a cheaper building while retaining the same valuable gambling regulatory concessions.  Update: and the Government appears to have made further contractual concessions to Sky City.

Dear NZ Labour. Listen up.

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, May 12th, 2015 - 48 comments

For the sake of reference – Nye Bevan was a Labour mp and the architect of the British NHS. Michael Sheen’s  speech was a defense of that institution, but the underpinning message is, well…

Pull the other one… ponytails, minimisation and male privilege

Written By: - Date published: 5:48 pm, April 25th, 2015 - 407 comments

From pulling ponytails to police minimisation, there is a deep problem in our country with attitudes towards women and to sexual violence.

Northland’s decaboondoggle bridge building programme

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 pm, March 10th, 2015 - 37 comments

National’s proposal to double lane ten Northland bridges has some unusual aspects.  Seven of them were not in the region’s Regional Land Transport Program such was their priority in the scale of things.  And one is apparently right next to National candidate Mark Osborne’s home …

Brassneck

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, March 2nd, 2015 - 64 comments

The release of the candidate donation returns has shown us that the National Party are still rorting the system. However, there are issues for the NZ Labour Party as well. Four MP’s have taken money from sources that do not have the interests of the Labour party or, indeed, the majority of Kiwis at heart. Brassneck or bought and sold?

A Breakdown.

Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, November 26th, 2014 - 25 comments

There’s a lot of smash flying around concerning the SIS, the PM’s office, OIA requests, Judith Collin’s and what not. So here’s a simple, stripped back, breakdown

Nats illegally gaming the OIA process

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, October 16th, 2014 - 75 comments

It is clear to anyone who has read Dirty Politics that the National government illegally games the OIA process for political gain. Now we have Key’s confirmation of the fact.

“Democracy Under Attack”.

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, September 7th, 2014 - 89 comments

How long before “they” use control of the internet and media to bury adverse information, subvert democracy and vilify and silence those who disagree. “They” are doing it, NOW! A Government no longer has legitimacy, when they regard their own citizens as the enemy.

For a better way…

Written By: - Date published: 4:53 pm, August 30th, 2014 - 10 comments

The NACT way is Not Our Way. We need a better way of governance and democracy.  One that is for all the people. I joined the hardy souls who went to the Not Our Way rally and march in Auckland.

Some thoughts…

Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, August 30th, 2014 - 113 comments

The English faction is now calling the shots inside the National party.

The moral low ground

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, August 18th, 2014 - 45 comments

Revulsion. That’s what’s coming out from a range of people who have ploughed through the inner thoughts of Slater, Farrar, Ede, Collins, Lusk, Odgers, Jordan Williams – they’re all repulsive. It’s the strength of that gut feeling in response that will sink their plot. Despite all John Key’s efforts to move as quickly as possible to the end of the day, …it’s still not ok.  Key’s try at cover up is pathetic, and doomed to be futile. But what it shows is that he has chosen the moral low ground with the rest of them. TeamKey indeed.

But the door was open…

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 am, August 15th, 2014 - 277 comments

The intention of this post is to examine the similarities and differences between the hacking of Cameron Slater’s communications on the one hand, and the hacking of the Labour Party donor database on the other. There are two important issues to determine in both cases and I will cover them separately. The first is the legality of the hacking and the second is the ethics of using the resulting information regardless of whether the obtaining of the information in the first instance was unlawful.

Dirty Politics: The Brestapo

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, August 14th, 2014 - 88 comments

I have foolishly never taken Cameron Slater very seriously except when his attacks have been obviously for the benefit of the National Party. I actually believed that the misinformed and bigoted viewpoints that prevail in his posts were his genuine opinions. It fits his character to drone on about “The Breastapo” “Sucking on the Taxpayers’ Tit”. To discover that such posts were actually written and paid for on behalf of Fonterra actually shocked me.

Polity: Herald on regional roads fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 12:52 pm, August 2nd, 2014 - 13 comments

The National Government’s $212 million plan has Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee explicitly admitting that it is a massive pork-barreling for government MPs with public funds, and explicitly tells people to piss off if they don’t like it.