Jami-Lee Ross is to resign from Parliament amid further claims about unlawful activity from Tory leader Simon Bridges. Ross says he will stand in the Botany by-election. Ross also says he will lay a complaint against Bridges with the Police.
We know the real names of the Russian spies who bungled the Salisbury novichok poisoning. Will it make a difference to the Kremlin’s plans?
David Fisher in the Herald has reported that the Taxpayer’s Union has used numerous fictitious identities to make Official Information Act requests.
The latest right wing beat up is that Jacinda told a porkie this morning to Chris Lynch on Newstalk ZB. A closer inspection reveals that nothing of the sort happened.
As though politicians with a social democratic bent don’t have enough to contend with…
Stuart Nash this week withdrew from a fundraiser organised for him by Matthew Hooton.
Great to see that the State Services Commissioner has widened the investigation into the use of private investigators hired by the state against its citizens. But. They should go further.
Newsroom has released details of media emails sent to the police about the Clarke Gayford rumours.
Text of a statement issued by Nicky Hager indicating that police have settled his claim for a breach of his rights by payment of costs and significant damages and the issuing of an apology.
Winston Peters has commenced legal proceedings against Anne Tolley and Paula Bennett because of the leaking during last year’s election campaign of private information about a superannuation overpayment he received.
National MP Parmjeet Parmar has been accused of threatening to tell the employers of submitters to a Select Committee what they had said in evidence if they did not withdraw their statements.
Phil Quin has been his usual dickheaded self on the net. Trying to bully people about material that they probably didn’t write on this site is not a way to get it looked at. For that everyone need to follow the procedures detailed in our contact page and the pages linked to it. The alternatives aren’t nice. Ask Dermot Nottingham. Updated
The police have publicly scotched rumours that have been circulating about Clarke Gayford by saying that Gayford is not and has not been the subject of any police inquiry and has not been charged in relation to any matter.
Claims that “Russian bots” helped Labour during the 2017 UK General Election…
Yesterday the Herald said something stupid about Clarke Gayford, reported his response and then reported at how the country was divided by the article.
In the second stage of a false flag attack, facts go out the window and the sole issue becomes “are you for us or against us.” Our media and National Party politicians are well into this stage in the Skripal affair. But as questions mount and skeptics proliferate from all sides, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters may well be wiser than media advisers by not following blindly the western herd. 26 countries is not the whole world. Update: Porton Down unable to establish Novichok of Russian origin.
Nicky Hager and the publishers of Dirty Politics have released into the public arena the chapter dealing with Mark Mitchell’s campaign to be selected as National’s Rodney candidate.
Steven Joyce and Mark Mitchell have both thrown their hats into the ring for National’s leadership.
An accidental tweet from a Government account has led the right to claim the existence of all sorts of conspiracies.
Doofus of the week Christmas edition is awarded to Jordan Williams for criticising Jacinda Ardern for entering into the spirit of Christmas through #nzsecretsanta and for comparing socialism to Father Christmas.
A couple of recent examples suggests that National’s social media game is well below standard. And Judith Collins is no longer the Parliamentary Queen of twitter.
“Ministers realised they had a device through which they could reduce the surprises they suffered. And, as it went on, the surprises ministers no longer wanted to experience became greater in number and smaller in significance.Increasingly, it placed on the public service a political imperative which it had never had to shoulder. “
David Farrar has continued his crusade against Golriz Ghahraman with a claim of 15 instances where she has by implication deceived us.
David Fisher has written an in-depth article for the Herald that suggests that John Key’s promise, three years ago, that the Government had cancelled the Speargun project which would have allowed for the mass surveillance of New Zealanders was not actually correct.
ffs NZ, get a grip. Then have a think about fairness and what kind of society we want.
Winston Peters has launched a legal fishing expedition to identify who exactly breached privacy on his superannuation over payments. A problem that he shares with about 50 thousand other pensioners. Unlike them, his problem wasn’t trying to find money to repay it. It was that the breach was deliberately timed to be a classic dirty politics ploy, almost certainly by National, in the leadup to the recent election. I wish him good fishing.
National’s Parliamentary list has been announced. The big mover is Judith Collins who has jumped 7 places to number 9 and she is on the front bench.
Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn writes about the Police’s decision to not lay charges against former MP Todd Barclay.
Steven Joyce had a bad day yesterday. His claim that National’s use of one of Eminem’s song was “pretty legal” was shown to be anything but. And he stuck to his claim that there was a $11 billion dollar hole in Labour’s budget, casting doubt either on his honesty or on his competence.
It seems that National’s use of Eminem’s song lose yourself was not so legal.
This post is too long to read. Its purpose is to serve as reference material, a “one stop” snapshot of where we are as a country. The mess that the new government inherits. The consequences of the nine long wasted years of National. The magnitude of the challenge ahead of us.
This is the first Labour Government of the digital age. How progressives respond to social media attacks may be crucial to its success.
“Once upon a time, in a world far away” we had these people called “reporters”.
An honourable profession, who considered it their job to keep the public accurately and completely informed.
Audrey Young on the coalition dance: “Labour would probably have an advantage because of the greater policy overlap”, “Keeping deputy leader Paula Bennett out of the first pro-forma courtesy meeting was an appalling decision by English that simply says he was desperate to please Peters at any cost”.
Cameron Slater and friends and clients are in the High Court defending a claim that he defamed three health researchers. They tried to have the case kicked out but failed. The judgment makes for an interesting read.
The Greens aren’t going to support a National government, so why is there so much push to make it look like it might happen?
