Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, March 12th, 2014 - 16 comments
The Orivida mess smells worse by the day for National. Yesterday, it turned out the Cabinet Office’s advice clearing Judith Collins of any wrongdoing had failed to even look at the most important piece of the evidence – the Chinese text of Orivida’s website. It had to rush out new advice to cover that off, which Key still won’t release. That is why today John Key will spend much of question time dancing on the head of a pin…
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 18 comments
Rob Salmond at Polity has a look at why National surprisingly announced the election date yesterday. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was a deflection from something. Rob thinks that National was worried about where a look at donations to National’s campaign would lead. He may be right, as in the past National has had some legally and morally dubious donation regimes
Written By: - Date published: 1:20 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 16 comments
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave evidence to the European Parliament last week about the NSA and mass-surveillance. The most interesting revelation? The NSA’s use of lawyers to subvert other countries limits on surveillance – including our own. So what did GCSB receive “legal guidance” on? What about the careful loopholes in the new Act
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 4 comments
[satire] It’s early morning at a greasy spoon cafe set in a back street off K Road. Rene (Cameron Slater) is scrubbing the grease off the table where he and John Key sat last night. His wife Edith (Judith Collins) is trying to get a fresh milk stain off her jacket.
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, March 11th, 2014 - 57 comments
Three years ago National announced a full term election date and ruled out going into coalition with NZ First. Fast forward to now and we are having an early election and Key is not ruling out going into coalition with Peters. Get the sense that National is becoming desperate?
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 10th, 2014 - 32 comments
Gower’s one-dimensional, distorted, gotcha reporting, highlights the failings of TV3 news & The Nation. Corin Dann and Qu &A are less one-dimensional, but speak within the B-Hive-Media Loop, that speaks for the comfortable middle & Business classes, & manufactured a “problem” week for Cunliffe.
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, March 10th, 2014 - 8 comments
My brother has posted across at Red Alert on Steven Joyce’s bungling oversight of AgResearch’s current $100 million restructure. The Crown Research Institute is New Zealand’s largest, and a recipient of generous Government support. Andy West, the former head of AgResearch stands to gain as head of Lincoln University from a plan that independent review […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, March 8th, 2014 - 21 comments
The government has imposed mandatory minimum pass rates of tertiary education. If Universities (and Polytechs, Waananga, and others) do not meet a government-imposed minimum pass rate (which ratchet up every year, and may go as high as 85%), then the institution risks losing some of its government funding. That is crazy town.
Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, March 5th, 2014 - 38 comments
John Key claims Judith Collins was not guilty of conflict of interest re-her visit to Oravida in China. Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins, in the General Debate today claimed that Peter Goodfellow met with an Oravida sponsored group of businessmen to discuss “bi-lateral collaboration.” They claim Key also played golf with an Oravida bigwig.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 5th, 2014 - 15 comments
[satire] The Taxpayers Union has hit out at Prince George for wasting taxpayers money by accompanying his parents, The Prince and Princess of Cambridge on their Royal Visit to New Zealand. Jordan Williams lashed out at the Prince saying “We expect that he will cost the New Zealand tax payer approximately $550 in nappies, baby food and sundry expenses while he is here; although since he is an infant, we understand he will not have to pay airfares. Even so, we are astounded at this blatant misuse of taxpayers money ”.
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 pm, March 4th, 2014 - 23 comments
After having the past five and bit years with National’s negative policies about anything to do with new technologies, it is really nice to see some partially formed red-tinged morning ideas about how to encourage local usage of the net appearing on the sky’s horizon. National’s ICT strategy seems to see how uselessly slow they can do everything and how much they can slow down the development of ICT in NZ.
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, March 4th, 2014 - 70 comments
Colin Craig has announced that he is off to Court to sue someone called Russell Norman who I think is the same person as Greens leader Russel Norman. And he is going to leave documents relating to his views of gays in the closet by only suing Norman for his comments about women. One wonders what he has to hide?
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, March 4th, 2014 - 150 comments
NZ seems like a client state of both US imperialism, and the UK monarchy: a throwback to the first part of the 20th century. John Key was quick to support the US & EU lines on the Crimea; some low achieving, British royals are visiting NZ at taxpayers’ expense.
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 pm, March 3rd, 2014 - 216 comments
John Key is attacking David Cunliffe for using a trust to obscure some donations – whilst repeating the word ‘tricky’ about Cunliffe as many times in one sound-bite as humanly possible. It’s an astonishingly brazen stone to throw given National’s glass house. Do no reporters remember John Key, Hollow Man, or anything about National’s funding […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, March 2nd, 2014 - 111 comments
Trisha Dunleavy has outlined the problems a& challenges for public service TV in NZ. Contrasting tales of 2 TV journalists – Rachel Smalley & Patrick Gower – highlight the problems with NZ’s (currently) dominant infotainment approach to news.
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 pm, February 27th, 2014 - 57 comments
What do you call someone who knowingly relies on false information to defend his case?
Bill English.
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, February 27th, 2014 - 17 comments
The Government has effectively conceded that the Genesis share float will not meet expectations and is softening New Zealand up to the prospect that only 30% of the shares may be sold. It makes you wonder why they are still going a head with the sale.
Written By: - Date published: 1:23 pm, February 24th, 2014 - 13 comments
When Parliament in its select committee oversight role asks the GCSB about whether it is obeying the Public Finance Act, or whether it has formal NSA moles in its organisation, then suddenly its an “operational matter” which they can’t answer. The natural conclusion: they do and there are – because if either allegation was false, they’d just deny it. Looks like John Key’s assurances about greater parliamentary oversight over the GCSB are a lie.
Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, February 21st, 2014 - 104 comments
Popular songs can capture the heartbeat of communities. “Rock Star” economy”? Or “No Depression in New Zealand”? A song that links the NZ of Muldoon & John Key. “History Never Repeats”? Who has pulled up the ladder & who wants to replace ladders with something more accessible to all?
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, February 21st, 2014 - 31 comments
The GCSB has eroded public confidence in its performance by displaying a concerning inability to count beyond four …
Written By: - Date published: 2:56 pm, February 20th, 2014 - 227 comments
National is now targeting David Cunliffe and his family. Metiria Turei was attacked for living in a castle and wearing designer jackets, and now David Cunliffe is being attacked for being wealthy. The criticisms miss the point. There is nothing inherently wrong with being wealthy. But there is everything wrong in setting fire to the ladder of social support after you have had the opportunity to climb it.
Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, February 20th, 2014 - 42 comments
Tracey recounts the rise and fall of the `financial genius` John Key’s pet financial hub for NZ to emulate the paragon economies that tried it. Like Ireland – the home of the jobless and deserted housing projects.
Fortunately he was somehow prevented from stuffing NZ in this way. However he did put in some legislation of dubious value to allow NZ to be used as a haven for hot money fleeing taxes…
Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, February 19th, 2014 - 21 comments
John Key makes up the figures during a session of parliament for the expected unemployment in coming years when he took office. The apparent reason is to make his governments piss-poor performance running the economy look better. Of course there is that problem that Rob Salmond can link to the December 2008 projections from the Treasury which show John Key to be lying (yet again).
Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, February 18th, 2014 - 28 comments
Local Bodies looks at some (very cool) solar installations and the Greens solar policy. We are now seeing a stark contrast between a Government desperate to support the status quo of increasing charges and large company profits, while the future focussed Greens are truly progressive in their thinking.
Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, February 18th, 2014 - 121 comments
Colin Craig has threatened Russel Norman with defamation proceedings unless he apologises for saying that Craig prefers women to be in the kitchen and gays should be in the closet. Norman has refused to apologise. At the risk of being thrown out of the Lawyers’ union shouldn’t they debate these issues publicly and let the public decide rather than fight it out in Court?
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 pm, February 17th, 2014 - 123 comments
Good to see Labour has stood up against National’s “harder-to-vote” revisions to the Electoral Amendment Bill, especially making voters now have to state their name to get a voting paper. The reason for this is to allow scrutineers to more easily challenge a voter’s credentials, and is similar to voter intimidation practices in conservative States in the US. Expect National Party scrutineers questioning more voter credentials in the 2014 election.
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, February 17th, 2014 - 79 comments
It’s puzzling why John Key diverted attention from who spied on Winston Peters, by implicating Cameron Slater. Following revelations about the 5 Eyes spying capabilities, & illegal surveillance of Kim Dotcom, there is much at stake for Key. Recapping some significant details in the surveillance saga.
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, February 16th, 2014 - 239 comments
The text of Russel Norman’s speech to the Green Party Conference given today.
Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, February 16th, 2014 - 30 comments
Fairfax posted an article recently where three businessmen were interviewed on what they thought the political parties should be discussing this election year. The comments from the first interviewee were basically a John Key love in so I thought we should try and provide some balance …
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, February 15th, 2014 - 170 comments
This week has seen how sophisticated the publicity campaign against Kim Dotcom has been. The surprising detail that a Herald Socialite columnist has published with political implications potentially represents a new tactic by National. And the confirmation that Key is regularly in contact with Cameron Slater shows how deep the relationship is between National and the Sewer is. And there was the use of, as Key calls them, blogsters to smear opposition MPs with hints of corruption. This is going to be an interesting year …
Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, February 14th, 2014 - 270 comments
Stuff has an astounding interview with John Key where he reveals he has regular catch-ups with Cameron Slater.
We’ve always known that there were close ties between National and the abomination that is Whaleoil but now we know that the ties go right to the top.
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