Andrew Geddis (Associate Professor of Law at Otago and writer at Pundit) is an expert on democratic theory. He has become required reading for politics junkies. His latest piece — a brutally honest analysis of the recent work of the Law and Order select committee — should be required reading for everybody.
I was wondering whether to write a post on the very odd things that outrage the tight little circle of right wing bloggers we have in this country. But MikeG in a comment at Dim Post made the point far far better than I could have.
The other day, National Party pollster David Farrar had a rant against alcohol experts that boiled down to ‘who cares what the science says! We’re in charge now and booze barons are on our side. Go back to your books, dorks!’.
Big Dog responds:
This government is attacking education at every level. In particular it is attacking teachers over national standards. National blogger DPF’s post yesterday was a particularly disgraceful example. Arrogant, ignorant, and full of lies.
A new lobby group, the “Costal Coalition”, crawled out from under a rock today. Above is their first billboard, one of several planned for Wellington and Auckland. It’s a distasteful, damaging campaign, but National and their associated hacks have no grounds for complaint.
Key hasn’t ruled out working with Winston after 2011. This seems like a huge miscalculation. Not only has he added legitimacy to the re-animation of this political zombie, but he has also cut the legs out from under the right’s “Winston is the devil” campaign. That giant sucking sound you hear? That’s DPF’s head imploding.
Labour’s lineup for the next election is emerging, the usual balance between continuity and new talent. There will be some interesting electorate selections coming up. Such personality politics is always very popular of course, but more important than the people is the policy…
David Farrar leapt to a “they did it too” defence of the taxpayer-funded ‘survey’ that National MPs are sending to selected voters around the country. I reckon he wrote the questions. It was Farrar’s dodgy polling that convinced National to run Melissa Lee as the candidate in Mt Albert. I guess Lee getting caught out with a dodgy ‘survey’ is just Farrar’s reverse midas touch striking again.
Last Queen’s Birthday Weekend 10 people died on the roads and 32 were seriously injured. Last Easter another 12 dead, the highest toll in 18 years. This Queen’s Birthday police announced a massive crackdown on speeding. Idiots such as DPF denounced it as a “revenue gathering exercise”. But events have proved them very wrong, with the lowest toll in 54 years.
A shadowy cabal calling themselves “The NZ Bloggers Union” set out to create a grass-roots “Air NZ” blog award. Apparently a bunch of blogs have entered, The Standard might even be one of them, which is pretty organised for us! But we were deeply disturbed to hear that DPF will not be entering, apparently because he does not believe in awards. What’s up with that? Well, we’re from The Standard, and we’re here to help…
Pointing out that a “rich get richer” budget is going to increase inequality in NZ seems to be making the Nats uncomfortable. Bill English tries to simply deny the facts. DPF tries to divert attention to “social mobility”. Lame efforts in both cases. The truth is that inequality isn’t on the Nats radar. They simply don’t care.
David Farrar has finally made a comment on my “Hey Chubby…” post. It raises more questions than it answers. So I ask some of the obvious questions, and conclude that he has forsaken the principles of “free speech” that he so enthusiastically espoused only a few years ago.
It looks like Nationals favourite pollster and blogging spinster has been sniffing around trying to find out who our authors are. So I guess I’ll have to gently castigate him yet again. Such a child, always reaching for the cookie jar..
In the process it appears that he has pissed off some journos, and it appears that David has acquired a new nickname.
I don’t read Kiwiblog often. DPF is capable of interesting political commentary or detailed policy wonkery on occasion, but most of the time it is editorial cut and paste jobs, troll farming, or postcards from his latest holiday. Ho hummm. Even a casual reader such as myself, however, can’t help but notice that National’s eternal spinster is having a pretty appalling week.
Vernon Small calculates that if the Cullen Fund had continued getting its monthly contributions, rather than just the one-off $250 million the government gave in July, we would be $30 million better off by now. Predictably, the financially illiterate Key apologists are having a cry about being shown to have stuffed this one up so badly.
Norightturn writes DPF went apeshit about the then-Labour government’s Electoral Finance Act. He vented online, raised funds, even launched billboards. You’d think that with plans to sack an elected council and strip 560,000 people of their vote in regional council elections for four years, as a “defender of democracy”, he’d be similarly outraged.
David Farrar obviously lost it today. In a post called “Anonymous Smears” he is upset about Eddie pointing out Murray McCully and his mining shares. There wasn’t an value known when the post was written, so Eddie reasonably asked if there was a conflict of interest.
David can get upset with an opinion from a author. However he has attacked this site as an entity. So as sysop of the site, he is getting my opinion about his opinion, and my opinion on his antics. It is an honest opinion, the same as Eddies. However in this case just for benefit of David, it isn’t anonymous.
A Price Waterhouse Coopers report has highlighted the huge returns from each dollar spent on Adult and Community Education (ACE). Farrar and other bloggers have attacked the conclusions of the report and the credibility of PWC, but the attack is bizarre…
David Farrar is well know as National’s main pollster. But should he also be polling on political issues for internal affairs? And what other non-tender contracts has his company, Curia, been doing for the public sector?
Poneke wrote a post about ‘climategate’. There was little about the science and more about personally attacking the authors of parts of the evidence supporting climate change. This ignores the whole basis of science, the scientific method.
Fran O’Sullivan wrote about how she was called by David Farrar’s Curia, National’s polling company, recently. What she was asked is revealing. She […]
David Farrar has one of his dodgy maths posts, where he argues that getting rid of the 33% rate is necessary because typical New […]
Both David Farrar and Cameron Slater have posts up attacking a comment by roger nome in one of our comment threads, and it […]
In a recent post my good friend and fellow concern troll DPF covered the Associated Press review of the leaked “climategate” materials. The […]
I’ve never quite understood why David Farrar, who is after all paid to do statistical work, insists on performing transparent statistical tricks on […]
There’s some massive FAIL going on over at Kiwiblog. Farrar’s got this new green-bashing post up where he breathlessly mocks Al Gore for […]
Over at Kiwiblog, David Farrar is doing his usual apologetics for National by trying to spin its removal of guaranteed rest and meal […]
An interesting post from David Farrar calling for National to implement radical rightwing policies while it still has the support to get away […]
Poor DPF must feel like he’s through the looking glass these days. He’s got to defend a government that flip flopped on tax […]
It was inevitable that Farrar would do this, although I really hoped he wouldn’t. His post criticising Chris Carter for being in Samoa is […]
If DPF doesn’t practice Yoga already I think he should take it up. He’d be a natural. He’s so damn flexible! I’ve had […]
It seems I’ve hit a sore spot with David Farrar over the business of death threats to Sue Bradford. He’s now claiming I’ve […]
Farrar has come back with a defence of his icky and outragous ‘satire’ post that proports to be a Green press statement announcing […]
Farrar’s attacks on climate change campaigners and the Greens recently have been pretty hysterical (‘they’re going to shoot the cows!’) but now he’s […]
Over at Kiwiblog DPF has wet himself with excitement at the Field verdict. Sadly however, he doesn’t get two bullet points into his […]
It took just a few seconds, it was reasonable and considered, yet, amazingly, a suggestion from David Slack of Island Life has achieved […]
