Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, June 29th, 2014 - 34 comments
Ed Miliband is competent, has the support of his party, but has abysmal poll ratings. The right-wing British press has played a significant role. For instance a messy bacon sandwich. In New Zealand, we all know that the British press is notoriously biased and that our own press may have their own allegiances but are reasonably impartial. Which is why there are some disturbing features about the press treatment of the supposed “scandal” (as it is regularly referred to) of Donghua Liu and David Cunliffe.
Written By: - Date published: 6:25 pm, June 23rd, 2014 - 44 comments
In previous elections, the major parties have submitted lists heavily dominated by men, and this passes without comment. This year, Labour has submitted one with a slight imbalance (53:47) towards women. The reaction is sadly predictable. Misogynist reporting. Also incorrect, there is no gender rule. Not mentioned: Labour’s list is gender-balanced up to position 40; that slight imbalance comes from the bottom, unelectable end of the list and will not translate into caucus places.
Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, June 23rd, 2014 - 34 comments
John Key claimed he didn’t know about the big shift in the US-NZ surveillance relationship in 2009. Now he claims he always likes to be fully briefed on intelligence matters. Robert David Steele points the way from such anti-democratic governance & misinformation, to an open source everything revolution.
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, June 9th, 2014 - 61 comments
For the second time in as many weeks, David Farrar has lied to his readers over at kiwiblog.
Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, June 3rd, 2014 - 20 comments
One should defend the right of a politician and anyone else to be a complete dork on the net. Even Judith Collins doesn’t need two years in jail for lying to a reporter about another reporter or tweeting bullying abusive rubbish. However many would see Collins’ tweets as “part of the cut and thrust between politicians and journalists”, and they’d be right. But the fact that they would be illegal under her law shows just how awful that law is
Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, May 28th, 2014 - 16 comments
There’s been a lot of heat on Labour from the usual beat-up suspects and not a lot of light until now.
Written By: - Date published: 6:51 pm, May 14th, 2014 - 77 comments
National Party pollster David Farrar must be seeing some numbers he really doesn’t like because he is claiming that David Cunliffe photoshopped himself into a rally that he was really at! Yeah right – a doyen of the local net governing body failed to use google before making a complete dick of himself on the net. I expect we will see a lot more of National’s paid for bloggers acting like fools heading into this election because National only being good at putting us heavily into debt (again!) rather limits the good news they can write.
Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, April 18th, 2014 - 37 comments
The highs and lows and the good and bad of what was a fascinating week in Politics.
Written By: - Date published: 1:12 pm, March 6th, 2014 - 55 comments
For anyone who’s had enough of the media being footloose and fancy free with their reporting.
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, March 4th, 2014 - 33 comments
Rob Salmond at Polity points to the right wing publicists who pose as independents, set up publicity shells for nutters, and who seem to make outright lying their hallmark. Perhaps it is time that journalists start describing them as they are rather than quoting them as they prefer. They should be “blogger and National’s pollster” or “part-time lawyer and ACT supporter.”
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: 4:58 pm, March 3rd, 2014 - 5 comments
Looks like Mark Ames really has lost the plot viz a viz Glen Greenwald and ‘The Intercept’
Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, February 3rd, 2014 - 38 comments
Somehow questions about how Metiria Turei wearing clothes from expensively ravaged visage of Judith Collins seem somewhat hypocritical. But Polity politely asks the second obvious question…
Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, January 31st, 2014 - 175 comments
Blue has a look at the the gallery hacks and what they’re looking for from a politician. The answer is – not much. Political journalists do not require any special qualifications. They go to journalism school to learn how to structure an article and avoid being sued. There is no test you must pass to become a Gallery hack proving that you understand policy, economics or statistics. Their job is write ‘colour’ pieces about the ‘cut and thrust’ of politics….
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 pm, January 28th, 2014 - 8 comments
Scott gets an exclusive interview with David Cunliffe… and then goes Paddy Gower on his a#$e. Always good to be fair and balanced on the 2 sides of the House.
Written By: - Date published: 7:53 am, January 28th, 2014 - 197 comments
Following David Cunliffe’s announcement of Best Start New Zealand’s right wing took it upon themselves to show how useless and venal they are. It started with Jordon “the new Cameron Slater” Williams and the National front group Taxpayers’ Union’s eviscerating attack on “Middleclass Welfare” (honestly guys that line’s so 2007) only to blame it on” “Labour […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, January 16th, 2014 - 28 comments
Polity had this post up this morning. The only problem with it was that Rob Salmond missed out on the correct title. For complete accuracy it should have been “Jordan Williams on whine”
Update: Looks like the Herald has a retraction coming.
Written By: - Date published: 2:07 pm, December 30th, 2013 - 8 comments
Normally we’d put “ImperatorFish: ” because, well, the post come from that site and from the fertile satirical mind of Scott Yorke. But in this case it is clear that someone else must have written the post. They couldn’t get the sequence of events right and they admitted to an act that a lawyer (such a fine upstanding and moral part of community) would never admit to. Has Scott has been hacked? And why does it sound like actual Cameron Slater writing on one of his better days.
Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, December 18th, 2013 - 246 comments
The right wing NZ Herald editors, have misused their position in the news mediascape to produce some shameless, highly partisan and manipulative propaganda. They do not have the interest of all Aucklanders at heart. More considered analysis needed. Let’s wait for tomorrow’s public meeting.
Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, November 13th, 2013 - 16 comments
ImperatorFish follows the future direction of the hapless duo JT and Willie… Replacing Jim Mora? OMG….
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 pm, October 18th, 2013 - 261 comments
Of course John Palino did not know about the Len Brown Bevan Chuang relationship despite Chuang’s boyfriend who knew of the relationship being on his campaign team and despite Cameron Slater’s father being Palino’s campaign manager. Update: The Herald this morning has reported that Chuang claims to have met Palino for 90 minutes two days before the news of the affair was made public where the disclosing to Brown of the news was discussed.
Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, October 11th, 2013 - 12 comments
Maurice Williamson has apparently been proclaiming that the lower than expected population growth in the census (mostly from people fleeing his government and emigrating) means that a revision of Auckland’s infrastructure plans was needed, such as an increase in high-rise apartments and the construction of an inner-city rail loop. Bullshit. Perhaps the idiot minister should look at *where* the growth has been going…
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, September 20th, 2013 - 18 comments
The spinners in parliament and government are rather predictable. They dump their embarrassments late on a friday, preferably on a long holiday weekend or with a sporting event. I’m picking that today we will see some material dropping off the rear of DOC related to what Nick Smith saw and can no longer remember….
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, August 21st, 2013 - 29 comments
Grant Robertson & David Cunliffe explain how the GCSB Bill is bad law (especially section 8 & related sections). It doesn’t provide adequate oversight or safeguards against the wholesale spying on New Zealanders. A clarifying statement from the PM is not good law. Andrea Vance demystifies the Bill.
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, August 2nd, 2013 - 89 comments
John Key claims there are Al Qaeda-linked Kiwis in the country and in Yemen. That raises several questions: 1) why haven’t they been arrested? 2) why do you need additional spy powers, if you already have these people 3) why is the PM breaching security and jeopardising the spying on these people? 4) isn’t that an extraordinary thing to do for the sake of political point scoring?
Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, July 31st, 2013 - 64 comments
Key’s loyal retainers are trying to keep him out of the Vance spying scandal. Major players are straight-out lying. Sadly for Key, the evidence of the timeline is clear. This is his scandal, start to finish.
Written By: - Date published: 1:47 pm, July 30th, 2013 - 80 comments
David Henry did but didn’t get Andrea Vance’s phone records from Parliamentary Services and Speaker David Carter said that the information had not been disclosed but had been disclosed. And they expect us to believe that Henry did not look at the phone records despite asking for them.
Confused?
Written By: - Date published: 8:51 pm, July 17th, 2013 - 60 comments
They say you can tell a pathological liar by the fact they’re no longer just lying about the big stuff, but start telling petty, irrelevant lies that hardly even seem worth it.
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, July 14th, 2013 - 168 comments
A significant proportion of the media is now heavily invested in the narrative that David Shearer is about to be rolled as Labour leader. As Matt McCarten puts it today “Truth no longer matters” and “civil society is poorer for it”.
Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, July 10th, 2013 - 27 comments
In all its red crayon glory.
Written By: - Date published: 7:23 am, July 10th, 2013 - 238 comments
Apparently there was a coup in Labour last night. Missed it? So did Labour. Looks like what really happened was that someone played Garner / Gower. Perhaps the problem lies with relying on well-known Labour insider Cameron Slater as your source.
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