The recent handling of Charlie Hebdo by the Standard and by Kiwiblog provides a startling contrast. And neatly underlies the reality that the left wing blogs are in no way just the same as the right wing blogs despite what John Key may say.
At last, some of our conservative short-term thinkers have woken up to the elephant in the room with the SkyCity convention centre subvention. Years late and their previous support has cost taxpayers dearly already. Perhaps they could learn to read reports? And think before committing us to be suckers?
On the eve of Christmas in a cynical attempt to avoid political damage the Government has apologised to Andrea Vance for breaching her rights of privacy in 2013 after requiring Parliamentary Services to hand over her metadata and attempting to cover up the exercise.
As the matter seems to be heading for trial now is a good time for the audio from the teapot tapes to be released.
Tim Groser and National have a plan to solve global warming so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
A year ago National rammed through special housing areas promising 9000 homes consented in the first year under it. Over the last year they have managed to build 5 and consented 294. Nick Smith fails maths yet again. This year 13,000 – yeah right!
Good news citizens! The National government has revealed unto us today the cause of poverty and inequality.
Eminem is suing the National Party for breaching his copyright in the song “Lose yourself” used by National in its campaign video. Stephen Joyce previously claimed that National had the full rights to use it. But it appears that this may not be the case. Update: There may be some interesting legal issues for National if it loses in terms of its spending cap and the Electoral Commission broadcast allocation.
The Jackal cleared up some more strange tweeting behaviour from Matthew Hooton. It appears that he has been tweeting that he has heard from a “left source” that The Standard have the last whaledumps. Yeah right…. Perhaps he should ask before making a fool of himself.
Nationals hypothetical tax cut package has not gone down well. People do not appear to like the fact that it is small, hypothetical, and irresponsible, all at once.This is what you get when you have a prime minister so weakly desperate for public approval that they make up policy by accident and then push that poor decision through their cabinet and caucus.
Two weeks to go and polls suggest that National’s slide in the poll may be arrested. But for how long?
Pity the political reporter. Committed to horse-race style reporting and desperate for an ‘angle’. Patrick Gower on 3 News last night was desperately talking up how “complicated’ National’s… current arrangements are?? Use your brain Paddy…
The Sunday Star Times has reported on the Hotchin – Slater attack on SFO boss Adam Feeley. The email which caused John Key to effectively sack Judith Collins as a Minister was provided by Cathy Odgers. The intent was to put off a SFO/FMA investigation into Hotchin. This is third world stuff.
The latest Dominion Post contains survey data on people’s responses to Dirty Politics but attempts to manufacture a message by quoting selected interviews suggesting that Labour and not National have been hurt by Hager’s revelations. The headlines though are that half of all New Zealanders think less highly of John Key and 7.9% of voters are considering changing their vote. National should be afraid.
How did @peace’s offensive song from 2013 suddenly become topical news? Why the usual suspects of course…
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.
So the book is an expose of the Slater-Ede-Key Dirty Politics machine, based on data acquired and leaked to Hager. Will Update: Update: Hager to be on Campbell Live tonight.
It’s been interesting to watch the nats and their busy little helpers working away at branding the election campaign as a nasty one.
It’s been disappointing to watch the media falling for it so hard.
During every revolution there will be winners and losers, change can mean pain for some, especially for the bloodsucking leaches & parasites, that […]
The extent that the National minister have been pork-barreling the roading budget for their electorates is crazy. The OIA’s show that most of the $212 million announced by John Key at the National party conference is pure pork for ministers. They are assessed as costing more money to build than they will ever produce in benefits, even using NZTA’s infamously overoptimistic assessments. National MPs and Ministers want to be seen as delivering something for their electorates before the election. So much for assessing needs based on merits. They must be really worried about this election to misuse so much pork.
The Herald is saying some weird things about David Cunliffe and Labour’s Clutha Southland candidate Liz Craig.
Over the weekend we learned that police had been juking the stats, recoding burglaries as “incidents” to make themselves and their Minister look good. But its all fine now, supposedly – the police claim they’ve instituted a series of spot audits to ensure it can never happen again. Except when they’re asked for information about these supposed safeguards and whether they’ve uncovered any problems, they suddenly can’t find anything… Sounds like bullshit and spin.
There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics. And then there’s writing a beat-up story and providing none of the numbers needed to back it up at all.
Updated: Other bloggers commenting on the ‘maths’
National is claiming that Immigration NZ’s decision to allow Kim Dotcom to stay was made without any political pressure being applied. But it was the decision of the SIS to remove its block on Dotcom’s application that let the approval be granted. Why did the SIS remove its block and who applied the political pressure?
Greenpeace has been told by the Electoral Commission that its Climate Voter Website requires third party authorisation and that a cap on the amount that can be spent applies. There is an exception in the law if the site is a “news media” site which is paradoxically the same defence Cameron Slater is running in his case against Matt Blomfield justifying his refusal to disclose who his informant is. The sense of irony is strong here …
The Herald is reporting that direct political pressure was applied on Immigration NZ to grant Kim Dotcom and his family residence in New Zealand. And the SIS tried to block the application but dropped their objection after being told there was “political pressure”.
Updated with more links
If the aims of National/ACT’s education policy were, genuinely, to to improve the learning, education and career choices for our children, including the ones that are failing at present, they would not be following policies which have signally failed to achieve any of these goals, anywhere else they have been tried.
The Herald needs to explain why they think they can print anti-democratic lies and get away with it.
Make them answer. Make a complaint.
Ok, so according to the NZ Herald Donhua Liu is alleging that a fund raiser was held on Sunday 3rd of June 2007.
That is the Sunday in the middle of Queens birthday weekend. To say that is hardly credible is an understatement. No-one schedules fund-raisers on Sunday. They certainly don’t do it in a long weekend. And can’t the journalists at the Herald read a calendar?
Updated: This mornings Herald story looks like being more about face saving than accuracy, and the interview on Morning Report make the journalistic process at the Herald look even more dodgy.
In Kiwiblog this morning, David Farrar appeared to be running a 9th floor pre-pump for John Banks to resign. But I was rather incredulous when I read this “I don’t think the Judge has actually helped the Government by delaying the decision on entering a conviction. Now that it is the Judge’s role to care about the impact on the Government.”. Huh? DPF badly needs to go back to do some adult education. Perhaps to night school?
There is no housing crisis. Everything is fine.
A tiny surplus. After six years. And how much does New Zealand owe six years later? That’s right Seventy Five Billion Dollars. Mayby it […]
Despite having never presided over a budget surplus and despite the nearly tripling of core crown gross debt John Key is talking about the possibility of future tax cuts.
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.
It’s called “Cabinet Club” but National claims Ministers aren’t actually acting as Ministers when they use it to raise money.
Which is why they called it “Cabinet Club” and not something with Ministerial connotations like… um… “Cabinet Club”
Cameron Slater is spinning that an informal question of a police minister about staff leave entitlements by an opposition MP is the same as a Minister effectively requiring the review of a police prosecution of a National Party donor. There is a sense of desperation emanating from the right over the Oravida issue … Update – and John Key appears to be displeased that Collins has brought a TVOne reporter into the debate …
