Taxpayers Union receives funding from British American Tobacco
Sam Sachdeva at Newsroom has connfirmed that the Taxpayer’s Union (*not a real union) has received funding from British American Tobacco.
spin
you couldn’t make this shit up
Karma Cameleon
Cameron Slater is seriously ill. The Whale Oil blog will carry on without him, but in the meantime, Cam is asking for help.
Family First thinks there is a Cafe porn watching crisis
Family First thinks that there is a crisis of porn watching at cafes. And has commissioned Curia to see if others think the same.
No confidence?
Live feed of the UK debate in Parliament.
National shafted us with the MOM privatisation
Five years on how are the benefits from the Mixed Ownership Model privatisation process the last Government engaged in working out?
Beware the Ides of May
It’s D Day for Theresa May’s Brexit plan. Will Jeremy Corbyn finally put her out of our misery?
David Seymour can’t handle criticism
ACT MP David Seymour has lashed out on Facebook at Dianne Khan apparently for successfully fact checking him.
President Peaches
I’m moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches! Donald Trump has yet another bizarro, almost Freudian, moment as his threat to invoke a national emergency to fund his wall falls flat. Peaches, people! Not impeachment, peaches!!!
Julian Assange and the Streisand Effect.
Wikileaks has tried to silence media organisations on behalf of Julian Assange. Why is a ‘transparency’ organisation opposed to free speech and have they made things worse for the Aussie hacker?
UPDATE: The list has been leaked. Link in post.
Farrar criticises Genter for not solving National’s transport safety mess quickly enough
David Farrar has accused Julie Anne Genter of saying she can do nothing about the road safety when she said nothing of the sort.
Political punditry in 2019
The media has recently reviewed its predictions from last year and made a few new ones. How did it go? And what is going to happen in the next 12 months?
Matt King goes full nut job
National MP Matt King has claimed that Stuff has been censoring comments that are critical of the Government and that an article expressing concerns about the run down of health infrastructure, the increase in child poverty, the use of private contractors to spy on us and the inability of NZTA to properly regulate WOF inspections is “left wing claptrap”.
The Taxpayers’ Union* responds to the Clark and Thompson spying fiasco
* not a real union.
National’s varied response to the Thompson and Clark report
Simon Bridges and Gerry Brownlee have offered diametrically opposed versions of how to respond to the crisis presented by the report into Thompson and Clark’s activities.
Trump’s smocking gun
This week in America former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen admitted electoral finance violations by using campaign money to pay off two hookers to stop them going public during the last election campaign with news about Trump’s infidelity. And Russian national Maria Butina was convicted of conspiring to infiltrate the NRA.
National’s Sroubek fizzle
National are trying to manufacture a conspiracy out of revelations that someone who knows Karel Sroubek and has met Jacinda Ardern sent her a text.
You’ve got to lively up yourself …
National have responded to the Government’s medicinal cannabis law by suggesting hordes of cancer sufferers will hang around schools smoking joints.
On the first day of leakmas …
Overheard at a Press Gallery BBQ …
Nutjobs and the UN Global Migration Pact
National and ACT have alleged that a United Nations Pact supported by New Zealand in 2016 will take away sovereign rights even though the pact itself says that it is not legally binding.
National’s dead cat strategy
National has attempted to drown out news of further leaks, bad poll results and a reference of Maggie Barry’s behaviour to the Auditor General by staging a big stink in Parliament.
Memo from Crosby Textor – National’s leak problem
The Standard has been leaked an internal memo from Crosby Textor to the National Party concerning its current situation.
National; Leaking Like a Sieve
Another day, another leak from the National Party. If it’s not JLR, just who is poking the borax inside the Tory caucus?
We’re dreaming of a White Christmas
Social media has erupted because a Santa Claus was not a fat old white guy with false facial hair.
Another National MP accused of bullying
The Herald has reported this morning on allegations of bullying being made by staff against Nati0nal MP Maggie Barry.
National wants there to be no unions
Dan Bidois this week in Parliament confirmed what we have always known, that National want there to be no unions around.
TERFed Out: UPDATED
Labour MP Louisa Wall has written an opinion piece in response to Herald columnist Rachel Stewart’s attack earlier in the week on the trans community and their LGBTIQ+ allies. It’s very good.
UPDATE: Rachel Stewart, as predicted, has blocked me on twitter. But not before going full on racist.
The strange case of the missing text from Bridges’ speech
National’s social media team have sent out a tweet with a quote from Simon Bridges that does not appear in the speech that he gave.
Bridges believes fictional character is definitely a male
Simon Bridges is going for the under 10 misogynist vote by claiming that Santa Claus is definitely a man.
Bridges Billion dollar bungle
Simon Bridges has claimed that Labour’s Kiwisaver fund is $18 billion short of the amount needed to meet the Government’s goals of constructing ten thousand Kiwibuild houses a year. The claim has as much credibility as National’s claim that Labour’s budget figures had an $11.5 billion hole in them.
Another day and more Simon Bridges f*&k ups
Simon Bridges has in the last 24 hours blamed Labour law changes for increasing rentals but has forgotten which ones, and has disagreed that an apology is owed to the families of the Pike River miners on the 8th anniversary of the disaster.
Go Bus Lockout; Hypocrites Ngai Tahu and Tainui Screw Workers
Ngai Tahu and Tainui remind us that they like exploiting working people as much as the next capitalist. They’ve locked out their Waikato bus drivers for asking to be paid the Living Wage.
Will Andrew Little be responsible if the Pike River mine gets hit by a meteor?
Stacy Kirk has made the outlandish claim that Andrew Little is prepared to risk someone’s life in his desire to have the Pike River mine properly investigated.
All that is wrong with America’s democracy
In Georgia, despite the Repbublican candidate who oversaw the election process engaging in the mass disenfranchisement of Democrat voters, the removal of voting machines to make voting in Democrat areas more difficult and baseless smearing of the Democrat candidate, the result is on a knife edge and a second vote is a possibility.
Rude ‘n Terrible?
Trump’s…I don’t actually have words for this little escapade.
Proxy Music
Jami-Lee Ross has passed his proxy vote to NZ First, elevating waka jumping to an Olympic sport. How bad does it have to get before the Tory caucus puts Simon Bridges out of his misery?
Simon’s sure fire way to deal with difficult questions
Simon’s strategy is that cunning you could be tempted to pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.