As Shane Jones makes a complete dick of himself in public yet again in a traditional display of Labour party backbench egotism. I’m left shaking my head at the apparent complete inability of the Labour caucus to settle down to the task of being an effective opposition.
Yesterday the ‘sphere was all a-twitter with reaction to John Armstrong’s rant at “parasitical bloggers”. On this and many other topics, do yourself a favour, go read Gordon Campbell.
Greenpeace has a case in front of the Court of Appeal today. It is going to be important for any number of small charities who do some advocacy work that may be considered to be ‘political’.
But Greenpeace deserves a resounding cheer for taking this case when it is far more important to other advocates from poverty groups to churches to climate deniers than it is to themselves.
My father was a dog-trialler, and a very good one. As a kid, I loved going to the trials. I heard a lot of dog-whistles, and Dad won a lot of short-heads. The political dog-whistle is a different matter.
Stayed up last night to watch Robert Jay QC question Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson enquiry. It was riveting – you can see why top lawyers like Jay are called silks. Murdoch denied, deferred, demeaned, derided and defended but couldn’t help himself – ended up with more damage than control. This affair has more legs than a millipede.
Dr. Don Brash has pulled out of a debate on Treaty issues to be held on TV3’s ‘The Nation’. Which is curious considering Act’s ‘one law for all’ policy is directly concerned with treaty issues. Average Joe points out his take on why Act isn’t there. Plaudits to The Nation for having the debate, brickbats to Act for avoiding the debate – at least send along the person who knows the policy….
How journalists make a hypothetical question based on a nutty claim and manufacture a sensational headline out of it. The really sensational headline is that western journos appear to have picked up the story from that world renowned nutter Anthony Watts raving about a fictional war between Russia and Poland. It looks like you can only rely on hard checked science news from some of the rational blogs, and a Chinese news agency…
One of the strange things about helping to run a left blog like this is looking at the varied opinions of those on the left of the political spectrum, and then looking at the monolithic opinions that the right seem to have of the left. I was musing on this while reading Matt McCarten’s excellent Saturday article. Now you have to understand that Matt and myself are almost at the ends of the spectrum when it comes to politics on the left….
One of these things is not like the other, One of these things is not quite the same. Can you guess which one […]
After picking up my award for worst ever ‘Standard’ post title, I’d just like to say that there seems to a penchant these days to leave too many things up to higher powers, or perceived authorities. And authorities and those who are ideologically aligned with them or reliant upon them, naturally enough encourage such a giving away of agency. It’s not always deliberate. And it’s certainly not a conspiracy. It’s just the way it is and is borne of habit. This morning afforded a fairly clear example of it.
At last, the left has its own version of Investigate magazine. As you might expect it’s a bit saner and better substantiated than anything […]
The current incumbent of the Bagehot column at The Economist is stepping down with a few relevant comments about current relationships ebtween the politicians, journos, and the public.
The opinions could have been written about the poor state of journalism here.
National’s 2008 election victory was undoubtedly a great success for the Party. Just two terms after humiliating defeat under the leadership of Bill English, […]
Adrian Orr and Brian Fallow‘s pieces on the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and the economics of long-term investment in a declining market. A+ […]
Trevor Mallard for getting himself into one of those complex, multi-blog conversations and pulling it off. A Started when he commented on a Kiwiblog post […]
The praiseworthy and the pitiful is our weekly post on the little things that caught our eye but didn’t lead to a full […]
Lockwood Smith managing of Question Time. B. Lockwood has made a commendable effort to get ministers to answer questions and cut down on […]
The praiseworthy and a pitiful is a weekly compilation of some of the comments we’ve seen around the traps that warrant some response, […]
Last year, we had The Standard Week as a regular feature on a Friday. We might resurrect that if there is popular demand but, […]
