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6:00 am, August 18th, 2026 - 75 comments
Categories: open mike -
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Bishop says that he can't pause fast-track developments because of the law. Is he ‘avin a laff?
"The housing and infrastructure minister says he can't legally pause fast-tracked housing developments…..Bishop said the fast-track system was designed to facilitate developments that are out of sequence, so the system was working as intended."
"Out of sequence" means slamming houses into places that the District Plan and Spatial Plan said were inappropriate in terms of infrastructure, traffic and landscape values. These plans catered for enough houses around Queenstown until 2052.Fast-track was never needed.
He put the dumb fast-track law in-he can repeal it.
The Queenstown mayor was clearly exasperated on Morning Report today.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019048044/mayor-fears-residents-will-bear-brunt-of-fast-track-costs
Well that Mayor can be gloriously exasperated all he likes.
He needs to go have a chat with the barely-alive Warren Cooper, because Cooper actually stared the Muldoon government down five decades ago and said I will actively block new commercial development until the government funds the infrastructure we need. Three new hotels were held up as a result.
And the government caved. And they also gifted Queenstown with chunks of land that were to be sold off for future public work purchases.
Not many mayors in living history have that kind of chutzpah.
The last one of note was Mayor Len Brown, who commissioned the first 800 metres of City Rail Link 20m deep and 14m wide up Albert Street, and basically shamed the government into completing the rest.
The government signed up to the whole thing in October 2016.
The Queenstown Mayor is I am sure lovely, but if he is to be more than performative he needs to develop and utilise real political levers. They are not hard to invent in Queenstown.
"Massive faux pas" – oops!
Goldsmith too busy now.
"Defence industry sources say Goldsmith has made a massive faux pas in cancelling New Zealand’s attendance."
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361021326/coup-collateral-new-defence-minister-cancels-lucrative-meeting-japan-australia
That goes beyond dumb and approaches treasonous.
It is a awe inspiring short-term screw-up even by this governments standards – which includes their massively expensive and very late cook strait ferry debacle that has a good probability of cutting teh freight transport links between the islands.
At present, defence has no associate minister since Penk just got moved from that position before being fired. That means the Goldsmith is the only possible person to send.
Who are the associate ministers who can handle those other appointments for other ministries?
Defence is a core function of the state and is scheduled for some massive investment. This meeting is where the local defence companies hook up with the offshore ones to make that happen. This is especially in areas like drones and maritime.
Just another case of Luxon and his cabinet mismanaging New Zealand's critical functions.
"approaches treasonous"?
Aren't we getting just a little bit carried away?
Time you were alwyn – you weren't up with the play last century and no hope of catching up now. Relax, and retire take up playing poker instead and what your lose will be your own assets.
Right now we’re
Have they asked Judith Collins if she’s free? She might still be on National’s pay-list as a ‘casual’.
No ex-National Party MP is ever free; they all charge exorbitant fees for their valuable advice; see Bill English et al. Their party pays them handsomely for their wisdom.
Quote of the week
“We have seen a huge increase in price hagglers, low ballers and time wasters since the coalition came to power,”
Felicity Maera-Wallace
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361021447/christopher-luxons-advice-struggling-dominatrix
I feel her pain.
I worry she would hear your safe word.
I'm from the left so my safe word is Harder!
Dang! I wrote, "wouldn't" and my auto-correct did its job wrongly.
Perhaps how it first appeared is more freudian?
And now we have the latest eruption from the Tourets Syndrome US President – to bomb Oman because they dare to voice an opinion that is not 100% in favour of Trump.
Trump gets more and more unstable as time goes by and yet the American people seem paralysed as to how to deal with it.
O, man! The guy's an idiot!
Mercurio, if you keep this up, I'm going to make a formal request to the moderators, to have you BANNED!
I'll do my best to make sure I deserve it!
No, no Mercurio should, have a band. Here is Andre Rieu showing the way. (In this vid imagine a better, modern, good, kindly, musical, mass leader.)
'Taken from the DVD Love in Maastricht,' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgYyBwnCDPo
Andre Rieu puts on spectacular shows
Find me another Andre Rieu for PM. (As in Groucho Marx' comment on instructions for implements that can be operated by a child of five. His immediate thought – 'Find me a child of five'.)
The American spirit and pride will rise again. They just need more trombones and to get back to 1962. (The Simpsons redid this with a message for us as well as the US with the Springfield Monorail.)
An excellent opinion piece from Ian Taylor today attacking the figures and rationale behind the 'little sh*ts" comment from Paul Henry.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361021142/stark-education-numbers-behind-paul-henrys-little-s-soundbite
Taylor examines the comparisons Henry used, and most tellingly puts it all down to where the government puts its priorities. He sees the priorities as expenditure on education and on feeding school children.
Taylor gives these figures on what we spend in NZ on education per child? $US9,472 whereas Finland spent US$13,465, Norway: US$19,797 and Switzerland US$21,091.
He finishes with this- "When 15-year-olds were asked whether they had gone without food because there wasn’t enough money at home, the answers were telling.
Finland: 2.7%. Switzerland: 6.7%. New Zealand: 14.1%.
And that's when those “little shits” walk into our classrooms."
Later in my career as a school teacher I dealt with boys who had been dismissed from class. One of my first questions was what have you eaten today? A boy who had had no breakfast, who drank sugar drinks and ate pies and boston buns at morning break, was a common scenario.
Cold and under-dressed, underfed, sleep-deprived kids…….his figures are indeed telling.
Elderly people who eat badly; not enough fibre, no fruit etc. can end up only able to produce "rabbit droppings" during their rare visits to the toilet.
Paul Henry, by choosing "little shits" as a descriptor for children, inadvertently reveals the state of his own digestive system, imo.
Why are you surprised? We aren't nearly as rich as a either Norway or Switzerland so of course they have more to spend.
As a percentage of GDP/head the figures for education spend you quote are NZ 18.20%, Finland 22.24%, Norway 18.69% and Switzerland 16.71%. We are below Finland, equal to Norway and ahead of Switzerland. Switzerland doesn't concentrate spending on education. It just has more to spend.
If we were to concentrate on increasing our GDP/head rather than crippling industry we would have more to spend on things like education wouldn't we?
You could cancel just one useless RONS and feed those children for years.
We have the money.
I'll not quibble with you over the choice of countries for comparison.
They were countries chosen by Paul Henry himself. See paragraph 8ff.
As for us being poorer than those you cite. Taylor anticipated this when he wrote- "Henry then went on to inform us that we had to accept that New Zealand is now a poor country.
That, I guess, depends on which side of the poverty line you sit when you make that observation."
And also I would argue, poorer or not, it's a question of priority. Children's nutrition or tax breaks? Education or (insert here whatever you think is a government folly).
Priority. Who comes first? Who is more important, vulnerable, needy?
Islam has a tax system called zakat. It is levied on Muslim with assets above about $300,000, is levied at 2.5% of assets( there are exceptions) above that figure and is paid to, and this is the important part,
That is an example in my eyes of truly prioritised expenditure.
Thanks mac1 for keeping us up to the mark with things that we should be most concerned with. These could be listed as –
Here are two racist shits shown dancing on the grave of Jason Arday, the black Cambridge professor. He killed himself the other day after a UK media pile-on that amplified (since discredited) rumours of plagarism about his PhD. They were first ‘leaked’ on social media by the smirker on the left.
https://bsky.app/profile/luxjude352.bsky.social/post/3mtb2afnpgk2y
I hope this clip hounds them for the rest of their lives. Those that live by spreading shit on SM should have their own reputations die in the same manner.
counter narrative:
Arday was a plagarist and fantasist (haven't seen any discrediting of the major MSM reporting on this)
He was enabled to rise so far beyond his capabilities because of unrestrained left identitarianism melding with neolilberalism
Earlier attempts to write about him were suppressed. This left the vacuum for the academic racist Cofnas to write his post that led to the spiralling pile on by MSM and SM
Ardays suicide is tragic af, and terrible for his family.
Since then, factions have rushed to defend various positions. Some people seem aware enough to learn lessons from the complex dynamics, others not so much. Some people just don't care about Arday's life, or believe he made his bed and should lie in it. Other people double down on the identitarianism and portray this as a tragedy of racism alone, as if it can't be true that Cofnas is racist and Arday was a plagriarist and fantasist.
We (the left) really need to have a conversation about identitarianism. Everyone needs to have conversation about complex responsibility in an age of mass media.
No denying Arday's fantacism. And neurodiversity. But he was also respected and liked by those with whom he worked. His PhD university defended him against the plagarism charge, and Cambridge provided legal support to suppress an article in Higher Education supplement. They would have dropped him like a hot potato if he was useless and a complete liar.
You can throw up examples of white academics in the Oxbridge system who have survived similar charges without fuss. The plagarism rumour was leaked by a white eugenecist who wasn't kept on at Cambridge. The key point is he was mobbed by UK opinion columnists because of his colour.
From a vigil service organised by Stand Up to Racism with 30,000 attendees in London:
'The statement referenced Arday’s work setting up mentoring schemes and mental health support for students and academics of colour. It said: “He worked tirelessly to inspire all students from marginalised backgrounds to believe that academia could also belong to them. He did not inspire one or two people to do a PhD; there are dozens of us over generations who have dreamed and are now doctors and soon-to-be professors because of him.” '
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/17/tens-of-thousands-pay-tribute-jason-arday-trafalgar-square-vigil
You're describing the problem that this scandal revealed. The issue isn't so much Arday's academic fraud as the fact that it was no impediment to enjoying the respect of his colleagues, or to being put in charge of fee-paying students, or to being made a professor at Cambridge, or to having Cambridge back him in trying to sue a journalist for doing their job.
Except he was, and they didn't. Again, this is the actual problem the scandal raises.
Not quite so simple Weka. He was found not guilty of deliberate plagiarism. This from Wiki:
Having been alerted to allegations of plagiarism in Arday's PhD thesis in 2025, Liverpool John Moores University—who had awarded him his PhD—set up a misconduct panel. Arday did not dispute the allegations of plagiarism, but said he had not received adequate supervision given his autism and learning disabilities, and described the allegations against him as being part of an "insidious and relentless" strategy to undermine black academics. Accepting that there were problems with Arday's supervision, the panel concluded that the similarities between Arday's thesis and an earlier PhD thesis by another academic were the result of "honest and reasonable error", not deliberate plagiarism, and were "well within the accepted range of compliance with the academic standards of the time".[
"Arday did not dispute the allegations of plagiarism…"
No denying Arday's fantacism. And neurodiversity. But he was also respected and liked by those with whom he worked. His PhD university defended him against the plagarism charge, and Cambridge provided legal support to suppress an article in Higher Education supplement. They would have dropped him like a hot potato if he was useless and a complete liar.
You can throw up examples of white academics in the Oxbridge system who have survived similar charges without fuss. The plagarism rumour was leaked by a white eugenecist who wasn't kept on at Cambridge.
The key point is he was mobbed by UK opinion columnists because of his colour, and that cannot be denied, nothing to do with identitarianism, because every day that press shamelessly slanders migrants, trans people, muslims, whatever 'outrage du jour' their owners want to push.
It's not identitarianism or social media, or Jason Arday who are on trial here, it's the toxic UK press amplifying fascist messaging.
The clip is vile, and shows two white supremecists who believe that neither Arday, nor anyone of his skin colour could ever deserve to get a 'real degree'. That's all I put up, while making the point that social media is a two-edged sword.
I’d add Prince Harry to that list targetted by the UK Press as an example too. I have a lot of sympathy for Harry and Megan, as people under immense and malevolent scrutiny, after reading 'Spare'.
100% and I'm so happy you mentioned identity politics and neoliberalism, because I've thought for a long time that identity politics is just the kinder face of individualist neoliberalism. Idpol doesn't challenge the economic status quo, it doesn't talk about class or universalism which is why corporations have gone all in on it.
His suicide is tragic but he was a plagerist who lost his job, let's not forget the institutions that allowed him to reach his position still need to be held accountable for putting him there in the first place. His suicide cannot allow these institutions or the ideology that put him there to remain unchecked
Too many on the left have brought into identity politics, we need to move on, back to universalism, if an idea is backed by corporations, doesn't challenge or address the the economic status quo, doesn't unify but puts people into individualist boxes it's not an idea the left should champion
In a nutshell for me, why the disparagement of 'identity politics' and 'identitarianism' is generally a mask for racist or sexist, or anti-"DEI" positions, is set out in the last sentence of the second paragraph in the quote below.
"Importantly, identity politics has always been a reaction to liberalism, although both frameworks have the same end goals of equality and ending oppression. A liberal approach to social justice sees the demand for political equality as emanating from a shared human dignity. As such, it de-emphasises difference. If only we look past the superficial things that divide us, we’re told, we see a common humanity. It washes away any justifications for discrimination on the basis of race, gender or orientation.
But liberalism can tend to mask the circumstances that make us need liberating in the first place. By focusing on universalism – the ways in which you and I are the same – I may well become more aware of our shared human equality and less sensitive to how different our lived experiences may be. So the forms of privilege I enjoy and you lack remain invisible to me."
I consider if you're anti identity politics, you are by extension against Treaty provisions, such as the Maori health authority. You are a fellow-traveller of Seymour and Peters and the Nats on this issue. The forms of privilege you enjoy remain invisible to you.
https://ethics.org.au/putting-the-identity-into-identity-politics/
And it’s the nastiest assignment of reasons for targetted policies: to pull a fast one on me. Me and mine somehow lose out if you are given a boost to even things up.
Now the can of worms is opened regarding the facts of Arday's ‘sins’, I feel honour-bound to follow through. Bylines news co-op offers the best journalism the UK has these days.
This article is the best-detailed and -fact checked of those covering accusations against Arday. As importantly, it also identifies his accusers and those who fund them.
The UK mainstream press and commentators mobbing Arday are a flock of Chinese whisperers in comparison.
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/08/18/the-peter-thiel-linked-race-science-network-that-penetrated-cambridge-university-and-targeted-jason-arday/
Stephanie Lamey adds extra info on the accuser/funder context.
https://bsky.app/profile/stephlamy.bsky.social/post/3mtdjj6vnf227
The UK’s Free Speech Union have their fingers all over this.
By the way, Arday's research area included quantifying the disadvantages and institutional hurdles faced by women and minorities in academia and the education sector.
tWig You mentioned Arday and I looked him up yesterday. My conclusion is that he was one of another country's self-involved talking points and a side issue even in his country.
We have so many issues that directly relate to our future and deteriorating present, country and society, and they need all our thoughts and time. And those of us attempting to think are a minority percentage. Can you please stick to those existential topics and not deflect precious thought onto personality brouhaha like any amoral news communicator pretending it has moral considerations?
My comment builds on joe90's post at TS the other day https://thestandard.nz/open-mike-16-08-2026/#comment-2069983, on the number of UK press articles associated wirh Arday's death. I did not open this topic, but am continuing it.
This mobbing is very similar in structure to that of Benjamin Doyle. Additionally, the UK press and media completely steer the political discourse in the UK. If we don’t watch ourselves, we’ll be there too, soon enough.
Carole Cadwalladr on the digital lynching of Arday.
https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/a-digital-lynching?r=nv9u6&utm_medium=ios
Good one, ta. Again, I wish heartily that those who live by the smear get a really big taste of it themselves.
More in-depth vindication of Arday', with receipts building on the claims in the Bylines article.
Gee, actual fact-checked journalism.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jason-ardays-marathon-challenge-and-football-claims-found-be-true-after-his-death
The elephant in the room is that the tech bros are enabling plagiarism on an industrial scale via AI.
They are scraping every corner of the internet for information to feed into these AI Tumours irrespective of prior ownership or copyright, and lately literally feeding books into them
Thereby making anyone using AI vulnerable to claims of plagiarising the work of other people, in my opinion.
Thank you juicemedia for your truthful short takedown of data centres ("Authorized by Sarah Connor") in that first link.
As one comment says, "“Built to house your digital prison"
And Techspot for the second link. "AI firms are quietly buying and destroying millions of printed books to train their models"
https://youtu.be/kON2ZI2BNj8?si=smTptOrEtnQaz3Xe
The nobility of the whistleblower…
'In an interview with conservative media personality Rob Montz, posted to YouTube on the day Arday died, Cofnas admitted what happened to Arday was not really about plagiarism, which he noted is common in academia, but about his “exalted position”. He goes on to fantasise about one day becoming head of a department of race science and eugenics at Harvard.'
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/8/17/jason-ardays-death-is-institutional-murder
The world is going pear shaped and something good pops up.
MedievalistMatt
Aug 15
Exactly what I had in mind
https://x.com/medievalistmatt/status/2088240657085129014
Winston Peters shows up National as simply wasting volumes of taxpayer funding on yet another study on replacing the Auckland Harbour Bridge:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361021614/winston-calls-governments-harbour-bridge-decision-gross-waste-money
Inside NZTA they have been modelling and designing a tunnel for well over a decade. Winston will be holding out for a rail-enabled design. And who knows he might just get it.
I'm getting to the point where I don't think that any of the parties actually want to have a project underway. Since the potential cost of making the 'wrong' decision is too high.
I think that Wayne Brown's tantrum over his Meola Reef proposal (which has been comprehensively rejected in multiple studies over at least the last 30 years) – should have just been ignored.
I think that we are well past the point where business cases are needed. Auckland needs a replacement for the current harbour bridge. And this needs to be underway now.
Perhaps this is an example of something which is too big an issue to be left to the government (any government)- since the costs are so great that they will constrain the operations of subsequent governments over at least the next decade (based on the slow pace of delivery of infrastructure projects in NZ).
A cross-party committee, should be formed to hammer out the best proposal for Auckland. And, yes, it will be difficult and challenging for all parties. But they need to learn to co-operate for the benefit of NZ; not to engage in adversarial point-scoring.
I know, I'm dreaming……
I'm in complete agreement with you.
No it does not mean you are dreaming.
I think Auckland should go slow on another harbour bridge. Instead reduce the traffic in clever ways on the present one, and set up ferries to more northern places taking a few cars or other vehicles. Have small ones for passengers nipping across the harbour (Kestrel I remember you).
Also have a service for workers going back and forth to Waiheke Island and a midday service there and back. Take over the present businesses playing around with the residents there. Cut out free travel for gold card oldies, and give young adults and parents options of low fares. And stop thinking that 'we want it, must have it, and deserve what we decide is our right'. Santa Claus has gone for efficiency and will call only every two years unless certain intelligence comes to him of exemplary administrative and fiscal behaviour.
While reducing traffic is always something for consideration – the current harbour bridge has a lifespan. According to different interpretations we are somewhere between halfway to 3/4 through – the answer depends on different traffic scenarios. But, at some point in the next few decades, the current bridge will cease to be usable for heavy traffic (which includes buses). And, given the delays on completion of major infrastructure projects in NZ – if we want a solution, then we need to begin implementing it now. We've already seen what happens when the AHB is closed (completely or partially) – and it's not pretty.
Ferries can only ever be a minuscule contribution to passenger traffic (and I say this as someone who used them for commuting when I worked in the CBD). The Northern busway – which has been the outstanding bang-for-buck public transport initiative in Auckland over the last 40 years – currently carries tens of thousands of passengers per day. Only a very tiny percentage of the highly wealthy ones (who can afford waterfront living in the Shore suburbs) – would be potential ferry customers. All of the rest have to cross the harbour via bridge. Diverting these across the current Upper Harbour bridge would create traffic chaos – and add hours to people's commute daily.
Waiheke Island is a minor diversion. The population is insignificant compared to the whole of the North Shore and further up the Island. And it's overwhelmingly highly wealthy. I really don't think they need any further public transport favours.
The initial goldcard provision was intended to operate outside working hours (say 9-3) – when the buses are running, but they are not full. I wouldn't be opposed to giving uni-students the same (if they are traveling outside peak hours). Having been a parent in Auckland – the vast inconvenience of the public transport system (getting you to where you need to go, when you need to be there), outweighs any price incentive. PT in Auckland works well to get workers/students into the CBD. It is poorly designed, and performs poorly, for any other use case.
Part of the problem is that the decision-makers don't live and work in Auckland, and really have no comprehension of the size and scale of Auckland traffic issues. Really, no, we don't have the option to just ride a bike.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/1042870/transport-minister-chris-bishop-defends-commissioning-another-auckland-harbour-crossing-report
Winnie forgetting he is part of the govt when it suits him, Maybe he was asleep when this was discussed.
Now Stanford berates her staff for "milling around" in Parliament's Banqueting Hall while her failed coup was taking place.
The staff obviously knew it was all on for Stanford, but she blames them regardless. Who will want to work for her now?
I nearly choked on my muesli yesterday when Stanford came out with her lies, denying she had organised a bid to become PM and pledging support for Luxon.
For once I agree with the racist:
"It comes as New Zealand First leader Winston Peters wades in, laughing at the suggestion now-sacked minister Chris Penk was behind a “one-man coup” as has been asserted by Luxon"
Stanford went under before the meeting and stayed submerged for a long time after the meeting because she didn’t want to give away anything. Once the seas had clamed a little, she surfaced for air and declared her support to the
NakedBald Emperor, belatedly.Parliament is having an urgent debate on Penk's sacking. Hipkins has just been saying that Penk was obviously the fall guy, and also having a go at Luxon's record.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360968485/parliament-tv-livestream
Simeon Brown now up.
I thought Simeon Brown had remained seated while he spoke, but then I realised…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361021810/ministers-apologise-after-appalling-error-stopped-15000-winter-energy-payments
Idiots
Just when Luxon had a shot at starting the political week afresh, instead this story is on 1 News, TV3, and RNZ which is where all that old demographic sit down in their cold cold winter to get their news.
Of the 11 weeks remaining to regain this election, Luxon just lost 1.
Luixon has just 10 weeks left to right his ship.
Well, he's tried dumping some ballast (Penk) but there's still a big list (that no Nat MP wants to be on come Election Day).
Next, he'll be commanding the band to strike up something stirring to take everyone's mind off what's on the horizon.
The Luxxon Valdez.
Slick comment, Incognito.
Yay, Hipkins, Davidson and Waititi, for giving credit to a member of the opposite side, because of that man's overall integrity of character and the unjust way he was treated.
Churchill said something similar about Rommell, for having the guts to try to remove Hitler, and paying the price for doing so.
To be fair, Luxon is certainly not Hitler. But, whether he admits it or not, he is wanted out not only by those who oppose him, but by enough of his own people that he had to call them all to Wellington to find out who.
Surely, enough of the country can see that now?
If I was Penk, I would see the light and vote Left. He is still an MP. It might be a nice gesture to offer him a chair away from his true opposition, on the other side of the chamber.
Isn't it amazing how so many people on the left side of politics suddenly start announcing how wonderful someone on the other side of politics was after they have quit.
I noticed on this blog how MICKYSAVAGE was so impressed by him when he said a few days ago that
"Chris Penk has been a hardworking and dedicated Minister and my impression of him as an MP is that he is perhaps the best National MP I have ever engaged with. In my life I have never seen a National MP so receptive to his local communities as Penk. Chris’ Christian views jarred with me but as an MP his dedication to the job I could not fault.".
I may have a bad memory but I can't remember anything like this that he said in the whole time Penk was an MP. Now we have Hipkins, Davidson and Waititi following the same path.
It reminds me of an early episode of Yes Prime Minister when Jim Hacker's predecessor dies suddenly and Jim, who had just been berating him for proposing to publish his memoirs which scorned Hacker now lauds him as a great, dead, statesman. Isn't it amazing how quickly, and completely, ones views can change?
Life imitating the screen or the screen imitating life? Love Yes Minister.
Why do you say "on the left" when you mean all politicians?
Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, James Shaw … they want to destroy our economy, do such terrible things that our children will live in fear!
And then, outstanding people of great integrity and principle.
There's bound to be one good person on the other team, alwyn, you'll have to admit and when they get the Spanish Archer because of their integrity, honesty and so on, all qualities we on this side of the mid-line value, we speak out in support of them, as we've done with that lovely Mr Penk. It will no doubt transpire that he was somehow tricked into joining the National Party and was being blackmailed or something along those lines, to keep him there. He saw, in the collapse of the National Party through Luxon's ineptitude, an opportunity to escape, while maintaining his integrity, as a diamond tossed into a cess-pit does, and so it all unfolded. Luxon unwittingly setting free his best MP and kabang! shooting himself in both feet at the same time, winging Bishop and Stanford seriously and shredding the tenuous credibility that Simeon squeeze-me-and-watch-my-eyes-pop-out Brown and Marksman Mitchell had left.
Nuff said, Tony Veitch'll be fizzing'!
Yes, Alwyn, we already know that you’re prone to logical fallacies.
FYI, absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence.
It’s called bias & selective (or false) memory. It’s a thing.
I'm reading Catherine Cookson alwyn, she is a good writer aware of social niceties and class behaviour. The proper way to speak of the dead is always to speak of them as praiseworthy about something.
Here's my take on it, Alwyn,
One's views haven't changed at all.
Assuming Penk still supports the National ideology, I will still say I don't support his ideology or, from that, his management of his portfolios.
However, I and others are happy to uphold him as a person of integrity who, although I don't respect his ideals, I respect his track record of fair dealings and all that goes with that.
Alwyn, it's called "playing the ball and not the person".
Hagar, in his book Dirty Politics or Hollow Men, calls National out for often playing the person, not the ball, so I can understand your naivity.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2608/S00045/ais-good-news-for-modern-man.htm
Tell it like it is!