Search Results » what was dirty politics about
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Local Bodies: First they ignore you
Local bodies writes on the way that National has been concentrating their personal attacks at the Greens. It is a pretty typical display by National in any election year. But you get the impression they’re going to seriously be dumpster diving for dirt this year – especially Judith Collins. National are getting desperate at their disappearing coalition partners. “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win”
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A glorious waste of money for the titillation of perverts
The fiasco of the wet dick and the perverts shuddered to a conclusion yesterday with the direct bill of around $250,000. Len Brown was strong-armed into paying $40,000 for the audit which turned up nothing much except that his wife brought a lot of hotel nights. Questions remain about who was responsible for the waste caused by the lack of scoping of the external audit. Looks like dirty politics at the ratepayers expense.
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SkyCity: they’re toxic
The detail of the Ernest and Young report on Len Brown clears him of all significiant wrongdoing on the local government purse. The hotel room upgrade values are just complete bullshit for someone who had a regular family timeouts at one hotel – which did most of the almost all of the upgrades. The type of customer that all hotels want. The political question is about receiving anything “free” from Skycity.
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Cameron Slater: So who pays who?
accountability, blogs, dpf, john key, national, Parliament, parliamentary spending, Politics, public services, rumour, scoundrelsLooks like John Key’s communications boss Jason Ede has been busted supplying material for the most disgusting site in local politics – Whaleoil. It has long been suspected that he supplies material and possibly even writes for that site as part National’s dirty tricks team. Looks like we have some confirmation. So how much is the taxpayer paying for this public servant to blog and does he do it for his job? How much does Cameron Slater “demand” from the taxpayer to provide this service?
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The anti-democrats NZ tea party
From the ranks of those working in the murky depths of dirty, disgusting and despicable politics, comes a piss take of a “union” of “taxpayers”, to lobby against a fair, democratic, caring and inclusive state and for the already greedy and powerful.
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The Blame Game
auckland supercity, democracy under attack, local body elections, spin, you couldn't make this shit upAnd so it continues. Inside the Palino-Wewege-Cook-Slater camp, every one is pointing the finger at everyone else and putting the blame elsewhere for the clumsily executed smear campaign against Len Brown. Got to wonder who is in the shadows frantically pulling various levers?
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Cam Slater: politely being called a lying arsehole
I’ve been trying to think of a way of expressing my complete and utter distaste for the arsehole of the local blogs and politics. But someone beat me to it. Hamish Price has been attacked in the usual way by Cameron Slater. Here is his facebook statement in response.
This rings quite true to me from what I know of the people and timelines.
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National’s Civil War
It is clear that there is significant concern within the National Party with the behaviour of Cameron Slater and there is worry that a New Zealand version of the Tea party is forming. There is an interesting battle developing between the civilised cautious wing of the Party and the Tea Party take no prisoners approach of Slater and Lusk. The future of the National Party is at stake …
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The sick state of the right
The Herald reports today that John Palino’s campaign team were up to their eyeballs in the Len Brown dirty digging (or should that be “pantie sniffing”) with Bevan Chung releasing evidence that it was a calculated political move.
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Why drop on Len today?
Len’s acknowledged affair can’t have been a secret until today – there are affidavits involved. It can’t have been about the campaign for mayor – otherwise the Slaters would have dropped it before the election. I think there is a bigger story that may come out tomorrow, involving Len’s opponent in the previous mayoral election. For what it’s worth, I also don’t think Len’s affair is a hanging offence. He’s a good man and has been a very good mayor, for Manukau and for Auckland.
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Return of the Hollow Men
accountability, brand key, david cunliffe, don brash, election 2014, Ethics, john key, Judith Collins, news, same old national, slippery, spinWith Cunliffe’s Labour in the ascendance, NAct and/supporters pull out their bag of dirty and deceptively manipulative, Hollow Men, tricks. Adviser to John Key & Boris Johnson, Mark Textor, will most likely be used again: ruthless attack politics, playing on fears & prejudices.
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On national’s smear tactics
As Irish predicted, the Nats continued their desperate smear campaign today with the revelation that David Cunliffe doesn’t actually have a qualification he never actually claimed to have. Honestly, you couldn’t make this shit up.
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Labour up 6.8% – Herald DigiPoll
Sure it’s just one poll but that’s nearly seven percent. And it’s (nearly) all come off National. This goes quite some way to […]
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NRT: The Herald supports oligarchy
No Right Turn makes the point on what the NZ Herald considers a “democracy under attack” to be. Their track record indicates it only ever happens if they find it harder to get advertising revenue or some of their audience finds harder to make money off selling other people’s assets. Of course having people participating doesn’t appear to them to be a part of democracy.
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GCSB- Questions?
John Key has been twisting himself out of shape answering questions about spying on New Zelanders by the GCSB under the GCSB amendment Bill that is currently before the House. [Update] Video Qu One & Three [Update] Qu 1 transcript.
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Key’s credibility hit
At the same time as Russel Norman was laying out the Key Government’s flagrant disregard for democracy in powerful terms (and weren’t the Right’s pundits quick to circle the wagons around Key after that?), a poll was out showing the public is agreeing with Norman’s view of Key. 43.5% of Kiwis trust Key less than a year ago. 49% think its time for a change of government.
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This is what corporate dictatorship looks like
accountability, activism, capitalism, democracy under attack, greens, john key, Metiria Turei, overseas investment, same old national, slippery, Steven Joyce, tradeThe compensation part of Joyce’s and Key’s dirty, undemocratic SkyCity deal, could legally be over-turned by a future government, as proposed by the Greens. However, the TPPA could weaken NZ’s parliamentary sovereignty and open the government to claims by secret private offshore tribunals. Opposition needs to step up!
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Good poll for Shearer
The latest Herald Digipoll is mixed news for the left, but good news personally for David Shearer. Even John Armstrong is cautiously impressed…
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English drained Solid
Some great work from Labour yesterday as they got the documents showing Bill English being advised about Solid Energy’s predicted lower profits from a lower coal price – and asking for a bigger dividend anyway.
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Espiner on wages
For those of you who’ve missed it Colin Espiner is back on the NZ interwebz with a new Stuff blog, the (rather earthily titled) Bull-Dust. Colin was a bit of a pioneer of journalist blogging in New Zealand. He was, I believe, the first Gallery journalist to run a proper blog and certainly the first to get in amongst it in the comments sections.
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2012 cabinet report card
After Eddie dissed the usual beltway year in review style of column/post I was a little chary about doing this one. And then I realised the good thing about The Standard is we do real world and beltway issues. So here goes my once-over assessment of the 2012 cabinet performance and what it’s likely to mean for the future.
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NRT: This week’s distraction
No Right Turn on this week’s offering from the Nat roulette wheel of political distractions…
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How to sound completely insincere
John Key is world-famous for speaking unintelligibly, no doubt. But how do we spot the times when he’s not just being ineloquent, and is clearly parroting lines prepared by someone else?
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Labour, WTF? – a collection of posts
We’ve received a set of guest posts arising from the Stab In the Back comments that Duncan Garner reported on Tuesday and Su’a William Sio. We’ll compile the best here. As always, we exercise judgement in not publishing truly nutty stuff but there’s no editorial line, no endorsement of guest posts we publish – they just have to pass the test of being informative, lucid, and left.
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Nats’ pollster reveals asset sale plan
National pollster and Herald columnist (I know!) David Farrar has revealed what National has up its sleeve for asset sales. No, I’m not talking about how they would put ‘mums and dads’ at the ‘front of the queue’, or any such nonsense. I’m talking about how they will attempt to de-legitimise the referendum or, alternatively, try to slam the sales through before it happens.
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Nat Civil War: ceasefire breached
Well, that didn’t take long. A couple of weeks of quiet (probably thanks to some good polls more than anything) and, now, the National Party Civil War has re-erupted as the Collins and Joyce factions fight over the post-Key future. The leaking of National Party board minutes shows how serious the fighting is and reveals strong opposition to Slater/Lusk’s tactics.
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Slippery does a flip-flop
Slippery old Key said on Monday and Tuesday that he had to apply a legal test to whether John Banks should stay on as a minister. The Cabinet manual demands the highest ethical standards. Now, Key’s flip-flopped: ethics are required – but only after one becomes a minister. Which would be worrying if true. Pansy Wong won’t be the only one to note Key’s standards a slipping.
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Banks’ secret donation from the ‘wide boys’
John Banks has had a miraculous change of heart on pokies. He used to say gambling bosses were “wide boys” who “sucked” the people of this country dry. Now, he’s rubbed up against John Key and become ‘relaxed’ about more pokies. Maybe the $15,000 undeclared donation from SkyCity helped. A donor Banks was legally required to disclose but didn’t. Labour’s laid a complaint. Update: donation has been referred to police.
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Collins’ in pokies for convention centre deal – in 2001
The Herald’s revealed that, in 2001, Judith Collins, as chair of the Casino Control Authority, rubber-stamped a ‘pokies for convention centre’ deal with SkyCity. This triggered the then Labour Government limit the number of pokies by statute. Now, the Nats are doing another dirty deal with the cancer in Auckland’s heart but, thanks to Labour, they can’t do it on the quiet.
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Sack or be sacked
Ports of Auckland management admit they gave Slater/Lusk the confidential employment details of a worker who criticised the bosses’ disastrous bargaining strategy. At least 2 other workers were victims of the same misdeed. CEO Tony Gibson needs to sack the senior staff responsible. If he can’t or won’t, he’s incompetent or complicit and ought to go himself.
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The political year ahead
Here’s a few guesses about what’ll happen in the year ahead in politics. Shearer will cement his leadership by turning his back on the old guard who put him there. The Greens will hold on to their gains. National will go hell for leather. Mana will build as the Maori Party dies. Asset sales and the economy will be the big issues – can the Left win the framing?
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ImperatorFish: Spill the Beans, Now!
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Scott suffers from being a political blogger with sudden time on his hands, and a lack of politics.
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Victim tales of the right
Nationals yapping poodles here were doing it during the election by calling Labour “nasty” in violation of any level of common sense. John Key and teabags. In the US similar supporters are calling Obama nasty for pointing out a lying political ad by Mitt Romney.
Don’t ya know the right are always the poor victims… I just tend to find them to be whining dickheads. But I am actually trying to be nasty.
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The year of the Greens?
Several commentators have suggested recently that the Greens have crossed some kind of “credibility threshold” and are poised for a strong performance in November. Is this the year of the Greens?
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Mission: whatevered
Classic Key on his
holidayvery important series of very important meetings that were very important and achieved all kinds of important things: “I’ve got to be the luckiest Prime Minister of New Zealand in the last 25 years. I’ve come to Washington and every single person who we’ve met with from the Administration has wanted to see us” Yay! Meetings!
