Yesterday Opposition parties filibustered, and successfully delayed the passage of the Key-Dunne spying Bill. This buys more time to protest, and to put pressure on MPs.
We have never before seen in New Zealand such a broad and ongoing chorus of opposition to government legislation as we are seeing with this Bill. Just yesterday alone…
Aaron Gilmore, eh? He’s clearly finished in the National Party. Not for the view he expressed when he threatened to get a young waiter sacked, but because by doing so he’s lifted the veil on the carefully covered elitism that drives the national party’s agenda.
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.
Needed a laugh. Luckily, C Espiner always delivers: “While his predecessor was fond of visiting Europe, Key has virtually snubbed the northern hemisphere since he has been prime minister.”
Colin Espiner says MP’s shouldn’t protest but then gets some basic facts wrong trying to show why.
I guess he’s made a point. But not the one he meant to…
In a short statement outside the Beehive today Labour leader Phil Goff conceded the 2011 election to National.
Colin Espiner sums up Highwater-gate very well: “Basically it comes down to this: [John Key] said he didn’t know he had shares in Highwater when he really did.” No-one’s alleging Key had conspiracy meetings in smokey rooms with alcohol magnates. That’s a ridiculous misdirection being run by Kevin Taylor. This is about the blind trust and how Key handled the conflicts of interest arising from his knowledge of his shareholdings.
“Gov-Gen to attend PM’s funeral”. To me, it says a hell of a lot about the state of the media in this country that a sub-editor, or whoever they have writing headlines these days, does not know the difference between a president and a prime minister, and that no-one else at Stuff spotted the mistake before it went up.
The Nats run orchestrated smear campaigns coordinated with ministers’ offices, bloggers, and tame journos. National doesn’t want to and can’t engage in real political debate on the issues. So it is reduced to mud throwing. Some brave journo needs to shine a light on what is going on here. It is not good enough for the government to get away with using its proxies to wage secret smear campaigns.
Colin Espiner is hanging up his umm, journalist tools?, and leaving the press gallery to be an assistant editor for The Press down in Christchurch.
I wish him the best of luck but I can’t help but leave him with one more correction of a basic mistake for the road.
Crime is not, as Judith Collins seems to think, evil people doing evil things that can be repressed by ever greater state violence. Deterrence doesn’t work because crime, especially violent crime, is not a rational outcome of weighing costs and benefits. A crime policy that doesn’t reduce crime isn’t really a crime policy, it’s a con.
It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that a government that spends half its time on holiday and the rest on PR stunts […]
Colin Espiner’s back with his first blog of the year. It’s so much fun having him back. In his first outing, he comes […]
More economic illiteracy from our old friend: Certainly given the rhetoric from the finance minister of late I’d thought the numbers would be […]
Colin Espiner: After making inroads in the latest TV3 poll, Goff has clearly taken fright after the reaction to his nationhood speech. How […]
Colin Espiner has a piece in the Dom Post today attributing Labour’s four point rise in the polls to Goff’s ‘Nationhood’ speech. He […]
On his blog, Colin Espiner writes: “it’s also extremely ironic to hear Labour wringing its hands about the impact of the ETS when…HELLO…Labour […]
We’ve been pretty hard, although justifiably so, on Colin Espiner recently and I’m loath to do it again. He does put himself out […]
Last Thursday, Colin Espiner was mocking all of us who said that National and other rightwing groups were trying to create a sense […]
Colin, I think we need to discuss your work: the conspiracy theory peddled by Labour and the EPMU (i.e. Labour) that somehow this […]
Colin Espiner: “For some reason that I don’t quite understand, unemployment usually continues to rise at the end of recessions, and there’s normally […]
A few good posts today that are worth a look if you missed them: Chris Trotter reckons the police and the media are […]
Colin Espiner writes: “Another thing that’s being clearly signalled is that Labour’s previous spending promises in health and education won’t be honoured in […]
Prior to the last election our fearless MSM media uncritically repeated Key’s ‘NZ Sucks’ Crosby/Textor attack lines, framing an historically unremarkable rise in […]
Sadly, I couldn’t find Colin Espiner’s excellent piece in The Press today online. It’s good. Colin’s thoughtful observations derail the government’s PR spin […]
We’ve covered the National/ACT government’s latest ACC beat-up extensively already. IB spelled out rather well here the techniques being used by the government […]
This week the election was announced and the third question to the PM (asked by Colin Espiner) was about whether The Standard possibly […]
Should Labour be worried about today’s poll in the Herald which contrary to other recent polls showed the gap between the parties rising? […]
Colin Espiner pointed it out the other week, National “needs more women. Never over-represented in National at the best of times, the party […]
