Federated Farmers continued their fear campaign today in a Herald editorial. Their anonymous demand is that “Farmers should know they are still appreciated”. It is hard to have respect looking at bills that urban dwellers and businesses pay tofix their environment, while Federated Farmers bullshit about the environmental impacts of farming and how they don’t like paying to fix them.
Journos have been looking at how Peter Thiel gained citizenship. Not because he shouldn’t have been made a citizen. But it was done without any public notice using a special section of the immigration act. That reeks of a corruption route by a minister or officials. Reasons need to be made public for this and other decisions done this way.
Greg Presland has been daft enough put his hand up for Labour candidate in New Lynn. That would be unfortunate for this site. But my advice for Labour and New Lynn is to grab him. Media say that the leading candidates are him and Deborah Russell. Regardless of a her competence, a non-Auckland resident is a big ask in the era of MMP seats.
You might be surprised to learn this, but you don’t want a pay rise.
The NZ Herald starts cuddling up even closer to the National party. I guess they have definitely dropped that shallow facade of being the “Newspaper of Record”. Mind you, it isn’t a good look when Paula Bennett, the minister meant to take care of children, cuddles up with the heartless hypocrite who laughs at dead children. National really must be worried about this election.
The New York Times has an editorial stating that Edward Snowden should be regarded as a whistleblower who has done the public there and elsewhere a service by revealing the illegal extent of the NSA’s surveillance. What is most interesting in the extremely well linked editorial is that there is this curious hole in the US whistle blower laws that many including Barack Obama have said he could have used. They don’t cover contractors….
Yesterday, the Greens illustrated the size of the gambling concessions in the SkyCity deal with a to-scale cardboard display in Aotea Square. The visually striking move got extensive coverage on Breakfast yesterday and a rather, odd, story in the Herald, which chose to focus on the cost of the protest. What was that, presumably, outrageous cost? $3,000.
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.
Granny Herald: “Some policies aimed at quenching what politicians perceive to be a public appetite for fairness are recycled regularly even when they have been shown to be deeply flawed.” Discuss…
I have a theory that the Herald employs Shelley Bridgeman et al as columnists only because, while a relatively small team of monkeys on typewriters could spit out much more cogent and insightful pieces well within deadline, the price of bananas these days makes it more economical to fill the space between ads with whatever dross these ‘writers’ throw-up. But, I have an alternative that benefits everyone.
The minor party debate on Q+A was very interesting. Rahui Katene was self-contradictory and vague, like the Maori Party always is. Peter Dunne was pathetic. Roger Douglas slammed the government’s borrowing as did Russel Norman, who pointed out the other three had all voted for National’s debt-increasing tax cuts for the rich.
I don’t read Garth George columns. Life’s too short eh? But I could hardly miss this one, with its bizarre anti-China quote plastered on the front page of The Herald.
It’s always so wonderful to load up Granny Herald and see some wealthy late middle-aged grump (I’m picking this one is John Roughan) taking a swipe at the poor in the editorial. Today, Granny says we can’t afford to give mums more paid leave or more Working for Families for young kids. Hmm. But we can still afford those tax cuts for the rich?
Our guest poster writes about a letter he had published in the Herald recently. A clever wee missive, it started ‘helpful’ in tone but had a sting in the tail on the inaction of Key’s do nothing government in the face of recession, unemployment, and peak oil. The Herald cut off the sting leaving a ‘pro-Key’ letter. What are they up to?
Over recent years the anonymous editorials in the NZ Herald have become increasingly variable. Some have been written by authors who I’d disagree with their ideas, but who clearly have examined the topic in enough depth to be able to argue for and against alternate ideas to arrive at their editorial judgments. Then there are others that have clearly been written by authors with little understanding of the topic and are simply coded dog-whistles unworthy of the editorial page. I have a look at one of the latter.
It must be coming up to election year, because whenever I load Granny Herald there’s some ludicrous attack on Labour or love-piece on Key. The Herald on Sunday has some Wikileaks cables and the ones they’ve chosen to pre-release supposedly shows Labour was willing to give up the anti-nuke law but didn’t to win votes. They show no such thing. [Updated]
The Herald just accused Key of “blood on his hands” for failing to act on alcohol abuse. That’s an extraordinary rebuke. It far exceeds anything I can call from that pulpit directed at Helen Clark. John Key just lost another big chunk off his Teflon coating.
Former ACT MP Deborah Coddington isn’t a journo anymore. Shot her reputation with the infamous ‘Asian Angst’ piece. Just does opinion pieces now. Strange, then, to see her by-line on 2 Herald articles attempting to vindicate disgraced conflict of interest judge Bill Wilson. Turns out her husband was Wilson’s lawyer.
Two more Supercity polls. Brown ahead 29% v 17% in a Horizon poll. Herald’s Digipoll has it closer – 29.8% v 27.8%. Brown still ahead. Naturally, the Herald calls it too close to call. Looks like the Right’s plan for an Auckland coup is coming unstuck. Guess they’re lucky Labour and the Greens supported their nation-wide coup instead.
It’s the stomach-churning way that some on the Right have decided to try to use the earthquake for political advantage by deifying Bob Parker. Even Parker himself looked sick when Paul Henry compared him to Rudi Giuliani. Update: Farrar, Whaleoil, Henry, and Matthew Hooton are trying to spread a lie that Anderton said only an earthquake could stop him winning the election. Danyl has the truth.
After every emergency come the media articles that accuse the civil defence system of failing. This time the well-known emergency relief experts at the Herald were criticising within a day. Well, the Herald can go f*ck itself. I take my hat off to all the public servants who did their jobs with skill and dedication. The public services responded swiftly to get the situation under control and get people the help and information they needed.
I know that The Herald likes to campaign for the Right, but surely this overdose of sucking up to “Banksie” sets new records?
Newspaper and magazine readerships continue to plummet despite the end of the recession. The biggest falls are the major newspapers. The Herald has shed 92,000 readers since 2005. The Sunday-Star Times lost 90,000 readers (15%!) last year alone. It’s got to the point where they literally can’t give the SST away.
The Herald has a headline article on John Keys “Party Central”. But their cartoon really said it all. The question is:- How many […]
My new poll shows Len Brown will get 90% of the vote. Even though the survey is unscientific and consisted of a self-selected group most of whom think like me, it provides an interesting take on the two weeks of intense political and media scrutiny of Mr Brown’s credit card expenses.
The Herald will be disappointed. Over the last two weeks it has been a willing soldier in John Bank’s smear campaign against Len Brown. It’s a desperate last ditch strategy by the right as it faces defeat. And it’s not working. Even the Herald’s on online poll still has Brown beating Banks.
There are several myths about the coming tax swap that have a surprising amount of currency. The biggest is that this tax swap will boost growth. It won’t and the Tax Working Group never said it would. What it will do is increase inequality with massive tax cuts for the elite funded by higher GST and rents for working Kiwis. That’s not by accident or inevitable – it’s by design.
The Herald editorial is rightly damning of the government’s lacklustre approach to science funding. The ‘new’ money is a trickle, barely replacing last year’s cuts. A crucial difference between Labour and National has always been that Labour invests in the long-term success of the country while National makes short-term wealth grabs for the ruling elite.
I’m not usually envious of Sydney, but they have a newspaper that actually researches the issues that matter to their local audience.
The Sydney Morning Herald has been researching transport issues in their city. If newspapers are to survive the transition into the networked era, they’re going to have to relearn how to focus on local issues. Otherwise why would we pay the pay-wall for material we can get elsewhere?
The Herald has a editorial lambasting John Key about claiming this week that they were ‘hysterical’ writing about the plans to mine the conservation lands, and that there were no such plans. Later in the week, the government launched a probe to find out who leaked cabinet documents about mining the conservation lands. The irony of the two actions appears to have escaped John Key who appears more clueless than ever.
Come on Granny Herald. You’re almost there…
Guess what? Editing the Herald is back for the new year and it’s as sharp as ever.
The Herald is still full of casual idiocy, incredible stuff ups (like the headline that went to print on page 3 as “HeadXXX”), and the bizarreness of Garth George.
EtH skewers it all brilliantly.
Does anyone else think it’s a coincidence that Granny Herald has tried to start a meaningless debate over the national flag – ’11 […]
