I’ve just been reading Andrea Vance’s review of Judith Collin’s released biography. One thing that usually infuriates me is whining arseholes. I have always thought Judith Collins has always been one of them. Vindictive, small-minded, and ignorant. She whines even through a review that merely quotes her.
It has been an interesting few days looking at political reality kicking in on politics and the net in the UK and the […]
Right wing online forums are going to reach new levels of toxicity over the next 3 years. Someone really needs to monitor them.
A lot of politics and political blogging is all about the details. This includes National’s pollster David Farrar who falsely asserted yesterday that Winston would have received 7 annual letters about his superannuation status. So why is National trying to irritate their only possible coalition partner?
If you want to know why the right is farting so much personal smoke, take a look at the poll trends 2011, 2014, 2017. It’s not a pretty picture for the Nats.
Over months, the readings from Statcounter had gotten increasingly inaccurate. Since the other public site stats packages have significiant other flaws on highish volume sites, we stopped running any. That means that the blog rankings for this site at Open Parachute stopped. Bomber can claim a empty position because he can’t check his statistics.
Either Kiwiblog had a very large social media blip (one million page views in a day is pretty high), or something is really wrong with Sitemeter, or there is a irritating bug somewhere bloating the numbers. I’d like to know one way or another, as I’ve had to deal with some strange spikes like this in the past and they are tricky to track down.
Our political system is awash with money. There is clearly an arms race going on where National is trying to spend everyone else into the ground. National includes significant funding from Auckland property developers and real estate agents, and probably explains their effective disinterest in fixing Auckland housing.
National counterattack line on Iraq is now out and about, courtesy of National’s tester and parrot of lines – National pollster David Farrar at Kiwiblog. It consists of two contradictory lines about Labour. Also neither line is true. But they are just there for the ‘journalists’ to mindlessly repeat in the evening news.
John Key has been advertising us in parliament. But he has a problem distinguishing how his right puppet blogs operate compared to the volunteer blogs of the left. It says more about how John Key thinks than it does about us. Key prefers sites that recruit prostitutes in order to blackmail reporters.
David Farrar is wrong. We don’t have abortion on request in New Zealand. Not literally, and not “effectively.”
David Farrar continues the Dirty Politics strategy of trying to intimidate critics of the government into silence.
Dr Jarrod Gilbert was the victim of a typical dirty politics smear campaign via Kiwiblog. In the last couple of days he has done some interesting posts on the subject. Expect dirty politics, and personal attacks on critics of the government, to escalate even further over the next three years.
A new series on happy mischief and paying back double.
David “Princess Parties” Farrar at Kiwiblog is trying to wash off some of the stench of Dirty Politics. Turns out it’s after the election (of course) – and so heavily qualified as to be meaningless. Expect business as usual at the sewer.
The British public estimates the poor pay around 24% of their income in tax, while the rich pay around 35%. The truth is very different. Once you add up all taxes, the poorest actually pay around 43% of their income in tax, compared to only 35% for the rich. We have the same perceptual issues in NZ especially if you listen to the whining of Kiwiblog. Here the poorest pay the same tax rate as the rich, and the middle classes have the lower tax rate.
National appear to have been indulging in wishful thinking for some time based on dubious analysis of voter turnout. Their latest round of silliness comes from kiwiblog. Sure there were some National supporters who chose not to vote in 2011 out of complacency. But it is probably a minority, and that most of the new non-voters (who voted up to and including 2008, and then stopped) are lefties. The survey evidence points that way, and so does the E9 evidence when looked at properly.
David Farrar in his usual burst of hypocrisy and curious selectiveness about detailed numbers is proclaiming a headline rise in manufacturing. As is usual he is only interested in the top level numbers and doesn’t provide a link to even the summary data. I guess that is because they are rather depressing for his 9th floor of the Beehive view of employment and wage packets, which is what most voters expect from growth. There has been a slight decline in manufacturing jobs while we have a 11% growth in “manufacturing”.
David Farrar often bullshits on numbers. Does he have what appears to be a maths block that makes him so wrong so often (like Bill English)? Or is it just that he obeys orders like the good National puppet tools that he and Cameron Slater appear to be? Anyway, Rob Salmond pulls him up on a few obvious and significiant flaws in his ‘analysis’. DPF didn’t allow for people lying – just like he does
Charles Waldegrave has slammed Brian Scott’s critique of the method used to calculate the Living Wage in New Zealand. He shows Scott’s critique, and that of the Treasury, lack an informed understanding of the definition of a living wage and confuse market wage rates and welfare transfers. The living wage level was set at $18.40 per hour in February 2013. Scott’s paper has been given prominence on Kiwiblog 3 January 2014
Since the nutters on the right at the sewer (otherwise known as the kiwiblog comments) seem to have a thing about billboards (probably because they can’t handle actual politics or actual policy). So to keep them entertained and running around like headless chickens rather than doing any actual political action – here is another billboard to keep everyone amused watching them.
It’s a tough job, but somebody has got to do it…
In their attempts to justify putting up GST on all New Zealanders to give huge tax cuts to the wealthy few, the Right are going so far as to argue that middle and low income New Zealand doesn’t even exist.
Poneke wrote a post about ‘climategate’. There was little about the science and more about personally attacking the authors of parts of the evidence supporting climate change. This ignores the whole basis of science, the scientific method.
David has a new innovation at the sewer. The old comment voting system has been enhanced to, amongst other things, hide comments when […]
This is a classic. Media are reporting that National MP Nick Smith has had an assault complaint lodged against him by a Nelson […]
David Farrar, head of the Free Speech Coalition and renowned democracy fighter, has outlined the Right’s reasons for opposing letting the people of […]
No Right Turn and David Farrar have written posts on the massive lack of proportionality in the suggested voting regime by the Royal […]
The Dominion Post has this column on Fridays called the Diary [offline*]. It’s written by some anonymous staffer and is supposed to be […]
I’m always amazed at the intellectual hoops the neoliberal right will jump through to try and deny low income workers minimum wage increases. […]
I’ve been meaning to write something about National’s attempts to beat up ACC’s costs in order to soften the ground for privatisation (see […]
One of the most disappointing things about the debate over National’s fire at will law is how little its supporters understand the basic […]
Via Farrar’s site I’ve come across this a lovely piece of Government spin. It’s a PDF document checking off everything National’s done in […]
I’ve got to admit there are days I wonder whether the National Party really have swung leftward. I mean I know they are […]
More gold from Lyndon Hood: Blogger Still Maintains Clark Just Like Mugabe The power-sharing arrangement Helen Clark has permitted after the opposition National […]
Kiwibank, New Zealand’s supreme award winning Sunday Star-Times/CANNEX best value bank for the third year in row, the Socialist Bank of Jim Anderton, the one doomed […]
