Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, May 24th, 2012 - 18 comments
Poor political choices, lazy spin management, a succession of statistics highlighting National’s poor management of the economy, a much more active Opposition, and, let’s not forget, a much less friendly media ever since the teapot tapes have combined to make this the first budget that has hurt National, rather than bolstered it.
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, May 11th, 2012 - 34 comments
According to John Key voters rejecting austerity is good news for the government, high unemployment is a sign of confidence in the economy, ignorance is strength, black is white, and he has a bridge to sell you.
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 pm, May 2nd, 2012 - 4 comments
There’s the facts, the questions and the legal opinions. Today in Parliament John Key stuck to his lack of interest in detailed questions, and adherence to Banks’ reliance on legal opinions. He even alleged that the Labour Opposition agreed with these opinions. Not likely. The Police need to ask all the relevant questions that have so far not been answered by Banks or asked by Key, then their veracity and reliability should be established by a judge.
Written By: - Date published: 11:04 pm, April 30th, 2012 - 55 comments
Campbell Live showed us pictures of the Cheques by which Kim Dotcom’s company Megastuff made donations to Team Banksie 2010. How can John Banks argue that the two donations of $25,000 from Kim Dotcom’s company Megastuff Limited are anonymous when the company name is on the cheque? You could look up their address on the website. Game over, John and John.
Written By: - Date published: 4:46 pm, April 27th, 2012 - 37 comments
Stayed up last night to watch Robert Jay QC question Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson enquiry. It was riveting – you can see why top lawyers like Jay are called silks. Murdoch denied, deferred, demeaned, derided and defended but couldn’t help himself – ended up with more damage than control. This affair has more legs than a millipede.
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, April 19th, 2012 - 14 comments
As part of the Nats’ pre-Budget framing, English’s mate Farrar is running graphs meant to show a blow-out in spending under Labour. Problem is, he hasn’t adjusted for GDP growth, or even inflation. How dumb does he think we are?
Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, April 11th, 2012 - 12 comments
As the Nats try to spin us into accepting another zero budget, focus is turning to 2 big holes that their policy decisions have created. First, the $1b+ a year spend on the low to negative value Roads of National (Party) Significance. Second, the $1b+ annual cost of the 2010 tax changes. That’s $2b+ that could be spent elsewhere, avoiding spending cuts without more borrowing.
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, March 31st, 2012 - 16 comments
Punching above our weight will never be the same again …
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 pm, March 29th, 2012 - 153 comments
Close Up tonight led with the allegation, based on a leaked document, that John Key (and other prominent Nats) were listed as supporting a $14 million dollar insurance claim by Bronwyn Pullar.
Written By: - Date published: 12:34 pm, March 28th, 2012 - 10 comments
100 jobs a day were lost in January and 1000 people a week left New Zealand for Australia last year but it turns out it was all a mistake! David Farrar has discovered that we measure GDP slightly differently from Australia and if we use their measure then the purchasing power parity-adjusted difference in GDP per capita is close to zero. Hooray!
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, March 5th, 2012 - 70 comments
Anyone saying there are plenty of jobs, people are just to snobby (ie lazy) to take them, has to explain why 90,000 people suddenly got lazy between 2008 and 2009 as 80,000 jobs disappeared.
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, March 1st, 2012 - 113 comments
The Left has its fair share of conspiracy theorists – who think that, for reasons tenuously explained at best, various, often opposing, organisations are secretly carrying out massive cons and not being discovered. But we’ve got nothing on the Right. Belief that climate change is world’s most enormous conspiracy, engineered for no good reason, is an article of faith for these guys. If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious.
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, February 29th, 2012 - 17 comments
There are quarter of a million jobless people. In a typical quarter, about 250,000 people start new jobs. Does that mean we can eliminate joblessness in a quarter? Of course fucken not, but that’s what National is telling you when they rabbit on about ’10,000 jobs on Trademe’. To get joblessness and benefit numbers down you need a net increase in jobs,not just churn.
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, February 13th, 2012 - 19 comments
Not everyone in the Beehive is thrilled that National is throwing away its chance at a third term for the sake of asset sales which make no sense, economically or politically. The Standard has obtained a copy of the generic column that National MPs are meant to add some ‘local flavour’ to and have published in their regional papers. It shows how cynical and shallow their position really is.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, February 9th, 2012 - 9 comments
Steven Joyce’s piece on Tuesday was a transparent and hypocritical attempt to frame political opponents negatively, and soften us up for more asset sales, mining, deep sea drilling and the like. Thing is, it’s the Nats with their misguided austerity cuts who are the real nay-sayers holding the country back.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 8th, 2012 - 42 comments
Steven Joyce reckons that the ‘can’ts’ are holding us back. I agree, just look at these facts:
Written By: - Date published: 10:38 pm, January 29th, 2012 - 76 comments
Pike River boss Peter Whittall, the guy facing charges after 29 of his employees died working in his unsafe, ‘profit-over-people’ mine, has set up a mining safety consulting company. What’s next? A Minister of Tourism who always holidays overseas? A Finance Minister who wants to sell highly profitable assets in a down market? … oh … This country is nuts.
Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, January 11th, 2012 - 398 comments
They say that the nice thing about Cameron Slater is he’ll believe whatever he’s paid to believe. Yesterday, I asked whether Slater is being paid to run dirt stories for Ports of Auckland. He didn’t deny it. So what is the Port’s propagandist up to? Yesterday, he was calling for the workers’ pay to be slashed while defending the directors’ massive fees.
Update: Ports of Auckland denies paying Slater anything.
Written By: - Date published: 7:32 pm, December 21st, 2011 - 14 comments
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Did you realise Jim Hopkins abolished Climate Change last Friday? It was awfully good of him and his craaaaaaaazy red-rimmed glasses.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, December 14th, 2011 - 88 comments
Congratulations David Shearer, you’re leader of the Left now, and the prime target for the Right’s smear machine. The Right’s strategy is obvious: bait and switch. Having proclaimed Shearer’s virtues to high heaven, they (and their useful idiots) will now say ‘who is this man?’, try to frame unreasonable expectations, and try to beat up leadership rumours.
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, November 28th, 2011 - 140 comments
Pundit’s poll of polls tracked 57 individual polls this year, four of them appearing just a day or so before the election. Every single poll predicted National with the seats to govern alone. Didn’t happen. The polls over estimate Nat support to the tune of about 4%. They need to rethink their methods.
Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, November 16th, 2011 - 65 comments
The teapot tapes story (seems that’s the name that’s been settled on, despite the story involving neither teapots nor tapes) has evolved two distinct strands: the contents of the Key-Banks conversation, which is gradually coming out through the media, and the very aggressive, poorly conceived response of National which is making it worse for them.
Update: According to Fairfax reporter Danya Levy on Twitter, Key has just “stormed out” of a press conference after further questioning on the tapes. He’s losing it. Now The Herald has the story.
Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, November 14th, 2011 - 4 comments
Wave goodbye to higher taxes. Not your loved ones.
Choose a Brighter Future. Derp de derp.
This is what John Key was promising last election – before he came to power, raised GST, and record numbers of kiwis left New Zealand permanently for a brighter future in Australia.
Written By: - Date published: 7:50 am, November 7th, 2011 - 46 comments
hattip William Joyce
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, October 21st, 2011 - 16 comments
More protests in Tauranga. Simon Bridges blames “out of towners”.
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, October 19th, 2011 - 40 comments
The Nats are clearly at panic stations. They’re trying to minimise the Rena disaster by comparing the number of dead animals to those killed by other means. As one emailer put it: “it’s like saying the Christchurch earthquake was no big deal because more people die of cancer”. Meanwhile, Key visits oiled birds and says they’re the price of economic ‘progress’.
Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, October 14th, 2011 - 55 comments
Attentive readers may recall some time back, when talk about illegal police video surveillance was to the fore, that there was also mention of the existence of video surveillance of a politician having an affair with a P user. Now of course having an affair isn’t particularly dreadful by today’s standards, even if the person …
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 pm, September 30th, 2011 - 16 comments
I missed it at the time but apparently John Key’s big plan for Christchurch was to have a yarn to Oprah.
What kind of weird fantasy world does this guy live in?
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 pm, September 29th, 2011 - 22 comments
Key says we have to leave men in Afghanistan, killing and dying, to “honour” the ones we’ve lost. Typical chickenhawk bullshit. This isn’t about ‘tearism’ or ‘Afghanistanians’ or ‘honour’. It’s all about PR. All about politics. Before Smith’s even in the ground, this arsehole Key is spinning his death for PR. Just like Pike River. Just like the earthquake dead.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 4th, 2011 - 66 comments
Reading the political spin from David Farrar (channeling Bill English) over the weekend, I have to keep reminding myself that he really has very little idea about the practicalities of business. Where he is concerned about political costs, I find from a perspective of an exporter that I’m far more concerned about reliability of services.
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, September 3rd, 2011 - 24 comments
See Small on Hager yesterday? He’s all like “of course I knew we’re working with US intelligence but I
didn’t tell you because, duh, it’s not important”. It was the same story with the Hollow Men and the secret tape revelations. Wonder what other “unimportant” stuff journos don’t tell us in the interests of maintaining access and being part of the elite.
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