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: 12:33 pm, April 20th, 2012 - 46 comments
Will our children think of the welfare state, the tiger and the rhino as part of a mythologised Arcadia?
Written By: - Date published: 6:34 am, April 2nd, 2012 - 273 comments
Bernard Hickey has a great piece in the Herald on Sunday that you shouldn’t miss.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 pm, March 27th, 2012 - 22 comments
“Crusher Collins up close” headlines a two-page article by Andrea Vance in the Saturday March 10 DomPost. It’s not on the Stuff website but deserves a wider audience. John Key might have been unwise to have stayed away on holiday this week – he should remember what happened to Jim Bolger.
Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, February 7th, 2012 - 218 comments
The Herald looks like it has an excellent series this week, on Auckland: A city divided by income. It’s an issue that has been waiting to be examined in the local context in more depth. It’s been quite a big issue in the UK for a while, with The Spirit Level making an impact before …
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: 3:07 pm, December 16th, 2011 - 53 comments
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Garth George: Social Engineering is wrong unless it’s my social engineering. Those Greens are sinister and dangerous…
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, December 9th, 2011 - 24 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 pm, November 19th, 2011 - 107 comments
Bradley Ambrose, the cameraman widely maligned by John Key and his pudgey lapdogs David Farrar and Cameron Slater for daring to hold the PM to some basic standards of accountability, is demanding an apology from John Key or he’ll take the PM to court for defamation.
UPDATE: The final week of the campaign will kick off with a police raid on the Herald Monday morning.
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, November 18th, 2011 - 64 comments
John Key has a history of choking under pressure but this time, calling on the police to raid the premises of our national broadcasters TVNZ and RNZ, and our major privately owned newspapers - he’s cracked under the pressure of the campaign and the spectre of losing it all. There’ll be no knighthood if Key becomes the first National PM to lose after just one term.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, November 17th, 2011 - 7 comments
This is just from one news outlet. Stuff, the Herald, RNZ, TVNZ – they’re all focussing on what’s making Key looking like a fool. They aren’t interested in hearing what National has to say about anything until they fess up. Nine days from an Election, now that’s a spectacular agenda setting fail. Who’s advising Key’s campaign, Melissa Lee?
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 pm, November 10th, 2011 - 12 comments
Emmerson in the Herald has a good take on John Key’s campaign style. As he continues to fail to front up to debate on actual policy.
Written By: - Date published: 10:10 pm, November 7th, 2011 - 15 comments
In an Editorial that would not have been out of place as a post on ‘The Standard’ The Herald praises the Occupiers of city squares around the country, (and around the world).
Written By: - Date published: 12:54 pm, October 21st, 2011 - 48 comments
A very thoughtful piece from Simon Collins in today’s Herald: “Deep divisions over $1000 for a Rugby World Cup game as poverty grows”.
Written By: - Date published: 3:22 pm, October 7th, 2011 - 27 comments
Speaker Lookwood Smith is getting a lot of flak for his decision to punish The Herald for publishing a photo (taken in violation of Standing Orders) by banning their reporters from Parliament for ten days.
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, September 3rd, 2011 - 48 comments
Remember those thundering editorials and opinion pieces chastising Labour for focusing on trivia instead of the substantive issues?
Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, August 5th, 2011 - 57 comments
It isn’t often that I find myself in agreement with Garth George. But he’s written a scorching indictment of right-wing greed that feels right at home here on The Standard…
Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, June 4th, 2011 - 15 comments
John Armstrong says NZers are like frogs in ever hotter water, not realising the incrementally more radical agenda of National.
Tracy Watkins looks at the rise of lobbyists and their lack of accountability.
Written By: - Date published: 2:36 pm, May 26th, 2011 - 47 comments
John wouldn’t answer our readers’ questions but he’s out in New Plymouth this Tuesday.
Get along and ask him the hard questions if you can.
And if you can’t get there make sure you email your question to editor@dailynews.co.nz
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, May 22nd, 2011 - 13 comments
John Armstrong is highly critical of the sub-zero budget: “The Budget has displayed a degree of cynicism one would expect from a Government in its third term, not its first”…
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, May 19th, 2011 - 25 comments
An anonymous Sunday Star Times editorial last weekend (not on line) reads like a postcard from the future…
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 pm, April 23rd, 2011 - 7 comments
“Fallen soldier records free to access over Easter” is the headline in a Herald story today promoting a special free access to a website. I went to look at it because three of my four uncles were shot down in combat during World War 2. Both of Mum’s brothers, Andy and Jack, were killed and …
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, April 16th, 2011 - 66 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 pm, March 26th, 2011 - 63 comments
The latest media frenzy about a Phil Goff coup is rapidly dying down. The Government passed some controversial legislation in double-quick time with little coverage and somebody made a killing on iPredict. Coincidence?
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, January 10th, 2011 - 34 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 2:47 pm, January 6th, 2011 - 29 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, December 21st, 2010 - 18 comments
I couldn’t let the last of the year slip away without a fond farewell to the good old Electoral Finance Act. Last week the government passed its replacement legislation. It tweaks some thresholds, but retains the principles and much of the substance of Labour’s EFA. But this time there is no “Democracy Under Attack” campaign. I wonder why…
Written By: - Date published: 6:38 am, November 9th, 2010 - 25 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, October 25th, 2010 - 2 comments
There was an excellent piece in the Saturday Herald by John Armstrong. A large 2-page spread, fairly prominent in the paper, and not critical of Labour. Not fulsome praise; just great, unbiased reporting.
Now admittedly I shouldn’t get excited by such things, but the steadily slipping standards of New Zealand’s papers, combined with a media love-in with National at the last election, leaves good quality newspaper journalism a sight to behold.
Written By: - Date published: 6:14 pm, September 26th, 2010 - 18 comments
I guess we shouldn’t really mock such unfortunates but this latest missive from the Bog is too hard to resist. Farrar and his merry band of ignorant loons are furious that the ODT, one of New Zealand’s better newspapers, is daring to ask pertinent questions of ACTs replacement for David Garrett. It seems pretty fair …
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