Dodgy reviews

Written By: - Date published: 10:24 pm, October 12th, 2015 - 49 comments
Categories: making shit up - Tags: ,

Apparently Slater has written a “book” called Dodgy Unions. It’s on Amazon.

dodgy1

The book has a 5 star review – tough and fair minded – this is bad news for Labour etc. Click on the “1 customer review” link on the web page as imaged above, and you get here:

dodgy2

So who is this “B Edwards” reviewer? Bryce? Brian? Brent? All have denied it (of course). Click on the Public Wish List on the web page as imaged above and you get here:

dodgy3

Oh look, Whaleoil sponge Pete Belt has faked an Amazon review of Slater’s book. Ht the Twitterati.

49 comments on “Dodgy reviews ”

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  1. r0b 1
    12 October 2015 at 11:44 pm

    I don’t think anyone who has been paying attention for the last year is going to be surprised…

  2. Kevin 2
    12 October 2015 at 11:50 pm

    Lusk wrote it.

  3. McFlock 3
    13 October 2015 at 12:26 am

    Ah, the latest edition of “I’ve Been Wanking”….

  4. Smilin 4
    13 October 2015 at 12:40 am

    Slater and his crying wolf, the Unions pay tax dont they, is the rate anywhere near the corporate welfare rate disclosed away back by Bruce Jesson’s in Behind the Mirrored Glass?
    I wouldnt think that has increased
    Does he really think anyone cares about his point of view after reading Dirty Politics

    • NZJester 4.1
      13 October 2015 at 1:04 am

      I’m betting he gets a lot of book sales out of that thing.
      They will be buying it as a backdoor way to hide payments made to him, but they will be buying multiple copies and showing him the receipts.
      I think there is an actual Dodgy Union in New Zealand anyway.
      It starts with the word ‘Tax’ and ends in ‘Union’ with the name of someone who makes payments in the middle of the name.
      By the way ‘Smilin’ there are a lot of people who do care about his point of view and have paid a lot of money to him to be sure that point of view of his is what they want it to be!

    • Richard@Down South 4.2
      13 October 2015 at 1:03 pm

      On the subject of Tax, Facebook UK Paid £35m In Staff Bonuses, But Only £4,327 In Corporation Tax

      I wonder what companies here are actually paying

      • dukeofurl 4.2.1
        13 October 2015 at 5:58 pm

        Easy to look up Facebook NZ on companies website

        For the year ending Dec 2014 there was a loss of $39,000 or so

        The income tax was $3,378 with other tax expenses bringin it up to $43,261

        Howver there was a significant transaction of $1.2 mill with Facebook Ireland

    • Chris 4.3
      13 October 2015 at 2:58 pm

      The number of people commenting has gone way down. The ads for overseas singles and so on makes it look like a porn site. Marvelous stuff.

  5. dukeofurl 5
    13 October 2015 at 7:32 am

    I wonder if the Whaleoil cartoonist Sonovamin , better known as [deleted] did the artwork ?

    [lprent: If you want to out someone here, then you have to link to show that they have outed themselves somewhere. This is your warning. Don’t do this again. And read the policy, especially the privacy sections, to see just how irritated we are liable to get about this behaviour. ]

    • One Anonymous Bloke 5.1
      13 October 2015 at 12:03 pm

      @Lprent: a whois lookup returns similar information. Is that considered “outing”?

      • lprent 5.1.1
        13 October 2015 at 12:10 pm

        What I was after was a link. If the whois shows the relationship between the pseudonym and the person, and was put up by that person – then that is sufficient. If it requires several levels of inference then it doesn’t.

        In this post for instance, the step from “B Edwards” to Peter Belt was direct, no levels of inference were required.

        Essentially once someone outs themselves, then we’ll allow people to point out the connection. But we need to see something at least once that goes beyond malevolent idiots like Cameron Slater inventing connections. So the criteria is that they must have unambiguously outed themselves in public directly or even by accident.

        That “in public” part is why we don’t use the information that is apparent to us on this site as moderators.

        • One Anonymous Bloke 5.1.1.1
          13 October 2015 at 12:17 pm

          For future reference, does this pass the test?

          • dukeofurl 5.1.1.1.1
            13 October 2015 at 1:02 pm

            What about Simon Lusk, who obviously uses a pseudonom when writing as a whaleoil author ?, after all who else would be so interested in the Ruataniwha water scheme and the Chair of the HBRC ?
            Im certainly not the first to mention his name in this context here, as some have suggested ‘the book’ is mostly his work.

    • dukeofurl 5.2
      13 October 2015 at 12:06 pm

      Ok , i didnt realise it extended to others who didnt commentate here ( a bit like using the name Pete Belt ?)
      Im not trying to get around it if you dont like it , but this person puts their url on their work, so what I used is easily publicly available.

      • dukeofurl 5.2.1
        13 October 2015 at 1:13 pm

        sonovamin.com is on his cartoons, and has a website, no need to deduce the full url

        “sonovaMin Cartoons As seen on Whaleoil”

        He too is flogging his own book. “Feel free to get in touch with us!”

        [lprent: Fair enough. This is a direct historical link from last year https://whoisology.com/archive_7/sonovamin.com which was easy enough to find after you gave enough info (why didn’t you provide that link?). It looks the registry has since gone under cover.

        But please don’t assume that the moderators “know”. We don’t have time to track people on this site, let alone those on other sites. Give us a link. ]

  6. infused 6
    13 October 2015 at 7:35 am

    Im surprised you guys give whale oil so much attention. I had no idea about the book.

  7. RedLogix 7
    13 October 2015 at 8:03 am

    Surprised blubber boy would taint his brand image by being associated with Amazon …. I though he was better than that 🙂

  8. les 8
    13 October 2015 at 8:19 am

    he should pen a book on boxing…something he knows something about….a suggested title…Canvass kissing Cam.

  9. Mike Bond 9
    13 October 2015 at 9:53 am

    I am not surprised to read these comments here. Lets all take a shot at Slater! But if we must be honest, is it not really the truth what he is saying? We allow the unions to have a say who is going to be Labours leader and I assume they do have an influence over the direction the party moves in. Why then do they not finance more of the party?

    • One Anonymous Bloke 9.1
      13 October 2015 at 9:57 am

      What twisted definition of honesty is this?

      Unions are good for society and the economy. Why do you hate the economy? Why do you hate society?

      Are you a sociopath much?

    • Pascals bookie 9.2
      13 October 2015 at 10:43 am

      “Why then do they not finance more of the party?”

      Coz it isn’t a pay for play system probably, unlike Slater’s silly blog.

    • Paul Campbell 9.3
      13 October 2015 at 12:34 pm

      no WE don’t allow unions to do any such thing – the Labour Party decides who can be a member and who can vote its Leader – the rest of us don’t get to say (the same goes for the Nats and the Greens).

      Equally I presume the unions get to decide where their member’s dues are spent. If you want control over who the unions finance become a member and vote.

      • Mike Bond 9.3.1
        13 October 2015 at 2:03 pm

        So the Unions do not have a hefty vote in who is the leader?

        • Stephanie 9.3.1.1
          13 October 2015 at 2:55 pm

          This entirely depends on whether you think 20% is “hefty”.

        • One Anonymous Bloke 9.3.1.2
          13 October 2015 at 3:24 pm

          Just imagine your worst nightmare…union members on the board of directors, strong links between unions and government. New Zealand having an economy more like Germany’s.

          Then wonder briefly whether you’re a dupe or a sociopath before going back to sleep.

          Question: why do you hate democracy and freedom of association?

  10. NZJester 10
    13 October 2015 at 11:55 am

    Given Slaters previous track record of being paid to put his name on other peoples work, till someone can compare the writing style in the book to works he is known to have written can we be 100% sure the book is actually by him?

    • dukeofurl 10.1
      13 October 2015 at 12:08 pm

      The brand ‘Whaleoil’ has many personalities, is the best way to put it

      • mark 10.1.1
        13 October 2015 at 12:23 pm

        By “personalities” you mean paid hacks right?

        • Puckish Rogue 10.1.1.1
          13 October 2015 at 12:56 pm

          So you admit he is a journalist then?

          • McFlock 10.1.1.1.1
            13 October 2015 at 1:04 pm

            Not all journalists are hacks and not all hacks are journalists.

            In fact, there might even be a “no true scotsman” in there, disregarding any media accreditation (of varying reliability).

          • dukeofurl 10.1.1.1.2
            13 October 2015 at 1:05 pm

            NZ only has a few restricted occupation names which can only be used by those qualified, lawyer, medical doctor, architect, fire engineer. ( any others ?)

            Journalist isnt among them!

            • Joe Bloggs 10.1.1.1.2.1
              13 October 2015 at 1:17 pm

              psychologist, psychiatrist … both professions that Slater and Belt could be well advised to consult with

      • Visubversa 10.1.2
        13 October 2015 at 9:45 pm

        And given the numbers of people he sockpuppets for how could one ever find a piece of writing guaranteed to actually be his own unaided work?

  11. Saarbo 11
    13 October 2015 at 1:21 pm

    Hilarious…how embarrassing.

  12. Thinking Right 12
    13 October 2015 at 6:48 pm

    I have read Slater’s book.

    My opinion of it is as follows:

    1: The primary question he raises (which I think is one that Labour Party members should consider) is this and relates to his observation that over the last 20 years Unions have had significant influence over the direction, personnel, and policy of the NZ Labour Party.

    This has included many ex-unionists standing as MP’s and obviously includes the current leader Mr Little.

    Labour’s industrial relations policy has appeared to be a time machine warp back to the 1970’s.

    And obviously the direct influence they have with their 20% affiliate voting for the Labour leader.

    However he uses the book to point out that despite the apparent close relationship between Labour and various Unions the Unions have been particularly stingy at supporting Labour financially.

    2 Though Slater offers a number of interesting questions he does not supply many answers which may limit the impact his book may have on the political landscape.

    3 Also the text appears to have not been edited professionally which may detract from his impact.

    • Pascals bookie 12.1
      13 October 2015 at 7:40 pm

      I’m amazed he manged to string it out to 100 pages then, if that really is the gist of it.

      But to respond, (and just to be clear, I’m not, never have been, a member of the NZLP and vote Green more often than Lab):

      over the last 20 years Unions have had significant influence over the direction, personnel, and policy of the NZ Labour Party.

      This has included many ex-unionists standing as MP’s and obviously includes the current leader Mr Little.

      Sure, Unions have an influence over the Labour party. This is known, and the clue is in the name. I’m not sure why RWers seem continuously surprised about this. It would be like lefties expressing confusion that the National Party, which was set up purely to oppose the Labour party in particular, and the Labour movement more generally, does not like unions or the Labour party.

      Labour’s industrial relations policy has appeared to be a time machine warp back to the 1970’s.

      Just silly, Labour famously had nine long years in govt and yet the changes from the ECA to the ERA were minor. If you think they look like the 70s, you simply don’t know what the 70s looked liked.

      However he uses the book to point out that despite the apparent close relationship between Labour and various Unions the Unions have been particularly stingy at supporting Labour financially.

      He would be confused about why Unions need funds then. Union finances are for many things, but Unions are not primarily fundraisers for the political wing of the Labour movement. They retain money to support workers’ families during strikes and all sorts of other things.

      If his thesis is as you say, then it presupposed things that are not true. That is, his judgement of what is ‘stingy support’ is based on misunderstandings of what Union funds are for and what the relationship is between the Party and the Unions. (Clue: the relationship is not transactional)

    • Rodel 12.2
      14 October 2015 at 11:42 pm

      TR Thanks for telling Labour Party members what we should consider but I doubt that any of them would be bothered considering any of Slater’s trashy politiporn .

  13. ropata 13
    13 October 2015 at 7:37 pm

    i hope nobody wastes time on fail-boy’s effluent.
    instead, watch this http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/1951-2001
    or this: http://the-enemy-within.org.uk/

    the right has a history of violently crushing unions and subverting democracy.
    inequality in the UK is back to Dickensian levels
    there is no more middle class, only rich and poor (mostly poor).

    dirty politics is taking us down the same road.

    Q:
    did the police raid slater and take all his gear?
    was slater interrogated in order to reveal his sources?
    was his book embargoed until after the election for no apparent reason?
    were powerful people in government annoyed by Slater’s “expose”?
    did anyone release Slater’s private details hoping that he would be killed?

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