Written By: - Date published: 2:58 pm, February 28th, 2008 - 98 comments
Categories: john key, wages, workers' rights -
Tags: john key, wages, workers' rights
Like most of his policy positions John Key’s story on his comment “we would love to see wages drop” just keeps on changing.
First he was “misrepresented”, then his comment was “lighthearted”, and now he’s claiming he never said it. Which is it John?
In an interview today with Mickey Havoc, Key now denies ever having made the comment (“I did not say that quote”), claims he never took part in an interview, asserts that the reporter was “eavesdropping”, implies the reporter is lying, and states rather ominously – “there’s more to this than meets the eye” and “we’re taking our own issues with it”. He even loses it a bit at the end under pressure from Havoc and throws in a “don’t give me that crap”.
Anyone remember that advice (see image) from Richard Long to Brash in The Hollow Men in relation to accusations about foreknowledge of the Brethren campaign to ‘try to dodge further questions by feigning irritation’?
You could almost be forgiven for thinking Key and Brash had been coached by the same guy. On the other hand, maybe Mr Key’s just not as friendly underneath all the gloss as some may have supposed.
The audio’s four minutes long but I reckon worth having on the record:
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Scoopit!
“Both left and right will fuck things up, but at least the right want to STEAL AND spend less of MY MONEY”
Right-wing economic fallacy #164: “Taxation is theft”.
Sorry mate, but without the social contract (of which taxes are a part), you’d be making no money whatsoever. Complaining that the government is “stealing your money” is a bit rich: the infrastructure and the education of the workforce (some of the things that have enabled you to earn this money in the first place) actually have to be paid for, you know. And taxation is the way we as a society have agreed to fund it.
Tane:
“As for your other whinge, the reason right-wingers tend to complain more vocally about comments not showing up is because they’re the ones who assume some great conspiracy to silence dissent. People on the left realise it’s just a technical error with the captcha.”
Be more biased without foundation. You know you can do it. I mean, seriously. I actually thought you were better than that. I’ve come to expect charging like a wounded bull kind of statements from many people on this site, but I’ve never seen it before from you.
Hahahahaha
You will be banned if you take issue with the censorship standard du jour.
Best of luck.
Hahahahaha you best behave before you join the long list of those turfed outta here…moderators have been grumpy for a few weeks
IrishBill says: Haha. etc will be turfed out of here for spam and for abuse (here’s a hint: we don’t tolerate email details that describe us as “fuckers”)
“Rob, once you have read the article I linked to try this.
do you agree with this sentence;
Augusto pinochet is a hero.
fills you with revulsion no doubt.
Now try this one;
Fidel castro is a hero.
Slow nod of the head no doubt.
This highlights the fundamental hypocrisy of the left.”
As opposed to the Right, which merely invited individuals like Pinochet around to tea (Thatcher really used to do that), or which backed Pol Pot because at least he was an anti-Soviet genocidal maniac (yes, Pol Pot was a Western ally), or which cheerfully gave madmen like Suharto a bottomless truckload of state-of-the-art weaponry and a laundry list of individuals the US would like to see “disappear”?
Give me a break. The real crime Castro committed in your eyes was not that he was a dictator, but that he had the nerve to nationalise the property of Cuba’s pre-1959 corporate mafia. If he were a free-marketeer, you Tories would adore him.
Talk about hypocrisy.
Hahahahaha
Two things. No unreasonable (or unjustified) force/abuse AND take a ‘copy’ of you comment and post it into a notepad or similar plain text editor, save it. You never know when you might just need it again.
Oh, reposting a deleted comment will normally result in a ‘duplicate comment’ response, simple solution is to add or subtract a few lines or add/subtract a word or two.
Hahahahaha
Also moderators will tell you it’s a CAPTCHA issue. Normally it is, they are not shitting you, can test this yourself.
Post a comment and type the CAPTCHA wrong, refresh the browser after it accepts the comment, normally the comment is still there, refresh it again (or a few more times) and it’s gone.
IrishBill says: you’re banned. Come back in a week if you want but you won’t be welcome if you continue the way you’ve started.
Hahahahaha
Trust me, there isn’t much I agree with about the standard and it’s authors, however the captcha thing, if the comment just vanishes very soon after it was posted, it’s probably a captcha issue. Hence the save a copy and re-post (rule number 2).
IrishBill says: You’ll be pleased to know, Burt, that we have to use the bloody captcha to post comments too. I had one disappear today. Luckily I’ve also got into the habit of saving them to the clipboard before I hit “submit”.
Burt, I can’t speak for Steve but I’ve made it clear in my posts what the government can do to lift or drop wages. Have a browse through our workers’ rights section:
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?cat=5
IrishBill
Your captcha although effective is a dog breakfast from a usability perspective.
I have a question, although it might be one for ‘lprent’. If I stuff up the captcha and my comments appears in the thread, is it just me who can see it or can others also see it?
Another 1 bites the dust
Only you can see them. It’s got something to do with javascript but beyond that you’d need Lynn to explain. It is very good at keeping spam out however and means we don’t need to run a prescriptive registration system.
Dean, you’ll have to exuse me. Occasional Observer is a troll and my patience for them is running very thin. In his short time commenting on this blog he is yet to make one constructive comment but has levelled all kinds of smears and accusations at us.
I’m sorry if you got the impression I was referring to all right-wingers there, what I meant and probably could have worded better is the ones who come on here merely to disrupt, then accuse us of deleting their comments when all that’s happened is they’ve mistyped the captcha.
It’s a fact that we don’t seem to have much of a problem with lefties coming here trying to abuse and disrupt. I’d put that down to them having an interest in this place functioning properly, as do most sensible right-leaning commenters. Unfortunately there is a small group of righties who see this place as a threat and try their hardest to turn it into a sewer. We’re determined not to let that happen.
Tane
I’m really not trying to be difficult, but that link provided me with 6 posts of ‘Key wants to cut wages’ interupted with a post about Aussie, followed by more ‘key wants to cut wages’ before I got to the Bunnings strike.
You and I seldom agreed over the effect unions have on wages, so I’d rather not relitigate the Bunnings thread. However I’m very interested in what policy Labour has to lift wages.
You as an anonymous poster provide some interesting perspectives, but as we don’t know who you are we have no idea if they are Labour policy considerations being tested in the market (the response on this and other blogs) or if they are just your own personal opinions. We certainly can’t take you perspective as policy when you are anonymous.
IrishBill
Cheers, that all I wanted to know, I can now use it as a preview feature if I have a truck load of html tags and want to verify the formatting is as planned.
Yeah, I just had a look through that myself Burt and realised the thread’s been swamped a bit. I’m tired and a couple of wines down so I can’t be bothered going through it right now. I’ll track down some stuff for you tomorrow.
we have no idea if they are Labour policy considerations being tested in the market (the response on this and other blogs) or if they are just your own personal opinions.
Just saw this – I can assure you nothing I post is a Labour policy consideration. Christ, I wish it was. They’re just my personal opinions based on experience and a bit of research.
Off topic I know, but are you guys going to post about Cunliffe overriding the will of voters in the Hawkes Bay? Or given all the links back to the Labour Party (Chris Clarke, Peter Hausmann, Ray Lind, Annette King), don’t you see it as newsworthy?
I2
Don’t get me started. It’s outrageous, do you think Annette King ever had dinner with Peter Hausmann? Do you think they discussed his appointment and his interests in Healthcare NZ? It’s got shabby written all over it.
It is the going to be the biggest scandal over the next month or so.
.
the players
Chief exec……… Used to work for Clark
King…….. appointed hausmann to board… who employs kings husband.
uncontested tenders awarded and then rescinded.
it stinks.
Nope. Recaptcha uses this interesting bit of javascript in the page. If you look at the page source you can find it near the bottom.
It pops the comment onto the screen where you can see it, but fails to go to the database. It is kind of cute, but a total pain when it fails because you ‘see’ it, but no-one else can. There is an update that fixes it, but to date I haven’t had time to do more than test it.
As other people have noted, we have to work as well – a thread problem with xlib at present for a new product. Hopefully this weekend. I have a number of plugin’s to put in, but I need repair the older posts and comments. They took some character set damage while shifting around MySQL versions.
Burt & Bill
http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-on-hb-dhb.html
Where do all roads lead?
rOb
You can now also use the new burt preview ® feature as well. Go on, get bold, blockquoted, knock yourself out.
Here is a helpful guide;
http://websitetips.com/articles/html/basictags/#chart
I can now use it as a preview feature if I have a truck load of html tags and want to verify the formatting is as planned.
Did anyone else get a shiver of antici
…
…
…
pation?
Don’t go too crazy Burt. WordPress (on which The Standard is based) only recognises a subset of tags:
http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/06/08/allowed-html-tags/
Take my advice Burt, work on your objectivity rather than your html.
For the record…..why is the Director-General of Health suppressing information over the goings-on at the Hawkes Bay DHB? Could it be that the contents of the suppressed report would be damaging to the government?
http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2008/02/still-more-on-hb-dhb.html
Insider – just to clarify – I was definitely implying that monty was drunk, not yourself (you have a rationality and coherence he was lacking back there).
As for your question (from about 5pm yesterday) – ‘wages’ implies not the rich fellers on salaries, but those on wages (as opposed to salaries). Wages dropping would imply to me businesses paying employees less. I’ve said this elsewhere but I Key would want wages to drop where they are artificially inflated (in his eyes, where anything non-market is an intervention and therefore bad), minimum wages, collective bargaining and the like.
This is something I would expect if there was a possibility of charges being laid. As such I’m not about to go round getting paranoid about it just yet.