Not PC on John Key’s lies

Written By: - Date published: 2:57 pm, October 12th, 2011 - 17 comments
Categories: blogs, john key - Tags: ,

Trenchant criticism of the beleaguered PM today from an unusual source. Well worth clicking through to read the whole post, here’s the main points:

John Key lies [updated]

… And the talk elsewhere now is not about last week’s downgrade—due in part to “increased spending by the government”—but about John Key’s lies about it.  About the lie he told parliament after last weeks’ downgrade that an even bigger downgrade would have happened under a Labour Government—and he knew this (he says) because Standard and Poors told him.

Bullshit, says Standard and Poors. They aren’t now, never have been and never will be so partisan—and, frankly, any former manager of Merrill Lynch knows that as a fact you can take to the bank, whatever he now says he heard second-hand from whichever ill-tamed unnamed source.  …

And how about this boast of his in parliament a couple of weeks ago, boasting about “his” achievements as Prime Minister:

We have grown for eight of the last nine quarters, we will be back in surplus by 2014-15, our debt is one quarter of the OECD average, we have interest rates at a 45-year low, unemployment is starting to fall, we have created 45,000 jobs, … we are likely to create 170,000 jobs in the next 4 years, we have reformed the Resource Management Act, and, by the way, we are on track to win the Rugby World Cup.

More lies.  More bullshit. More hyperbolic nonsense.

  • “We have grown for eight of the last nine quarters…” Any “growth” has only been in inflated figures—and even those show any “growth” as virtually a statistical anomaly. The claim is a nonsense.
  • “…we will be back in surplus by 2014-15…” Any “surplus” expected in 2014-15 is expected only by Treasury, and only on their delusions of world economic recovery and local economic “growth” of over three percent a year for the next several years. Do you see any of that coming? The claim is a fiction.
  • “…our debt is one quarter of the OECD average…”   Government debt is now $28.5 billion and growing, thanks solely to Bill English’s continued over-spending.  This rapid and worrying rise in government debt was cited by both Fitch and Standard and Poors in their downgrade. Moreover, the OECD includes the UK, USA, Japan, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece … being just “average” in this company would be a very disturbing place to be indeed. The claim is irrelevant, at best.
  • “…we have interest rates at a 45-year low…” Interest rates have been set at a 45-year low by every central bank in the world because the world is in the middle of a 75-year historical world financial crisis, brought about by those same central banks. This is not an achievement, it is an admission. Of failure.
  • “…unemployment is starting to fall…” Really? Since the official unemployment rate rocketed up to between six and seven percent, virtually doubling under his Premiership, the adult rate has remained virtually static—figures helped, perhaps, by the more than 100,000 New Zealanders who left under his watch for Australia, with the rate of departure increasing in recent months. Meanwhile, a quarter of young people are now out of work and likely to remain so for some time, and nearly one-third of a million New Zealanders have been on a benefit for nine out the last nine quarters, with no sign of that falling either. Key’s claim is a joke. A disgraceful joke.
  • “…we have created 45,000 jobs…”  There were just over 2.2 million New Zealanders in work when the Key G0vernment came to office. There are now just over 2.2 million New Zealanders in work. 2.2 million minus 2.2 million equals …
  • “…we are likely to create 170,000 jobs in the next 4 years…”  More flatulent fiction.
  • “…we have reformed the Resource Management Act…”  The Act was “reformed” not to free up land to help make housing more affordable, nor to give power and property rights back to property owners, but to give more power to planners and make life easier for the government’s road-building machine. In other words, not to help you or I, but themselves. The claim is a lie.
  • “…we are on track to win the Rugby World Cup…” We? Is he next in line behind Stephen Donald?

His boasting is a litany of orchestrated ooze. …

17 comments on “Not PC on John Key’s lies ”

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  1. Craig Glen Eden 1
    12 October 2011 at 3:08 pm

    Yup he is the big Dick all right but oh so soft. What a goober we have for a PM

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    12 October 2011 at 3:12 pm

    The Act was “reformed” not to free up land to help make housing more affordable…

    Not that freeing up land will make housing more affordable. It’ll make it more expensive due to the increased costs associated with having:
    To go further to get to work
    To go further to do any social activity
    The increased use of resources to provide services to those houses

    etc etc

    The fucken idiots in their desire to build even more sprawling cities when it’s obvious that if you want cheaper living you build upwards. Of course, more sprawling cities do boost the profits of gas stations and oil companies especially when the government is doing everything in its power to stop public transport.

    • Uncle Fester 2.1
      12 October 2011 at 11:29 pm

      Yeah, and also like having to build more schools and roads what are closer to the new “cheap” houses.

      Without proper goverment control people will just build houses anywhere, like rich pricks could build near us ordinary people. and we would have to pay for roads n evrything.

      Stuff like houses aren’t even that expensive John keys is just a lier.

  4. sally 4
    12 October 2011 at 3:28 pm

    I almost feel bad for laughing at the broken Libertainz billboard in Western Springs last night. Almost…

  5. Mac1 5
    12 October 2011 at 7:33 pm

    Broomhead on Key’s lies.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/cartoon/

    Out wearing a NZLP rosette on the street today, and a youngish Otaki ACT voter came up and said he was voting Labour this time because of the lies from John Key and from Rodney Hide.

    • Jim Nald 5.1
      12 October 2011 at 7:40 pm

      He can lie to some people, some of the time …

      Might such highly developed ability of his be pathological that has so far carried quite impressively into his professional life and now being put less successfully to practice in his prime ministerial capacity?

      • felix 5.1.1
        12 October 2011 at 9:38 pm

        My thoughts exactly.

        In the corporate world bullshit and bluster is the order of the day. You’re expected to be able to waffle impressive-sounding but meaningless nonsense, and no-one is ever going to analyse it to figure out if there’s any truth in it as long as the noises are the right ones.

        The right noises being noises that demonstrate that you fit in with the group, that you hold the same basic ideas and are interested in the same things as the other corporate drones you’re talking “to”.

    • Deadly_NZ 5.2
      12 October 2011 at 8:38 pm

      I just want to catch the NAT mp for Otaki and ask him to tell me with a straight face, and looking me right in the eye, and without lying, to explain to me, just what has John Key done thats positive for this country.

  6. Josh 6
    13 October 2011 at 9:35 am

    “Government debt is now $28.5 billion and growing, thanks solely to Bill English’s continued over-spending.”

    I thought The Standard was of the view that public debt is not an issue; that National has ‘manufcatured’ a crisis to justify its asset sales and public spending cuts: http://thestandard.org.nz/the-great-debt-myth/

    • Zorr 6.1
      13 October 2011 at 10:50 am

      The NACTs made public debt an issue and, therefore, are being judged by their own metric.

      Public debt is not necessarily an issue dependant on what it is used for (mainly based around Keynesian and neo-Keynesian economics) but, in their infinite wisdom, English and the NACToids have spent most of that borrowing on tax cuts which have the lowest flow on multiplier of any form of spending.

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