Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, December 23rd, 2010 - 11 comments
Do the wikileak cables illustrate just how stupid the diplomatic community is? What’s it all about? And why is our media not focussing any attention on this strange state of affairs where governments are seemingly informed by deaf and blind diplomats mouthing off?
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 pm, September 29th, 2010 - 62 comments
After picking up my award for worst ever ‘Standard’ post title, I’d just like to say that there seems to a penchant these days to leave too many things up to higher powers, or perceived authorities. And authorities and those who are ideologically aligned with them or reliant upon them, naturally enough encourage such a giving away of agency. It’s not always deliberate. And it’s certainly not a conspiracy. It’s just the way it is and is borne of habit. This morning afforded a fairly clear example of it.
Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, December 3rd, 2009 - 58 comments
Here’s a wee gripe in the morning. John Key. Did you ever see such a prima donna? Headline on Newsroom this morning: “Key And Copenhagen – Prime Minister John Key is preparing to relent on his refusal to attend the world climate change conference in Copenhagen”. In The Herald: “Key books flight to Copenhagen – …
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, October 14th, 2009 - 4 comments
The Herald can be bad, but it’s not yet a patch on Fox News. From The Guardian: “What a bunch of warmongers we have in the White House. America is fighting the war in Iraq, they’re fighting in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban. And now these people have taken on another enemy: Fox …
Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, June 16th, 2009 - 44 comments
During his time in parliament Richard Worth has cost the taxpayer well over a million dollars yet John Key won’t even be straight with the public as to why he’s gone. First Key wouldn’t tell us because he claimed he didn’t want to contaminate a police investigation, now he won’t tell us because, having resigned …
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, May 24th, 2008 - 62 comments
Key’s best trick is to answer questions with impressive or technical sounding assertions that stop the line of questioning but don’t actually tell us anything. When he does that, interviewers need to push him to explain himself. Here’s a few paraphrased examples from the last couple of week: Q. ‘What don’t you like about the …
Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, May 10th, 2008 - 15 comments
A great interview by Jon Stewart on political blogging. Well worth watching. The part about evolution of blogging in the US is particularly interesting. New Zealand obviously lags behind in some ways but, as is often the case in this small polity, things also have a tendency to move faster once they get going. I …
Written By: - Date published: 12:39 pm, May 7th, 2008 - 42 comments
In some ways, there’s little to tell New Zealand First, other than let Winston Peters be himself. Peters has been (along with Helen Clark), New Zealand’s most successful MMP politician he has survived and run good campaigns every time except in 2005. He needs to remember to play the charming rogue a little more often, …
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, May 7th, 2008 - Comments Off
The Daily Show’s John Oliver goes behind the scenes at the Pollies, the US awards ceremony for political ad consultants. Hilarious. Watch the nominees tell Oliver how to destroy hope, make voters fear black people and hang your fragile ego on a yard sign. I’m sure our mate John Ansell would feel right at home. …
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, May 6th, 2008 - 53 comments
This morning’s performace on breakfast TV by Paul Henry was a disgrace. His complete lack of objectivity on the rail and ferry buy-back was even more biased and partisan than we have come to expect from him. Despite Guyon Espiner’s best efforts to provide some objective analysis of the government’s decision, Henry simply shouted about …
Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, May 6th, 2008 - 84 comments
Here’s the first par of National’s release on the rail deal: National Party Leader John Key says at a time when householders are struggling to pay the weekly bills, Helen Clark’s decision to spend the thick end of a billion dollars to buy back the rail rolling stock does not make any sense. Here’s Fran …
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, May 5th, 2008 - 7 comments
Wat Tyler at KBB has an interesting comment on Agenda’s dreadful panel discussion yesterday: Agenda on Sunday was awful. The panelists didn’t want to listen to the people they were interviewing (both Russell Norman and David Parker did very well) and had their own agendas to pursue. Jenni McManus was a disgrace. Argumentative and rude, …
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, April 28th, 2008 - 79 comments
Last week, Campbell Live ran an article about the framing of Key as slippery. It could have been an excellent piece on the merits of such attacks, the wisdom of them, and their effectiveness. In parts it was, but then Campbell did this: The shallow premise that politics is only identical brands competing for popularity, …
Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, April 26th, 2008 - 36 comments
This morning’s Dom Post buys into National’s “Aussie exodus” spin with a lead story claiming “A staggering one in 10 voters are considering a move to Australia” in the next twelve months. The facts, of course, are somewhat different. As we’ve shown before, as few as 0.67% of New Zealanders actually emigrate to any country …
Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, April 20th, 2008 - 61 comments
In the Herald today, Bill Ralston sticks up for poor John Key who has been the subject of personal political attacks recently. Like Key, Ralston wonders what is “the cost of the Government using countless bureaucrats to endlessly scour records in an attempt to discover inconsistencies in any utterance [Key has] made”. Ralston needs to …
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, April 18th, 2008 - 14 comments
As predicted by The Standard earlier this week, the Press Council has upheld the Coalition for Open Government’s complaint against the NZ Herald’s Electoral Finance Bill campaign. The Press Council found that the Herald’s front-page editorial last year contained a “mis-statement of fact”, which the paper should have promptly corrected. At heart was the paper’s …
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, April 16th, 2008 - 72 comments
John Key’s latest line is to whine that Labour and others (including this blog) are launching personal attacks on him, and would we please stop. Our attacks are not personal, they are political. National wants to be in control of the Government, control an operation with a budget of near $60 billion and quarter of …
Written By: - Date published: 4:11 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 16 comments
Word has it that the Press Council will tomorrow uphold the complaint laid against the New Zealand Herald by the Coalition for Open Government that the Herald’s December 4 front-page editorial headed “Speak now or forever hold your peace in 2008″ was misleading. The Herald’s editorial attacking the Electoral Finance Bill implied that anyone who …
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, April 8th, 2008 - 16 comments
The Herald could barely contain its self-satisfaction when National’s David Farrar complained to the Electoral Commission that the country’s largest private sector union, the EPMU, which comprises 50,000 working New Zealanders, should not be allowed to register as a third party under the Electoral Finance ACT. ‘ Law gags friend as well as foe‘ proclaimed …
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, April 3rd, 2008 - 60 comments
Now this is what Campbell needs to do more of. Last night the man ripped poor old Peter Brown to shreds over his racist comments about Asian immigrants, and it was brutal. You almost had to feel sorry for the guy:
Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, April 2nd, 2008 - 14 comments
Keith Ng of Public Address has a long-standing commitment to improving the quality of journalism in this country. Now, he is proposing a non-partisan wiki-style forum for fact-checking politicians’ statements. It seems like a great idea. We constantly see politicians making statements that are not backed by the facts but have time to only cover …
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, March 31st, 2008 - 18 comments
There have been a number of stories recently about the number of doctors heading overseas but they are usually sensationalist and lack context. The most important questions are how many doctors do we have working in New Zealand, and how does that relate to the size of the population? Fortunately, the Medical Council produces an …
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 pm, March 27th, 2008 - 36 comments
Ever since the Herald lost its rag over the EFA I’ve come to expect little more than half-truths and inaccuracies from its editorials, but today’s effort was particularly disappointing. Business NZ press release in one hand and a keyboard in the other, the Herald had itself all wound up over suggestions that proposed minimum entitlements to meal …
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, March 20th, 2008 - 18 comments
With Barack Obama doing so well in the Democrat primaries and being seen as the candidate of change, National wants to paint John Key as the kiwi Obama. And some in the media have lapped it up pointing to such amazing similarities as: ‘they were both born in 1961!’, ‘they both have two children!’, ‘they’re …
Written By: - Date published: 11:04 am, March 18th, 2008 - 6 comments
This week’s NBR editorial, titled “Smarten up, John Key”, frets that Key keeps showing himself to be a slippery, policy lightweight (can’t have people seeing that side of him until the election is safely won). They have three recommendations for how Key can smarten up: ‘First, is to keep his mouth shut when asked questions …
Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, March 17th, 2008 - 7 comments
Rob Stock apparently holds several awards for personal finance reporting but looks unlikely to win another based on his rehash of National Party lines in the SST this weekend. I can understand the desire to get these pesky articles to the publisher when the sun’s shining and there are better things to be doing outside …
Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, March 15th, 2008 - 8 comments
I imagine this by-line is an error, but given the way the Herald’s been evangelising for the Right lately you do have to wonder… (Hat-tip: gobsmacked)
Written By: - Date published: 3:33 pm, March 13th, 2008 - 54 comments
Yesterday in Parliament, Winston Peters tabled a letter of protest from the Herald journalists’ chapel to APN chief executive Martin Simons. The letter related to Simons’ meeting with John Key to draft a ‘clarification’ for the Bay Report’s quote of Key saying he “would love to see wages drop.” The Bay Report was then forced …
Written By: - Date published: 11:02 am, March 11th, 2008 - 53 comments
Speaking of humour, that joke of a newspaper the NBR has had a crack at us again. According to them The Standard is “a blog which tests Labour lines in advance”. So much for the NBR’s self-lauded connections: we don’t test Labour’s lines, we write them with Mike and Helen in a secret bunker under …
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, March 11th, 2008 - 32 comments
Tomorrow – ‘Slavery: it wasn’t so bad when you think about it’
Written By: - Date published: 2:54 pm, March 10th, 2008 - 45 comments
In an article on the economy that would have had my high-school economics teacher in fits, Bill Ralston says that it is hypocritical of the Government to block the sale of Auckland Airport because it is a strategic asset while the Government-owned New Zealand Superannuation Fund (the Cullen Fund, as National dubbed it, I guess …
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