Archive for November, 2007

More hypocrisy from National

Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, November 19th, 2007 - 53 comments

It’s interesting to see National is attacking Peter Davis, the PM’s husband, over a letter he wrote to the NZ Herald about the Electoral Finance Bill. Apparently Peter Davis – a respected university professor – is not entitled to views of his own and is merely parroting the lines of the ‘Clark household’. From Bill […]

Granny’s blue woolly slippers

Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, November 17th, 2007 - 21 comments

Granny’s campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill started with a bang and ended with a whimper. On Monday there was a banner headline “Democracy under attack”, complete with a front page editorial, a fuzzy picture of a masked woman, and a serpent cartoon. By Friday our crusading heroes had reduced the protection of democracy to […]

Fairfax poll

Written By: - Date published: 5:43 am, November 17th, 2007 - 70 comments

The Dom Post reports that: National’s support slid from 50 to 45 per cent in a Fairfax Media-Nielsen poll released today. Labour jumped four to 40 per cent from Fairfax’s September poll, close to the 41 per cent it scored in the 2005 election. There is also surprising opposition to tax cuts – despite Labour’s […]

Party like it’s 1999

Written By: - Date published: 3:19 pm, November 16th, 2007 - 64 comments

If we needed any more reason not to let National take us back to the 90s, I think this might be it. Via nznationalparty on flickr.

Tell the panel Don & I am not a liar

Written By: - Date published: 2:34 pm, November 16th, 2007 - 10 comments

Spotted yesterday in the Westin Hotel in Auckland’s Viaduct Basin by our orbiting surveillance satellite & Don Brash in a job interview line. Could it be he’s going for the now vacant National Party general manager’s job? Steven Joyce and Jo de Joux, also of Hollow Men fame, are back at National’s HQ & perhaps […]

Pretend polling

Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, November 16th, 2007 - 32 comments

Dodgy online polls seem to be becoming a staple of political reporting here in New Zealand. The story earlier this week on poll “hacking” sent me in search of an insightful opinion I’d heard previously. So today, we have a guest author on The Standard – BPGP, on “Pretend polling”. Pretend Polling BPGP So for […]

Looking for: whatever he can get

Written By: - Date published: 4:10 am, November 16th, 2007 - 43 comments

In perhaps his strongest signal yet to potential coalition partners, John Key has set his Facebook ‘Looking for’ status to “Whatever I can get”. Puzzled by the phrase “Whatver I can get” I looked it up in the urban dictionary: “A phrase popularly used on the networking college site facebook.com. It refers to an individual’s […]

Lawson not bonkers

Written By: - Date published: 8:26 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 10 comments

Esteemed Tory Brit-econ-pop-enviro-guru Nigel Lawson, Lord of Blaby, dad of Nigella, is not bonkers. Lord Blaby (Ed: shurely not? Wot? It is true?), who is visiting New Zealand, allegedly to attend a Business Roundtable party, told TVNZ’s Breakfast that the world could adjust to global warming because people don’t find Singapore too hot to do […]

Prats in the Nats on China’s miners

Written By: - Date published: 5:52 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 26 comments

How’s this for small-minded prejudice from National Party backbencher Kate Wilkinson in a press release today complaining about the $84,000 dollars for a Labour Dept to help provide health and safety training for Chinese coal miners: Ms Wilkinson says Kiwi taxpayers will clearly be surprised to learn that the New Zealand Government is effectively subsidising […]

Headline of the Day

Written By: - Date published: 4:35 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 9 comments

Paris Hilton doesn’t help drunk elephants I haven’t read the article yet, and I don’t think I will. With a headline like that who needs to?

Granny gulled by National and Brethren spin

Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 58 comments

Granny Herald wants to run a campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill when it doesn’t understand the Electoral Act. Worse, because it doesn’t understand the Act it makes assertions that are neither true to the law or in line with the facts. So it keeps repeating National and Brethren spin. One example is in yesterday’s […]

Roundtable shirks science, embraces aristocrat

Written By: - Date published: 4:26 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 21 comments

The Business Roundtable has invited Nigel Lawson, British Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher, to speak to them on climate change. Inevitably, Lawson is a climate change denier. His message is that climate change is a replacement for communism and mainstream religion. He says people who are concerned about climate change are ‘eco-fundamentalists’ and ‘climate […]

Granny’s wail

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 27 comments

Today the New Zealand Herald’s waning tantrum over the Electoral Finance Bill has been relegated to Page 5. Perhaps Granny has paused, had a cuppa, and is coming to her senses. The Herald reports today, a tad ingenuously, that the government might be about to “change tack”. Anyone paying attention to the noises coming out […]

Landslide sliding away

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, November 15th, 2007 - 16 comments

The Roy Morgan poll results have been included in the latest rolling poll from Molesworth and Featherston and shows that National – despite John Key’s confident prediction of a landslide victory (The Press, 9 Jun 2007) – is going to have to lift its game if it wants to present itself as a viable alternative. […]

Hollow man beachtowel

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, November 15th, 2007 - 4 comments

Make your National MP’s holiday season with one of these fantastic towels. Currently out of stock but don’t doubt for a minute that it’ll be back.

Google Australia launches election tools

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, November 15th, 2007 - Comments Off on Google Australia launches election tools

Google’s launched some great new online tools for the Australian election. Check out: www.google.com.au/election2007 where you’ll find Google maps called maplets, with electorate boundaries, seats held and margins as well as electorate profiles and member information. Links are also provided to videos and associated electorate information. Great way to waste a day! Quick YouTube overview […]

Take the blinkers off Granny

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, November 15th, 2007 - 32 comments

Granny Herald tries to defend itself against National Party bias by saying it ran a headline “I am not a liar” over Brash after he admitted on bFM knowing that the Brethren were going to issue pamphlets attacking labour, three days after saying he knew absolutely nothing about them. Brash’s exact words were “I knew […]

Electoral finance: link roundup

Written By: - Date published: 3:45 am, November 15th, 2007 - 48 comments

Tony Milne’s got a good piece on the Electoral Finance Bill over at his blog I See Red – electoral finance reform is a way to safeguard democracy: “New Zealand history tells an interesting story about the battle for democracy. Whenever progressive forces have mobilised to extend the franchise or the ideal of ‘one person, […]

Students as stakeholders

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, November 14th, 2007 - 40 comments

Interesting to see Onslow College is giving its students a say over the hiring of their teachers. Recognising students as stakeholders in their schools is a fundamentally progressive and democratic move, and it’d be good to see it happening in other schools too. From this morning’s Dom Post: Pupils at Wellington’s Onslow College now have […]

Ask not what your country can do for you, DPF…

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, November 14th, 2007 - 63 comments

Interesting to see National Party blogger David Farrar is inciting his readers to start a political party to bypass/oppose the Electoral Finance Bill. Even more interesting is the fact that his rabid hoard are already calling for him to be its leader. Here at The Standard we couldn’t agree more – if anyone has the […]

Burqa Bob speaks out

Written By: - Date published: 1:01 pm, November 14th, 2007 - 19 comments

Bob Clarkson’s never been one of the sharper tacks on the National party backbench, his only contributions to the debate being his infamous ‘left testicle’ remark and his call for Muslims who wear the burqa to ‘go back to Islam’. According to Frogblog he’s now given up trying altogether: According to the wonderful TheyWorkForYou website […]

Speech: Labour is the Party of Ideas

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, November 14th, 2007 - 10 comments

The other day we published an extract from Evan Thornley’s speech to the Labour Party conference. We’ve finally managed to get hold of a digital copy, so here it is in full. It’s quite long, but well worth a read: LABOUR IS THE PARTY OF IDEAS NZLP National Conference Keynote Speech – Auckland 4 Nov., […]

SCRABBLE success

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, November 14th, 2007 - 7 comments

Nigel Richards, formerly of Christchurch, has become our first world Scrabble champion. Richards apparently led from the start, needing just three of the five available games to clinch victory. Stuff reports that “In the final game, Richards got four bonus scores for getting all seven letters out & for dirtiest, overapt, recopies and equinias” Clearly […]

The cost of the war in Iraq

Written By: - Date published: 5:09 am, November 14th, 2007 - 5 comments

From the BBC: “The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing nearly double the amount previously thought, according to a report set to be released by Congress”. The Washington post has the full story: The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, […]

Sharpen up your climate change arguments

Written By: - Date published: 4:22 am, November 14th, 2007 - 3 comments

The BBC has a good roundup of the top 10 climate change denier arguments with rebuttals from scientists who agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: that it’s happening, it’s due to us, and the potential damage is serious. Worthwhile reading for those who still find themselves in these kinds of arguments in the […]

Latest Cosmopolitician on shelves now

Written By: - Date published: 7:04 pm, November 13th, 2007 - 91 comments

Thanks to the reader who sent us the latest edition of Cosmopolitican, a nifty little publication that did the rounds just before the last election. This month’s edition has John Key as its coverboy, which sure makes a change from 2005 when old man Brash used to don the cover every other month. Strangely though, […]

Time for an upgrade

Written By: - Date published: 6:17 pm, November 13th, 2007 - 21 comments

So the Herald links to us from the front page of their website this afternoon, and the resulting traffic knocks out our server. Bugger. We’re back online now, but I guess the moral of the story is we’re going to have to start paying for it like the big boys do. Did I say bugger […]

NZ Herald to investigate Nats’ funding

Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, November 13th, 2007 - 19 comments

Matt Robson’s newsletter has a real scoop on the Herald’s next propaganda campaign: NZ Herald investigation into large, secret party funding I have it from good sources that any day now the NZ Herald is going to launch a full, in-depth investigative report into the National Party’s use of backdoor, closed-door and behind-the-scenes sources of […]

What’s National got to hide?

Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, November 13th, 2007 - 54 comments

During the debate over the Electoral Finance Bill John Key’s made a lot of noise about National’s willingness to clamp down on anonymous donations and the need to regulate third party expenditure. This makes a lot of sense from his perspective – inoculate the real issues (which National is weak on) and beat up the […]

History repeats, part II

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, November 13th, 2007 - 13 comments

There’s a famous line from Joyce’s Ulysses in which the main protagonist Stephen Dedalus states “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” and when I opened the Herald this morning I suddenly understood what that can mean: Now look at this one from a little ways back: Spot the difference. It […]

History repeats

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 pm, November 12th, 2007 - 32 comments

The Dominion, election day 1938: If the socialist government is returned to power your vote today may be the last free individual vote you will ever be given the opportunity to exercise in New Zealand. NZ Herald, 12 November 2007: When is the Government going to get this message: democracy is not a device to […]