Archive for September, 2008

Roy Morgan has Winston on 5%

Written By: - Date published: 12:52 pm, September 19th, 2008 - 93 comments

If the latest Roy Morgan poll is to be believed, John Key’s big gamble of ruling Winston Peters out of any future coalition may well turn out to be one of the stupidest plays in New Zealand’s political history. According to the poll, NZ First has increased its hypothetical share of the vote to 5%, […]

The Standard Week: 12-19 September

Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, September 19th, 2008 - Comments Off on The Standard Week: 12-19 September

Work rights and judgement look to be central issues in the campaign. The Greens set the standard by putting forward a fantastic work rights policy in counter to National’s continued attacks on our rights. Key’s judgement in fiercely advocating Kiwi involvement in the invasion of Iraq raises serious questions over whether we can trust him […]

Unacceptable

Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, September 19th, 2008 - 164 comments

From Newzblog: “Local activist James Sleep was today exercising his democratic right to protest when he was approached by an entourage of 4WDs carrying Wairapara MP John Hayes and John Key. Sleep attempted to get out of the way however he soon found himself being propelled backwards by the force of Hayes’ car. The car […]

Compliments and questions

Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, September 18th, 2008 - 25 comments

First, it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised by a tory. Turns out Tony Friedlander’s Road Transport Trust is not just donating to National. As well as $30K to the Nats, Labour got $20K and other parties will get something as well to help the democratic process. Can’t help but notice National got the most though. […]

ACT’s fifth Candidate?

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, September 18th, 2008 - 54 comments

The word around the traps is that ACT will be announcing the name of its mystery 5th list candidate at its Law and Order policy launch this weekend and it’s rumoured that the candidate will be David Garrett. Garrett is a Barrister and is also a legal advisor to the Sensible Sentencing Trust who drafted […]

Key on scrapping four weeks annual leave

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, September 18th, 2008 - 24 comments

Thanks to the wonders of Scoopit I’ve just come across this old TVNZ footage of John Key’s first day as National’s finance spokesman. It’s interesting to see where his economic priorities lay: The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh? [It’s worth noting that this isn’t some aberration limited to John Key […]

Burned

Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, September 18th, 2008 - 33 comments

Under the headline “National MP ‘least prefered’ in own website opinion poll” the Kapiti News reports that Nathan Guy trails Darren Hughes 5% to 95% in his own Facebook poll. Comments on the poll include: I don’t trust Nathan Guy to work properly for all the people of Kapiti and Horowhenua. I’ve heard nothing from […]

Greens good for workers

Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, September 18th, 2008 - 75 comments

Work rights should be a big issue this election. National is proposing to strip workers of their rights to undermine wage increases. The Greens’ work rights policy, on the other hand, rocks. – Lift the minimum wage from $12 an hour to $15 an hour immediately. That will restore the minimum wage relative to the […]

Key still wishes we had invaded Iraq

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, September 18th, 2008 - 158 comments

Helen Clark made foreign policy judgement a campaign issue today when she told a Grey Power meeting that if New Zealand had invaded Iraq with the US as John Key wanted we would have lost up to 60 soldiers*. Through a spokesman, John Key said “the claim of 60 dead is hysterical and desperate”. I […]

Hooton hits rock bottom

Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, September 17th, 2008 - 130 comments

Matthew Hooton lies for a living. He was one of the architects of Don Brash’s deceptive, racist campaign in 2005, he has told lies about me personally in his SST column, and he lies endlessly on his new paid blog. The latest lie is that a small rightwing blog called ‘No Minister‘ has been blocked […]

Poor

Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, September 17th, 2008 - 39 comments

I’ve just come across Labour’s tragic new campaign website, Labour08.co.nz, and I’m of the firm opinion that someone needs to get their shit together very quickly. Let’s recap here. Labour, according to the polls, is anywhere from 6 to 18 points behind National. Even accounting for the quirks of MMP it’ll be a bloody hard […]

The descent continues

Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, September 17th, 2008 - 87 comments

I sometimes have Fox News on in the background when I’m home, it’s good to get wound up now and again. So, I’m used to seeing the most bizarre attack angles masquerading as serious journalism. But I took a second-take when I saw this one because it took a moment to realise I wasn’t looking […]

More slippery attacks, still no solutions

Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, September 17th, 2008 - 70 comments

Yesterday, John Key “attacked Labour’s economic record, which he said amounted to overtaxing voters so it could put money into its pet projects” So, what are these ‘pet projects’ and which of them National would cancel? Well, Labour’s major spending projects have been increasing the health budget, spending more on transport (including roads, unfortunately), more […]

Billboard ideas for Left and Right

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 17th, 2008 - 46 comments

I see the National billboard on the corner of Dixon and Victoria in Wellington is already down. Are they pulling them all because they have been unanimously ridiculed or were the hilarious extra comments* that kept appearing on this one making it a liability? Either way, perhaps they will consider replacing it with something like […]

Jessica Alba says “Declare Yourself”

Written By: - Date published: 4:26 pm, September 16th, 2008 - 12 comments

Some commentators have pondered whether an election in NZ so close to the election in the States should be a concern for Labour. Helen Clark has already said: “… Obviously we all take a great interest in the American election but our election is what determines our immediate future”. But there’s also an upside in […]

Video: health policy like you’ve never seen it

Written By: - Date published: 4:02 pm, September 16th, 2008 - 39 comments

Fair to say this is video is pretty much out there…

National Monopoly

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, September 16th, 2008 - 14 comments

Just came across this on G.Blog. Pure gold: ps. Is that Winston in the bottom left corner?

Chutzpah

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 16th, 2008 - 17 comments

When the EPMU released its investigation notes on Shawn Tan it was obvious that some right-wing bloggers would seize on the fact that Tan had been employed on a probationary agreement and stupidly claim that, therefore, the union was hypocritical for opposing National’s fire at will policy (which creates a 90 day no-rights period for […]

How would Nats cut tax? Where would the money come from?

Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, September 16th, 2008 - 22 comments

Bill English has confirmed that National still intends to give the average worker a $50 tax cut. That’s $18 a week more than they will get in Labour’s tax cuts after 2011. If National’s would increase the cut for all taxpayers by around $18 a week it would cost nearly $3 billion a year. In […]

Nats’ dirty tricks exposed?

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, September 16th, 2008 - 53 comments

Cameron Slater, aka Whaleoil, is a nasty piece of work. If you’re a leftie and you get into the media, he’ll dig whatever dirt he can find on you from the ‘net and what he can’t find he’ll make up in an attempt to intimidate you and others into silence. But the intertubes flow both […]

Old battles

Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, September 16th, 2008 - 64 comments

When John Key responded to the PM’s announcement of the election date on Friday he stated: This election is not about the past. It’s not about the old political battles of the past 20 or 30 years. And I got to thinking, what exactly are these “old political battles of the past 20 or 30 […]

Nothing to Hide? + more moaning

Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, September 15th, 2008 - 46 comments

Prime is running a series of interviews every Sunday until the election with the leader of each party in Parliament, starting with Rodney Hide last night. It was surprisingly good. Hosted by Bill Ralston with a panel of Barry Soper, Audrey Young, and Colin Espiner, some good questions were asked and Hide himself was good […]

Video: Slippery as a snake

Written By: - Date published: 2:16 pm, September 15th, 2008 - 30 comments

08 wire are staying on the case – coming to a screen near you:

Govts do keep promises, some more than others

Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, September 15th, 2008 - 24 comments

It’s an old saw among those who think knee-jerk cynicism is a replacement for healthy skepticism that politicians always break their promises. That’s challenged by an interesting study out of Canterbury University about whether governments keep their election promises. In the 11 terms from 1972 to 2005, each government kept at least half its election […]

Rochelle, that was pretty good.

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, September 15th, 2008 - 78 comments

Well it turns out my niece has been having fun and done an effective google bomb on John Key. I’ve just been watching her TV3 clip when I wrote this post. Rochelle shows her experience with the media in expressing her opinion. This is something that belongs in the Tips on campaigning. I’ve had something […]

Disappointing

Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, September 15th, 2008 - 79 comments

I just have to say, it’s incredibly disappointing that a simple prank, a google bomb, gets three newspaper articles and coverage on TV3 and when talkback radio suggests The Standard was tipped off on the election date that is an issue worth following up with the PM. But when John Key is quoted in a […]

To ask the real questions, you have to know the details

Written By: - Date published: 6:02 pm, September 14th, 2008 - 32 comments

Agenda this morning showed, in several ways, that if you want to ask difficult questions, you have to know your topic. Guyon Espiner gave a comprehensive lesson in the dangers of only knowing the media hype on a topic, not the actual detail. Defence Minister Phil Goff, frankly, made mince meat of Guyon’s attempts to […]

MSM columns – clueless about fact checking

Written By: - Date published: 5:33 pm, September 14th, 2008 - 30 comments

This week the election was announced and the third question to the PM (asked by Colin Espiner) was about whether The Standard possibly knew the date (Helen doesn’t tell us either). Colin thinks we’re being sensitive about the mainstream media’s attitudes to The Standard as shown in a comment he made on his own blog […]

No policy?

Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, September 14th, 2008 - 20 comments

A reader just sent us the screenshot below with the attached explanation: Thought I should start to read up on some of the content from parties involved – from their own websites of course.  Mainly to educate myself as a voter. National party site – loaded up, but then Firefox tells me the flash script […]

Negative vs dirty

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 pm, September 13th, 2008 - 69 comments

There’s an important difference between negative campaigning and dirty tricks but it already seems the two are getting confused in the media. Negative campaigning is saying bad things about your opponent that are at least arguably true (eg Clark saying Key was like a tourist at the South Auckland markets). Dirty campaigning is knowingly telling […]

The Standard Week: September 5 – 12

Written By: - Date published: 5:53 pm, September 12th, 2008 - 31 comments

The election date was announced as November the 8th. Everyone had worked that out based on the available dates. But that didn’t stop Colin Espiner asking the PM if she had tipped off The Standard about the date seeing as we have called the 8th correctly on a number of occasions. No tip off Colin, […]