Archive for June, 2009
A few facts unpin a lot of spin
Written By: - Date published: 1:06 am, June 10th, 2009 - 108 comments
The Tories are throwing all the muck they can at Goff. Trying to get him to back off on the Worth thing. Their latest is that Labour is spinning out this presentation of texts to Key to drag the issue out. Thought I would take a leaf out of Eddie’s book and do a timeline. Clear it […]
Honest? John?
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 12 comments
Richard Long, Fairfax’s in-house media adviser to the National Party, recycles an old line in today’s DomPost. Today it’s “honest John”. Two years ago, just before he was rolled, we posted how it was “honest Don looking like Mr Magoo”. “Honest” John’s starting to look like “honest” Don.
Crosby – Posturing with little substance
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Lynton Crosby of the political spinners Crosby/Textor, who ‘advised’ both John Key and Don Brash, has finally given up on trying to pursue a unwinnable defamation case against Nicky Hager and Radio NZ.The case appears to me to have been started largely as intimidation by the Crosby (and maybe the National party) to find out […]
Why the Herald’s polls are stupid
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 34 comments
Audrey Young: Goff right, Key wrong
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 19 comments
The Herald asked this morning whose word was more credible on the Worth issue, John Key or Phil Goff. Their political editor Audrey Young has just answered the question for them. “One politician was bound to be deeply embarrassed today, Phil Goff or John Key. One would be right and one would be wrong. And […]
Productive debate
Written By: - Date published: 1:34 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 23 comments
There was nothing in the Budget for productivity. Education, the foundation of producitivty, was actually cut when you take into account inflation and population growth. There was a bit more for a few more roads but shaving a few minutes of the commute has no effect on productivity. Yet Bill English is very keen for […]
Fight for Auckland’s local democracy
Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 2 comments
Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog, has a list of upcoming meetings on the supercity. Mt Albert – 5.30pm Tuesday 9 June, Owairaka District Primary School, 113 Richardson Rd, Owairaka, hosted by Phil Goff and David Shearer Waitakere – 7.30pm, Wednesday 10 June, Kelston Community Centre, Cnr Great North Road and Awaroa Rd, hosted by […]
Kneecapped
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Until now, Melissa Lee’s only remaining selling point in this train wreck of a campaign has been that the party she’s standing for is currently in Government. As she said in her press release yesterday: ‘I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key’s Government.’ Unfortunate […]
The Tory nose-dive roundup
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, June 9th, 2009 - 34 comments
I never seen a government crash so quickly, so hard. The Standard was saying before the election that Key was a two-faced facade and his government would push a rightwing agenda. The media chose to ignore the signs. Too caught up in the fun of getting their boy elected to care about what would happen […]
The plot thickens?
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, June 9th, 2009 - 35 comments
At his post-cabinet press conference, John Key continued to determinedly fly in a death spiral over the Worth affair. The journalists asked some probing questions on the sexual offending allegations and while Key still refuses to give us the full story, more details are emerging: Key has now confirmed that he did fire Worth, it […]
Political Chicanery
Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
The Irascible Curmudgeon writes some really good posts. So without apology we republish this little gem on spin and the art of re-writing history. John Key follows the same style – as evidenced by his shifty stories on when he knew about complaints against Richard Worth last week. The sort of political spin we can […]
Old news
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, June 9th, 2009 - 2 comments
Saw this strange article from NZPA last night. National may be behind in the polls for the upcoming Mt Albert by-election, but nationwide it still maintaining high levels of popularity. The latest nationwide Roy Morgan poll recorded unchanged support for National with 52 per cent and Labour down half a percentage point to 31 per […]
Joke candidate cracks a funny
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, June 9th, 2009 - 19 comments
From Lee’s presser yesterday: “I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key’s Government.’ Melissa, you’re not a minister. Only ministers are members of government.
Cataclysm
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, June 9th, 2009 - 10 comments
Six Degrees Could Change the World This is a documentary detailing the possible effects as temperatures rise throughout the world degree by degree. We are shown deserts spreading out across West/Central America (Stretching from Texas up into Canada) as rains fail to reach there. New York becoming inundated as seas rise and storm surges increase […]
It’s called sovereignty, stupid!
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 9th, 2009 - 9 comments
The Minister of Agriculture David Carter really outdid himself in the house last week. First he completely dodged and didn’t address the question put to him by Sue Kedgley on the use of sow crates. Next, clearly feeling the pressure he had a National backbencher ask him a nice easy question with which he took […]
3000th Post
Written By: - Date published: 5:41 pm, June 8th, 2009 - 17 comments
Well it is that time again. We just rolled over the 3000th post on the site. Number 2000 was in November last year, so it took 7 months – not bad considering that it took 6 months coming up to an election last time. The comments are sitting at 95,000. So we have done about […]
Key endorses Banks
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, June 8th, 2009 - 59 comments
As if denying Aucklanders the chance to have their say on the super city wasn’t enough National now seems determined to tell them who their mayor’s going to be too. It’s absolutely unacceptable for the PM to be endorsing John Banks as the mayor of the super city.
Rhetoric & Reality 3: Crime
Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, June 8th, 2009 - 19 comments
One of the most tedious and predictable right wing electoral tactics is to try and whip up a frenzy of fear about crime, especially violent crime. Mix in some “fear of youth” dog whistling for extra impact. Last election National were guilty as usual. The rhetoric: Key: I am extremely worried about the youth crime […]
The Tank Man
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 8th, 2009 - 4 comments
It was remiss of me not to post on this last week. June 4 marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Pictured above is “Tank Man” – an unidentified protester who briefly halted the progress of the Chinese tanks on June 5 1989. You can watch the Frontline video “The Tank Man” below […]
Brains Trust
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, June 8th, 2009 - 36 comments
Whaleoil, John Key, and Melissa Lee. National’s policy wonks discuss transport modalities in an oil- and carbon-constrained future.
More opposition than ever to supercity
Written By: - Date published: 5:51 am, June 8th, 2009 - 27 comments
While the mishandling of the Worth scandal grabs all the headlines, the mishandling of the supercity process is still grinding on. And Aucklanders aren’t fooled. A ShapeNZ poll released on Friday shows that Aucklanders want more consultation, want a government that really listens, want a referendum, and don’t want a supercity. Here are the poll’s findings: […]
New Zealand’s weakest link
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, June 7th, 2009 - 63 comments
Is its business leaders. There’s Keys, the Fyfes, the Weldons. Who all spend so much money to look good on the covers of magazines. Who expect us to love them. They want to be hailed as messiahs or Atlases carrying the rest of us. These are the muppets who banged their heads together for a […]
First moves on Holidays Act reform
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, June 7th, 2009 - 23 comments
Call me old-fashioned but the Worth scandal doesn’t really interest me much. In fact I’m of the opinion that Goff and others should just STFU about it now and let process take its course or risk having some of the unpleasantness of it rub off on the Labour brand by association. I’m much more interested […]
Should Key have appointed Worth at all?
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 7th, 2009 - 104 comments
On Q+A this morning, Phil Goff was asked by Paul Holmes for more detail on why John Key wasn’t surprised when he took the sexual harassment complaint against Richard Worth to him. According to Goff, Key said that he had been aware of rumours of similar activity by Worth and that was one reason why […]
She was lying there with her inbox open and her cellphone pulled up
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 6th, 2009 - 128 comments
The Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure has a post with this wonder title about the type of victim bashing that the some of the right have indulged in this week. Notably tsmithfield from our comments page. Here are her answers – pretty good considering she had a cold. First bold: ‘If the victim didn’t […]
Wait, didn’t he say ‘women’?
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 6th, 2009 - 50 comments
There’s still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I’ve tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us “The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible impact on the new [Labour-led] government’s subsequent fortunes. The same […]
Looking forward to the weekend
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 31 comments
Will be fun to read the Armstrongs, Rolstons, Laws, Holmes, Hooton and the other assorted rightwingers that besmirch our weekend papers. See them desperately to turn Key’s handling of Worth’s philandering into an attack on Goff. There will be claims that Goff made the harassment issue public. When it was Key on Wednesday afternoon. They […]
Why didn’t Goff out Worth earlier?
Written By: - Date published: 3:01 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 89 comments
That’s the right-wing bloggers’ spin. It’s weak. By far the most interesting thing that emerged from this morning’s exchanges on the wireless was Goff”s revelation from his file notes of his private advice to Key, that Key said “that he had heard previously rumours of inappropriate behaviour by Dr Worth”. It would be interesting to […]
Piggy in the middle
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 27 comments
Key is describing himself as ‘piggy in the middle’ in the Worth sexual harassment affair. Says he had two conflicting stories and couldn’t choose between them. What rubbish. Key accepted Worth’s version of events. He let the matter drop. No punishment for Worth. If he had been in a dilemma on who to believe he […]
Crying wolf?
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, June 5th, 2009 - 12 comments
From The Independent: No lasting harm from airport credit downgrade. Analysts and management of Auckland International Airport are unconcerned at Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the airport’s corporate credit and debt rating from A to A-minus. The downgrade will add less than $1 million to the airport’s overall interest bill of around $80 million. If […]
Air New Zealand, shame on you
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, June 5th, 2009 - 1 comment
In Brisbane yesterday, members of Australian transport unions took over an intersection outside AirNZ’s HQ to show their solidarity with the Zeal workers. Great to see the workers supporting each other across national borders. As for Air New Zealand, their shame is now international. -Marty G
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Asia Pacific Report Israel is forcing two hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate under threat of attack as its ethnic cleansing campaign continues. Israeli forces have surrounded the Indonesian Hospital, where many staff and patients sought shelter after nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was destroyed in an Israeli raid last week, ...5 days ago - Pacific 2025: Vanuatu quake, Tongan and Kanaky shakeups, Trump questions set tone for coming year
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milo Gough, Lecturer in History, University of Manchester An artist’s impression of Idris Elba’s planned eco-city, Sherbro Island City. Greenfield Planners Sdn Bhd / Sherbro Alliance Partners Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, is celebrated as a city founded to resettle freed slaves in ...6 days ago
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milo Gough, Lecturer in History, University of Manchester An artist’s impression of Idris Elba’s planned eco-city, Sherbro Island City. Greenfield Planners Sdn Bhd / Sherbro Alliance Partners Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, is celebrated as a city founded to resettle freed slaves in ...6 days ago
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“People comment a lot on how emotional I am.”The children’s minister says she’s always been an emotional person. It’s her way of coping with trauma.“Because if you bottle that up it turns into something quite nasty, right? It turns into anger, it turns into frustration, and you start to look ...6 days ago - Anne Salmond: Hunger Games in the Beehive
Comment: There are times when fiction anticipates life, and dystopian nightmares become real.Who would have thought that in New Zealand, a relatively wealthy country that was once proudly egalitarian, a version of The Hunger Games would play out?That a government would cut thousands of jobs, deny desperate families emergency food ...6 days ago
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- ‘Grossly misleading to me and to the country’: the Lange-Douglas letters, unearthed
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- How many goddamn words should I be saying to my baby?
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- Remembering Young George, the barber who cut Auckland’s hair forever
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- Newsroom daily quiz, Saturday 4 January
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp');Got a good quiz question? Send Newsroom your questions.The post Newsroom daily quiz, Saturday 4 January appeared first on Newsroom. ...6 days ago
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milo Gough, Lecturer in History, University of Manchester An artist’s impression of Idris Elba’s planned eco-city, Sherbro Island City. Greenfield Planners Sdn Bhd / Sherbro Alliance Partners Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, is celebrated as a city founded to resettle freed slaves in ...6 days ago
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Asia Pacific Report The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, has called on “medical professionals worldwide” to suspend ties with Israel in an act of solidarity with the more than “1000 colleagues of yours” killed in Gaza over the past 14 months. Countless ...6 days ago
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The co-founder of Te Pāti Māori and architect of Whānau Ora will be remembered as a skilled political tactician who dedicated her life to the wellbeing of Māori, writes Miriama Aoake. Part of the hesitation of entering politics for any sane person is surely compromise. Compromise is essential in the ...7 days ago
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