Aloha means hello and goodbye

59 comments on “Aloha means hello and goodbye ”

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1. ghostwhowalks 1

   29 April 2008 at 3:21 pm

   Was he also out of the country after New year when Hillary died?

   That was in addition to the time in Hawaii in August
2. Steve Pierson 2

   29 April 2008 at 3:53 pm

   wow. we’ve been getting denial of service attacks since these last two posts went up. Sorry about the interruption of service. Lynn’s got it under control.
3. Macky 3

   29 April 2008 at 3:55 pm

   what’s up with the site?

   it’s pretty rich of Key to complain that the government isn’t doing anything about rising prices when he’s jetting off to his million dollar bach in Hawaii.
4. mike 4

   29 April 2008 at 3:55 pm

   This is outrageous. He should have his bloody passport confiscated and bank accounts turned over to the sallys. Whats next thats what I want to know..
5. higherstandard 5

   29 April 2008 at 3:57 pm

   Ah the politics of envy.
6. Steve Pierson 6

   29 April 2008 at 4:03 pm

   The post is about why this kind of information is being leaked.

   Clearly, inside National there is a desire to damage Key.
7. r0b 7

   29 April 2008 at 4:04 pm

   Ah the politics of envy.

   I have a particular dislike of that phrase HS. It makes as much sense as saying of the other side “Ah the politics of greed.”
8. all_your_base 8

   29 April 2008 at 4:07 pm

   mike and hs – you’re missing the point. As is made abundantly clear in the post, this is more about the leaks than the Maui mansion.

   Anyway, I love that he’s a jetsetter. I’m just hoping he got my email request for some duty free colby on the way home…
9. higherstandard 9

   29 April 2008 at 4:07 pm

   Tough r0b that’s exactly what this post is about trying to portray Key as the uncaring rich prick.
10. Steve Pierson 10

    29 April 2008 at 4:09 pm

    no, hs. the leak is about trying to portray Key as the uncaring rich prick. this post is about why there would be a leak.
11. Matthew Pilott 11

    29 April 2008 at 4:10 pm

    Agreed r0b. It implies that everyone who believes in any form of collectivism/socialism is poor, envious of their betters, and believes in such a political system purely to punish those who have done well, as opposed to hoping that it can improve the lot of those who have not.

    So all HS saw here was that IrishBill is poor (at least relatively to Key), jealous of his Hawaiian hoilday house, and thought he would put up a post because he’s bitter about it. Nice.
12. higherstandard 12

    29 April 2008 at 4:11 pm

    ayb

    IB makes the assumption that it is a leak but at the same time comments that.

    I don’t think the information we were given is that big a deal as we were simply told he’ll be shipping off to his new Hawaii holiday home on Thursday.

    What evidence do you have that the information is confidential and why is it potentially embarrasing ?

    I went to my holiday home last week all my staff knew I was there and I wasn’t embarrased at all.
13. r0b 13

    29 April 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Tough r0b

    You are feeling feisty today HS! Too much coffee? Steve and a_y_b have carefully explained what didn’t need explaining (the original post is perfectly clear).
14. higherstandard 14

    29 April 2008 at 4:15 pm

    MP

    No completely incorrect – my point which you have missed entirely is as per my comment that the point of this post is to utilise the politics of envy against Key.
15. mike 15

    29 April 2008 at 4:16 pm

    “Clearly, inside National there is a desire to damage Key.”

    Or could it be thats a not as big a deal as you think – ie why keep it a secret.
    It also says a lot about how the party is travelling in election year. If there was strife as you say – he wouldn’t be going anywhere.

    I think the “mole” got you good this time SP
16. mike 16

    29 April 2008 at 4:17 pm

    I mean IB
17. higherstandard 17

    29 April 2008 at 4:18 pm

    r0b

    No more grouchy than feisty.

    After the excellent posts on GST and Child poverty earlier today the last couple have been disappointing.
18. James Kearney 18

    29 April 2008 at 4:23 pm

    It’s because you don’t agree with them hs. Try to see it from other people’s perspective sometimes.
19. IrishBill 19

    29 April 2008 at 4:32 pm

    HS, I don’t give a toss if Key is in Hawaii (although I suspect a lot of people would). What I find interesting is that someone within the Nat’s caucus would make a specific effort tell us this.

    Mike, Key is well known for taking time out from politics and he drops out of the game reasonably frequently.

    I think Key is safe for now because he has been dynamite for National in the polls. I also think there will be more than a few in the National party who are concerned he is locking them into too much of a Labour-lite position.

    To be honest I don’t know why someone would leak this information and without knowing what is going on in the National party caucus I guess I won’t ever know for sure but every way I look at it it seems like an attempted attack on Key from the inside. In my opinion that’s not particularly smart.
20. rjs131 20

    29 April 2008 at 4:43 pm

    Well it is hardly the most insightful leak following news that he has brought a condo in Hawaii, that he wishes to take his family there during school holidays and parliamentary recess…

    I guess it just shows he isnt as hard working as the likes of Judith tizard, who i am sure nevers takes a day off or goes on holiday…..
21. jafapete 21

    29 April 2008 at 4:45 pm

    If he’s so rich, why does he drink the cheap pinot noir at The Matterhorn then, that’s what I want to know?

    Seriously, too close to the election to roll a seemingly popular leader without a really good excuse. Nope, they’re locked into the Labour-lite and there’s nothing the neoliberals can do about it for the time being. There is some solace to be had when the polls come out.
22. Billy 22

    29 April 2008 at 4:45 pm

    “I think Key is safe for now because he has been dynamite for National in the polls.”

    What startles me is that Key has been generally inept. It tells me that the voters have just had enough of Labour. I suspect that National would be enjoying this level of support with Britney Spears at the helm.
23. Matthew Pilott 23

    29 April 2008 at 4:47 pm

    HS – that doesn’t add up when you look at the content of the post – you can’t claim that based upon your ‘general impression’ of the post either. I suppose (reaching here) you could draw a long bow and claim that while the post is putatively about dissent within the NP ranks, it’s actually a dog whistle against Key being rich – but that would be a long, long bow indeed.
24. lprent 24

    29 April 2008 at 4:50 pm

    “what’s up with the site?”

    Not too sure. Just at present it looks like it simply ran out of memory. It’d run out of all RAM and swap space. I had to reboot from a command prompt. I’ve curtailed the number of processes available for the web server to prevent it happening again.

    It is incredibly active right now. I’m tailing the access_log and it is servicing requests continuously. I’ll look at client side caching. It seems to be sending too much out that should be cached at the client side. That defines what I’ll be doing tonight.

    Probably related to the new version of wordpress. I’ll analyse the logs after work.

    Lynn
25. IrishBill 25

    29 April 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Billy, I don’t think his ineptness is necessarily a bad thing for National. It may simply be that it helps his everyman image in much the same way Bush’s gaffes helped him seem less “elite”.

    I don’t actually think that having his Hawaii holiday home made public will hurt him either because I don’t think Kiwi’s are particularly envious people. We like everyone to get a fair go sure, but my reaction when I heard about the Hawaii home was pretty much “good on him, I’d do the same if I could” and I reckon most Kiwis would feel like that.

    If he’s seen as having all of this and then wanting to take a fair go from others however, then he’s in trouble.
26. lprent 26

    29 April 2008 at 5:12 pm

    Oh wow. Definitely something was hitting us. Just downloaded the logs. Yesterdays log was ~3MB. Todays log so far is 19.5MB.

    Now we see where it was coming from and what they were accessing. Question is if it was deliberate or someone had an out of control system doing something like trying to suck the entire site. Seen that before.
27. Stazi 27

    29 April 2008 at 5:12 pm

    How strange that John Key would want to take his kids to Hawaii during their school holidays. He’s going to be pretty busy over the next few months so I guess he wants to spend a bit of quality time with them. Good that he finds time for his family as well as being a fairly high profile politician.

    Gee. Big conspiracy. Huge. This will shake the foundations of our political system to the core.
28. infused 28

    29 April 2008 at 5:21 pm

    How about this. Tell us the source or shut the hell up. Otherwise you’re just talking spin as usual.

    IrishBill says: How about this: we keep our sources confidential in line with journalistic ethics and you take a week ban.
29. r0b 29

    29 April 2008 at 5:32 pm

    How about this. Tell us the source or shut the hell up.

    Know anything about journalism infused? Didn’t think so.

    Incidentally, I think what The Standard is doing these days warrants the tag of “journalism”. Great work guys and gals, this place is going from strength to strength.
30. Tane 30

    29 April 2008 at 5:40 pm

    Well, we’ll see if this one pans out 🙂

    As reliable as the leak appears you can never be 100% sure until it happens.
31. higherstandard 31

    29 April 2008 at 5:43 pm

    IB

    I hope you are right and that NZers are maturing into as you put it a non envious people. It is a pity that this behaviour is not modelled by the current Minister of Finance.
32. Phil 32

    29 April 2008 at 5:46 pm

    Ok, this one’s coming completely out of left field in my brain, so bear with me while I explain this – I’ll even type it slowly so you can all keep up.

    1) Someone in National – probably a few of them actually – keep a close eye on TheStandard to see what’s happening in the militant left of the blogosphere (know your enemy…)
    2) they see that you’re sending out questions to the leaders of political parties
    3) they conclude that it would not be a good look if John didn’t respond, or took a longer time to respond than the others

    End result; this person decides to be helpful, and let you know John’s not going to be checking his inbox while drinking Pina Colada in the sun.

    Unless you’re willing to quote from the email verbatim, I highly doubt the conspiratorial tone you suggest is really there at all
33. higherstandard 33

    29 April 2008 at 5:49 pm

    Or alternatively Phil he’s just going on Holiday with the kids.

    I would be amazed if he gave a crap about responding to questions from The Standard.
34. Scribe 34

    29 April 2008 at 6:01 pm

    hs,

    I would be amazed if he gave a crap about responding to questions from The Standard.

    Bu-bu-but, rOb said “this place is going from strength to strength”. Are you telling me it’s not the greatest blog in the history of the world?!
35. lprent 35

    29 April 2008 at 6:24 pm

    It can’t be. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to analyze why it went down today, and how to stop it in the future. Somewhere, someone will be wearing the consequences of wasting my time today.

    Oh – you’re talking about the other side of the blog………

    Have to say they’re getting better. I’ve been reading old posts from last year looking at how to clean up the utf-8 junk. Their writing now is of a much higherstandard (with apologies to the holder of the name) now than it was them.
36. r0b 36

    29 April 2008 at 6:30 pm

    It is a pity that this behaviour is not modelled by the current Minister of Finance.

    What’s that about not liking personal attacks HS?

    Bu-bu-but, rOb said “this place is going from strength to strength’. Are you telling me it’s not the greatest blog in the history of the world?!

    I’ll take a wild guess that it has more readers than your work Scribe.

    And no, it’s not the greatest blog in the history of the world, just the history of NZ. Non facetiously on the topic of great blogs, check out this excellent list:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs
37. Higherstandard 37

    29 April 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Yes r0b

    I dislike the personal attacks which is why I pointed out Michael Cullen’s effort.
38. darryl p 38

    29 April 2008 at 6:52 pm

    Let’s say it really is someone inside National that wants to hurt JK, and the most controversial thing they could come up with was to tell you that he’s going to Hawaii for a holiday, surely that’s not good news for Labour. As far as skeletons in closets go it’s not that sensational and a pretty uninteresting platform for attack.
39. randal 39

    29 April 2008 at 6:54 pm

    probably having a strategy meeting with the lynch mob. hey you guys I thought this was a done deal!!!!!!!
40. Scribe 40

    29 April 2008 at 7:00 pm

    rOb,

    I’ll take a wild guess that it has more readers than your work Scribe.

    Ouch, that hurt. You’ve sunk my battleship.
41. mike 41

    29 April 2008 at 7:33 pm

    “I guess it just shows he isnt as hard working as the likes of Judith tizard”

    Anyone else catch the story on TV1 of the Labourites in their shiney new BMW Limo’s (theres a good look for Struggling NZ IB) Judith T gets out of her’s and can’t hear Guyons question cause she’s listening to her iPod. Oh dear
42. randal 42

    29 April 2008 at 7:41 pm

    who gives a stuff about that little creep espiner and his creepy questions. he needs to go somewhere and get de-creeped
43. lprent 43

    29 April 2008 at 9:18 pm

    Bugger. Had to fix the caching to use mime types because WordPress is generating css and js like .js.php. I had the caching by file extensions after I moved from IIS. Also some image directories moved.

    Anyway the server blew its little mind servicing high demand and sending files over and over again that it didn’t have to. Hopefully that is teh last upgrade problem.

    Wasted by own time. Time for a beer..

    Had the beer – now I’m watching web crawlers wandering slowly through every page on the site. That explains why I’m getting a change in the baseload. They have detected that the pages on the site have changed and are now busy reindexing it. There are a of a lot of them, googlebot is working around ?p=576, 1498, 832. I think about half of the load at present is crawlers. That fits with what I saw in the logs. The site is getting spidered.

    Lots of things to note for the next time I do updates.
44. Patrick 44

    29 April 2008 at 11:01 pm

    Well done lprent, we appreciate it!
45. j 45

    29 April 2008 at 11:05 pm

    “who gives a stuff about that little creep espiner and his creepy questions. he needs to go somewhere and get de-creeped”

    You guys should really stop shooting the messenger. It’s getting old real fast.
46. randal 46

    29 April 2008 at 11:37 pm

    its all about character j and espiner exudes creep without even trying.got nothing to do with the message or getting old..its about being a creep..dont you get it?
47. Ted 47

    30 April 2008 at 1:23 am

    I’m somewhat dubious as to whether this really was leaked by a National party MP as you have suggested, partly because the details of Key’s holiday have already been circulated beyond Caucus.

    My understanding is that Key revealed his intention to holiday in Hawaii when questioned by Ruth Laugesen regarding his purchase of an apartment in Hawaii. Key has often disclosed his holiday details in the past.

    Laugesen then consulted with other editorial staff at the SST and decided not to run the story. I don’t know if this was to protect Key’s privacy or because Laugesen wanted to hold off to get another story out of it. It leaked out of the SST newsroom and has been floating around since. This isn’t quite the scoop you’re making it out to be.
48. Ted 48

    30 April 2008 at 1:36 am

    Also, a couple more things. IrishBill invoked journalistic ethics in refusing to reveal his source which was fair enough. I wouldn’t expect you guys to and agree it would be unethical to do so.

    However, identifying the source as being a National MP does raise some interesting ethical questions. Some people would say identifying the person as a National MP rather than a figure in the National party was unethical and I’m inclined to agree. It’s certainly nowhere near as bad as revealing a source but narrowing it down to one of 47 – despite an arguable public interest in revealing this – is a breach of the source’s trust unless permission to do so was given.

    It’s a minor point but I hope your reference to Key’s ‘Maui mansion’ was a facetious one. It’s been clearly identified that the property he purchased was an apartment, so it’s a little unfair to claim he will be off cavorting in a mansion.
49. expat 49

    30 April 2008 at 7:31 am

    So Key has some cash and is going on holiday in Hawaii. Maybe he has earnedt a break..That’s unlike the glorious dear leader who fucks off overseas all the time on the tax payers chit?

    And the advent of modern technology means people can stay in touch from ‘overseas’
50. j 50

    30 April 2008 at 8:26 am

    “its all about character j and espiner exudes creep without even trying.got nothing to do with the message or getting old..its about being a creep..dont you get it?”

    That’s the trouble with some people they operate on incorrect assumptions with no basis in reality. Keep up the good work though.
    Nice headline in the herald today wasn’t it. Maybe there’s another conspiracy theory in there. Enjoy ;>
51. randal 51

    30 April 2008 at 8:38 am

    no it wasnt a nice headline in the herald today was it…its raining today isnt it. espiner is a creep isnt he. the nats are not going to win aren’t they..have a nice day wont you…bye bye
52. higherstandard 52

    30 April 2008 at 8:41 am

    Actually Randal the sun’s out in Auckland at the moment – bizarre but true.
53. randal 53

    30 April 2008 at 8:49 am

    isn’t it?
54. Steve Pierson 54

    30 April 2008 at 9:55 am

    Interesting that Key missed his interview on Breakfast this morning. Yesterday, they were advertising he would be on (as he is every Wednesday) but they had English instead.

    English just repeated the same lines: the solution to every problem is lifting after-tax wages through tax cuts (implicitly, not wage rises).
55. insider 55

    30 April 2008 at 10:31 am

    Steve

    It’s utterly uninteresting. According to the Herald Key is in Singapore. Think about the time differences…
56. higherstandard 56

    1 May 2008 at 8:21 am

    As I said before the politics of envy

    http://brendensheehan.blogspot.com/2008/04/wheres-johnny.html
57. r0b 57

    1 May 2008 at 9:32 am

    As always the politics of greed

    http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?ArticleId=10097

    Oh and let’s not forget the New Zealand Sucks campaign

    http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?ArticleID=12171
58. James Kearney 58

    1 May 2008 at 9:48 am

    Brenden Sheehan is a right wing idiot and a liability to Labour- don’t assume he speaks for me or anyone else.
59. Dancer 59

    2 May 2008 at 3:09 pm

    I like the idea of a holiday with the kids in Hawaii – except I can’t walk out the door without my workmates having to cover for me. Maybe that’s why some within National were feeling unhappy enough to drop the story? I see from Steve P that English covered for Key on BreakfastTV (and other regular slots too I suspect). Now English has his own young (and extensive) family – I bet he’d have liked some time off too….

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