An astute reader just sent us this – they spotted Ashcroft’s jet parked at Lyall Bay on Saturday August 30 and managed to snap a quick pic. The photo below is from TV3’s coverage. Looks like the same plane.
Maybe Ashcroft was meeting with the SFO, who leaked information to him, which he later passed on the Key.
And then the SFO can say that they didn’t leak the details to Key.
You guys are free to post on whatever you like, and I say this at the risk of having my comment deleted, but there have now been 15 posts at least since Helen Clark alleged the SFO leaked to National without a mention of it — the biggest story of Monday.
a_y_b,
Do you think this information — whose plane was where at what time — is more important than the PM’s allegations?
[lprent: It isn’t a news site – it is an opinion site. Posters write on what they consider is interesting. Same as the other sites. What was it – DPF on kiwiblog did 34 posts on Winston last week. Almost obsessional. ]
he must have been there to meet with the SFO, he then jetted to Auckland to meet with John Key. Classic C/T, right from the play book etc etc etc.
Can you actually see the numbers on the tail of the plane in the bottom photo? I am assuming each air craft has unique numbers/identifying marks on the tail/wings?
Actually, it carried Owen Glenn to also see JK in Auckland so he could back the winner with a $500K donation.
Rumour also has it that Lord Lucan and Shergar were also present.
My point is that he was evidently in Wellington as well as Auckland. I suspect there is someone out there to whom that information might be useful. Let’s wait and see eh? 😉
What is the requirement for large donations these days under the EFA. 2 weeks to report to the electoral commission. There is also a cap on overseas donations as well.
A secretive conservative political funder jets into at least two NZ airports…and secret payments to political parties are top of the agenda at the moment…I certainly find this intriguing news…
Of course, maybe he was just in Welly to visit the zoo. And Te Papa.
The photo tells us that he left Wellington soon after 8.48 AM, Saturday 30th August, likely for Auckland.
Given that 8.48AM (~ + 30 min) is a pretty inhospitable time of day, the question arises how long had he been in Wgtn. up till then.
Long enough to watch the Owen Glenn affaire break, catch up with Wgtn-based National party apparatchiks, and hand over the number of a Swiss bank account ?
Who else was on that plane .. Crosby & Textor ? Conservative Party Central Office ?
lp, I believe the limit on overseas donations is $1,000. I very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew all the way to New Zealand, and then onto Wellington, to give a secret one thousand dollar cheque.
I thought Labour was running the line that National had a secret stash of many millions of dollars. Suddenly the line is that they’re short of money and need to take money from foreign billionaires illegally. In Chris Trotter’s words, that is an example of “projection”. Just because Labour takes really big pots of money from foreign billionaires, and tries to cover up its coalition partners doing likewise, doesn’t mean National is doing it.
Tim Ellis – I also very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew to other side of the world just to have a general chat about british politics as John Key claims.
here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.
hs: Yes – but on the other hand Labour are implementing policy and promising more of the same careful management that they have been doing since 1999. NRT was bemoaning that in this post.
Labour don’t quite have the credibility gap that the Nay’s have after the abrupt policy changes over the last few years. So far what we’re hearing from the Nay’s is at best incoherent. Sounds like an choir singing from different songbooks.
Hope you guys don’t mind me pinching the images (let me know if you do and I’ll remove them). I think the more interesting thing here is how Key supposedly believes in climate change now but is still more than willing to welcome his rich mates who come to him aboard luxury corporate jets: http://newzblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/planespotting/ .
Grow up, illuminatedtiger. By the same argument Helen Clark, who wants to lead the world on climate change, welcomed her “rich mate” Owen Glenn, who actually donated large amounts of money both to her own party and a coalition partner. Where do you think Owen Glenn lives? I’ll give you a clue: not New Zealand. How do you think he arrived in New Zealand? I’ll give you another clue: he didn’t swim here.
The suggestion about an anthology of prostitutes is part of a joke I heard years ago:
A group of specialists in collective nouns was in bar an observed such a group of professionals and came up with the following:
A jam of tarts
A flourish of strumpets
An anthology of English pros
hs it seems like your favourite tactic is telling others what to do. in the meantime while the victims of your overbearing assertions are figuring out your fallacies you have netly evaded the issue. Key does say he is going to win the election when everybody else plainly knows that he wont. in the meantime he offers no policy and and a whole parcel of obfuscatory meaningless trivial garbage that says nothng and I suppose that is a reflection of his intellect. I say that because we know what his agenda is. His party is the party of those who believe they are HARD DONE BY and now believe it is their right to grab everything by force instead of waiting in turn for a fair distribution of society’s fruits. take three thorazine and go to bed.
1. Thorazine is no longer available in NZ
2. I can’t remember one instance of either Key or Clark saying they were going to win the election.
3. You are a clearly a deluded moron
I think I know what Ashcroft was doing here. Hasn’t Key been wanting to buy a private jet for a while now?
hs:
“Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?”
I believe your last comment to randal proved that yes, it can be. Don’t you have some pretend patients to attend to?
[Tane: And banned for a month for your smears. Such a pity, we’d just started linking to you too…]
[lprent: Looks like he didn’t like getting linked to this morning. I put this comment on his post about getting banned. I was wondering why he’d gotten himself banned – obviously was better to be a martyr.
Dave that is bullshit. You got banned because you wrote a smear against the site or a writer on it. Moreover based on this post I’d guess that you repeated an unsubstantiated, unproven smear by that pathetically technical incompetent Whale.
You have lied all of the way through this post. Why comes to mind. I’d guess this little effort comes because I actually linked to one of your posts this morning.
Are you having to re-establish you credentials. You know exactly what our policy is about smearing the posters or the site. You’ve been putting comments up there for long enough.
]
“here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?”
A few policies have been released, which is a few more than the Labour Party – unless you can show me where to find the links to current policy on Labour’s website.
“It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The thing on top of the tail appears to make it a Falcon 900, which is a variation of the 50.
I saw a red van parked outside the brothel on Wakefield st today. Trevor Mallard has a red van – must have been him eh…. The number plate was different and it wasn’t the same model van that Trevor has but I’m so sure it was him because I wish it was….
Do I get a [standard-super-snoop] chocolate fish now ?
first things first…where is the national party policy besides…”I am like Barack Obama” and “what is the SFO number” and “how much money can I screw out of this rich Pom withour being busted?”
“I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.
You are likely to face a two month ban for baseless smears.
Its not as though you are insinuating something true like the SFO leaks to John Key ”
I’d imagine that ayb will take the SP option here – simply ignore the comments and pretend the post he made doesn’t exist.
Besides, neither of them could possibly talk about Clark’s allegations regarding the SFO. Word on the street is that Helen can do no wrong. It’s election year, you see.
dave got banned for suggesting that the site was run from the 9th floor. That is an allegation that we’ve had for a while along with various attributions for contributors or that it is run from the NZLP. It isn’t correct as stated in the About.
In fact the only person that really seems to be determined to prove it is Whale. So far he has been ineffectual and hasn’t managed to prove bugger all that wasn’t in our About. We can’t do much about the bloated ego’s allegations because of our anonymity policy. That requires we neither confirm or deny for exactly the same reasons that the US does about nuclear weapons.
As for the plane. a_y_b described why this post was here
If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.
I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.
Last time I post here. This blog has become 1984, where yesterday is rewritten to prove tomorrow is correct. Its really a polite way of saying what I can’t say without getting this post deleted.
[lprent: Please promise. It’d make me so happy because you contribute buggerall, and I have to read them. ]
It’s so strange how it’s never smart people who have the type of trouble sweetd describes above. Smart people seem to be able to discuss issues on this site from all sorts of points of view without being censored.
In fact the only person that really seems to be determined to prove it is Whale. So far he has been ineffectual and hasn’t managed to prove bugger all that wasn’t in our About.
I’m not trying to be pedantic lpren, I just want to clear something up, a language thing.
In the context of trying to prove something you call Whale “ineffectual”. Calling him “ineffectual” you are saying something very different than if you said ‘He’s barking up the wrong tree’. It comes down to is he failing to prove it or is there noting he can prove?
I don’t really care either way, but this subject has been hotly debated and denied, people banned etc ever since the Happy New Year post.
Cyber-Santa came a little late to The Standard this year but we’re certainly not complaining – evidently we’ve got a New Year’s present instead.
He and the techno-elves have moved us to a brand spanking new server cluster that should give us plenty of breathing room and make those pesky traffic congestion problems we were having a thing of the past.
Seriously though, it wasn’t really Santa. Just like James Bond apparently we have our very own M and it’s him we have to thank instead.
We’re still secretly hoping for the pimped out Austin Aston Martin but this should tide us over in the meantime. Thanks M!
Next time Key wants to meet unwelcome wealthy foreign donors, for gongs, Cash-for-Honours or otherwise, he should just take a leaf out of Mike Williams book and meet them in the South of France. The weather, Languedoc and Lobster Thermador are so much nicer than in Cibo’s….
About the only thing that can be noted as being unequivocal in this thread is that there is no visual evidence, to the readers of this blog, that the two aircraft shown in the two photos above are the same aircraft, since the one shown taking off is too fuzzy.
Ashcroft owns a company (Flying Lion) that owns a Falcon 900 registered VP-BMS. All I can really tell from the photo at the top of this page is that the aircraft shown parked doesn’t appear to have that registration and appears to be a different aircraft (different number of windows). Since I can’t actually read the tail number I don’t actually know who owns that aircraft.
Perhaps the original poster can read the number better from the (presumably) larger photo they were originally sent?
Come on lp, give me a break! I understand your reasons for making standard authors anonymous and I don’t care where they come from, but comparing your reasoning to the US neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is pretty ludicrous. A simple “we don’t have to, and we’re not gonna” would suffice.
As for the plane, I don’t like visiting whale’s site (call me pompous, but I think the language and tone he uses is a bit excessive) but if the second plane photographed in Auckland really is Michael Ashcroft’s plane, then the one that appeared at the Standard in Wellington clearly isn’t.
The one at the Standard has fourteen windows, versus twelve in the one that Whale says is Ashcroft’s plane. They have different numbers, different livery, and the Standard’s one is longer. According to a google search, others in the past have identified Ashcroft’s plane registration number as VP-BMS, which is the aircraft in Whale’s picture. The one pictured here clearly doesn’t have that registration number.
So it looks like there isn’t any evidence that Ashcroft came to Wellington, based on this picture. I don’t know anything about airplanes, apart from how to fasten my seatbelt and fall asleep before the hostesses try and put revolting food trays in my lap, but I’d be happy owning either of those planes. As an aside, wouldn’t it be a wonderful irony if it turned out that the owner of the Wellington plane did actually meet a New Zealand politician while in Wellington?
Details details details. Such unnecessary things in the world of perception is reality. The blurry makes the clarity in the hands of the spins. Perhaps the plane belongs to Owen Glenn?
Whale has a picture comparison that is easier to play ‘spot the difference’ between the stated model that is owned and the clearer picture as displayed here in Wellington.
burt: You’re correct and incorrect. The girlfriend keeps criticizing my use of language.
What I meant was that there are certainly union members, definitely NZLP members (me for instance), probably green members, maybe feminists, etc writing on this site. Whale has proved that this is the case for unionists, although why he didn’t just look at the About which implicitly says that is beyond me. The trade unionists have been the heart of the labour movement for a long time.
Whale’s main thesis is that the site is run by one or more of EPMU, NZLP and/or 9th floor. That he hasn’t proved. He is wrong in his basic assumption because the site is run and paid for by me – as my credit card shows each month. I’ve stated that many times and I do it so the left has a place to post and talk about issues. It is a bonus that we can also get them discussed by people from all over the political spectrum, I think that is useful, and try to maintain that attribute of the site. Obviously Whale thinks I’m lying so I think he is a fool because that is what you see in the comments on the site.
His second thesis is that the posts are written from work by various contributors. There even I have limits. They aren’t written from parliament IP’s because I’d see that. Most of the large posts are written out of work hours from their log histories and the scheduled times. A lot of the smaller ones are written at are what a roughly break times. I wrote quite a long one today at work in small breaks over a hour or so while I was waiting for things to happen.
Am I going to bother to prove any of this? Absolutely not because the only way to do it is to look at the full logs, and that would identify not only the posters but also the commentators – see the Policy.
Take the blogs as they are written by the writers. They will use material from other people. The material they are written from turns up in the mailboxes from all over the place (I get a lot which I pass on to the mailing list), links to other sites, speculative ideas, post suggestions, photos, PDF’s, etc. It is a way for people to get things aired in public.
Am we going to confirm or deny peoples identities – nope. It’d be pretty easy even for a incompetent like Whale to simply work through a list of politically active leftie people (there aren’t that many in NZ). So we don’t discuss identity, and I don’t even know who most of them are in real life. They are just gmail addresses.
The bloated ego can keep jerking off in his number inflated corner of the blogosphere. He is ineffectual in proving his speculations and will continue to be so because even I can’t prove them true or false, and I run the site. The site was set up that way because that made it impossible to hack it and to break into peoples real identities. That is why the blog posters here can operate with a degree of freedom that will not impact back onto their real life. All of Whales crap is just smear designed to detract from the content of the posts using an irrelevant speculation that is impossible for him to prove and impossible for me to disprove. Besides it gives the pathetic bugger something to write about, and he really needs it as his writing is appalling – sort of like the Truth on P and with about the same level of content.
But if his speculations get repeated here even by inference on this site – I’m going to boot people permanently and with extreme malice. I’m tired of it, it is only used to try to distract from a post or comments, and it is a waste of bandwidth that I’m paying for. Besides I could do to reduce server loadings.
The little stats server here runs noon-noon Noon-midnight page views are just below the page views for the whole of yesterday. Yesterdays page views were a record. Throwing idiots off the system may lessen the load – it is cheaper than the next server upgrade.
“If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.”
You can’t see the difference, therefore it must be his plane?
Like I said, it’s election year. You NZLP activists will try anything, won’t you.
“I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.”
There was a little matter of the medals that were returned. But I suppose that doesn’t make a good book.
Honestly, you need to be more objective, if you can find the time between pretending nobody’s noticed Clark smearing the SFO.
Thank you so much for promoting my Blog. I might actually go up a few places in the blogosphere because of you. I am currently number 35 whereas your hero Slippery John is number 54. Not bad for a single blogger only out to inform people and give them some real news for a change.
About the conspiracy thing you seem so hung up on let me enlighten you about the terms you use so loosely and erroneously.
So when John Key and other people from National secretly meet with Lord Ashcroft who is known for his right-wing secret funding, who is known for supporting secret donations, who is a ruthless wheeler dealer and who helped Howard change election laws to make undisclosed donations possible and we only found out because a journalist actually did his job, the above synonyms apply.
Fact no 1. Lord Aschroft came to Auckland
Fact no 2. John Key and Lord Ashcroft met
Fact no 3. They tried to keep it secret
Facts combined = Conspiracy
We don’t know what they conspire about but two powerful men meeting secretly with a known penchant for wheeling dealing and secrecy spells a conspiracy.
Do we know if they are conspiring something criminal or something which would be disapproved of by the general public? No we don’t but we do know that politics often are about back room deals and the deception of the voting public.
From the fact that Lord Ashcroft has a history of secret donations and John Key and National through another bit of intrepid civil journalism we do know that the like to keep secrets and do not want the voter to know their real agenda. What we don’t know is what that secret agenda is.
So in order to point out a “conspiracy” we do not have to prove what it is that the conspirators are conspiring about. Just two or more people keeping secrets for reasons only known to them is a conspiracy. The fact is that News 3 caught a politician, who wants to be trusted and voted for, doing something he wanted to keep secret from the people he wants to vote for him.
When an event occurs and it is clearly the result of people planning and conspiring to perpetrate this event and a theory about why and how this could have happened without a sound criminal and crimescene investigation is announced as the truth without actual proof as to their involvement than that is a Conspiracy theory.
When a perpetrator or perpetrators are accused and even in light of the impossibility of them having been involved in the way the theorists claim than their conspiracy theory becomes a “mad Conspiracy theory”.
When it becomes clear that their theory falters in just about every single claim they make and they still hold on to that theory you are looking at “crazy Conspiracy nutters”.
The 911 truth movement is a movement of millions of people around the world who come from an amazing different variety of walks of live. We don’t profess to know the truth. We are in search of the truth. That is a big difference.
What we do know is that the Anthrax used in the Anthrax attacks after the 911 Attacks was a US military grade weaponised strain only produced in one location in the US. Fort Derrick. So it could not have been 19 hijackers or other “terrorists” who send this to News paper outlets and two vehemently anti war Democratic senators.
What this group has been able to prove is that the chemical signature of Nano thermite (a military quality incendiary and explosive used to blow up buildings) and nano sized iron spheres indicating a far higher temperature than was possible with Kerosene and office fires was abundant in the dust of WTC 1, 2 and 3
What this group has been able to prove is that the biggest crime scene ever in New York was destroyed in an unprecedented fashion and much to the distress of the police, fire-fighters and other crime investigation professionals.
What we have been able to establish that a crime has been committed but it could not have been done by 19 hijackers with box cutters.
So in order to find out who perpetrated the atrocities on that day we urgently ask for a new and independent investigation based on science and sound criminal investigative protocols by a commission of professionals and surviving family members with subpoena power and proper funding so that we may find out what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and perhaps even who did it.
We want real answers and justice for the people who died on that day, who are still dying because of the dust and the toxins they breathed in on that day, for the family members, for the soldiers who died in the wars and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq who died and suffered as a result of the events of that day.
[lprent: Spam engine caught it. TE: I’ll give you leeway (this time) – but please do this size of ‘comment’ on your own site and link to it.]
Yes Tara – In fact it is likely that Ashcroft had his plane repainted between Auckland and Wellington.
When AYB’s whole post is based on a photo of a plane though, and that photo is shown to be of the wrong plane, the least one could do is to acknowledge the error.
“None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft visited Wellington.”
None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft is one of David Irving’s lizard men either, but in rational circles we put the burden of evidence on proof.
Unfortunately AYB doesn’t see the world the same way, or he would have retracted by now.
Comment for Burt and everyone – has anyone actually proved which plane Ashcroft flew to New Zealand in?
Just because he owns BMS, does that prove he came to NZ in it this time around? It could be sitting in a hangar with the engines being overhauled.
There is a very interesting point about the other aircraft, and BMS, that they both have the initial registration letters VP, which means a British colony, most VPs seem to be Carribean islands. Could be they are both registered in the same country.
I have consulted the source and he has replied as follows:
Swampy’s reference to VP-BMS and 12 windows seems to have been taken from googling by ‘Falcon 900’ and ‘Ashcroft’ to give
and similar sites.
VP-BZE photographed in Wellington appears to be a later, slightly extended model, consistent with what a billionaire ex-Treasurer of the British Conservative Party would fly.
The pool of executive jets in Aotearoa is very small so it is unlikely that another Falcon Dassault 900 would just happen to be passing through.
The CAA should have a record of aircraft movements.
Unfortunately, the resolution of the shot from TV3’s footage was not great enough to count the windows. Could someone nicely ask TV3 to count the windows on that jet if there are any better images ?
It is unlikely that he was travelling such great distances alone at considerable cost. Who else was on the plane ?
Could Key’s conservative reforms in NZ be a model for those mooted in the UK after the next election ?
Tara Swampy, those are interesting points. Except Lord Ashcroft is known as only having one plane, which is the one featured by TV3, and is consistent with the registration numbers. The plane in Wellington is not a Dassault Falcon 900. It is a Dassault Falcon 7x.
Now, given that we know Lord Ashcroft came to Auckland, and that his plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, with Ashcroft’s registration numbers, was filmed at Auckland airport, what do you think the chances are that a second plane, a different model, filmed at Wellington airport, also belonged to Ashcroft?
Pretty close to nil, I would say. I am not saying that Ashcroft didn’t go to Wellington. I have no idea whether he did. All I am saying is that the picture of the plane at Wellington airport, which appeared at the Standard, does not belong to Ashcroft, and is not any evidence that he was in Wellington, which is what the Standard claimed.
What the Standard’s picture does show is that a Falcon 7x was in Wellington. We know this is not Ashcroft’s jet. It is a very nice jet though, worth about US $40 million. I have no idea who owns it. Probably not a New Zealander. The Brazilian Foreign minister was in New Zealand at that time. Could be his.
.. but I’m not clear that TV3 shows a 900 or a 7X taking off at Auckland with Ashcroft in it. It would be nice if someone could count the windows to prove or disprove it .. but at this point its a bit academic.
It is certainly interesting that he was around at the time of the Owen Glen saga which has yet to play itself out.
“Lord Ashcroft has become a significant figure in Australian politics having been identified as the single largest individual donor to any Australian political party during the Financial Year 2004/2005. The Australian Electoral Commission reported in February 2006 that Ashcroft (who gave his address as “House of Lords, Westminster, London”) had donated $1,000,000 to the Liberal Party in September 2004 just before the 2004 Federal election. It was the biggest single disclosed private donation in Australian political history.[10]
Over the last weekend of August 2008, Lord Ashcroft flew into Auckland, New Zealand in his private Lear Jet. While there he was confirmed to have met with senior figures from the New Zealand National Party; the main opposition party in the upcoming New Zealand general elections.”
VP-BMS is recorded at airliners.net and other sites as being owned by Flying Lion, a company owned by Ashcroft which according to some other sites “has only one major asset…a Falcon 900”.
Is there any recorded footage that positively identifies that BMS was here last weekend? It was here when Ashcroft came over in April in conjunction with the VCs.
1. There is no footage of which I am aware that BMS was here last weekend. It appears that he used BZE on this trip
2. Did Labour ask Ashcroft for a donation ?
Dunno. I don’t think they’d bother given his history.
“In the UK, he was a major donor to and Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 1998 to 2001, under William Hague. His tenure was marked by a number of controversies: he was seen to pay little UK income tax due to his domicile in Belize; and he was at the centre of a debate about openness and accountability of political funding.
Unsubstantiated speculation about his business affairs was concluded when he pursued a libel action against The Times. This was settled on 9 December 1999, when The Times issued a statement that “[…] Litigation between the parties has been settled to mutual satisfaction, with each side bearing its own costs.”[8]
In 2004 he clashed with Conservative leader Michael Howard when he offered a £2m donation on the condition that it should go to his specified candidates, rather than into general Conservative Central Office funds.
In December 2005, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.[9]
On 12th October 2007 he was accused by Labour MP’s for being allowed to heavily fund the local Conservative organisations in marginal seats of his choosing. The Electoral Commission is investigating and changes to the rules are predicted.
During the “Cash for Peerages” controversy, on 31 March 2006 he was named by the Conservative Party as having loaned it £3.6m.”
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The registration code VP-BZE was previously used by a Falcon 50 that has since been re-registered in the US.
Since the Falcon 7X is such a new aircraft (RTM about a year ago) the current usage BZE must be fairly recently registered in Bermuda.
“Welcome aboard Air Ashcroft, the Tories’ favourite airline”
David Hencke, The Guardian,
Saturday November 3 2007
When Gordon Brown does his weekly commute between Edinburgh and London, he flies with British Airways or BMI on scheduled flights crammed with other passengers. By contrast, when David Cameron touched down in Khartoum last November for a fact-finding mission to Darfur, his relaxation was due in no small part to a journey spent on the supple leather couches of a Falcon 900 private jet.
Courtesy of millionaire donor Lord Ashcroft, shadow cabinet ministers have enjoyed the use of the luxury jet on trips to Israel, China, Mali and the Czech Republic, according to information in the Parliamentary Register of Interests and declarations to the Electoral Commission.
The trips – 32 so far – have already attracted questions from Labour MPs and led to a complaint to the commission that Michael Ashcroft’s largesse has been significantly underestimated, possibly by as much as £500,000, in declarations of the perk’s value to the Tory frontbench.
Altogether shadow cabinet ministers and aides have flown 184,000 miles on the Ashcroft jet over the last five years with Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, flying 65,453 miles and shadow foreign secretary William Hague flying 49,670 miles.
Analysis conducted for the Guardian reveals that Tory globetrotting has racked up 1,289 tonnes of carbon emissions. The biggest footprint was made by Michael Ancram when he was shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary, according to environmental consultants Carbon Footprint. Mr Ancram’s flights emitted 372 tonnes, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and Poland. The plane’s movements are being tracked by planespotters who logged it leaving Luton empty to fly to Khartoum to pick up Mr Cameron and return him to Britain. Indeed spotting the Ashcroft jet seems to have become a bit of cult on spotter blogs.
Lord Ashcroft’s generosity through his Bermuda-registered firm Flying Lion allows the Tory leader and his colleagues to travel in style to global hotspots. The jet features “supple leathers, glistening veneers and deep pile carpet as standard”, according to its French maker, Dassault.
It boasts a galley that “houses all the essentials for a fine dining experience 45,000ft in the air”. Comfort is generous, with a 7ft-wide cabin “so you can move easily with your head held high” and the jet has satellite communications and full conference facilities. For anyone thinking of investing in this kind of luxury, the typical asking price for a second-hand one is around $30m (£14.3m).
But it is the value placed on the flights that has drawn criticism. Mr Hague declares a trip on Lord Ashcroft’s jet to Belize, Brazil, the Falklands, Iceland and Panama as being worth £8,486, the equivalent of flying first-class. Yet to hire a Falcon with Premier Aviation would cost £55,000 for a one-way trip to New York alone.
Labour MP Tom Watson said: “There appears to be a huge discrepancy between, say, David Cameron’s declaration of £16,000 for the cost of his trip to Darfur and the cost of hiring a similar jet from a commercial firm. I got a quote of over £100,000 to hire a jet to go to Khartoum.”
Lord Ashcroft is relaxed about the plane and faintly amused that he is now the subject of interest among planespotters: “Am I becoming a cult figure like Madonna?” he said. He is also unrepentant about making it available to the Tory frontbench on a bigger scale in the future. “I hope it will be used by all the shadow cabinet over the next few years,” he added.
Lord Ashcroft is not the only person to make private aircraft available to the Tory frontbench. Mr Cameron’s carbon footprint is much higher if another 68 internal flights, including a short helicopter ride from Birmingham to Warwick, are taken into account. He has flown just over 3,700 miles on the Ashcroft jet.
The green cost
The Falcon burns about 3,000 US gallons of fuel to cover its maximum range of 4-5,000 miles. A Boeing 777 uses about 30,000 US gallons to cover the same distance. But the Boeing can carry 300 people, which significantly reduces its carbon footprint per passenger kilometre, the usual yardstick for emissions. If the Falcon flew with three passengers, then each would be responsible for 10 times as much pollution as those in the Boeing.
[lprent: Please don’t quote the whole article into a comment. Quote a few selected juicy bits (teasers) and then provide a link is usually sufficent. You’ll find that regardless of how interesting the article is at least a high proportion of the participants here will regard it as a waste of bandwidth. They usually start moaning after some repeated occourances, and I get involved.
Bugger – just found the first limit in google chrome – no dictionary. Switching back to firefox. ]
Tim, there’s no record of the Brazilian Air Force owning any Dassault Falcon aircraft. The nearest thing they have are three Learjets. They might have also used one of ten Embraers to fly the Minister in.
It’s the CIA doing a black bag secret rendition jobby. The GOP is worried that Colin Powell has gone completely off the reservation and was about to endorse Obama, see. So they’ve whisked him down here, and they’ve got the poor bugger tied to a chair with Judith bloody Collins in full on scold mode at him in 3 hr stretches.
Michael Ashcroft commissioned a programme of research, with the aim of building a clear picture of public opinion on the questions that would determine the outcome of the general election.
As well as measuring the true level of support for the parties he sought to establish the underlying attributes associated with each, and how these changed during the course of the election campaign. Crucially, he also aimed to establish whether the state of opinion in marginal constituencies reflected that in Britain as a whole.
…
including the biggest political poll ever conducted in Britain, with a sample of 10,000. This included:
* a tracking poll monitoring daily movements in opinion from January 2005 until the May election
* polls and focus groups in specific marginal constituencies around the country
* a national post-election ‘call-back’ survey to establish why people voted as they did
.. http://www.populuslimited.com/michael-ashcroft-case-study.html
During the run-up to the May 2005 general election, Michael Ashcroft became interested in political opinion polls. Using two respected polling companies, he decided to commission some research of his own. Once his polls had been analysed, they produced some fascinating findings and some valuable lessons for the Conservative Party.
He began to become interested in political polling in the autumn of 2004 at a time when he was already working to help Conservative candidates win and hold on to some of the most marginal seats up and down the country.
Initially, he concentrated his research in these key marginal seats but then, as his fascination with polling grew, he decided to conduct a vast poll of 10,000 voters (the usual size is 1,500 people) in order to produce the biggest ever poll in the UK on political attitudes. Initially, he did this out of self-interest but in July 2005 he published the findings for all to see.
Between mid January 2005 and the eve of polling day in May 2005, he also conducted a daily Americanstyle “tracker poll’ which he hoped would show how voters were responding to key Tory policies in the run-up to the general election.
Why is Michael Ashcroft considered an election winning expert?
Written by Mark Pack on 28th August 2007 ? 1:50 pm
Lord Ashcroft, the controverisal former Conservative Treasurer and now Deputy Chairman, is back in the news again. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ran a piece about internal Conservative disagrements over his role and there?s been plenty of criticism of him on Conservative Home, some of which made The Guardian.
Defenders of Ashcroft essentially say: he knows what it takes to win elections so having Ashcroft in charge and the serial losers being given the push is a good thing.
But how good is Ashcroft?
Well, here?s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:
The national swing from Labour to Conservatives was 3.2 per cent, yet the swing in the seats which we supported was 3.8 per cent.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times by Michael Ashcroft, p.296
You read that right: by his own admission, all his expertise and money achieved was a paltry o.6 per cent extra swing.
Given the campaign I ran at the general election secured a Labour to Liberal Democrats swing that was 9.8 points above the national average, I guess that makes me 16.3 times better than Lord Ashcroft 🙂
Do drop me a line Michael; my consultancy rates would be very competitive?
By Rachel Sylvester
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/12/2007
Have your say Read comments
He has a powerful empire, a network of agents and a Caribbean hideaway. It is not surprising that some of David Cameron’s most senior allies refer to Lord Ashcroft, privately, as “Blofeld”.
# Andrew Gimson: Lord Ashcroft – reveal yourself
# Three Line Whip: The fag end of a Government
# Three Line Whip: Cameron and Brown, cat and mouse
The millionaire deputy chairman of the Conservative Party directs the operations of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Capturing Target seats, from his well-equipped suite of offices in Millbank Tower. The only thing missing is a white cat. The Tories’ presiding electoral genius pores over Sudoku puzzles instead.
advertisement
<A HREF=”http://ads.telegraph.co.uk/event.ng/Type=click&FlightID=31448&AdID=38847&TargetID=10049&Values=1478&ASeg=&AMod=&Redirect=http://familyhistory.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph.jsp” target=”_top”><IMG SRC=”http://adc.telegraph.co.uk/h/house/familyhistory/august/findmypast_mpu.gif” WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A>
Yesterday, the Conservative leader defended Lord Ashcroft, at his monthly press conference, by saying that he is responsible for only four per cent of donations to the Tory party, far less than David Sainsbury or Lakshmi Mittal have given to Labour.
He was “happy”, he said, with the assurances he has been given that the peer’s tax and residency status are in order.
But Mr Cameron knows as well as anyone that the mud being thrown at Labour over sleaze will stick to all politicians in the end.
Every morning, as Tory strategists meet to discuss their battle plan, they ask whether they are missing anything damaging in their own affairs. They can be sure of one thing. When the spotlight does eventually move away from Gordon Brown and towards Mr Cameron it will linger long and hard on Lord Ashcroft.
# Three Line Whip: Optimism and the Olympics
# Brassneck: Mind your tone, Mr Cameron
Privately, senior figures around the Conservative leader have been worried about the party’s dependence on the peer for some time. As deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft is more powerful than ever.
He does not just give donations, he is also responsible for the party’s polling and target seat strategy. When the shadow cabinet is briefed on focus group or poll research, it is Lord Ashcroft who presents the results. That puts him in an extraordinarily powerful position.
The party may not be, as one senior Tory put it, a “wholly owned subsidiary of Ashcroft plc” but part of it has certainly been captured by his management team.
The concerns that first circulated when Mr Cameron took over are beginning to resurface. Senior Tories warn that the deputy chairman is running a “party within a party”. Some MPs mutter that he could be their leader’s Achilles’ heel.
Certainly, Lord Ashcroft is a generous benefactor. According to the Electoral Commission website, he has given almost £2.6 million to the Conservatives since 2003.
About half of this comes in the form of donations in kind – polling, focus group work, consultancy work and at one point last year, rather bizarrely, £5,927.88 for “bottle openers”.
The peer also frequently flies senior Tories around in his private jet – David Cameron, William Hague, Andrew Mitchell, Patrick McLoughlin and David Davis have all used it.
Recently, he paid for the Tory leader, and several shadow cabinet ministers, to attend the rugby world cup in Paris.
..snip..
On July 13 the London Times published two leaked foreign office documents. The first involved a telegram written in 1997 by the British high commissioner in Belize, Gordon Barker, cautioning against the appointment of Ashcroft to the chair of the Caribbean trade advisory group. It warned that the Belize government viewed him with “deep suspicion’ and remarked that rumors concerning his business deals cast a “shadow over his reputation that ought not to be ignored.’
This was followed by a 1994 report by a British foreign office adviser calling for tighter regulation of financial services in Belize and noting with some alarm that “low standards of regulation and supervision’ were attracting “those seeking to conceal proceeds of drug trafficking and other serious crime.’
Ashcroft’s response was allegedly to quash the report and solicit the British government to intervene on his behalf. Another document involved a letter from a local diplomat in 1996, Charles Drace-Francis, stating that Ashcroft made threats to the effect that he would “stir up trouble’ for Britain unless he were allowed to set up a branch of his Belize bank in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Four days later the Times disclosed that Mr. Ashcroft’s name appeared in a series of files kept by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as part of its investigations into drug trafficking and money laundering in Belize. It later transpired that cocaine was found on at least two ships sailing under the Belize “flag of convenience’ in 1994, under a shipping register in which Mr. Ashcroft had a 50 percent stake until earlier this year.
The attempted rebuttal to such charges by the Conservative Party Central Office, as well as the pro-Tory Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers, was far from emphatic. A statement by the US State Department to the effect that no conclusive proof had been established connecting Michael Ashcroft with money laundering and no specific concerns had been raised with either the British or Belize governments was released.
The Times then published an article which explained that Ashcroft had been index-numbered on the files of the DEA, a step taken only when serious suspicions exist. On the same day Peter Bradley, Labour MP for Wrekin, raised explicit allegations within Parliament. Utilising the legal immunity afforded under parliamentary privilege, Bradley stated that Ashcroft and his companies had been repeatedly mentioned in connection with money laundering by the DEA. Among the most incriminating examples was one document dated April 1994 with the heading: “Intelligence concerning possible air smuggling/money laundering activity undertaken by Michael Ashcroft.’
.. snip ..
The House of Commons has heard details from a series of documents linking Conservative treasurer Michael Ashcroft to drug trafficking.
Labour MP Peter Bradley used parliamentary privilege to read from files, which he said came from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the International Narcotics Bureau.
.. snip .. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/400078.stm
You’re a spammer of epic proportions. Cut and paste do not a thoughtful post make.
I see AYB hasn’t retracted this post yet, either. AYB, is Key still a bona fide member of the secret order of baby eating nine rich white men secretly ruling the world still?
With an unfair voting system, uneven electorates and an un-elected upper house, the UK's "democracy" is barely worthy of the name. But now the government wants to make it worse:The government has been accused of suppressing voters’ rights with the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people after plans ...
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, the building industry was building leaky homes which should never have been granted consent. Now it turns out they've been building dodgy office blocks as well:New imaging technology has revealed hundreds of major buildings nationwide have defective or missing concrete or reinforcing steel. ...
Local body election results were released over the weekend, to joy or despair depending on where you live. In Auckland, Phil Goff trounced John Tamihere, who is muttering darkly about running for Parliament again (but which party would want him?) Wellington is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weta Workshop, except ...
Two years have now gone by since the Friday afternoon when my university-student son and I headed out of our Barcelona flat to a nearby primary school, designated as a polling station for the vote that was to be held the following Sunday: the referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain ...
Overruled: The joint decision of Finance Minister, Grant Robertson (Labour) and his Associate Minister, David Parker (Labour) arguably the two most powerful ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s government, to grant OceanaGold the consents which Land Information Minister, Eugenie Sage (Greens) had earlier denied them, offers bitter proof of how hard fighting ...
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...
A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill. With a stroke of the pen, the woke are aiming for total erasure ...
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...
The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The ...
Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the ...
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...
New Zealand’s media is doing its part in Japan, reassuring those in the path of the storm that they won’t miss any rugby while away from their flooded homes. New Zealand sports reporters stationed in Japan for the Rugby World Cup have had the rare and heartwarming opportunity to inform ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is the only Cabinet member in favour of putting it all on green. As Finance Minister Grant Robertson finds himself with an enormous $7.5 billion surplus, the Government has begun intense, at times contentious conversations about whether to put the money on red or black at ...
by Susanne Kemp At the start of September close to 100,000 school teachers went on strike in Jordan. They demanded a 50% pay rise. A pay rise actually agreed to by the regime back in 2014. In early October, however, in the face of government repression and threats, the teachers’ ...
Back in 2011, journalist Nicky Hager published Other People's Wars, an expose on NZDF's activities over the previous decade of the "war on terror". NZDF didn't like this, and especially didn't like the fact that it was base don leaks from their own. So, they had the SIS investigate him ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is due back from select committee in two weeks, and will likely pass its final stages in November. So naturally, farmers are planning a hate-march against it. But they're not just demanding lower methane targets so they can keep on destroying the planet; they're also demanding ...
Last year, California burned. This year, to stop it happening again (or rather, to stop themselves from being found liable if it happens again), Pacific Gas and Electric is cutting power to half the state for a week:Schools are closed. Traffic lights down. Tunnels dark. Businesses unopened. Hospitals running on ...
The Best Way: Missing from the on-line voting debate is any reference to the voting system that produces turn-out figures ranging from 77 to 93 percent of registered voters. The voting system used to collect and count the votes cast in our parliamentary elections. The system that involves citizens making ...
Among the great new bunch of political friends we have been making recently is the excellent Australian-based Marxist gender-critical site, Freer Lives. So we asked the comrade who set up that blog to write something for Redline on the blog, himself, his analysis of the rise of gender politics and ...
by Don Franks The Auckland City Mission is struggling with a 40 percent increase in demand for food parcels this year. A total of 23,020 were needed by June. Last month Missioner Chris Farrelly told the Herald the “cupboards are bare” and without an emergency food drive, he can’t see ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Massey Wellington Student Association had a sit-in today. Imagine a sit-in. On a campus. Against a women’s rights meeting. Did the ’60s really happen or did we fucking dream it? They gathered in the student square, an echo chamber. Sitting on soft pillows ...
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...
First, almost a score of Labour MPs seem to have sent a letter to the EU basically begging them to accept a deal - any deal - just so Britain can get the Heck on with Brexiting instead of being trapped in limbo:
by Phil Duncan In 2016 the National-led government suspended the Parent Visa Category, through which migrants were able to bring their parents into New Zealand. Since then over 5,700 people have been in immigration limbo, stuck on the visa wait list. Labour is now bringing back the scheme. Well, sort ...
The following was released yesterday (Tues, October 8) by the women’s liberation organisation Speak Up for Women. On 23 September Speak Up For Women announced that we would be holding an event at the Massey University Theaterette in Wellington. The event is called Feminism 2020. The intention of the event ...
The government is currently consulting on plans to improve freshwater quality. So naturally, farmers oppose it:South Taranaki farmers are preparing to fight proposed national freshwater changes that some fear will bankrupt them. The Government's proposed National Environment Standard on Freshwater Management, released in September, rated the Waingongoro River as one ...
Yesterday was the last day for (reliably) posting your vote away in local body elections. Turnouts are mostly much lower than the equivalent time last year (Palmerston North is down 2.3%), and so naturally people are pushing their online-voting snake oil again. Because the online census worked so well, lets ...
This essay, on the political legacy of the eugenics movement, by Kenan Malik was originally published in the Observer on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘The spirit of eugenics is still with us, as immigrants know to their cost’. Birth control. Intelligence tests. Town planning. Immigration controls. It’s striking how ...
Another year, and the government has announced another enormous government "surplus". And just like last year, its nothing of the sort. When we have people homeless and sick and hungry, when we have schools and hospitals still falling down, when we have underpaid public servants and infrastucture unmaintained or unbuilt, ...
James Forsyth at The Spectator (I know, I know) has tapped one of his contacts inside Number Ten for an insight into the Johnson administration's thinking and strategy.It is fascinating, unsettling and quite, quite mad. Some key points:Negotiations have stalled and the Johnson administration are keen to blame the EU: ...
Fatal Contact: With the arrival of captain James Cook in October 1769, the islands of what would become New Zealand ceased to be the preserve of Polynesian navigators and settlers and became a part of both the world’s map and the world’s history.THE MAORI NATIONALIST assault upon the historical meaning ...
Another round of tactical talks about forming a Government of National Unity have come to nothing with the Liberal Democrats still refusing countenance putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street:Opposition talks on Monday made little headway over when to try and vote down Boris Johnson's government and who might succeed him as ...
by Nick Rogers The debate around the meaning of sex and gender made an appearance at this year’s British Labour Party conference in Brighton. Women’s Place UK – an organisation that questions the demand that biological males who self-identify as woman should have access to women’s spaces, to all-women shortlists, ...
Yesterday I went down to Wellington to participate in the Extinction Rebellion protest. Its part of the latest global wave of XR actions, with actions happening all over the world. Some of those protests are massively disruptive: in Canada, XR is blocking major bridges, stopping people from getting to work. ...
The Workshop is a charitable trust for public good. The Workshop undertake research to find ways of communicating that will build support for the solutions that work to solve complex social and environmental problems. See their Report on Talking about Poverty and Welfare Reform below. ...
Being and Being Bought (Spinifex Press, 2013) by Kajsa Ekis Ekman A synopsis and commentary of Chapters 1-2 by Daphna Whitmore Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book She opens the discussion with a definition of ...
I make no claims to having much legal knowledge, so I defer to those trained in this area.I am very much enjoying this twitter stream from m'learned friend in Edinburgh, deciphering the legal arguments around the Scottish court challenge to Boris Johnson, based on the charmingly obscure principle of Nobile ...
Ivory Folly? The University of Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, upheld the right of the radical nationalist group, Action Zealandia to exercise their freedom of speech – not matter how distasteful that speech might be. A wiser community of students and scholars would have nodded their agreement and moved on. ...
If you are not convinced terrorist Organisation ‘Extinction Rebellion’ is very, very dangerous – watch this video at one of their recent meetings. Not only is this obviously mentally ill Woman begging the other terrorists to promote killing and “eating” babies and children, if you watch carefully other members nod ...
The Ombudsman has been surveying people about their knowledge of the OIA and the right to information. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that widespread:The Chief Ombudsman says too many New Zealanders were in the dark over their right to access official information. Peter Boshier said an independent survey released yesterday on ...
In the wake of last Friday's climate strike, Peter McKenzie had an article in The Spinoff about protest strategies. The school strike movement is "polite" and cooperates with those in power because that's its kaupapa - its led by schoolkids who understandably don't want to risk arrest. But there's more ...
So, the latest ruminations on the gnews from Westminster (Again, sorry; I'll stop making that pun right now). This follows on from, and likely repeats bits of, my last post, on the suggestion that a Government of National Unity (GNU) should be set up and then oversee a referendum before ...
New Zealand likes to think of itself as not a racist country (despite being founded on the racist dispossession and subjugation of Maori). But for years, we've had a racist refugee policy, which basicly excludes refugees from Africa and the Middle East unless they already have relatives here. Now, the ...
Several people have asked me whether a particular repeat litigant could be declared a vexatious litigant, in light of their recent decision to appeal an adverse High Court ruling. My nascent tweet thread was getting ridiculously long, so it became this blog post instead.The short answer is: no. The particular ...
Appealing To The Past: Action Zealandia, like so many of the organisations springing up on the far-Right, across what they call the “Anglosphere”, is born out of the profound confusion over what a man is supposed to be in the twenty-first century and, more importantly, what he is supposed to do.THE STATUE OF ...
The attempts of anti-democratic transactivists to (often violently) disrupt women’s rights organising is largely ignored by those sections of the left most prone to misogyny and authoritarianism in New Zealand. In Britain, however, scores of trade union and left activists added their names to a letter in July, defending ...
The Justice Committee has reported back on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. The Bill would establish an independent, quasi-judicial body to investigate and review potential miscarriages of justice, and refer them back to the Court of appeal if required. It would be a vital backstop to our judiciary, help ...
by The Spark On September 14, a total of 22 drones and cruise missiles struck two oil installations in Saudi Arabia, the Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field. Abqaiq is the largest oil production facility in the world. For a few days afterwards, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national ...
How much will NeoLiberal irregulation of the building sector and subsequent leaky homes crisis cost us? $47 billion, according to a new book:The total cost to fix all of New Zealand's leaky homes would be $47 billion, probably. The estimate comes from a new book, Rottenomics written by journalist Peter ...
Below is the start of another excellent article on the Freer Lives blog. Click onto the link at the end of this extract to read the full article. The punch-a-terf, kill-a-terf message pervades social media, always righteously delivered, chin held high. By contrast, the dehumanised “terfs” themselves, that is gender-critical ...
The Reserve Bank is currently planning tighter banking regulation, requiring banks to hold enough local capital to survive a 1-in-200 year financial crisis in order to protect consumers. The big Aussies banks, those foreign leeches who suck $5 billion in profit out of our economy every year, don't like that, ...
Its the usual story: a police officer beats a handcuffed suspect so hard they break one of their own fingers. The IPCA investigates and concludes that the use of force was unlawful. And the police refuse to do anything about it:A man punched repeatedly in the face by a police ...
From time to time we add links to our blogroll. The latest blog we have added is Freer Lives. This is a Marxist gender-critical blog, based in Melbourne, Australia. On it you will find a bunch of excellent articles which use the tools of Marxist analysis to critique the rise ...
Last Friday say the largest protest in a generation, as 170,000 people joined the school strike and marched to demand real action on climate change. The demands of the school strike were simple and clear: declare a climate emergency, set a climate target of net-zero by 2040, impose a total ...
Labour is a rather middle of the road capitalist party and earlier this year we discussed how far from being ‘transformative’, Ardern’s government is. An article published this week in the Guardian, by Bryce Edwards (political scientist and commentator at Victoria University), looks at Ardern’s business as usual performance. Where ...
In the hours since my last interminable wittering about the possibility of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in Britain, there has been a slight maybe development:A Corbyn-led caretaker government could then sit for several months while it enacted and delivered a referendum with the support of smaller parties and ...
Jeremy Clarkson says much like Greta Thunberg, Anne Frank “didn’t like what was going on”, but “she didn’t have a tantrum about it.” Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has offered praise to historical figure Anne Frank, comparing her favourably to 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who he attacked in ...
Press release by Speak Up For Women Lesbians from women’s rights group Speak Up For Women are furious at reports that Rainbow Tick are threatening Massey University with the removal of their ‘tick’ if they let the group’s event go ahead. The group has been under attack from trans ...
By Duncan Garner Before you jump down my throat, nobody cares about the environment more than me. I have a garden, and since my wife and I broke up, I’ve let it grow wildly out of control, so please don’t tell me I’m not doing enough for plants. They’re ten ...
Local government elections are upon us again. It is a fair bet that, when they are over, we will have all the usual complaints that, despite their undoubted importance, the turnout was depressingly low. So, why do local elections attract so little attention and involvement from the general public? I ...
Yesterday the High Court released its decision in Moncrief-Spittle v Regional Facilities Auckland Limited, on the (alleged) decision by the Auckland Council and Mayor Phil Goff to deny use of a public venue to a pair of visiting nazi grifters. Based on the information available back then, I said that ...
Image credit:45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. ...
So, more on the possibility of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in Britain.Two things, first. The numbers in parliament make things very difficult. And anyone who is saying X will happen or Y is impossible is spinning. We can not tell and will not know until votes are actually ...
The government is promising tough action against climate change via the Zero Carbon Bill and a strengthened ETS. Meanwhile, the Overseas investment Office is granting foreign coal companies permission to expand coal mining:Coal Action Network Aotearoa has slammed a decision by the Overseas Investment Office to allow Bathurst Coal to ...
Don't You Dare Let Them Down, Jacinda! Many New Zealanders, especially young New Zealanders, continue to believe that change – real change – is possible. Do we have criticisms about the way in which Jacinda’s government has gone about “transforming” New Zealand? Of course we do. But the very fact ...
. . With some historical and present context, it should become readily apparent to Pakeha that the occupation at Ihumātao is not a free-for-all conflict for any and everyone to become involved in. First, some important dates: . 1840 . The year in which the Treaty of Waitingi was signed. ...
If this is how you propose to defend free speech, then freedom of speech is in grave danger An open letter from James Robb to Jan Thomas, Vice-chancellor of Massey University Massey University in Wellington is the venue for an event on 13 November called Feminism 2020, organised by Speak Up For ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today in Gisborne an investment of $17.27m into bringing “world-leading” food-growing technology and the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the East Coast city. The funding comes from the Provincial Growth Fund, and included a $15 million loan to LeaderBrand, a ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development More than 100 people in Tairāwhiti’s Tolaga Bay will benefit from two employment initiatives supported by the Provincial Growth Fund, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. “Tolaga Bay is an incredibly tight-knit community, but one in ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is supporting Gisborne business Leaderbrand to produce salad vegetables year round and create more jobs in the Tairāwhiti region, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Our support for Leaderbrand will help them build large greenhouses ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has praised the promise by New Zealand’s biggest banks not to close any provincial branches while the Coalition Government trials regional banking hubs across the country. The Minister said the announce was the “first sign of hope for regional communities”, many of which have ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have delivered an upgrade of the SuperGold Card website and a new smartphone app, which will help unlock the full benefits of the SuperGold Card for 750,000 New Zealand seniors.Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters, ...
Delivering a key election campaign promise, New Zealand First is proud to have accomplished a long overdue upgrade of the SuperGold Card today. At an event in Auckland, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined Minister for Seniors Hon. Tracey Martin in unveiling the new website and smartphone app which ...
Another busy week, from speaking with world leaders on the world stage about climate change, to equipping our school leavers with everything they need to get ahead in life. ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says Air New Zealand has "an obligation to look after Kiwis", and urged the national carrier not to hike up their prices after Jetstar airline announced their withdrawal from regional flights this week. The Provincial Champion also expressed his disappointment at Jetstar’s decision on ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will help fund a new dredge for the Port of Greymouth to ensure the regional fishing fleet have a reliable and productive harbour, Parliamentary Undersecretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today “Last year the movements of ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said he was "immensely disappointed" at the withdrawal of the Jetstar airline from regional routes. He has also warned national carrier Air New Zealand not to capitalise on the Australian budget airline’s decision by “gouging” regional air travellers. "Air New Zealand has historically challenged ...
International credit ratings agency Moody's gave a glowing assessment of New Zealand’s economy in its latest report, which ranks the country’s economic strength as "very high" while saying growth remains "robust". The report says it's expected New Zealand's economy will grow between 2.5 and 3 percent in the next few ...
The Coalition Government is allocating nearly $6 million to a campaign to stop Australian beekeepers marketing their products as "mānuka" honey. This move comes after Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones accused Australian honey producers of trying to steal what was indigenous to New Zealand. "The Aussies are trying to ...
The Provincial Growth Fund has provided $400,000 to Great South to help the agency drive Southland's regional economic development aspirations. The funding will allow Great South, which is Southland's economic development agency, to appoint a portfolio manager and a project support adviser, who will provide project management expertise and support ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The One Billion Trees Fund has just hit two significant milestones that will create more than 7,500 hectares of new forest cover, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Speaking at a celebratory dinner at Parliament to mark 100 years of the New Zealand Forestry Service, Minister ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
Extra funding will allow Rural Support Trusts to help farming families, says Minister for Rural Communities and Agriculture Damien O’Connor. “I know that rural families are worried about some of the challenges facing them, including the ongoing uncertainty created by the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. “Those concerns sit alongside ongoing worries ...
Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present certificates to the 16 graduates who have completed a beekeeping course delivered by the Howard League. Let us start by acknowledging Auckland Prison’s Deputy Prison Director Tom Sherlock, and Acting Assistant Regional Commissioner of Corrections Northern Region Scott Walker - ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leaves this weekend to attend the APEC Finance Ministers meeting in Santiago, Chile. Discussions between APEC Finance Ministers at the meeting will include the effects of the current global economic uncertainty, risks for APEC economies and sustainable development of the region. While at APEC Grant Robertson ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says for Pacific people, language can be a source of strength. It can help ground us and give us confidence. When we speak them, our languages provide us with an immediate and intimate access to our identity and our story - and ...
The Coalition Government has announced an action plan to improve the wellbeing of disabled New Zealanders by addressing inequalities in play, active recreation and sport. The initiative includes training to develop a workforce that understands the needs of children and young people with a range of impairments, advocacy for fit ...
The construction sector is being freed up to allow more homes to be built more quickly as the Government cuts through some of the red tape of the Building Act. “Every New Zealander deserves a warm, dry, safe home and old inefficiencies in the Building Act make building slow and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed further details on the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to New Zealand next month. Their Royal Highnesses will visit New Zealand from 17-23 November – their third joint visit to New Zealand and first in four years. They arrive in Auckland ...
Minister of State for Trade and Export Growth and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, heads to Thailand today to attend the final Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Ministerial meeting, as negotiations enter their final stages. “The RCEP Agreement would anchor New Zealand in a regional agreement that covers 16 countries, ...
Pacific young people living in the Hawke’s Bay, Southland and Otago regions will have access to support services that have proved successful in helping young people find new earning and learning opportunities. “Tupu Aotearoa is about changing Pacific young peoples’ lives. Our young people are talented, they are smart, they ...
Introduction As the Minister for ACC I thank you all for the work that you do supporting New Zealanders in their literally most vulnerable moments. From those who hold people’s lives in their hands, to the people who research technique, technology and trends, your work is highly valued. A special ...
Notes prepared for speeches in Christchurch – Wednesday 9 October 2019 Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There ...
Minister of Health Dr David Clark and Associate Minister of Health Peeni Henare say this year’s World Mental Health Day theme is a reminder of why the Government’s work on mental health is so important. “This year the World Federation for Mental Health has made suicide prevention the main theme ...
Associate Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Carmel Sepuloni will represent the government at Australia’s Meeting of Cultural Ministers in Adelaide this week. “This year’s meeting is special because New Zealand is expected to become an International Member of the Meeting of Cultural Ministers at this Australian forum,” Carmel Sepuloni said. “The meeting is an opportunity to ...
The Greater Christchurch Claims Resolution Service has resolved 608 insurance and EQC claims in its first year in operation, Minister Megan Woods has announced. The government service, which celebrates its first birthday today, provides a one stop shop to help Cantabrians still battling to get their homes repaired or rebuilt ...
Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There has been an increasing amount of attention paid to the outlook ...
The Government is acting swiftly to strengthen NZTA’s regulatory role following a review into the Transport Agency, and Ministry of Transport’s performance as its monitor, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. An independent review by Martin Jenkins has found NZTA failed to properly regulate the transport sector under the previous ...
The Netherlands and New Zealand have a long-standing and close relationship based on many shared interests and values. We value the rule of law, our democracies, and multilateralism. And we value our environment – at home and globally. Right now there are major global challenges in all of these areas – ...
The Government is putting right a decade’s worth of underpayment to nurses, doctors and other health workers, says Health Minister Dr David Clark. Initial sampling of District Health Boards payroll records has found that around $550-$650 million is owed to DHB staff to comply with the Holidays Act. It’s expected ...
A strong surplus and low debt show the economy is performing well, and means the Government is in a good position to meet the challenges of global economic uncertainty. “The surplus and low levels of debt show the economy is in good shape. This allows the Government to spend more ...
New applications from mining company OceanaGold to purchase land in Waihi for new tailings ponds associated with its gold mines have been approved. Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and Associate Minister of Finance David Parker considered the applications under the Overseas Investment Act. Earlier this year, applications from OceanaGold to ...
New Zealanders in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa / Poverty Bay will witness Māori, Pākehā and Pacific voyaging traditions come together today as the Tuia 250 Voyage flotilla assembles for the first time, Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti Minister Kelvin Davis says. “Tuia 250 is a national commemoration and an opportunity for honest conversations ...
Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker leaves tomorrow for Dubai, London and Berlin for a series of meetings to advance New Zealand’s trade interests. In Dubai he will visit New Zealand’s Pavilion at Expo 2020 where construction is underway. There he will meet Minister of State for International Cooperation, Her ...
Confirmation that PHARMAC will fund two new cancer drugs is further evidence of the good progress the Government is making to improve the treatment of New Zealand’s leading cause of death, Health Minister David Clark says. From 1 December PHARMAC will fund alectinib (Alecensa) for ALK positive advanced non-small cell ...
An additional $2.7 million has been announced for the Government Strategy for Women and Girls in Sport and Active Recreation on the first anniversary of the strategy’s launch. Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson gave the opening address to the first Sport NZ Women + Girls Summit in Wellington today, ...
As part of its work to ensure businesses can get the skilled workers they need, the Coalition Government is re-opening and re-setting the Parent Category visa programme, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. The move will: support skilled migrants who help fill New Zealand’s skills gaps by providing a pathway for ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has today announced Major General Evan Williams of the New Zealand Defence Force has been selected as the commander of a significant, longstanding peacekeeping mission in the Middle East. In December, Major General Williams takes over as Force Commander for the Multinational Force and Observers ...
A record number of nurses are now working to deliver health services to New Zealanders as the Government’s increased funding and new initiatives rebuild key workforces start to show results, Health Minister Dr David Clark says. • 1458 more DHB nurses since the Government took office • 106 more midwives ...
Farmer and former Nuffield scholar Mel Poulton has been appointed New Zealand’s Special Agricultural Trade Envoy, Minister for Trade and Export Growth, David Parker, and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, announced today. The position supports key Government objectives, including raising the value of New Zealand agricultural goods and services. Mel is ...
New Zealand’s Pacific and Māori voyaging heritage is acknowledged and celebrated today as waka of the Tuia 250 voyage flotilla arrive in Tūranga / Gisborne. “Today we celebrate Tangata Whenua, the first people of Aotearoa, and the triumphs of the voyaging tradition that brought our ancestors here from Polynesia 1000 ...
“Fijian Language Week starts on Sunday and the theme reminds us how important it is that we each have something to anchor ourselves to, something that can help us pause and feel in control in a rapidly changing world,” says Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio. “Family, culture, faith, ...
The Government is establishing an Airspace Integration Trials Programme to support the safe testing and development of advanced unmanned aircraft and accelerate their integration into the aviation system, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods announced today. The Government will work with leading, innovative aviation industry partners to test and ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today welcomed the NZ Transport Agency’s decision to fund urgent safety improvements and confirm the designation of the Ōtaki to North of Levin highway. Safety upgrades will be made along 23.4km of the existing state highway, running along SH1 from the end of the Peka Peka ...
New Zealand playing its part in Asia-Pacific and globally are behind changes announced today to the Coalition Government’s three year refugee quota policy, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “We are proud to be a welcoming and inclusive nation committed to supporting some of the world’s most vulnerable people to rebuild ...
Creating thriving regions and inclusive local communities is the aim of the Welcoming Communities programme being rolled out across the country, says Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway today. A successful pilot of the scheme ran over the last 2 years led by Immigration New Zealand and involved ten councils across five regions ...
Takahē may be flightless but their population is flying high with the official count reaching 418 after a record breeding season that produced an estimated 65 juveniles, the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage announced today. “The population reaching a high of 418 is great news for takahē which were considered ...
New Zealand is today taking action to reduce the potent global warming hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases, Climate Minister James Shaw and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage announced today. “The global agreement to reduce these potent greenhouse gases is another step in New Zealand’s commitment to reduce global warming. It is estimated ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsThe results of the local government elections appear to show that New Zealanders are generally supportive of a more diverse range of representatives, having voted in greater numbers for candidates from traditionally under-represented groups. The elections have therefore modernised our councils in a small but very significant ...
The Inquiry has today published Minute No 21. This Minute sets out how the Inquiry intends to proceed given that the Attorney-General the Hon David Parker has agreed to extend the Inquiry’s reporting date by three months to 31 March 2020. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Skrzypiec, Senior Lecturer, Flinders University Many Australian students don’t know the difference between banter and bullying, with some saying they joke about wishing their friend would “drown” or “die in a car crash”. More than 800 Australian students aged 11-16 took ...
But he did play a crucial role in helping journeyman Andy Foster knock over Justin Lester. Team Gone By Lunchtime size up the local elections, gaze plaintively at the dramas in the NZ First Party, and ask how bad the new poll is for Jacinda Ardern.Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and ...
In the fifth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect Artificial Intelligence has on our lives, Russell Brown speaks to Ben Reid, executive director of the AI Forum, about the role of government in embracing and regulating AI.Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below.To ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Local government Henry Cooke (Stuff): How to lose an election: Over-promise or under-deliver Simon Collins ...
By RNZ Pacific A Solomon Islands province has agreed to lease a large island to a Chinese developer to develop into a special economic zone, weeks after the country opened diplomatic ties with China. But already cracks abound; there has been no official announcement and the provincial premier says the ...
The New Zealand First MP and Minister Shane Jones is still backing the firearms ban, despite being pictured with what appears to be an AR-15 semi-automatic while holidaying in Asia. ...
Everyone needs to be concerned about the draft National Policy Statement on Urban Development that the Ministry for the Environment has released. It is incompatible with the spirit of transparency and inclusiveness. ...
Prodigal Son is a new crime procedural coming hot and fresh to TVNZ 1 on Mondays at 8.30pm.Jean Sergent has a few reasons why you should be watching it. If you like serial killer shows, Michael Sheen, dark drama, Michael Sheen, twisted family dynamics, or Michael Sheen – strap yourself ...
Voters in the 2019 local elections have elected the largest number of new mayors in 30 years, with 26 candidates set to don mayoral chains for the first time later this month. ...
A team of investigators dedicated to stamping out violent extremism online is being set up with the government announcing $17 million in funding over four years. ...
In a major boost to efforts to counter violent extremism on the internet, the Government has promised $17m over four years to the Censorship Compliance Unit. ...
The final dinner party on Married at First Sight NZ brought an ugly misogyny to light. But it was far from the first time sexism reared its head this season, writes Alex Casey.It began with a man being edited out of the show after his domestic violence charges came to ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) is recommending members hold on to potentially illegal shotgun shells containing steel shot until the law banning certain types of ammunition is clarified. ...
New collaborative gifting platform Joyable is looking to shake up how we group-purchase gifts. Co-founders (and sisters) Rochelle Sheldon and Kimberley Crossman explain how their latest venture works. Joyable (not to be confused with the social anxiety-reducing app of the same name) is a somewhat left-field move for co-founder Rochelle ...
The extraordinary battle for the Tron has ended in a way no one quite saw coming, with the city relinquishing its stranglehold on the title of New Zealand’s most embarrassing council. Angela Cuming reports.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a ...
On the eve of the announcement of the winner of the 2019 Booker prize, Spinoff books editor Catherine Woulfe outs herself as a giant know-nothing. Booker time. Tomorrow morning I will sit there refreshing Twitter like the drinking bird on The Simpsons. A winner will be announced. And I’ll be gripped ...
National's claim that things only went south when Phil Twyford took charge of transport is not supported by us at CEAC and we see that this begun in 2008 as we witnessed the change then while working as a partnership group with NZTA then. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Churchill, Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Melbourne There’s an old maxim: not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. But there are some things we should count, and gender and sexual diversity are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Pollock, Climatologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Northern Australia is likely to see fewer cyclones than usual this season, but hot, dry weather will increase the risk of fire and heatwaves across eastern and southern Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology today released ...
We are in The Good Time for avocados. Alex Casey talked to an expert on how to make the most of it. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A time when a new avocado headline is published somewhere in New Zealandeverysingleday. A time when it is ...
Sexual harassment and assault are an issue in all walks of life, but addressing the problem is particularly difficult when the perpetrator holds public office. Today campaigner Carrie Buckmaster launches a parliamentary petition calling for more transparency on the issue.The ongoing Labour Party scandal around handling of sexual harassment allegations ...
Dunedin’s new mayor Aaron Hawkins is the first official Green Party mayor in NZ and, arguably, the first to represent the city’s student population as much as its older residents. Josie Adams, who guessed he would win, asked him ten questions about his win.The Spinoff local election ...
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (F&P) has upgraded its full year guidance again after gaining the right to sell its new full face mask in the United States. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Shadow foreign minister Penny Wong says Australia needs to “define the boundaries” of its engagement with China now the relationship between the two countries is in a new phase. Focusing on China policy in a ...
Canon Rugby in Focus: Ireland awaits an All Blacks team that will be well-rested. Perhaps too well-rested. Rested and ready, or a game short and not match fit. Those are the two scenarios that will have All Blacks fans fretting this week ahead of ...
With the government recently announcing a desire to help our cities grow up and out, leading New Zealand IoT expert Kriv Naicker today questioned whether New Zealand is falling behind in the use of smart city technology to help achieve this goal. ...
You famously said climate change was this generation’s nuclear-free moment. But when Extinction Rebellion uses the tactics of the Nuclear Free movement, you say you aren’t impressed. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Regina Jefferies, Affiliate, Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW In the past five years, more than 95,000 people who arrived by plane have lodged a claim for asylum in Australia, new statistics show. Labor’s Immigration Spokesperson, Senator Kristina ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Waller, PhD candidate, University of Sydney Organs from potential donors once rejected as being unsafe to transplant may not be as risky as once thought, new Australian research shows. Our study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, suggests organs from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merrilyn Delporte, PhD Candidate, Queensland University of Technology Australia’s refugee policy has led to a two-track education system. Those processed offshore, and deemed refugees by the time they have arrived in Australia, are entitled to fee support for university. But the almost ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marion Terrill, Transport and Cities Program Director, Grattan Institute Congestion charging should be introduced in Australia’s largest cities, as Grattan Institute’s latest report shows. Our analysis also finds that the people who commute to the Melbourne and Sydney CBDs by driving are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David C. Ribar, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Melbourne Australia, like the United States, makes it hard for people who get benefits to stay on them. It’s not simply a matter of withdrawing benefits as people get jobs and work more hours ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana Silkatcheva, Doctoral Candidate (Oriental Studies – Islamic Art and Archaeology), University of Oxford; Curatorial Researcher, Nicholson Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney In 2005, the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) opened Australia’s first permanent galleries of Islamic art. ...
Council's can expected more pressure from their own ranks to tackle climate change with a new crop of young councillors determined to fight it head on. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Analysis that hits the mark after a big weekend of local elections, new party poll released, and Dunedinites turn out to clean up in honour of killed student.By now, you probably know whether or not you have a new local ...
Would any of the politicians who opposed the marriage equality bill have voted differently if it had passed today? Greta Yeoman asked them.Just over five years ago, New Zealand politicians voted 77-44 to legalise gay marriage, making this country the 13th in the world to do so. Of the 44 ...
We have been on a collision course with freshwater in this country for over a century, writes Dr Jonathan West. Time to make some uncomfortable choices. ...
Teenager Ella Benn has lost part of her left leg, and part of her right lung, to cancer. But with the guidance of a Paralympic legend, she's determined to be a swimming star in her own right. ...
Spark Sport’s six year deal with New Zealand cricket has dealt another blow to Sky TV. The company’s share price has sunk to an all-time low and as Mark Jennings writes, its future existence depends on winning rugby rights. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The ALP has announced an inquiry into the head office of the NSW ALP, after weeks of shocking revelations at the Independent Commission against Corruption about scandals in the handling of donations. The review, announced ...
The new Canterbury Regional Council is set to have a 50-50 gender balance, a younger average age, and people from backgrounds including law, science, farming, insurance and landscape architecture. ...
Aucklanders did not turn out in their droves to vote for incumbent Phil Goff but nor did they embrace the erratic campaigning of challenger John Tamihere. ...
Four of NZ's six largest cities changed mayors on Saturday, three through incumbents being ousted at the local polls. The new crew now need to be the change they promised. ...
Hayden Donnell identifies who did well, and who got massively owned, in the 2019 local elections.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism, click here.Most of these winners and losers lists fail to capture the nuances ...
Sophie Handford, one of the country's youngest new councillors, hadn't expected to get elected and was at a barn dance when she found out the results. ...
Arms Bill a Legislative Colander: Must Be Rewritten SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER 2019 The Arms Bill has been written so poorly than it must be abandoned and rewritten, according to the Council of Licenced Firearm Owners, COLFO. ...
In one of the biggest surprises of the local elections, Andy Foster has seized the Wellington mayoralty from Justin Lester. In this cheat sheet, we answer some of the big questions about Andy Foster, such as ‘who is Andy Foster?’ The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff ...
Wellington mayoral frontrunner Andy Foster says if he gets into office his backer Sir Peter Jackson won't be influencing what happens within the new council. ...
Fritters are a New Zealand classic and these ones, packed with fresh spring produce, make a perfect light lunch or dinner.Spring is well and truly upon us – my garden has exploded and I take such pleasure in being able to harvest its bounty on a daily basis. We are ...
Anna Knox, who spent four years living in Saudi Arabia, has been waiting for a book like Celestial Bodies – a story that shakes up entrenched ideas of women in the Middle East. Early on in Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies, Abdullah, son of Sulayman the Merchant, describes his family home in the ...
Madeleine Chapman celebrates the girl truths of Netflix’s hit show about puberty, Big Mouth.Girls are horny too. Girls are angry too. How to have an orgasm. The episode titles of Big Mouth are literal and accurate. Girls are horny too! Girls are angry too! How to have an orgasm!Big Mouth follows ...
Ashcroft’s jet spotted in Wellington too 
With an unfair voting system, uneven electorates and an un-elected upper house, the UK's "democracy" is barely worthy of the name. But now the government wants to make it worse:The government has been accused of suppressing voters’ rights with the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people after plans ...7 hours ago
Two years have now gone by since the Friday afternoon when my university-student son and I headed out of our Barcelona flat to a nearby primary school, designated as a polling station for the vote that was to be held the following Sunday: the referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain ...3 days ago
Overruled: The joint decision of Finance Minister, Grant Robertson (Labour) and his Associate Minister, David Parker (Labour) arguably the two most powerful ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s government, to grant OceanaGold the consents which Land Information Minister, Eugenie Sage (Greens) had earlier denied them, offers bitter proof of how hard fighting ...3 days ago
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...3 days ago
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...4 days ago
https://mailchi.mp/7d9133add053/closing-the-gap-october-2019-newsletter ...4 days ago
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...5 days ago
Local government elections are upon us again. It is a fair bet that, when they are over, we will have all the usual complaints that, despite their undoubted importance, the turnout was depressingly low. So, why do local elections attract so little attention and involvement from the general public? I ...2 weeks ago
Image credit: 45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. ... 2 weeks ago
We're managing the Government books responsibly, helping more Kiwis into homes, and supporting New Zealanders with disabilities. ...3 days ago
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...3 days ago
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said he was "immensely disappointed" at the withdrawal of the Jetstar airline from regional routes. He has also warned national carrier Air New Zealand not to capitalise on the Australian budget airline’s decision by “gouging” regional air travellers. "Air New Zealand has historically challenged ...3 weeks ago
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...4 hours ago
Is Jacindamania dead and buried? Not quite yet, but the Prime Minister has good cause for concern. ...2 hours ago
The Inquiry has today published Minute No 21. This Minute sets out how the Inquiry intends to proceed given that the Attorney-General the Hon David Parker has agreed to extend the Inquiry’s reporting date by three months to 31 March 2020. ...3 hours ago
The latest One News Colmar Brunton Poll has National in a position to govern with the help of the ACT Party. ...3 hours ago
But he did play a crucial role in helping journeyman Andy Foster knock over Justin Lester. Team Gone By Lunchtime size up the local elections, gaze plaintively at the dramas in the NZ First Party, and ask how bad the new poll is for Jacinda Ardern.Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and ...4 hours ago
Poland could become an even bigger headache for Brussels than Brexit over the coming years. ...5 hours ago
"It's time for men to shut up," a novelist said today at the Man Booker ceremony in London. Well - is it? NZ writers respond. ...5 hours ago
In a major boost to efforts to counter violent extremism on the internet, the Government has promised $17m over four years to the Censorship Compliance Unit. ...6 hours ago
Countdown is reporting a surge in consumer demand for alternative proteins. ...7 hours ago
Move over Bathurst, we're taking your title. Steve Deane has the perfect venue for a motorsport dream. ...10 hours ago
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (F&P) has upgraded its full year guidance again after gaining the right to sell its new full face mask in the United States. ...10 hours ago
Canon Rugby in Focus: Ireland awaits an All Blacks team that will be well-rested. Perhaps too well-rested. Rested and ready, or a game short and not match fit. Those are the two scenarios that will have All Blacks fans fretting this week ahead of ...12 hours ago
In a deal that will change the sports media landscape New Zealand Rugby is to become a five percent shareholder in Sky. Mark Jennings reports. ...12 hours ago
Imagine sitting with a dozen other students in a classroom in Wellington, waiting for a lecturer in another part of the world to begin the class. ...20 hours ago
A new tranche of data is being collected from cellphone towers and sold - should we be worried? ...21 hours ago
We have been on a collision course with freshwater in this country for over a century, writes Dr Jonathan West. Time to make some uncomfortable choices. ...21 hours ago
Could an online bra-fitting service be the final death knell for bricks and knell stores? ...22 hours ago
Teenager Ella Benn has lost part of her left leg, and part of her right lung, to cancer. But with the guidance of a Paralympic legend, she's determined to be a swimming star in her own right. ...22 hours ago
Spark Sport’s six year deal with New Zealand cricket has dealt another blow to Sky TV. The company’s share price has sunk to an all-time low and as Mark Jennings writes, its future existence depends on winning rugby rights. ...22 hours ago
Aucklanders did not turn out in their droves to vote for incumbent Phil Goff but nor did they embrace the erratic campaigning of challenger John Tamihere. ...1 day ago
Four of NZ's six largest cities changed mayors on Saturday, three through incumbents being ousted at the local polls. The new crew now need to be the change they promised. ...1 day ago
An anti-incumbent sentiment, from a Wellington sick of waiting, is likely behind Justin Lester's surprise defeat. ...1 day ago
Political promises to 'smash the gangs' misses the context needed to understand and solve the problem. ...1 day ago
And your point is?
AYB: I’d have to agree with daveski here – what is your point? Perhaps you should add it..
Maybe Ashcroft was meeting with the SFO, who leaked information to him, which he later passed on the Key.
And then the SFO can say that they didn’t leak the details to Key.
You guys are free to post on whatever you like, and I say this at the risk of having my comment deleted, but there have now been 15 posts at least since Helen Clark alleged the SFO leaked to National without a mention of it — the biggest story of Monday.
a_y_b,
Do you think this information — whose plane was where at what time — is more important than the PM’s allegations?
[lprent: It isn’t a news site – it is an opinion site. Posters write on what they consider is interesting. Same as the other sites. What was it – DPF on kiwiblog did 34 posts on Winston last week. Almost obsessional. ]
he must have been there to meet with the SFO, he then jetted to Auckland to meet with John Key. Classic C/T, right from the play book etc etc etc.
Can you actually see the numbers on the tail of the plane in the bottom photo? I am assuming each air craft has unique numbers/identifying marks on the tail/wings?
Actually, it carried Owen Glenn to also see JK in Auckland so he could back the winner with a $500K donation.
Rumour also has it that Lord Lucan and Shergar were also present.
Hell, if I were a multisquillionaire coming on a flying visit to NZ, I would want to visit Wellington too 🙂
L
My point is that he was evidently in Wellington as well as Auckland. I suspect there is someone out there to whom that information might be useful. Let’s wait and see eh? 😉
What is the requirement for large donations these days under the EFA. 2 weeks to report to the electoral commission. There is also a cap on overseas donations as well.
A secretive conservative political funder jets into at least two NZ airports…and secret payments to political parties are top of the agenda at the moment…I certainly find this intriguing news…
Of course, maybe he was just in Welly to visit the zoo. And Te Papa.
I suspect that he landed in Wgtn to restock the jet’s kitchen with babies for the long flight back to the UK.
Looks like Labour needs a new bogeyman since the exclusive bretheren are oh so 2004.
It’s all part of the grand conspiracy
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Plan.jpg
The photo tells us that he left Wellington soon after 8.48 AM, Saturday 30th August, likely for Auckland.
Given that 8.48AM (~ + 30 min) is a pretty inhospitable time of day, the question arises how long had he been in Wgtn. up till then.
Long enough to watch the Owen Glenn affaire break, catch up with Wgtn-based National party apparatchiks, and hand over the number of a Swiss bank account ?
Who else was on that plane .. Crosby & Textor ? Conservative Party Central Office ?
Is that why Rodney was so studiously chewing his thumb on Parliamentary TV ?
Tara
I think you might enjoy this website.
http://aotearoaawiderperspective.wordpress.com/
It’s great for conspiracy theorists.
lp, I believe the limit on overseas donations is $1,000. I very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew all the way to New Zealand, and then onto Wellington, to give a secret one thousand dollar cheque.
I thought Labour was running the line that National had a secret stash of many millions of dollars. Suddenly the line is that they’re short of money and need to take money from foreign billionaires illegally. In Chris Trotter’s words, that is an example of “projection”. Just because Labour takes really big pots of money from foreign billionaires, and tries to cover up its coalition partners doing likewise, doesn’t mean National is doing it.
Can’t you guys do better ?
A number of substantive points have been raised.
Possibly donating some books for the Bookfair this weekend?
Remember to drop your old books in..
http://www.standrews.org.nz/dcm/events/bookfair.html
Tim Ellis – I also very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew to other side of the world just to have a general chat about british politics as John Key claims.
here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.
Ah ‘plane-spotting’ the rich-kid’s version of ‘train-spotting’, which is the posh-kid’s version of ‘car-spotting’, which is essentially what kids do.
Randal the only party that has fronted up with substantive policy to date is the Greens.
http://www.policy.net.nz
The rest are lagging behind badly and Labour is probably one of the worst offenders
So his plane was in Wellington. So what?
thats not the point hs. Keys says he is the pm in waiting so lets hear his POLICY. is that plain enough for YOU?
hs: Yes – but on the other hand Labour are implementing policy and promising more of the same careful management that they have been doing since 1999. NRT was bemoaning that in this post.
Labour don’t quite have the credibility gap that the Nay’s have after the abrupt policy changes over the last few years. So far what we’re hearing from the Nay’s is at best incoherent. Sounds like an choir singing from different songbooks.
Don’t froth Randal
Key has not said he is PM in waiting – he may be depending on the election result.
I’m sure more policy will roll out from all parties when the PM announces the election date.
You should also note that no one would have to be talking about NZF in the media if WP hadn’t lied to the public and parliament.
For policy released to date from the parties I do however recommend the site I linked to above.
http://www.policy.net.nz
Implementing policy – like what in the last 12 months ?
Hope you guys don’t mind me pinching the images (let me know if you do and I’ll remove them). I think the more interesting thing here is how Key supposedly believes in climate change now but is still more than willing to welcome his rich mates who come to him aboard luxury corporate jets: http://newzblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/planespotting/ .
Grow up, illuminatedtiger. By the same argument Helen Clark, who wants to lead the world on climate change, welcomed her “rich mate” Owen Glenn, who actually donated large amounts of money both to her own party and a coalition partner. Where do you think Owen Glenn lives? I’ll give you a clue: not New Zealand. How do you think he arrived in New Zealand? I’ll give you another clue: he didn’t swim here.
Captcha never fails: January transport
So Owen Glen flew to NZ privately then Tim?
Everyone of course has to fly but some do it more efficiently than others. Show me the proof that Glen didn’t arrive here aboard a public airliner.
Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?
Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?
Of course it could:
http://robinsod.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/i-been-busted/
[lprent: Link-whoring with elegance – completely in context (*sigh*). You’re almost as slippery as JK. ]
Just to add to conspiracy theories I was also in Wellington on Friday night, staying on the Club Floor of a major hotel.
However I can categorically state that I did not meet with Lord Ashcroft!!
All this post has succeeded in doing is make me throw away any liberal,left sympathising sentements I may of had.
I now have made a vow to tramp down the under priviged and exploit my workers untill I have enough cash to own and operate a plane like that.
I bet even a few of the wowsers on this site pictured themselves inside with a gaggle of hookers.
Crank:
Just make sure it runs of hydrogen 😉 .
However I can categorically state that I did not meet with Lord Ashcroft!!
Of course you didn’t – he thinks you’re a dick. (You should hear what he says about Farrar…)
Um, that’s an anthology of prostitutes (English pros)
That’s never the collective noun for sex workers.
Sounds about right to me. Me and Ashman pretty much did the collected works back in the day…
Source:
Wow it has gone pun-tastic all of a sudden. Though maybe Sod’s comment is more of a double entendre
A woman walked into a bar and asked for a double entendre. So the barman gave her one.
That’s very funny billy – now, would you care to exercise that wit back at our blog?
hs it seems like your favourite tactic is telling others what to do. in the meantime while the victims of your overbearing assertions are figuring out your fallacies you have netly evaded the issue. Key does say he is going to win the election when everybody else plainly knows that he wont. in the meantime he offers no policy and and a whole parcel of obfuscatory meaningless trivial garbage that says nothng and I suppose that is a reflection of his intellect. I say that because we know what his agenda is. His party is the party of those who believe they are HARD DONE BY and now believe it is their right to grab everything by force instead of waiting in turn for a fair distribution of society’s fruits. take three thorazine and go to bed.
Randal
1. Thorazine is no longer available in NZ
2. I can’t remember one instance of either Key or Clark saying they were going to win the election.
3. You are a clearly a deluded moron
Seeing as we’re telling jokes, how many anticlimaxes does it take to change a lightbulb?
Four.
Matthew, nice.
Thanks Billy, it was your one that motivated me to put it down.
I think I know what Ashcroft was doing here. Hasn’t Key been wanting to buy a private jet for a while now?
hs:
“Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?”
I believe your last comment to randal proved that yes, it can be. Don’t you have some pretend patients to attend to?
Actually – Glenn Arrived here in a boat…
A few of the VRWC were discussing a pirate style takeover complete with pirate flag and eye patches drunkely one night…
Unfortuantley it never went ahead…
Are you sure thats Lord Ashcrofts jet
it looks like this one, but this one is his actual jet – but its got more windows this ones got 12
[Tane: And banned for a month for your smears. Such a pity, we’d just started linking to you too…]
[lprent: Looks like he didn’t like getting linked to this morning. I put this comment on his post about getting banned. I was wondering why he’d gotten himself banned – obviously was better to be a martyr.
Dave that is bullshit. You got banned because you wrote a smear against the site or a writer on it. Moreover based on this post I’d guess that you repeated an unsubstantiated, unproven smear by that pathetically technical incompetent Whale.
You have lied all of the way through this post. Why comes to mind. I’d guess this little effort comes because I actually linked to one of your posts this morning.
Are you having to re-establish you credentials. You know exactly what our policy is about smearing the posters or the site. You’ve been putting comments up there for long enough.
]
Seeing as how we’ve resorted to lightbulb jokes….
How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Only one, but first and foremost the lightbulb has to WANT to change
“here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?”
A few policies have been released, which is a few more than the Labour Party – unless you can show me where to find the links to current policy on Labour’s website.
“It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The thing on top of the tail appears to make it a Falcon 900, which is a variation of the 50.
Swampy
I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.
You are likely to face a two month ban for baseless smears.
Its not as though you are insinuating something true like the SFO leaks to John Key…
“I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.”
The plot thickens then.
Who else has JK been meeting?
I vote Grover Norquist.
I saw a red van parked outside the brothel on Wakefield st today. Trevor Mallard has a red van – must have been him eh…. The number plate was different and it wasn’t the same model van that Trevor has but I’m so sure it was him because I wish it was….
Do I get a [standard-super-snoop] chocolate fish now ?
first things first…where is the national party policy besides…”I am like Barack Obama” and “what is the SFO number” and “how much money can I screw out of this rich Pom withour being busted?”
[IrishBill says: I banned you this morning, Dad. If you comment again you’ll get another week.]
“I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.
You are likely to face a two month ban for baseless smears.
Its not as though you are insinuating something true like the SFO leaks to John Key ”
I’d imagine that ayb will take the SP option here – simply ignore the comments and pretend the post he made doesn’t exist.
Besides, neither of them could possibly talk about Clark’s allegations regarding the SFO. Word on the street is that Helen can do no wrong. It’s election year, you see.
C of T, Dean:
dave got banned for suggesting that the site was run from the 9th floor. That is an allegation that we’ve had for a while along with various attributions for contributors or that it is run from the NZLP. It isn’t correct as stated in the About.
In fact the only person that really seems to be determined to prove it is Whale. So far he has been ineffectual and hasn’t managed to prove bugger all that wasn’t in our About. We can’t do much about the bloated ego’s allegations because of our anonymity policy. That requires we neither confirm or deny for exactly the same reasons that the US does about nuclear weapons.
As for the plane. a_y_b described why this post was here
If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.
I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.
Last time I post here. This blog has become 1984, where yesterday is rewritten to prove tomorrow is correct. Its really a polite way of saying what I can’t say without getting this post deleted.
[lprent: Please promise. It’d make me so happy because you contribute buggerall, and I have to read them. ]
It’s so strange how it’s never smart people who have the type of trouble sweetd describes above. Smart people seem to be able to discuss issues on this site from all sorts of points of view without being censored.
I wonder why?
lprent
I’m not trying to be pedantic lpren, I just want to clear something up, a language thing.
In the context of trying to prove something you call Whale “ineffectual”. Calling him “ineffectual” you are saying something very different than if you said ‘He’s barking up the wrong tree’. It comes down to is he failing to prove it or is there noting he can prove?
I don’t really care either way, but this subject has been hotly debated and denied, people banned etc ever since the Happy New Year post.
That was all_your_base as well.
Next time Key wants to meet unwelcome wealthy foreign donors, for gongs, Cash-for-Honours or otherwise, he should just take a leaf out of Mike Williams book and meet them in the South of France. The weather, Languedoc and Lobster Thermador are so much nicer than in Cibo’s….
Dear Concerned of Tawa,
About the only thing that can be noted as being unequivocal in this thread is that there is no visual evidence, to the readers of this blog, that the two aircraft shown in the two photos above are the same aircraft, since the one shown taking off is too fuzzy.
Ashcroft owns a company (Flying Lion) that owns a Falcon 900 registered VP-BMS. All I can really tell from the photo at the top of this page is that the aircraft shown parked doesn’t appear to have that registration and appears to be a different aircraft (different number of windows). Since I can’t actually read the tail number I don’t actually know who owns that aircraft.
Perhaps the original poster can read the number better from the (presumably) larger photo they were originally sent?
Come on lp, give me a break! I understand your reasons for making standard authors anonymous and I don’t care where they come from, but comparing your reasoning to the US neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is pretty ludicrous. A simple “we don’t have to, and we’re not gonna” would suffice.
As for the plane, I don’t like visiting whale’s site (call me pompous, but I think the language and tone he uses is a bit excessive) but if the second plane photographed in Auckland really is Michael Ashcroft’s plane, then the one that appeared at the Standard in Wellington clearly isn’t.
The one at the Standard has fourteen windows, versus twelve in the one that Whale says is Ashcroft’s plane. They have different numbers, different livery, and the Standard’s one is longer. According to a google search, others in the past have identified Ashcroft’s plane registration number as VP-BMS, which is the aircraft in Whale’s picture. The one pictured here clearly doesn’t have that registration number.
So it looks like there isn’t any evidence that Ashcroft came to Wellington, based on this picture. I don’t know anything about airplanes, apart from how to fasten my seatbelt and fall asleep before the hostesses try and put revolting food trays in my lap, but I’d be happy owning either of those planes. As an aside, wouldn’t it be a wonderful irony if it turned out that the owner of the Wellington plane did actually meet a New Zealand politician while in Wellington?
Swampy
Details details details. Such unnecessary things in the world of perception is reality. The blurry makes the clarity in the hands of the spins. Perhaps the plane belongs to Owen Glenn?
Whale has a picture comparison that is easier to play ‘spot the difference’ between the stated model that is owned and the clearer picture as displayed here in Wellington.
see: Standard smears wrong
burt: You’re correct and incorrect. The girlfriend keeps criticizing my use of language.
What I meant was that there are certainly union members, definitely NZLP members (me for instance), probably green members, maybe feminists, etc writing on this site. Whale has proved that this is the case for unionists, although why he didn’t just look at the About which implicitly says that is beyond me. The trade unionists have been the heart of the labour movement for a long time.
Whale’s main thesis is that the site is run by one or more of EPMU, NZLP and/or 9th floor. That he hasn’t proved. He is wrong in his basic assumption because the site is run and paid for by me – as my credit card shows each month. I’ve stated that many times and I do it so the left has a place to post and talk about issues. It is a bonus that we can also get them discussed by people from all over the political spectrum, I think that is useful, and try to maintain that attribute of the site. Obviously Whale thinks I’m lying so I think he is a fool because that is what you see in the comments on the site.
His second thesis is that the posts are written from work by various contributors. There even I have limits. They aren’t written from parliament IP’s because I’d see that. Most of the large posts are written out of work hours from their log histories and the scheduled times. A lot of the smaller ones are written at are what a roughly break times. I wrote quite a long one today at work in small breaks over a hour or so while I was waiting for things to happen.
Am I going to bother to prove any of this? Absolutely not because the only way to do it is to look at the full logs, and that would identify not only the posters but also the commentators – see the Policy.
Take the blogs as they are written by the writers. They will use material from other people. The material they are written from turns up in the mailboxes from all over the place (I get a lot which I pass on to the mailing list), links to other sites, speculative ideas, post suggestions, photos, PDF’s, etc. It is a way for people to get things aired in public.
Am we going to confirm or deny peoples identities – nope. It’d be pretty easy even for a incompetent like Whale to simply work through a list of politically active leftie people (there aren’t that many in NZ). So we don’t discuss identity, and I don’t even know who most of them are in real life. They are just gmail addresses.
The bloated ego can keep jerking off in his number inflated corner of the blogosphere. He is ineffectual in proving his speculations and will continue to be so because even I can’t prove them true or false, and I run the site. The site was set up that way because that made it impossible to hack it and to break into peoples real identities. That is why the blog posters here can operate with a degree of freedom that will not impact back onto their real life. All of Whales crap is just smear designed to detract from the content of the posts using an irrelevant speculation that is impossible for him to prove and impossible for me to disprove. Besides it gives the pathetic bugger something to write about, and he really needs it as his writing is appalling – sort of like the Truth on P and with about the same level of content.
But if his speculations get repeated here even by inference on this site – I’m going to boot people permanently and with extreme malice. I’m tired of it, it is only used to try to distract from a post or comments, and it is a waste of bandwidth that I’m paying for. Besides I could do to reduce server loadings.
The little stats server here runs noon-noon Noon-midnight page views are just below the page views for the whole of yesterday. Yesterdays page views were a record. Throwing idiots off the system may lessen the load – it is cheaper than the next server upgrade.
“If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.”
You can’t see the difference, therefore it must be his plane?
Like I said, it’s election year. You NZLP activists will try anything, won’t you.
“I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.”
There was a little matter of the medals that were returned. But I suppose that doesn’t make a good book.
Honestly, you need to be more objective, if you can find the time between pretending nobody’s noticed Clark smearing the SFO.
It was John McCain’s lawyers, they are vetting JK for veep.
They want someone like Obama, and they just found out Palin’s a woman, so she’s out.
Looks like a retraction from all_your_base is in order. Those be different planes.
J Mex, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
HS,
Thank you so much for promoting my Blog. I might actually go up a few places in the blogosphere because of you. I am currently number 35 whereas your hero Slippery John is number 54. Not bad for a single blogger only out to inform people and give them some real news for a change.
About the conspiracy thing you seem so hung up on let me enlighten you about the terms you use so loosely and erroneously.
Conspiracy
Synonyms: plotting, intrigue, huggermugger, trickery, scheming, secrecy, manoeuvring
Synonyms: intrigue, plot, deception, stratagem, manoeuvre, ruse, scheme
So when John Key and other people from National secretly meet with Lord Ashcroft who is known for his right-wing secret funding, who is known for supporting secret donations, who is a ruthless wheeler dealer and who helped Howard change election laws to make undisclosed donations possible and we only found out because a journalist actually did his job, the above synonyms apply.
Fact no 1. Lord Aschroft came to Auckland
Fact no 2. John Key and Lord Ashcroft met
Fact no 3. They tried to keep it secret
Facts combined = Conspiracy
We don’t know what they conspire about but two powerful men meeting secretly with a known penchant for wheeling dealing and secrecy spells a conspiracy.
Do we know if they are conspiring something criminal or something which would be disapproved of by the general public? No we don’t but we do know that politics often are about back room deals and the deception of the voting public.
From the fact that Lord Ashcroft has a history of secret donations and John Key and National through another bit of intrepid civil journalism we do know that the like to keep secrets and do not want the voter to know their real agenda. What we don’t know is what that secret agenda is.
So in order to point out a “conspiracy” we do not have to prove what it is that the conspirators are conspiring about. Just two or more people keeping secrets for reasons only known to them is a conspiracy. The fact is that News 3 caught a politician, who wants to be trusted and voted for, doing something he wanted to keep secret from the people he wants to vote for him.
Conspiracy Theory
Theory
Synonyms: philosophy, model, concept, system, scheme, idea, notion, principle, belief, rule, technique
Synonyms: hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, assumption, premise, presumption, supposition, guess
When an event occurs and it is clearly the result of people planning and conspiring to perpetrate this event and a theory about why and how this could have happened without a sound criminal and crimescene investigation is announced as the truth without actual proof as to their involvement than that is a Conspiracy theory.
When a perpetrator or perpetrators are accused and even in light of the impossibility of them having been involved in the way the theorists claim than their conspiracy theory becomes a “mad Conspiracy theory”.
When it becomes clear that their theory falters in just about every single claim they make and they still hold on to that theory you are looking at “crazy Conspiracy nutters”.
911Truth movement
movement (n)
Synonyms: drive, crusade, undertaking, program, measure, effort
The 911 truth movement is a movement of millions of people around the world who come from an amazing different variety of walks of live. We don’t profess to know the truth. We are in search of the truth. That is a big difference.
What we do know is that we have not been told the truth by the American Government, FEMA, NIST and the 911 commission.
What we do know is that the Anthrax used in the Anthrax attacks after the 911 Attacks was a US military grade weaponised strain only produced in one location in the US. Fort Derrick. So it could not have been 19 hijackers or other “terrorists” who send this to News paper outlets and two vehemently anti war Democratic senators.
We also do know that Cheney and Bush started to take Cipro, a Anti dote to Anthrax on the day of the 911 attacks
And we what also know is that in the case of the attack on Iraq the world has been lied into this war.
How do we know?
Scholars, Pilots, FAA professionals, Architects, Engineers, Firefighters, Military,Journalists, Film-makers, Family members of the victims of 911 and down right dedicated citizens have been able to prove is that the official “Conspiracy” theory could not have occurred.
What this group has been able to prove is that the chemical signature of Nano thermite (a military quality incendiary and explosive used to blow up buildings) and nano sized iron spheres indicating a far higher temperature than was possible with Kerosene and office fires was abundant in the dust of WTC 1, 2 and 3
What this group has been able to prove is that the biggest crime scene ever in New York was destroyed in an unprecedented fashion and much to the distress of the police, fire-fighters and other crime investigation professionals.
What we have been able to establish that a crime has been committed but it could not have been done by 19 hijackers with box cutters.
So in order to find out who perpetrated the atrocities on that day we urgently ask for a new and independent investigation based on science and sound criminal investigative protocols by a commission of professionals and surviving family members with subpoena power and proper funding so that we may find out what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and perhaps even who did it.
We want real answers and justice for the people who died on that day, who are still dying because of the dust and the toxins they breathed in on that day, for the family members, for the soldiers who died in the wars and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq who died and suffered as a result of the events of that day.
[lprent: Spam engine caught it. TE: I’ll give you leeway (this time) – but please do this size of ‘comment’ on your own site and link to it.]
Oops purgatory again. Too many links me thinks. Sorry, Iprent could you check it out?
Sure, will do. Thanks Iprent.
None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft visited Wellington.
Yes Tara – In fact it is likely that Ashcroft had his plane repainted between Auckland and Wellington.
When AYB’s whole post is based on a photo of a plane though, and that photo is shown to be of the wrong plane, the least one could do is to acknowledge the error.
“None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft visited Wellington.”
None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft is one of David Irving’s lizard men either, but in rational circles we put the burden of evidence on proof.
Unfortunately AYB doesn’t see the world the same way, or he would have retracted by now.
Well he does look a bit lizardy. And he spits when he talks.
Still, I maintain that he was probably here to sell Johnny a plane. He’s always wanted one.
Comment for Burt and everyone – has anyone actually proved which plane Ashcroft flew to New Zealand in?
Just because he owns BMS, does that prove he came to NZ in it this time around? It could be sitting in a hangar with the engines being overhauled.
There is a very interesting point about the other aircraft, and BMS, that they both have the initial registration letters VP, which means a British colony, most VPs seem to be Carribean islands. Could be they are both registered in the same country.
I have consulted the source and he has replied as follows:
Swampy’s reference to VP-BMS and 12 windows seems to have been taken from googling by ‘Falcon 900’ and ‘Ashcroft’ to give
and similar sites.
VP-BZE photographed in Wellington appears to be a later, slightly extended model, consistent with what a billionaire ex-Treasurer of the British Conservative Party would fly.
The pool of executive jets in Aotearoa is very small so it is unlikely that another Falcon Dassault 900 would just happen to be passing through.
The CAA should have a record of aircraft movements.
Unfortunately, the resolution of the shot from TV3’s footage was not great enough to count the windows. Could someone nicely ask TV3 to count the windows on that jet if there are any better images ?
It is unlikely that he was travelling such great distances alone at considerable cost. Who else was on the plane ?
Could Key’s conservative reforms in NZ be a model for those mooted in the UK after the next election ?
Tara Swampy, those are interesting points. Except Lord Ashcroft is known as only having one plane, which is the one featured by TV3, and is consistent with the registration numbers. The plane in Wellington is not a Dassault Falcon 900. It is a Dassault Falcon 7x.
Now, given that we know Lord Ashcroft came to Auckland, and that his plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, with Ashcroft’s registration numbers, was filmed at Auckland airport, what do you think the chances are that a second plane, a different model, filmed at Wellington airport, also belonged to Ashcroft?
Pretty close to nil, I would say. I am not saying that Ashcroft didn’t go to Wellington. I have no idea whether he did. All I am saying is that the picture of the plane at Wellington airport, which appeared at the Standard, does not belong to Ashcroft, and is not any evidence that he was in Wellington, which is what the Standard claimed.
What the Standard’s picture does show is that a Falcon 7x was in Wellington. We know this is not Ashcroft’s jet. It is a very nice jet though, worth about US $40 million. I have no idea who owns it. Probably not a New Zealander. The Brazilian Foreign minister was in New Zealand at that time. Could be his.
I reckon it was the former Cardinal Ratzinger, schooling Bill English on how to win caucus leadership votes.
Tim: I agree, it’s a Falcon 7X
see ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Falcon_7X.jpg
and ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Falcon_7X
.. but I’m not clear that TV3 shows a 900 or a 7X taking off at Auckland with Ashcroft in it. It would be nice if someone could count the windows to prove or disprove it .. but at this point its a bit academic.
It is certainly interesting that he was around at the time of the Owen Glen saga which has yet to play itself out.
Tim:
“The Brazilian Foreign minister was in New Zealand at that time. Could be his.”
Foreign dignitaries are usually welcomed at the International Terminal.
Private individuals, such as Ashcroft, generally use the Flight Center .. near where VP-BZE stood waiting.
“Lord Ashcroft has become a significant figure in Australian politics having been identified as the single largest individual donor to any Australian political party during the Financial Year 2004/2005. The Australian Electoral Commission reported in February 2006 that Ashcroft (who gave his address as “House of Lords, Westminster, London”) had donated $1,000,000 to the Liberal Party in September 2004 just before the 2004 Federal election. It was the biggest single disclosed private donation in Australian political history.[10]
Over the last weekend of August 2008, Lord Ashcroft flew into Auckland, New Zealand in his private Lear Jet. While there he was confirmed to have met with senior figures from the New Zealand National Party; the main opposition party in the upcoming New Zealand general elections.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ashcroft
Tim, Swampy:
VP-BZE could be derived from Belize of which Ashcroft is a national. See ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ashcroft
VP-BMS is recorded at airliners.net and other sites as being owned by Flying Lion, a company owned by Ashcroft which according to some other sites “has only one major asset…a Falcon 900”.
I found two websites that linked VP-BZE with Flying Lion as well:
http://www.airframes.org/reg/vpbze and
http://www.ecacnav.com/Content.asp?PageID=128&OpNum=11050&Operator=FLYING+LION+LTD.
The latter site lists both of the abovementioned aircraft under Flying Lion’s name.
Is there any recorded footage that positively identifies that BMS was here last weekend? It was here when Ashcroft came over in April in conjunction with the VCs.
Tara
Do you think that Labour asked Ashcroft for a donation?
Swampy:
1. There is no footage of which I am aware that BMS was here last weekend. It appears that he used BZE on this trip
2. Did Labour ask Ashcroft for a donation ?
Dunno. I don’t think they’d bother given his history.
“In the UK, he was a major donor to and Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 1998 to 2001, under William Hague. His tenure was marked by a number of controversies: he was seen to pay little UK income tax due to his domicile in Belize; and he was at the centre of a debate about openness and accountability of political funding.
Unsubstantiated speculation about his business affairs was concluded when he pursued a libel action against The Times. This was settled on 9 December 1999, when The Times issued a statement that “[…] Litigation between the parties has been settled to mutual satisfaction, with each side bearing its own costs.”[8]
In 2004 he clashed with Conservative leader Michael Howard when he offered a £2m donation on the condition that it should go to his specified candidates, rather than into general Conservative Central Office funds.
In December 2005, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.[9]
On 12th October 2007 he was accused by Labour MP’s for being allowed to heavily fund the local Conservative organisations in marginal seats of his choosing. The Electoral Commission is investigating and changes to the rules are predicted.
During the “Cash for Peerages” controversy, on 31 March 2006 he was named by the Conservative Party as having loaned it £3.6m.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ashcroft
“Draco TB
September 2, 2008 at 1:14 pm
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The registration code VP-BZE was previously used by a Falcon 50 that has since been re-registered in the US.
Since the Falcon 7X is such a new aircraft (RTM about a year ago) the current usage BZE must be fairly recently registered in Bermuda.
“Welcome aboard Air Ashcroft, the Tories’ favourite airline”
David Hencke, The Guardian,
Saturday November 3 2007
When Gordon Brown does his weekly commute between Edinburgh and London, he flies with British Airways or BMI on scheduled flights crammed with other passengers. By contrast, when David Cameron touched down in Khartoum last November for a fact-finding mission to Darfur, his relaxation was due in no small part to a journey spent on the supple leather couches of a Falcon 900 private jet.
Courtesy of millionaire donor Lord Ashcroft, shadow cabinet ministers have enjoyed the use of the luxury jet on trips to Israel, China, Mali and the Czech Republic, according to information in the Parliamentary Register of Interests and declarations to the Electoral Commission.
The trips – 32 so far – have already attracted questions from Labour MPs and led to a complaint to the commission that Michael Ashcroft’s largesse has been significantly underestimated, possibly by as much as £500,000, in declarations of the perk’s value to the Tory frontbench.
Altogether shadow cabinet ministers and aides have flown 184,000 miles on the Ashcroft jet over the last five years with Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, flying 65,453 miles and shadow foreign secretary William Hague flying 49,670 miles.
Analysis conducted for the Guardian reveals that Tory globetrotting has racked up 1,289 tonnes of carbon emissions. The biggest footprint was made by Michael Ancram when he was shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary, according to environmental consultants Carbon Footprint. Mr Ancram’s flights emitted 372 tonnes, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and Poland. The plane’s movements are being tracked by planespotters who logged it leaving Luton empty to fly to Khartoum to pick up Mr Cameron and return him to Britain. Indeed spotting the Ashcroft jet seems to have become a bit of cult on spotter blogs.
Lord Ashcroft’s generosity through his Bermuda-registered firm Flying Lion allows the Tory leader and his colleagues to travel in style to global hotspots. The jet features “supple leathers, glistening veneers and deep pile carpet as standard”, according to its French maker, Dassault.
It boasts a galley that “houses all the essentials for a fine dining experience 45,000ft in the air”. Comfort is generous, with a 7ft-wide cabin “so you can move easily with your head held high” and the jet has satellite communications and full conference facilities. For anyone thinking of investing in this kind of luxury, the typical asking price for a second-hand one is around $30m (£14.3m).
But it is the value placed on the flights that has drawn criticism. Mr Hague declares a trip on Lord Ashcroft’s jet to Belize, Brazil, the Falklands, Iceland and Panama as being worth £8,486, the equivalent of flying first-class. Yet to hire a Falcon with Premier Aviation would cost £55,000 for a one-way trip to New York alone.
Labour MP Tom Watson said: “There appears to be a huge discrepancy between, say, David Cameron’s declaration of £16,000 for the cost of his trip to Darfur and the cost of hiring a similar jet from a commercial firm. I got a quote of over £100,000 to hire a jet to go to Khartoum.”
Lord Ashcroft is relaxed about the plane and faintly amused that he is now the subject of interest among planespotters: “Am I becoming a cult figure like Madonna?” he said. He is also unrepentant about making it available to the Tory frontbench on a bigger scale in the future. “I hope it will be used by all the shadow cabinet over the next few years,” he added.
Lord Ashcroft is not the only person to make private aircraft available to the Tory frontbench. Mr Cameron’s carbon footprint is much higher if another 68 internal flights, including a short helicopter ride from Birmingham to Warwick, are taken into account. He has flown just over 3,700 miles on the Ashcroft jet.
The green cost
The Falcon burns about 3,000 US gallons of fuel to cover its maximum range of 4-5,000 miles. A Boeing 777 uses about 30,000 US gallons to cover the same distance. But the Boeing can carry 300 people, which significantly reduces its carbon footprint per passenger kilometre, the usual yardstick for emissions. If the Falcon flew with three passengers, then each would be responsible for 10 times as much pollution as those in the Boeing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/nov/03/uk.conservatives
[lprent: Please don’t quote the whole article into a comment. Quote a few selected juicy bits (teasers) and then provide a link is usually sufficent. You’ll find that regardless of how interesting the article is at least a high proportion of the participants here will regard it as a waste of bandwidth. They usually start moaning after some repeated occourances, and I get involved.
Bugger – just found the first limit in google chrome – no dictionary. Switching back to firefox. ]
Thanks, point taken, but I thought this was a good one ..
“Please don’t quote the whole article into a comment. Quote a few selected juicy bits (teasers) and then provide a link is usually sufficent. ”
Is it possible to edit that entry retrospectively, according to your guidelines ?
Tim, there’s no record of the Brazilian Air Force owning any Dassault Falcon aircraft. The nearest thing they have are three Learjets. They might have also used one of ten Embraers to fly the Minister in.
It’s the CIA doing a black bag secret rendition jobby. The GOP is worried that Colin Powell has gone completely off the reservation and was about to endorse Obama, see. So they’ve whisked him down here, and they’ve got the poor bugger tied to a chair with Judith bloody Collins in full on scold mode at him in 3 hr stretches.
It’s inhuman I tells ya.
Michael Ashcroft commissioned a programme of research, with the aim of building a clear picture of public opinion on the questions that would determine the outcome of the general election.
As well as measuring the true level of support for the parties he sought to establish the underlying attributes associated with each, and how these changed during the course of the election campaign. Crucially, he also aimed to establish whether the state of opinion in marginal constituencies reflected that in Britain as a whole.
…
including the biggest political poll ever conducted in Britain, with a sample of 10,000. This included:
* a tracking poll monitoring daily movements in opinion from January 2005 until the May election
* polls and focus groups in specific marginal constituencies around the country
* a national post-election ‘call-back’ survey to establish why people voted as they did
..
http://www.populuslimited.com/michael-ashcroft-case-study.html
During the run-up to the May 2005 general election, Michael Ashcroft became interested in political opinion polls. Using two respected polling companies, he decided to commission some research of his own. Once his polls had been analysed, they produced some fascinating findings and some valuable lessons for the Conservative Party.
He began to become interested in political polling in the autumn of 2004 at a time when he was already working to help Conservative candidates win and hold on to some of the most marginal seats up and down the country.
Initially, he concentrated his research in these key marginal seats but then, as his fascination with polling grew, he decided to conduct a vast poll of 10,000 voters (the usual size is 1,500 people) in order to produce the biggest ever poll in the UK on political attitudes. Initially, he did this out of self-interest but in July 2005 he published the findings for all to see.
Between mid January 2005 and the eve of polling day in May 2005, he also conducted a daily Americanstyle “tracker poll’ which he hoped would show how voters were responding to key Tory policies in the run-up to the general election.
http://www.lordashcroft.com/politics/generalelectionreport.html
Why is Michael Ashcroft considered an election winning expert?
Written by Mark Pack on 28th August 2007 ? 1:50 pm
Lord Ashcroft, the controverisal former Conservative Treasurer and now Deputy Chairman, is back in the news again. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ran a piece about internal Conservative disagrements over his role and there?s been plenty of criticism of him on Conservative Home, some of which made The Guardian.
Defenders of Ashcroft essentially say: he knows what it takes to win elections so having Ashcroft in charge and the serial losers being given the push is a good thing.
But how good is Ashcroft?
Well, here?s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:
The national swing from Labour to Conservatives was 3.2 per cent, yet the swing in the seats which we supported was 3.8 per cent.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times by Michael Ashcroft, p.296
You read that right: by his own admission, all his expertise and money achieved was a paltry o.6 per cent extra swing.
Given the campaign I ran at the general election secured a Labour to Liberal Democrats swing that was 9.8 points above the national average, I guess that makes me 16.3 times better than Lord Ashcroft 🙂
Do drop me a line Michael; my consultancy rates would be very competitive?
http://www.libdemvoice.org/michael-ashcroft-1239.html
Is Lord Ashcroft ashamed to live here?
By Rachel Sylvester
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/12/2007
Have your say Read comments
He has a powerful empire, a network of agents and a Caribbean hideaway. It is not surprising that some of David Cameron’s most senior allies refer to Lord Ashcroft, privately, as “Blofeld”.
# Andrew Gimson: Lord Ashcroft – reveal yourself
# Three Line Whip: The fag end of a Government
# Three Line Whip: Cameron and Brown, cat and mouse
The millionaire deputy chairman of the Conservative Party directs the operations of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Capturing Target seats, from his well-equipped suite of offices in Millbank Tower. The only thing missing is a white cat. The Tories’ presiding electoral genius pores over Sudoku puzzles instead.
advertisement
<A HREF=”http://ads.telegraph.co.uk/event.ng/Type=click&FlightID=31448&AdID=38847&TargetID=10049&Values=1478&ASeg=&AMod=&Redirect=http://familyhistory.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph.jsp” target=”_top”><IMG SRC=”http://adc.telegraph.co.uk/h/house/familyhistory/august/findmypast_mpu.gif” WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A>
Yesterday, the Conservative leader defended Lord Ashcroft, at his monthly press conference, by saying that he is responsible for only four per cent of donations to the Tory party, far less than David Sainsbury or Lakshmi Mittal have given to Labour.
He was “happy”, he said, with the assurances he has been given that the peer’s tax and residency status are in order.
But Mr Cameron knows as well as anyone that the mud being thrown at Labour over sleaze will stick to all politicians in the end.
Every morning, as Tory strategists meet to discuss their battle plan, they ask whether they are missing anything damaging in their own affairs. They can be sure of one thing. When the spotlight does eventually move away from Gordon Brown and towards Mr Cameron it will linger long and hard on Lord Ashcroft.
# Three Line Whip: Optimism and the Olympics
# Brassneck: Mind your tone, Mr Cameron
Privately, senior figures around the Conservative leader have been worried about the party’s dependence on the peer for some time. As deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft is more powerful than ever.
He does not just give donations, he is also responsible for the party’s polling and target seat strategy. When the shadow cabinet is briefed on focus group or poll research, it is Lord Ashcroft who presents the results. That puts him in an extraordinarily powerful position.
The party may not be, as one senior Tory put it, a “wholly owned subsidiary of Ashcroft plc” but part of it has certainly been captured by his management team.
The concerns that first circulated when Mr Cameron took over are beginning to resurface. Senior Tories warn that the deputy chairman is running a “party within a party”. Some MPs mutter that he could be their leader’s Achilles’ heel.
Certainly, Lord Ashcroft is a generous benefactor. According to the Electoral Commission website, he has given almost £2.6 million to the Conservatives since 2003.
About half of this comes in the form of donations in kind – polling, focus group work, consultancy work and at one point last year, rather bizarrely, £5,927.88 for “bottle openers”.
The peer also frequently flies senior Tories around in his private jet – David Cameron, William Hague, Andrew Mitchell, Patrick McLoughlin and David Davis have all used it.
Recently, he paid for the Tory leader, and several shadow cabinet ministers, to attend the rugby world cup in Paris.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/12/04/do0401.xml
Ashcroft & the DEA
..snip..
On July 13 the London Times published two leaked foreign office documents. The first involved a telegram written in 1997 by the British high commissioner in Belize, Gordon Barker, cautioning against the appointment of Ashcroft to the chair of the Caribbean trade advisory group. It warned that the Belize government viewed him with “deep suspicion’ and remarked that rumors concerning his business deals cast a “shadow over his reputation that ought not to be ignored.’
This was followed by a 1994 report by a British foreign office adviser calling for tighter regulation of financial services in Belize and noting with some alarm that “low standards of regulation and supervision’ were attracting “those seeking to conceal proceeds of drug trafficking and other serious crime.’
Ashcroft’s response was allegedly to quash the report and solicit the British government to intervene on his behalf. Another document involved a letter from a local diplomat in 1996, Charles Drace-Francis, stating that Ashcroft made threats to the effect that he would “stir up trouble’ for Britain unless he were allowed to set up a branch of his Belize bank in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Four days later the Times disclosed that Mr. Ashcroft’s name appeared in a series of files kept by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as part of its investigations into drug trafficking and money laundering in Belize. It later transpired that cocaine was found on at least two ships sailing under the Belize “flag of convenience’ in 1994, under a shipping register in which Mr. Ashcroft had a 50 percent stake until earlier this year.
The attempted rebuttal to such charges by the Conservative Party Central Office, as well as the pro-Tory Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers, was far from emphatic. A statement by the US State Department to the effect that no conclusive proof had been established connecting Michael Ashcroft with money laundering and no specific concerns had been raised with either the British or Belize governments was released.
The Times then published an article which explained that Ashcroft had been index-numbered on the files of the DEA, a step taken only when serious suspicions exist. On the same day Peter Bradley, Labour MP for Wrekin, raised explicit allegations within Parliament. Utilising the legal immunity afforded under parliamentary privilege, Bradley stated that Ashcroft and his companies had been repeatedly mentioned in connection with money laundering by the DEA. Among the most incriminating examples was one document dated April 1994 with the heading: “Intelligence concerning possible air smuggling/money laundering activity undertaken by Michael Ashcroft.’
.. snip ..
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/ash-a04.shtml
Michael Ashcroft: Special Report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ashcroft/
UK Parliament hears Ashcroft allegations
The House of Commons has heard details from a series of documents linking Conservative treasurer Michael Ashcroft to drug trafficking.
Labour MP Peter Bradley used parliamentary privilege to read from files, which he said came from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the International Narcotics Bureau.
.. snip ..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/400078.stm
UK: The Ashcroft Affair – The Accusation
Verbatim Text Of The Speech In The House Of Commons Yesterday By Peter Bradley, Labour Mp For The Wrekin, Questioning Michael Ashcroft’S Activities:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n754.a01.html
On Ashcroft & Belize, see
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5SpfhmFHyjwC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=ashcroft+belize&source=web&ots=k1lVXGdjNB&sig=nGdTVaoFyC7F6KEL0iRwwk7kBEk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result
Tara:
You’re a spammer of epic proportions. Cut and paste do not a thoughtful post make.
I see AYB hasn’t retracted this post yet, either. AYB, is Key still a bona fide member of the secret order of baby eating nine rich white men secretly ruling the world still?