Author Archive

Deja vu

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:11 am, June 24th, 2008 - 15 comments

I was having a look through some old campaign PR yesterday and found this gem: It seems John Key ripped off more than just Coldplay when he made his DVD.

Hit and Run

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 8:58 am, June 18th, 2008 - 40 comments

I put a comment on one of Steve’s posts a few days ago and he suggested I put it up as a post so here goes: National have been playing a hit and run public relations game for a few years now. It’s not a bad strategy for an opposition as the news-cycle moves so […]

Yet more government waste

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:27 am, May 30th, 2008 - 57 comments

Following a series of National Party questions to the house the Herald has discovered the Labour government has spent nearly $27K on sausage rolls since taking power in 1999. Sources inside the public service reveal that in many cases morning teas would be provided with nearly two sausage rolls per person in attendance and some […]

“pretty similar”

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:56 am, May 29th, 2008 - 60 comments

I noticed an interesting comment from Ferdinand in our Kiwisaver thread yesterday: I signed up to Kiwisaver based on the 4% employer contribution being rolled out. If National cap that at 1% then I’m out of pocket by about $75,000 in contributions alone. That got me thinking about that meaningless phrase John Key used to […]

Ambitious for big oil

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:41 am, May 27th, 2008 - 74 comments

We’ve all heard John Key bang on about his ambitions for New Zealand’s infrastructure and now one of my sources within the National Party has tipped me off that as part of their infrastructure policy they are planning to announce a plan for a four lane highway between Wellington and Auckland. As I recall this […]

Down the club

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:40 pm, May 26th, 2008 - 40 comments

National party activist and spokesperson David Farrar has surpassed himself this time with a post attacking Helen Clark for not having children that features youtube work from his friend and fellow activist Cameron Slater. Now I expect this kind of thing from Slater who is well known for such tasteful moves as photoshopping the face […]

National’s cruel hoax

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:10 am, May 23rd, 2008 - 52 comments

Well the budget is out and across the country the public are looking at their tax cuts and asking “is that it?” and this is at a time that economists are very nervous about the inflationary impact of such a large package of cuts and anything bigger means cutting services or significantly increasing borrowing. The […]

National’s campaign to muzzle union continues

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:14 pm, May 21st, 2008 - 139 comments

It seems National has succeeded in the first step of its campaign to muzzle the EPMU and the fifty thousand workers it represents. Over at the bog our mate Davey is crowing about the high court win that recognises the union as a legal person for the purposes of the act. This still means that […]

Spin Bingo: Budget Edition

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:12 am, May 21st, 2008 - 56 comments

Well it’s Budget day tomorrow and we’ve got our man Steve Pierson going to the lock-up so we can get you a good ol’ Standardista analysis ASAP. But while we don’t know what’s going to be in the Budget we can take a fair guess at what National’s response will be. So we’ve decided to […]

Herald gets it right

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:12 am, May 20th, 2008 - 41 comments

Good to see the New Zealand Herald is starting a campaign to let us know the policy cost of National’s likely massive tax cut programme. Amongst the list of things National could drop to put money into the pockets of a few are: $700 million for Fast Forward Fund investing in food and pastoral sector […]

Winner takes all (of us to the cleaners?)

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:56 am, May 18th, 2008 - 120 comments

The Sunday Star Times reports National is keen to have a referendum on MMP. As you would expect Peter Shirtcliffe has been involved in lobbying the Nats for this policy. It’s just as AYB predicted. I’m sure the advertising agencies will be rubbing their hands together in glee. I would imagine we’ll hear a lot […]

A change to what?

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:35 am, May 17th, 2008 - 192 comments

As we all know the latest Fairfax poll has shown a huge lead for the National Party. Now I’m of the opinion it’s probably a rogue poll and we could argue that point (and methodology, and trends, etc) until the cows come home but I’m interested in something else. If this poll was hypothetically the […]

Nats’ attack on union hits High Court

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:46 am, May 14th, 2008 - 47 comments

Today National will be explaining to the High Court why it wants the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s 50,000 members to be denied the chance to campaign for their work rights this election. I’m expecting that they will continue to claim they are only “testing the law” but given the EPMU’s record of showing National […]

Undo the cuts

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:05 pm, May 11th, 2008 - 56 comments

Good to see Ruth Dyson finally admitting we have left beneficiaries behind. I would hope now that there would be a lot more done than simply indexing benefits to wages though. Increasing the benefit to real pre-1991 levels would be a good start. A lot of people know about the benefit cuts but not many […]

Fran O’Shillivan strikes again

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:51 am, May 6th, 2008 - 84 comments

Here’s the first par of National’s release on the rail deal: National Party Leader John Key says at a time when householders are struggling to pay the weekly bills, Helen Clark’s decision to spend the thick end of a billion dollars to buy back the rail rolling stock does not make any sense. Here’s Fran […]

Aloha means hello and goodbye

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:28 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 59 comments

Strangely, given the fact the National Party is doing so well in the polls and looks to be the favorite heading into the election, things seem to be coming apart for them. We’ve heard a few stories about tense caucus meetings and divisions but mostly only as rumour and, in an election year, that sort […]

Buy it back

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 1:07 pm, April 28th, 2008 - 21 comments

I see that the Wellington lines network has been sold. Given the network has been in in the hands of foreign investors before I can’t see a sustainable argument for blocking the sale as the Auckland Airport bid was blocked. I do think the government should have bought it back. Electricity is too important to […]

Bad politics

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 8:23 am, April 13th, 2008 - 91 comments

National’s current attempt to stop the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union from registering as a third party pretty much proves what we all knew. They have no interest in democracy. Rather than accept the decision of the Electoral Commission and move on they’ve decided to appeal the decision and apply for an injunction to stop […]

Interview the leaders III: Labour

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 5:14 pm, April 7th, 2008 - 64 comments

A big thanks to Progressives’ leader Jim Anderton for being the first participant in our ‘Interview the leaders’ series. The quality of his answers has set a standard for the others to emulate. Our next leader is Jeanette Fitzsimmons of the Green Party. The general question remains: Of which of your achievements in politics are […]

Davey gets it wrong again

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:57 pm, April 4th, 2008 - 79 comments

David Farrar’s latest political campaign on behalf of the National Party has, like so many of them before, foundered on the sharp rocks of reality. In an attempt reminiscent of the ramshackle PR fiasco that was the Free Speech Coalition, DPF tried to get the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s application for third party status […]

Scum

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:54 pm, March 31st, 2008 - 95 comments

Cameron Slater’s co-blogger Steady Eddy is back to his creepy brownshirt tricks again and this time his target is Labour Party candidate Kate Sutton. I’ll say right now that I’m concerned about giving this filth any oxygen but considering Eddy’s previous attacks on Sutton have been approvingly linked to by National Party blogger David Farrar […]

Interview the leaders II: The Greens

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 1:26 pm, March 31st, 2008 - 51 comments

Well, we’ve made our decision on the two questions you wanted asked of Jim Anderton and one of the decisions we made was that we needed three questions. So we’ve picked the following: For the question that will be asked of all leaders we’ve chosen Wat Tyler’s question as tidied up by Billy: Of which […]

Belated big-ups

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:37 am, March 28th, 2008 - 6 comments

It’s been a bit remiss of us to have failed to welcome The Hand Mirror into the left blogosphere. I’ve only just had a proper look at it and I’ve got to say it is gold. Sort of like one of those action movies where half a dozen superheros get together to save the world. […]

More on mental health

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 12:36 pm, March 18th, 2008 - 11 comments

After reading Steve’s piece about suicide prevention and the subsequent comments I’ve decided a short history lesson on this issue is needed. In the late eighties and early nineties the mental health model was shifted from an institutional model to the ‘recovery model’. Effectively this meant mental health patients were shifted from facilities such as […]

John Ansell’s reverse Midas touch

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:07 pm, March 17th, 2008 - 22 comments

Oh dear. It started with Roger Douglas and now political ad-man John Ansell has got on board the ACT train to electoral oblivion as well. Ansell’s most famous work to date is the National Party’s racist iwi/kiwi billboards of the 2005 election but our sources tell us his stocks dropped considerably with the party after […]

Good for the ears

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:23 pm, March 15th, 2008 - 3 comments

For those of you who haven’t already found it, Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood has a bloody good economics-based radio show that goes up on the web. I’ve rediscovered it after being an avid listener some years ago and can throughly recommend it. His latest interview is with Nobel laureate Joesph Stiglitz (who incidentally […]

Yawn

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:47 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 11 comments

Well National’s finally got their line straight on the research fund and, despite me old mate Dancer’s prediction, they are not supporting it. It seems this one goes to AYB who picked their line perfectly. He said they’d claim the idea’s good but the model is flawed and then have cry about how it should […]

Pythonesque

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:50 am, March 10th, 2008 - 21 comments

According to the Herald some people marched down Queen Street against the Electoral Finance Act on Saturday. Apparently they were protesting the removal of their right to political expression, which was taken off them as of January first this year. Signs compared the government to Robert Mugabe. One presumes they are unhappy they can no […]

No, he meant “infrastructure”, he really, really did

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:47 pm, March 7th, 2008 - 27 comments

AYB’s confidence in English as a frontman for National may already have taken a knock as the second half of the dynamic duo has successfully managed his own John Key moment within hours of taking over the reins. When asked on NewstalkZB today whether National would borrow money to pay for tax cuts English managed […]

Key backs the underdog

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 1:39 pm, March 4th, 2008 - 25 comments

The latest Newsroom story [subscription only] about the Government’s move to protect Auckland International Airport from sale to the Canadian Pension Fund reports Labour is taking National to task on the issue of their support. Prime Minister Helen Clark is challenging National to state its position on strategic assets sales after the Government stepped in […]

Filth

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:15 pm, February 22nd, 2008 - 82 comments

It looks like the nasty little insecure creeps who inhabit the Kiwiblog Right are creeping into the mainstream. I mean, take a look at this from today’s Herald: This follows Cameron Slater’s description of a female columnist who pointed out how weird his obsession with Clark is as “a fat, lazy, pommy, leftist slag”, Clint […]