Author Archive

Speak no evil

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:32 am, October 9th, 2008 - 27 comments

Word around the traps is that this week Key and English have added veteran financial reporter Rod Oram to their list of journos they won’t speak to and Key has canceled his weekly chat with Wammo on Kiwi FM until after the election. This adds to Key striking Duncan Garner off his interview list after […]

Farce

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:01 pm, October 7th, 2008 - 18 comments

It was with wry amusement I read Bill Ralston’s revisionist history of New Zealand superannuation today. According to Bill it was Muldoon who created an “unsupportable” super scheme as an election bribe in 1975. Of course anyone who remembers the situation (as Bill certainly should) knows full well that the real story was big Norm’s […]

Attack on democracy

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 5:02 pm, September 28th, 2008 - 53 comments

National have quietly released their policy on electoral law and have promised to abolish the Maori seats once treaty claims are finished, repeal the Electoral Finance Act and run a referendum on MMP. These all represent substantial changes to the way our democracy operates. I’ll be very interested to see what the Maori Party make […]

That meeting

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:46 am, September 27th, 2008 - 50 comments

The more I think about it the more it seems to me that John Key’s meeting with Rail America needs some more explaining. For a start these kinds of meetings don’t just happen of their own accord. Rail America is based, somewhat unsurprisingly, in America. John Key is based in New Zealand. That means someone […]

Murky

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:30 am, September 26th, 2008 - 75 comments

We know John Key bought shares in Tranzrail on May 7 2003. We know he then met with Rail America as a representative of New Zealand’s parliament on May 20, 2003. We know those shares were then sold by June 10, 2003 for a massive profit. It appears the sale of Tranzrail was discussed during […]

Go the drivers

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 8:24 am, September 24th, 2008 - 115 comments

Wellington bus drivers are striking this morning and good on them. I was happy to find my own way to work today. The company, GO Wellington, is claiming the drivers claim of 12% is too much in “these economic times” But talk of percentages is nothing but a red herring when the basic truth is […]

Who’s sorry now?

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:46 am, September 23rd, 2008 - 41 comments

Anyone remember back in July Key accused Clark of misleading the house over his involvement in Tranzrail and asked for an apology? Just in case you don’t here’s what John Key said to TV3 said at the time: “Can I assure her that neither I, nor my family trust, was an owner of shares in […]

Derailing the issue

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:30 pm, September 22nd, 2008 - 27 comments

National has released their statement about John Key’s shady dealings in Tranzrail shares and unsurprisingly it’s another attempt at misdirection. As I’ve said in the past, this is a tried and true Crosby Textor technique designed to take the heat out of a negative story by directing attention elsewhere until the story dies down. It […]

ACT’s fifth Candidate?

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

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

You dicks

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:49 pm, September 12th, 2008 - 59 comments

Anyway, Tane sees the article on Stuff that the election date is going to be announced. He puts up a post about it and bets it will be November 8th (which we have already been predicting for weeks, you can see my rationale for it here). Next thing we know someone (we don’t know who […]

The Greens’ billboards, too good?

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:50 pm, September 7th, 2008 - 86 comments

I’m impressed with the Green’s new billboard campaign and I’m pretty certain it’ll work as it is clean and effective marketing and reminds me of the best work that was coming out of Saatchi when they were at the peak of their powers. One thing about the billboards disquiets me however, and that is that […]

Nats’ adman an objectivist fruitloop

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:28 pm, September 7th, 2008 - 33 comments

If you’ve caught yourself asking why the Nat’s billboards are so bad, then Jafa Pete has the answer. Their adman, Glenn Jameson, is an objectivist. For those of you not familiar with objectivism it’s kind of like a cross between neo-liberalism and Nietzschen fascism (as long as the Nietzsche is read without irony). Here’s a […]

Look. Over there!

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:26 pm, September 5th, 2008 - 49 comments

A friend has just rung to excitedly inform me that National’s conservation policy has now also been released by Trevor Mallard. That means there is officially a leak in the National Party caucus. I expect in the next hour or so the Nats are going to start their misdirection campaign and I expect it will […]

Market failure

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 8:11 am, September 5th, 2008 - 27 comments

An article on Stuff today shows “Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale”. It’s based on research by Dr. Jamie Pearce and indicates that those who live in poor areas are more likely to die early than those in wealthy areas. Dr Pearce said the changing social and political environment disadvantaged poor people […]

Not good enough

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:26 pm, September 3rd, 2008 - 117 comments

For any of you who thought the sharp end of capitalism was a nice place to be, the front page story in today’s Dom Post should change your mind. It’s about the lending practices of the loan sharks that have flourished in the twenty years since New Zealand had neo-liberalism foisted on it. And it’s […]

MIA

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:12 pm, September 2nd, 2008 - 53 comments

Who’s been missing from Kiwiblog’s comments section lately?

Open democracy?

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:56 am, August 24th, 2008 - 20 comments

According to the Sunday Star Times the Sensible Sentencing Trust and Family First have decided to refuse to comply with the Electoral Finance Act. While the Sensible Sentencing Trust is outrightly claiming they are going to use their breach of the Act as a publicity stunt, Family First are absurdly claiming they can’t register as […]

Another leftie in the ‘sphere

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:32 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 11 comments

We finally get to welcome Chris Trotter to the blogosphere as he’s started a new blog at http://www.policy.net.nz/blog/ I’ve often thought Trotter’s solid smart writing and love of a robust argument would be suited to blogging and I fully expect his new blog will go on the must-read list of NZ political commentary. It’s also […]

Did you say “wages”, John?

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:07 pm, August 20th, 2008 - 62 comments

Watching Key on Breakfast this morning I was surprised to see him talking about the need for higher wages (about two thirds of the way through). That’s nice to hear but given National’s policy is to reduce work rights and make it harder for working Kiwis to negotiate a better deal it seems a bit […]

Leave it to the pros

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:20 pm, August 19th, 2008 - 51 comments

Thanks to what I can only presume is a technical glitch at the Listener there’s online access to a lot more of their current content than usual including Jane Clifton’s column in which she’s bemoaning the blurring line between bloggers and jounalists. Hilariously she focuses on the responsibilities real journalists have and bloggers don’t but […]

Pulling the ladder up behind him

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:18 pm, August 13th, 2008 - 16 comments

A lot of you won’t remember it but there was a time in this country when being on a benefit wasn’t seen as the fault of the person receiving it and the idea of a social welfare system was about just that: the welfare of our society. It took a campaign of right-wing scaremongering through […]

A hard place

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:41 am, August 10th, 2008 - 13 comments

Kudos to Crosby Textor for doing such a good job of changing the secret agenda debate to the issue of who taped the conversations (although whoever came up with the absurd idea of taking photos of John’s rubbish should probably be put on leave until the election is over) but they have a harder job […]

Take the money and run

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:23 pm, July 24th, 2008 - 37 comments

I just read Gordon Campbell’s latest Scoop column about the omnibus tax bill and quickly followed it with Frog’s piece on the matter and I am not impressed. The first reading of the government’s bill took place last night and within its myriad of dull tax stuff was a hidden barb for the quarter of […]

Follow through

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:56 am, July 18th, 2008 - 34 comments

Over at Kiwiblog David Farrar has found an amusing error made by the Herald online in its politics section which has listed several stories from 1999 as current. Good for a laugh I thought and so I had a look. Two stories in particular got me thinking. One of them was headed “Clark’s mission: clean […]

Anti-abuse law in action

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 12:07 pm, July 16th, 2008 - 40 comments

A front page story on Stuff at the moment is about a woman who systematically beat her child and has been successfully prosecuted and placed on home detention. According to the story the Tauranga mother’s initial excuse was that she was disciplining her child: When spoken to by police in February, Nelson admitted she sometimes […]

Murketing

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:36 pm, July 14th, 2008 - 18 comments

Gordon Campbell has an interesting take on the political PR we’re seeing from National in his latest Scoop column. In it he quotes Salon talking about the marketing of Red Bull to different niches: ‘ Walker noted that instead of attempting to assert the brand’s identity to a mass market, the manufacturer pursued a strategy […]

Bullies

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 4:36 pm, July 13th, 2008 - 48 comments

Why is it that the right are so much more litigious than the left? The recent example of Crosby Textor threatening legal action over JafaPete’s minor inaccuracy on his blog is just the latest bit of overkill. For those of you who don’t know the background to it, JafaPete put up a post stating Crosby […]

The clean man

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:22 pm, July 8th, 2008 - 76 comments

Has anyone else noticed John Key’s absence from the media in the last few days? I finally clicked to it while listening to RNZ this morning when we heard yet another “a spokesperson for John Key’s office says” comment. This is a pretty standard technique from the Crosby Textor hand book. I like to call […]

Busted

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:59 am, June 29th, 2008 - 122 comments

Nicky Hager’s piece in today’s Sunday Star Times has confirmed what we all suspected: Crosby Textor are the creators of Brand Key. For those of you unfamiliar with CT, they’re known as the dirtiest and most driven political PR firm in the game. CT specialises in dog-whistle racism, attack politics and pretty much every aspect […]

Misdirection

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:44 am, June 27th, 2008 - 66 comments

There’s a technique that sits at the heart of conjuring tricks called misdirection the act of drawing attention away from the trick itself. You all know how it works: the conjurer will flourish a brightly coloured handkerchief in one hand, while the trick is quietly taking place unnoticed in the other. The same thing happens […]

Cake and eat it

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 1:55 pm, June 25th, 2008 - 10 comments

I’ve noticed a new trend in the right’s spin lately (apart from their wholesale theft of campaign scripts) – the â€˜have your cake and eat it’ trick. This tactic is basically a response to legislation or policy they don’t like but they know they can’t be seen to be against. So what they do is […]