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Key’s growing Dotcom problem

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:00 am, October 10th, 2012 - 29 comments

People don’t just vote for politicians because they like their policies. Just as important are trust and perceived competence. Key’s policies were never popular. He won on the other two – particularly trust. That’s why the Dotcom saga is so ruining for him. As more details of what Key knew or should have known come out day by day, perceptions of Key’s competence and trust in him plummet.

Nats give the middle finger to Kiwi workers

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:41 pm, October 9th, 2012 - 60 comments

When foreign companies want hand outs, John Key says ‘ how much?’ But there’s no such concern for Kiwi workers.
Young people need work – National gives them a pay cut.
40,0000 manufacturing jobs lost – Key turns a blind eye.

Mr Wrong

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:51 am, October 9th, 2012 - 32 comments

No wonder Key’s losing his credibility. He just keeps on getting it wrong.

24 Sept: I wasn’t briefed on GCSB’s spying on Dotcom. Yes, he was.
28 Sept: there’s no need for a Police investigation into the GCSB. Yes, there is, say Police.
4 Oct: It’s highly unlikely I’ll discuss Dotcom in Hollywood. He discussed Dotcom in Hollywood.
5 Oct: I won’t offer incentives to Hollywood. He offered them more incentives.
8 Oct: Intervening in the currency is “whacky”. Governments are intervening in all the free-floating currencies, except a handful of third world countries – and us.
8 Oct: There’s no crisis in manufacturing. 40,000 lost manufacturing jobs say otherwise.

Key’s snub to unions and workers

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:37 am, October 9th, 2012 - 99 comments

National promised us an “unrelenting focus on jobs” and delivered record highs in unemployment and emigration. Now Key is refusing to even attend a Union jobs summit, because on Planet Key everything is just fine. The unwillingness to admit that anything is wrong is just blind arrogance.

Hollywood Rules

Written By: karol - Date published: 11:10 am, October 8th, 2012 - 76 comments

In another slippery John Key u-turn, after his mission to Hollywood ‘sweeteners’ are now on the table. Key is bending over to let US-based conglomerates extend their dominance in NZ, in support of their own interests and values.

From cock-up to cover-up

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:30 pm, October 6th, 2012 - 49 comments

The narrative that the Government has tried to sell, and which has been largely accepted to date, is that the GCSB’s illegal spying on Dotcom was a cock-up. They claimed that Key wasn’t briefed, when he was. The Nats also claimed only a change in immigration law in 2009 protected Dotcom. Now, we know that’s rubbish. Cover-up it is.

Meanwhile back on Planet Earth

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:30 am, October 5th, 2012 - 18 comments

It’s now clear that National are unfit for office anywhere but Planet Key. Which is unfortunate, because here on Planet Earth, things aren’t going so well. We need new ideas, we need action, we need results. We aren’t going to get them from National.

A red herring?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:19 am, October 4th, 2012 - 23 comments

Call me cynical but I just don’t think it’s credible that it took over two weeks after Key supposedly learned of the GCSB’s involvement in the Dotcom raid before they realised he given a presentation featuring Dotcom by GCSB a month after the raid. They’re amateur, they’re not that amateur. No, I think the ‘presentation on a laptop screen’ is a red herring.

Of Hollywood, Hobbits & NZ-US politics: Episode II

Written By: karol - Date published: 8:17 am, October 4th, 2012 - 66 comments

As Key heads off to the US to promote the NZ film industry, I look back at the Hobbit union-busting case and the issues it raised. Will Key’s latest mission to Hollywood, boost the economy, increase jobs and provide benefits to the NZ film industry? Or will it actually undermine the NZ’s economy and democracy, further Americanising NZ’s culture along with it?

One video exposes Key, GCSB’s & Banks’ Dotcom lies

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:35 am, October 4th, 2012 - 115 comments

Watch this video of John Key being interviewed by the media on January 24th. 1: Key is clearly well-briefed on Dotcom. 2: he knows that Dotcom is a resident, so why didn’t he raise that a month later with GCSB? 3: How did Key know that Dotcom was a resident and GCSB didn’t? 4: Banks has told media he had dined at the mansion with Dotcom – months before denying remembering that meeting.

Key changing his story

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 5:50 pm, October 3rd, 2012 - 21 comments

Key is trying to subtly rewrite history on his denials re Dotcom. Unfortunately for Key his categorical denial is on record.

NRT: Convenient amnesia

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 1:00 pm, October 3rd, 2012 - 115 comments

What can one say to the latest. No Right Turn says…..
“So, having told everyone that he wasn’t briefed about the Kim Dotcom spying fiasco until September, it now turns out that John Key was told about it back in February. ” … “That whistling noise is the PM’s credibility shrinking even further. His amnesia is just too convenient here to be believed”

Updated: Added links to his next two posts.

Key needs to read the GCSB Act

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:37 am, October 2nd, 2012 - 23 comments

Key says that we would all be very scared if he had control over the GCSB. That’s wrong. Key is the only democratic control on our spies and he has extraordinary oversight. Every warrant the spooks need has to be approved by Key. Is he exercising that role properly, or is he just signing whatever the GCSB puts under his nose?

Key changes tune, orders GCSB review

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 7:15 am, October 2nd, 2012 - 71 comments

Last week, Key tried to tell us that the illegal spying on Kim Dotcom – which he, the minister, we’re supposed to believe wasn’t told about for 8 months – was down to one agent’s ‘brain fade’. Uh huh. So, why has he now appointed a senior public servant to review and reform GCSB? You don’t do that when the problem was one person’s human error.

[Update: Lol at Key. Police are launching a high powered inquiry after he said there was no need for one]

Labour leadership

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 3:02 am, October 2nd, 2012 - 33 comments

I’ll be in Manchester tomorrow to hear Ed Miliband speak at the UK Labour Party conference. Labour are ahead in the polls, and Miliband’s leadership is more secure than Cameron’s or Clegg’s. Ed Miliband has surprised those who thought Labour chose the wrong brother. Ed is receiving plenty of free advice about what he should say; I suspect he will continue to be himself. Interesting parallels to New Zealand; I’m looking forward to it.

When memes attack

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 2:52 pm, October 1st, 2012 - 22 comments

The speed with which Planet Key caught on is a measure of the public recognition that the Nats have lost the plot.

Where are the resignations?

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 10:12 am, September 30th, 2012 - 87 comments

John Key refuses to accept any responsibility for what his spies get up to. The only point of democratic responsibility for our spies doesn’t monitor them and won’t take the blame for failing to do so. He won’t fire a corrupt, lying minister, either. The rot is spreading to the public service. There has been not one resignation, not a single one, due to the Dotcom debacle.

Sunday Reading

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 9:30 am, September 30th, 2012 - 17 comments

My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: Obama the Tory, fish, Planet Key and the UK’s hit political single.

Neazor report proves inadequate cover for Key

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:23 am, September 29th, 2012 - 83 comments

Labour has written to Key calling for a much wider-ranging investigation into the Dotcom spying affair than Neazor’s narrow, tell-us-nothing-we-don’t-already-know report. They would have been better to go straight to the Auditor-General. The Greens have gone for the established illegality and called in the cops on the GCSB – cleverly citing the same offence Key claimed in the teapot tapes.

Key fails to guard the guardians

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:41 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 87 comments

Our government’s spies are overseen by two people – the Prime Minister and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The former asked the latter to investigate he found out the GCSB had been illegally spying on two Kiwis. And, guess what, the report blamed underlings. It didn’t even investigate the question of oversight.

Key / Peters 2014

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:21 am, September 27th, 2012 - 50 comments

John “power at any cost” Key isn’t ruling out a deal with Peters in 2014. Peters isn’t ruling it out either. Deputy PM Peters anyone?

What does Key have to gain by lying?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:52 am, September 27th, 2012 - 138 comments

John Key put on a display of incompetence in the House yesterday over the Dotcom spying affair. He claimed not to know a laundry list of basic facts that, if he didn’t know them before, he bloody well ought to have been briefed on by now. In some instances, his memory failed him over Dotcom. Yet he then showed he could recall exchange rates from 20 years ago. I think he’s lying. The alternative is too scary.

Implausible deniability

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 10:11 pm, September 26th, 2012 - 16 comments

There’s a lot of it about in right-wing parties at the moment. For John Key, John Banks and David Cameron it appears to be becoming the strategy of choice. It’s not working very well for any of them.

Many questions left unanswered in Banks affair

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:54 am, September 26th, 2012 - 43 comments

“Ignorance gets us nowhere”, it’s National’s new slogan and it certainly applied with Key’s feigned ignorance in answer to questions on Banks’ corruption last week. Key’s behaviour is jeopardising our reputation as a democracy that doesn’t tolerate corruption. And he’s got a lot of questions still to answer. Two particularly interesting angles are what exactly […]

A fish rots from the head down

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 1:50 pm, September 25th, 2012 - 51 comments

Key has failed to uphold high ethical standards for himself, his Ministers, or his government. The GCSB illegal spying fiasco is just the latest example.

ImperatorFish: Blame Labour

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:30 pm, September 25th, 2012 - 11 comments

National has a plan to deal with their crisis of job losses, GCSB illegality and bad polls. Tomorrow will probably see another welfare crackdown, although with the number of groups left to target rapidly diminishing, could it be the turn of one-legged Dutchmen to feel Paula’s wrath?
But if that plan doesn’t work, National has another up its sleeve: blame Labour. Go on, sing along.

Key plays the “don’t read, don’t care” card again

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 11:40 am, September 25th, 2012 - 19 comments

A couple of days before it was surely all going to come out – very messily and very publicly – in the Dotcom court case, Key has revealed that his spies illegally spied on Kim Dotcom. But, beyond that, Key won’t tell us anything apart from that he signed no warrant for spying on Dotcom (such a warrant would have been illegal anyway). Key has chosen not to find out more so that he wouldn’t have to answer questions.

Cynical Key

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 11:31 pm, September 24th, 2012 - 134 comments

So Key knew about the GCSB’s ‘unlawful’ actions for a week before he bothered to tell us. He happened to know that this Monday state owned companies would be announcing they were causing the loss of 500-600 jobs. Only one story would get its full due of airtime.

Extinction on Key’s watch?

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:55 pm, September 21st, 2012 - 44 comments

Clean green 100% pure New Zealand?

Or the only nation in the world to vote against measures to stop the extinction of the world’s rarest dolphins?

Fight the ‘War on the Poor’: Opposing Bennett’s welfare reforms.

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:45 am, September 21st, 2012 - 52 comments

Grant Robertson, in the House yesterday speaking on Paula Bennett’s “Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill” – First Reading, gave an impassioned speech. He said many some great points about social obligations and a mutually beneficial social contract (between the state and beneficiaries. However, will the Labour Party’s policies match up to the rhetoric?