john key
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State Services to fold into DPMC?
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, October 27th, 2009 - 10 comments
I’ve heard the State Services Commission are investigating their own demise, by looking into whether its functions should fold into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Has anyone heard anything similar? If true, it would be an incredible power shift in favour of the office of the Prime Minister. And you have to wonder, […]
John Key, Edication Espert
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, October 24th, 2009 - 69 comments
Well what a fiasco yesterday’s launch of National’s brave new $36 million education policy was. Despite Key claiming the plan was one of the most important steps his Government would ever take, teachers and principals boycotted the event in droves. Even the government’s education policy advisor Prof John Hattie said the new policy was potentially […]
Selling off your heritage
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, October 23rd, 2009 - 16 comments
Picture this scene from times past: Deep in the South Island high country an old sheep musterer with windswept face wakes up to a crisp clear cold morning. He gets up off a hessian hammock hanging between the walls of a small wooden hut perched on a creek between two bald mountains. He heads over […]
Key’s divide and rule to cut wages
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, October 22nd, 2009 - 20 comments
John Key says that if school support staff want pay-rises then teachers should sacrifice the ones they bargained for. Tell him to get stuffed. I don’t see him and his rich mates handing back the hundreds of dollars a week each in tax-cuts that National gave. I don’t see Key or his buddies Mark Weldon and Rob Fyfe […]
Hide flounders in effort to cover corruption
Written By: - Date published: 6:18 am, October 22nd, 2009 - 5 comments
Rodney Hide was always going to go one of two ways to try to excuse his corrupt abuse of office. Remember the facts: Hide is Local Government Minister. He will be speaking at a breakfast on Local Government issues. The breakfast is called ‘The Future of Local Government’ and the invitation promises attendees that “Minister […]
Who is John Key?
Written By: - Date published: 3:14 pm, October 21st, 2009 - 40 comments
OK, so this might be only slightly more intellectual than the usual quality of political analysis in our msm, and obviously it could never match the informative value of asking which politician would help an old lady across the street, but a few days back there was some speculation about which Simpsons character best personifies […]
Sharples a scapegoat for Nats’ bumbling schemers
Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, October 17th, 2009 - 10 comments
If we’re to believe National’s version of events, Pita Sharples kept secret from his colleagues that he was going to take $3 million from a contestable Te Puni Kokiri (TPK) fund meant for job initiatives and give it to Maori TV (MTS) to subsidise their World Cup bid. When it became a big story Sharples apologised […]
O’Sullivan: Key a poor manager, Smith needs to go
Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, October 17th, 2009 - 36 comments
Fran O’Sullivan’s piece today tries to resurrect the ‘Key=Obama’ line for some reason. She even refers to Obama as Key’s ‘alter ego’. I’m not quite sure she understands what the term means. Alter egos are like ying and yang, contrasting parts of the same whole. Does she think they’re one person with different personas at […]
Ned Flanders without the moustache
Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, October 17th, 2009 - 24 comments
Last night on TV3’s 7 Days panelist Jeremy Elwood described John Key as “New Zealand’s very own Ned Flanders without a moustache.” Ned’s a pretty complex character, with quite a lot of suppressed rage and a dark side that makes his hyper-cheerful niceness actually more of a necessary coping device than an optional expression of […]
Key lashes out at random
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, October 17th, 2009 - 16 comments
Key looks like a PM under pressure. He’s started lashing out at random – never a good sign. It happened while discussing Melissa Lee’s repayment of $80,000 of taxpayer’s money that she had somehow managed to forget that she had. (Yes I know – that sort of thing happens to me all the time too.) […]
ACC a good investor
Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, October 16th, 2009 - 40 comments
The other day, John Key said “ACC’s investment portfolio had not been working well”. Now, if there’s one golden rule regarding people with power it’s never take what they say for granted. And that’s never been more true than with this Prime Minister. So, I took a look at ACC’s annual report (Colin Espiner et […]
War on P
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, October 12th, 2009 - 28 comments
Did John Key pick up a pair of cowboy boots on his latest trip? Because he’s come back talking like some kind of macho macho man: My message to the gangs is clear. This Government is coming after your business and we will use every tool we have to destroy it. We will be ruthless […]
The bizarre world of sensible sentencing
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, October 9th, 2009 - 20 comments
Stabbing a kid to death is OK because it’s: “expressing frustration over [tagging]” Taking away people’s access to the most effective ‘flu and cold treatment because it’s a minor source for an ingredient(less than a third of pseudoephedrine comes from pharmacies according to Key), for a drug the use of which is already in decline: “a […]
Wee gripes: loose thinking/loose slots
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 pm, October 5th, 2009 - 14 comments
This the kind of garbage isn’t usually worth my time, but that’s what wee gripes is for: Why are Key, Henry and Watkins so excited that the Youtube vid of John Key’s clowning on Letterman has more hits than the vid of Obama on the same show? For a start, Obama’s vid has more hits. Anyone who […]
Key’s speeder-gate
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, October 5th, 2009 - 31 comments
When they’re struggling to defend Bill English’s housing rip-off, or John Key’s clowning, or Richard Worth’s dodgy dealings, or Anne Tolley’s incompetence, or Paula Bennett’s bullying, righties will still often try to deflect by recalling the time the car Helen Clark was in sped in Canterbury. Speeder-gate remains one of the worst things idealogs of the […]
The walking dead
Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, October 3rd, 2009 - 23 comments
Fran O’Sullivan has laid out the business elite’s preferred successors to Bill English: At this stage English is not mortally wounded. But his reputation as one of the Mr Cleans of New Zealand politics has been damaged. And – more importantly for the Deputy Prime Minister’s political future – some of the more ambitious among […]
Poor Bill
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, September 30th, 2009 - 33 comments
Bill English is teetering on the edge. National spinners are claiming that he has done what is needed to “close the issue down”. Labour are going to keep pushing. National’s next step will be to run a “poor Bill” defence. “Poor Bill has paid it back, what more can he do?”, “Poor Bill was just […]
Talk about politics
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 pm, September 29th, 2009 - 28 comments
RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan talks to Matthew Hooton and Andrew Campbell about the failures of Key’s trip to NYC, English’s terminal status and contenders to replace him, and Green leadership. Hooton’s dispirited ‘defences’ of Key and English speak volumes. From yesterday but still relevant for a while yet.
Next, I’m going to Disneyland
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, September 29th, 2009 - 47 comments
I was surprised to see this at the bottom of John Key’s press release on the English housing allowance scandal: “The PM is overseas and is not available for interview.” The Acting Prime Minister is going down in flames and the Prime Minister won’t be interviewed? What’s he up to? Turns out, Key’s doing something […]
Dispatches from the parallel universe, John Key 1940
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, September 28th, 2009 - 21 comments
The Standard, 12 June 1940 WELLINGTON Prime Ministerial candidate for the Nationalists, Mr John Key, today laid out his party’s policy regarding New Zealand’s participation in the current War. “Let me state clearly and unequivocally that, despite our past position, my Party now believes wholeheartedly that the War must be fought. It is undeniably a […]
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, September 28th, 2009 - 49 comments
Clown-in-chief
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, September 27th, 2009 - 2 comments
A hilarious send up of Key that pretty much everyone would have missed because it aired on Nightline on Friday.
Billalice in Wonderwelly
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 am, September 27th, 2009 - 4 comments
Things must be getting decidedly trippy for Deputy PM Bill English about now, and not in a good way. While his glorious leader is off overseas playing the Jester Statesman, back home Bill’s future is looking gloomier by the day. With the Auditor General looking into English‘s Krishna-like claims of being able to exist in […]
Reverse Midas Touch
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, September 26th, 2009 - 14 comments
And so ends a great day’s trading under the erstwhile eye of Mr Key. Looks like they won’t be inviting John back to give the opening bell at the NYSE.
Trivial
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, September 26th, 2009 - 81 comments
The more I think about it, the more Key’s Letterman approach is demeaning both to his office and New Zealand. Sure he did the stand up comedy competently but is that what we want our PM reduced to? A gag to be treated at best as a cute nobody, at worst dismissively, by some variety […]
Yo John, I’m happy for you and imma let you finish…
Written By: - Date published: 3:05 pm, September 25th, 2009 - 33 comments
Sent in by a reader:
The economy of hero worship
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 pm, September 24th, 2009 - 30 comments
I wish that I got praise heaped on me at my job for exchanging a bit of small-talk with the popular dude. Don’t want to take away from Key’s achievement. I mean wow, he shook the Obama’s hand and didn’t muck it up. I’m looking forward to the gushing accolades when he manages to crack a […]
Double standards for Double Dipton?
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 39 comments
Our readers pointed out some interesting quotes in yesterday’s thread on Bill English’s attempt to bully journalists into silence over his housing allowance rort. Key on why he fired Richard Worth: “The test of whether someone enjoys my confidence is not a legal test and I have never argued that Dr Worth broke any legal test.’ […]
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