john key
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John’s recession-buster: a party, in 2 years
Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, June 11th, 2009 - 29 comments
On Monday, John Key promised he would make a ‘major tourism announcement’ today. Apparently, we’ve just had it. In a speech today, Key announced that during the Rugby World Cup in 2011, Queens Wharf in Auckland will be a temporary ‘live site’ (whatever that means) where there will be an opening ceremony. Apparently, it will […]
Where’s the trap?
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 pm, June 10th, 2009 - 73 comments
Yeah. Great honey-trap. – First, target a minister that doesn’t matter with a woman who is openly Labour – Second, delete the most offensive texts and don’t record any phone calls – Third, don’t go public, refuse Goff’s offer to raise it privately with Key – Fourth, raise the issue privately with Key once the […]
A few facts unpin a lot of spin
Written By: - Date published: 1:06 am, June 10th, 2009 - 108 comments
The Tories are throwing all the muck they can at Goff. Trying to get him to back off on the Worth thing. Their latest is that Labour is spinning out this presentation of texts to Key to drag the issue out. Thought I would take a leaf out of Eddie’s book and do a timeline. Clear it […]
Crosby – Posturing with little substance
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Lynton Crosby of the political spinners Crosby/Textor, who ‘advised’ both John Key and Don Brash, has finally given up on trying to pursue a unwinnable defamation case against Nicky Hager and Radio NZ.The case appears to me to have been started largely as intimidation by the Crosby (and maybe the National party) to find out […]
Audrey Young: Goff right, Key wrong
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 19 comments
The Herald asked this morning whose word was more credible on the Worth issue, John Key or Phil Goff. Their political editor Audrey Young has just answered the question for them. “One politician was bound to be deeply embarrassed today, Phil Goff or John Key. One would be right and one would be wrong. And […]
The Tory nose-dive roundup
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, June 9th, 2009 - 34 comments
I never seen a government crash so quickly, so hard. The Standard was saying before the election that Key was a two-faced facade and his government would push a rightwing agenda. The media chose to ignore the signs. Too caught up in the fun of getting their boy elected to care about what would happen […]
Should Key have appointed Worth at all?
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 7th, 2009 - 104 comments
On Q+A this morning, Phil Goff was asked by Paul Holmes for more detail on why John Key wasn’t surprised when he took the sexual harassment complaint against Richard Worth to him. According to Goff, Key said that he had been aware of rumours of similar activity by Worth and that was one reason why […]
Wait, didn’t he say ‘women’?
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 6th, 2009 - 50 comments
There’s still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I’ve tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us “The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible impact on the new [Labour-led] government’s subsequent fortunes. The same […]
Looking forward to the weekend
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 31 comments
Will be fun to read the Armstrongs, Rolstons, Laws, Holmes, Hooton and the other assorted rightwingers that besmirch our weekend papers. See them desperately to turn Key’s handling of Worth’s philandering into an attack on Goff. There will be claims that Goff made the harassment issue public. When it was Key on Wednesday afternoon. They […]
Time for a change
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, June 5th, 2009 - 112 comments
Sorry for the long post. This is my transcript of John Key’s interview with Mary Wilson on Checkpoint last night. It’s just incredible. Key obviously shielded Worth with a *nudge* *wink* ‘investigation’ into the sexual harassment complaint and his now trying to cover his own arse. I’ve added my own comments in italics and taken […]
Get a shave mate, you’re the PM
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 47 comments
If you saw last night’s One News piece on the Worth fiasco, you might have noticed Key looking particularly haggard. This photo doesn’t really do justice to how crap he actually looked – grey, sallow, a lot of wrinkles and bags under the eyes, and a serious five o’clock shadow. Johno, if you can’t control your […]
Rhetoric & Reality 2: Jobs
Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 7 comments
Before the election National’s “Employment & Workplace Relations” policy set out the principle of “building opportunity for all”, and the need to “Expand job opportunities for those having difficulty getting work -like young, inexperienced people or new immigrants.” The Job Summit talk-fest paid plenty of lip service to the importance of jobs: Key: [Jobs] count […]
Question time
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, June 4th, 2009 - 44 comments
John Key’s making a real hash of this latest Worth scandal. There was the secretive way he went about things yesterday, which is just not acceptable from a Prime Minister in New Zealand. He wasted several opportunities to correct his mistake and give full details during the day. Yet the story is still coming out. […]
Iz satisfard
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, June 4th, 2009 - 2 comments
hattip: Maia, Anthony Karinski
Sprinters
Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 10 comments
David Farrar has a post on Kiwiblog listing the fastest risers to become Prime Minister. They are: John Key – 6 years David Lange – 7 years Jenny Shipley – 10 years Geoffrey Palmer – 10 years Bill Rowling – 12 years Mike Moore – 12 years Richard Seddon – 14 years So it might […]
If you’re gonna cut, make it clean
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 97 comments
How titillating. Worth has resigned and he won’t say why. ‘Personal reasons’ eh? Heard that one before. Key’s not talking either. He describes it as a ‘private reason’. Got to wonder what’s in the Tories’ heads on this one. Don’t keep a secret unless you really need to. Bad look. The public has a right […]
Three down
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments
Six months in and John Key has broken three of his eleven “personal guarantees”. Impressive. Click on the image for full size.
Transparency
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment
Strange isn’t it that Key can support transparency yesterday but not today. Political expediency at its worst.
Journalists not falling for Nats’ $8 billion con-job
Written By: - Date published: 4:23 pm, June 1st, 2009 - 67 comments
This part of Vernon Small’s article today deserves an extended quote: “The numbers are stark. If full payments resume in 2020, contributions will have to be more than $1b a year higher than if we continued as normal now. Even then, from 2020 till 2030 the fund will be $37b smaller than it would otherwise […]
Sweet rides
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, June 1st, 2009 - 41 comments
A few weeks back, in the best traditions of tabloid TV, Q+A took time to mention Lockwood’s ride, the macho muscle car Ford Falcon Cobra – a car that screams red-blooded heterosexuality. It got me wondering. I heard Helen Clark used to drive a Mitsi when she was PM. Boring. But what sort of cars would […]
The man in the mirror
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 pm, May 29th, 2009 - 28 comments
The Budget is already costing jobs. AirNZ has announced that it will be cutting flights. 80 jobs will go. The EPMU has said it will fight hard for the jobs. It’ll be tough to save them all. Why is AirNZ cutting the flights? Not enough passengers. AirNZ was hoping for something for tourism […]
Mission accomplished
Written By: - Date published: 6:03 pm, May 28th, 2009 - 20 comments
John Key famously said “we would love to see wages drop“. It sure didn’t take him long in government to see his ambition achieved. Here are the wage hourly wages rates, adjusted for inflation, over the last decade and Treasury’s projections from today’s budget. After peaking this year (wages lag unemployment), wages will drop then stall. […]
English and Key uncertain of Budget’s focus
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 pm, May 27th, 2009 - 35 comments
If there was ever a phrase that this Government keeps reminding me of, it’s “couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery”. Today, on the eve of what will be a particularly important Budget for our country, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance aren’t entirely sure just what it is they’re trying to achieve. […]
Fair weather friends
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, May 26th, 2009 - 32 comments
Watch as the Tories try to distance Key from Lee. Remember that Lee was Key’s personal choice. Young, pretty, smiley, not too sharp on the detail – he must have seen a lot of himself in her. He believed that she would win on the back of his popularity. In Key’s mind this would be […]
Let them eat oysters
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, May 25th, 2009 - 36 comments
Remember – March against National’s undemocratic supercity today 25th, noon, Queen St [More info] Thousands of protesters take to the streets of Auckland today to save local democracy. Key’s response: ‘let them eat oysters’ Nah, what he said was the hikoi is “unlikely to make a difference, is premature and the wrong forum to raise […]
The god of small things
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, May 24th, 2009 - 7 comments
Herald: Key negotiates talks in Hillary papers dispute Stuff: PM wants the facts on Veitch What’s next? Key joins hunt for couple who fled with $10 million? Key’s wasting his time getting involved in minor stories he saw in the news. Meanwhile, our country’s losing 2000 jobs a week. His government is doing nothing about […]
On the back foot
Written By: - Date published: 4:07 pm, May 19th, 2009 - 1 comment
When a Government are having to defend their actions they are not setting the agenda, Given it is a week before National’s first budget the ‘Rankin’ situation is not what they will be wanting. But as the previous Government illustrated, it’s not getting into a mess that matters – it’s how you get out: NZ Herald […]
Teflon off: Key gets a mauling at Press Conference
Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, May 18th, 2009 - 33 comments
John Key’s performance at this afternoon’s 4pm Press Conference was impressive. I’ve never heard so many, ‘don’t knows’, denials, ‘I can’t tell yous’, prevarications and equivocations in a press conference before. You wonder why he bothered to even turn up, he could’ve just sent along a billboard with ‘No Comment’ on it for all the […]
Hopeless
Written By: - Date published: 2:31 pm, May 11th, 2009 - 25 comments
Anyone remember Helen Clark’s announcement during Labour’s election campaign that there would be no new significant spending promises: “We have judged it not prudent at this present time to make those sort of commitments.” We’ve now got Key justifying his inevitable-looking betrayal of his campaign tax cut promises: “There’s no getting away from the fact that […]
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