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A Government of spin redux

Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, November 16th, 2015 - 26 comments

The Herald has withdrawn a story that reported on Government pressure on the ERO to rewrite a report after what appears to be pressure from the Government to do so.

Briefing Papers: Refugees and inequality

Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, October 13th, 2015 - 9 comments

Briefing Papers have been busy recently, check out some recent articles. How long can wealth keep sucking up before a society breaks down completely?

Bashar al-Assad and other Bastards.

Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, October 3rd, 2015 - 130 comments

What proper journalistic coverage of Syria looks like.

Briefing Papers (AUT)

Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, September 20th, 2015 - 5 comments

As our media becomes increasingly shallow, you might be looking for some solid content reading on a quiet Sunday. Check out Briefing Papers from AUT.

Local right wing media on climate change

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, July 18th, 2015 - 139 comments

Jack Tame on Newstalk ZB has recently brought refreshingly realistic commentary on climate change.  Meanwhile in the Herald climate change is thought to be a good thing because summers become warmer.

Cameron Slater has a idiot for a lawyer

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, April 14th, 2015 - 42 comments

Instead of taking the shot granted by the High Court of simply making an appeal, some incompetent legal dunderhead made the idiotic move of not filing. Then they took the much harder step of belatedly attempting to get the Court of Appeal to allow them to appeal. Complete stupidity. But this is a lawyer with Cameron Slater for a client..

Who is Miranda Devine?

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, April 13th, 2015 - 46 comments

Miranda Devine is the person who recently wrote a really obsequious article on John Key in the Daily Telegraph where she described him as one of the best Conservative Prime Ministers in the world.  But a reading of her other published material suggests that caution should be applied before applying too much weight to her opinions.

The implications of Winston Peters’ Northland win

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 4th, 2015 - 90 comments

John Armstrong in the Herald and Tracy Watkins in the Dominion Post have both written opinion pieces on the implications of Winston Peters’ win in Northland which reach very similar conclusions.

The Failed Estate: Body of the Host

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, January 2nd, 2015 - 11 comments

The failed estate is a blogsite run by veteran Australian Journalist Jim Parker.  He writes occasional but perceptive posts primarily on media issues.  This current post, reprinted with permission, provides a damning critique of main stream media coverage of the Sydney Siege.

du Fresne: Stop bullshitting us, prime minister

Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, December 5th, 2014 - 79 comments

An excellent assessment by Karl du Fresne, honest and direct.

Distract and Divert

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, December 3rd, 2014 - 16 comments

Why do I want to know about Bronagh’s private 30th wedding anniversary gift to John Key? The PM is in trouble and trying to get fluff out to distract from his recent repeated lying, make people think more nicely of him. Presumably his superstitiousness played well in focus groups.

Rob Gilchrist On Nicky Hager

Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, August 17th, 2014 - 88 comments

Unmasked by Hager, former activist and police spy Rob Gilchrist says “It may come as a surprise but I have the utmost respect for Mr Hager, He doesn’t write ’baseless allegations’, ’what-ifs and fanciful speculation’ Mr Hager is also not a ‘conspiracy theorist‘, he’s just extremely good at finding conspiracies.”

Workers Denied Access to Information

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, January 25th, 2014 - 29 comments

The  NZ Logger magazine has published attack after attack on us since about August of last year.  You have to read them to believe them.  Industry players and Editorials suggesting we are the problem in forestry safety!  One even suggested UNIONS were exploiting workers in the industry through our safety campaign. I contacted the Editor to ask for a right of reply.  It was written with minor changes and expected to appear this month. Now they won’t run it…. Have a look at it yourself.

Herald massaging a message

Written By: - Date published: 5:19 pm, January 23rd, 2014 - 23 comments

The Herald continues its tabloid-style vendetta against Len Brown by serving up non-news in a shock-horror frame to make the mayor look bad. With a combination of the delicate removal/rewriting of what was said and a a senile loss of memory about the chains imposed on Auckland by National, Act and Rodney Hide – the Granny Herald continues its downward slide into irrelevance.

Wally of the Year

Written By: - Date published: 7:37 am, December 22nd, 2013 - 12 comments

The Fairfax Political Team has released their annual list of prizes for some of the most and least deserving efforts in politics this year.  There was intense competition for Wally of the Year and somehow they did not think that John Banks deserved this award.  But I am not so sure …

Hubris in pink

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 pm, March 27th, 2012 - 23 comments

“Crusher Collins up close”  headlines a two-page article by Andrea Vance in the Saturday March 10 DomPost. It’s not on the Stuff website but deserves a wider audience. John Key might have been unwise to have stayed away on holiday this week – he should remember what happened to Jim Bolger.

Disgusted by the Poor

Written By: - Date published: 7:40 pm, February 16th, 2012 - 46 comments

“The idea that ultimately the poor must help themselves as social mobility grinds to a halt is illogical; it is based on a faith for which there is scant evidence. Yet it is the one thing that has genuinely ‘trickled down’ from the wealthy, so that many people without much themselves continue to despise those who are on a lower rung.”

Human face of public service cuts

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, August 30th, 2011 - 41 comments

Good human interest story in the DomPost today about the human costs of public service jobs cuts. A Wellington woman has written a letter to Prime Minister John after her 63-year-old mother learned last week that her position at the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry is to be axed. Staffing cuts after a merger with the Fisheries […]

National = Ideological Stupidity.

Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, July 25th, 2010 - 8 comments

National have been undemocratically shutting down the avenues to amend their ideologically stupid legislation. They ignore submissions to select committees and abuse the parliamentary process of urgency. The only effective means of diverting them from pushing through unworkable legislation is proving to be protests and direct action. Consequently you can expect to see a lot more of it.

Kerre Woodham on three strikes law

Written By: - Date published: 1:12 pm, May 31st, 2010 - 37 comments

Kerre Woodham’s just penned an endorsement of the three strikes act.

She admits that it probably won’t do what it sets out to do. She accepts that it might be unjust. She understands that it will be expensive. Nevertheless she supports it.

Here’s why…

A love that will not die

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, March 17th, 2010 - 19 comments

I tried to write a satire of John Armstrong’s column today along the lines of the ‘Beloved Key‘ one I did the other day. But I’ve had to give it away. It’s beyond parody.

So, I guess I’ll do some serious analysis instead.

Herald cans fact-checking, opts for dogwhistles

Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, March 17th, 2010 - 57 comments

The New Zealand Herald has never been shy of attacking blogs for their lack of journalistic standards and editorial rigour, but given some of their recent work you’ve got to wonder who they think they’re kidding.

Take today’s woeful piece by Dita De Boni pontificating about Charles Chauvel and those screaming kids on his plane.

But how much did the bus cost?

Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, March 10th, 2010 - 24 comments

Tolley finds ally in school mum” screams the headline of Audrey Young’s piece today.

When National runs a bus tour the Herald is desperate in its attempts to drum up support, when it’s Labour all they want to talk about is how much the bus is costing the taxpayer.

GST is not a tax – suck it up

Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, February 12th, 2010 - 24 comments

The best political commentary these days doesn’t come from the political journalists. As Zetetic shows, they have turned themselves into government minders. But there are others who tell it like it is. Such as Karlo Mila in today’s DomPost. The article was headed up “If you could just suck it up, that would be nice.” […]

Anonymous Dom editor has a cry

Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, February 1st, 2010 - 86 comments

I see the DomPost is running a sniveling editorial claiming Labour’s commitment to raising the minimum wage can’t be done. It then breaks out the dodgy unadjusted maths to claim Labour would never have lifted the minimum wage to $15 if it was in power because it “only” lifted it by $5 last time and […]

Getting it right

Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, December 14th, 2009 - 22 comments

Colin Espiner has a piece in the Dom Post today attributing Labour’s four point rise in the polls to Goff’s ‘Nationhood’ speech. He goes on, in what can’t help but be interpreted as a wee dig at The Standard: after 30 years in politics, it’s also possible [Goff] knows the electorate a bit better than […]

Rod Oram on the Brash report

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, December 7th, 2009 - 20 comments

All the arguments in one handy location – thank you Rod Oram, who in his SSTimes column says: …All it [the report] can say is: we’re not sure what the problems are or what we can do about them. But much lower taxes, government spending and regulation will do the trick. It offers no evidence […]

With some time to consider….

Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, December 1st, 2009 - 82 comments

I’ve been thinking about the reaction Phil Goff has had to his Nationhood speech, and whether Team Labour would be happy with the way it’s rolled out. Got headlines, tick, got commentators to notice, tick, appealed to demographic ‘non-Labour voting male’, tick, made some positioning statements on policy, tick. But what about the down side? […]

Blame it on the genes

Written By: - Date published: 8:56 pm, November 2nd, 2009 - 4 comments

The American asks: Who are smarter, liberals or conservatives? This is the kind of question that could spark fierce and endless debates between political opponents, but what if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues? This interesting article points out that […]

Granny’s waterworks

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, November 2nd, 2009 - 17 comments

I think Granny Herald must have shares in Infratil, based on her rubbish editorial today: Particular fervour is reserved for private-sector participation in this sector, perhaps because water is one of life’s necessities. Rarely is it conceded that, in reality, it occupies the same utility bag as electricity, which in this country and elsewhere has […]

ACC fracas ‘truly dumb’

Written By: - Date published: 2:51 pm, October 20th, 2009 - 5 comments

Tim Hazledine, a professor of economics at the University of Auckland, has a nice piece in the Herald today that lays out just how absurd National’s spin about the ACC “blowout” really is. Suppose you and your spouse are in charge of a family of, say, three young children. That means you are legally responsible […]

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