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Leadership D.O.A.

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, February 10th, 2025 - 31 comments

As we approach the half-time oranges for his government, I thought I’d give Mr Luxon some feedback and a few suggestions on how he might turn things around – if becoming a real leader interests him.

Standing for Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 1:47 pm, February 2nd, 2025 - 16 comments

Can Kerrin Leoni pave the way as Tamaki Makaurau’s first wāhine Māori Mayor? Open to all today from Nick’s Kōrero…

David Farrar’s Curia Market Research Woes

Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, February 1st, 2025 - 16 comments

What happened to the Curia Market Research suspension? David Farrar responded after RANZ hired an independent sub-committee to investigate complaints about polling integrity

Better Late than Never?

Written By: - Date published: 6:13 pm, January 31st, 2025 - 10 comments

Davey Seymour’s Disgusting School Dinners, and the faster you go, the bigger the mess, but does Chris Bishop look bothered?

Keep on Digging

Written By: - Date published: 3:44 pm, January 30th, 2025 - 30 comments

The latest outbursts and brain farts from the great Kumara of the North…

Open to all today in Nick’s Kōrero – Shane Jones calls climate change ‘woke’ and says, ‘Send the Mexicans home’.

Atlas Network in New Zealand

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, December 11th, 2024 - 11 comments

The similarities between the Atlas Network modus operandi and our government’s policies appear strident and unsettling.

Curia exited RANZ because Family First are unbalanced

Written By: - Date published: 4:49 pm, November 30th, 2024 - 7 comments

David Farrar’s company Curia abruptly exited the Research Association of New Zealand (RANZ) in August. It was triggered by a complaint about the fairness of the wording of a question in a April poll. This was a really bad poll, and this question a particularly egregious breach of any fairness. The question was paid for by Family Fi(r)st.

Curia Market Research Found In Breach Of Professional Standards

Written By: - Date published: 1:43 pm, August 16th, 2024 - 43 comments

It appears that Curia Research has resigned from the professional standards group Research Association of NZ (RANZ).

What Chat GPT thinks of the Standard

Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, February 18th, 2023 - 27 comments

I thought that I would get Chat GPT to write 500 words on the Standard and this is what it came up with.

Really bad takes on the Green’s leadership issue

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, July 26th, 2022 - 60 comments

There have been some spectacularly bad takes on Green Party leadership issues by voices on the right and academia which were all shown to be spectacularly wrong after Chloe Swarbrick announced that she was not seeking the Green Party leadership.

The dodgy Auckland Mayoralty Curia poll

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, June 21st, 2022 - 104 comments

An Auckland Ratepayers Alliance Curia poll that was trumpeted as claiming that Efeso Collins and Leo Molloy were neck and neck in terms of public support has attracted criticism after it was disclosed that the poll of 500 persons had 53% stating that they did not know who they would vote for.

The right to protest

Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, February 13th, 2022 - 131 comments

Complaints that the police are unnecessarily interfering with the Wellington Convoy’s right to protest appear to be vastly overstated.

Assange extradition judgment overturned

Written By: - Date published: 3:31 pm, December 12th, 2021 - 29 comments

I should have known not to be hopeful. British justice is an oxymoron which makes a mockery of official references to our ‘like-minded countries’ in the Five Eyes. The decision by senior judges in the UK to overturn a previous court decision not to extradite Julian Assange to the US is an example of state persecution of a person with the courage to speak out against crimes of the state.

How many centrist votes go to Labour?

Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, November 25th, 2021 - 105 comments

Judith Collins lost a vote of confidence. David Farrar seems to think that Act will get the inevitable flow. Sounds unlikely. The far right and nutbar fringe has already vacated to Act – who represent them so well. But Labour overwhelming won last election on a vote from previous National voters. History repeats in 2023?

Dirty Politics does not work any more

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, September 11th, 2021 - 83 comments

Egged on by a shock horror smear campaign on Cameron Slater’s latest post Judith Collins has attacked Dr Siouxsie Wiles by fat shaming her.

The politics of the New Lynn attack

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, September 4th, 2021 - 111 comments

Early days so far but the New Lynn attack will spark a debate about the adequacy of the country’s terrorism suppression laws and about citizenship rights.

Judith Collins is not John Key

Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, July 2nd, 2021 - 168 comments

I honestly am not sure what Judith’s game plan.  Supporting someone who on twitter called for the lynching of a person with a contrary view is not a way to reach to the middle of New Zealand politics.

Resistance

Written By: - Date published: 3:24 pm, March 31st, 2021 - 50 comments

Chris Trotter recently asked the question about why there isn’t more resistance to the degree of inequality that we face in New Zealand. He’s partially right, we do spend an awfully amount of time arguing with each other about matters of smaller and smaller moment while inequality slides downhill from glacier to avalanche.  But intersectionalism isn’t the primary cause of activist cooling.

Dirty politics denouement

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, March 4th, 2021 - 29 comments

Another chapter of dirty politics has reached its conclusion with Carrick Graham offering an abject apology to Doug Sellman, Boyd Swinburn and Shane Bradbook for smearing their reputation via the Whaleoil website.

Brash Bassett and Hide take up blogging

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 19th, 2021 - 100 comments

new political blog has appeared.  But rather than involving a fresh presentation of new ideas in an attempt to engender debate this blog has three tired old has beens who are well past their use by date engage in some climate change denial and race baiting.

National’s Internal Polling Leaked

Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, July 28th, 2020 - 40 comments

Yet another leak from Judith Collins’ Strong Team™. This time it’s their own polling … and it’s grim news.

Authorised by me

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 23rd, 2020 - Comments Off on Authorised by me

I finally perused the June 2020 Third Party handbook put out by the Electoral Commission. This morning I activated my authorisation notice. Activists should consider what adverts or promotional material that they’d like me to put up in the right column on the site. It must be directly related to the election day for parliament or for the referendums. And conform to the handbook.

The 2008 Go Wellington Bus Lockout

Written By: - Date published: 5:44 am, July 3rd, 2020 - 6 comments

20 days after being elected President of the Wellington Tramways and Public Passenger Transport Employees Union (we just called it Tramways), drivers at Go Wellington were locked out. The City nearly ground to a halt with thousands unable to get to work and traffic congestion a nightmare. Certain journalists were quick to call this a communist conspiracy.

From the inside out

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, April 8th, 2020 - 62 comments

I feel that many kiwis are quite unaware exactly how exceptional our plague performance has been so far. It is interesting reading the perspective published in the Washington Post by a recently returned kiwi. Less interesting was the mathematical illiteracy on the MP David Seymour who managed to ignore all medical facts while advising on how to bulk kill our citizens.

Not a good day for an April Fool’s joke

Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, April 1st, 2020 - 24 comments

David Farrar has shown that many of his commenters and followers do not understand satire.

What was Winston thinking?

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, February 15th, 2020 - 120 comments

It has been revealed that NZ First acquired photographs of its former President and two reporters emerged on the Whaleoil mark 2 site, raising the concerning possibility that Simon Lusk may be involved in helping NZ First.

Will DPF condemn National for hiding the identity of its donors?

Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, February 11th, 2020 - 59 comments

David Farrar has called for the suspension of Winston Peters from Cabinet for reasons which would also justify the suspension of Simon Bridges from the National Party.

A message for conservatives about climate change and nuclear power

Written By: - Date published: 3:21 pm, January 9th, 2020 - 142 comments

David Farrar has criticised young people not for their passion about addressing climate change, but for not supporting nuclear power as a potential solution.  Even though it is too risky, too expensive, and too late.

Small start to inflated bullshit.

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, October 29th, 2019 - 14 comments

I was reading one of Chris Trotters reflections which looked at the Corrections Amendment Bill 2018, that just passed its 3rd reading. “Putting The Check In Right-Wing Prisoners’ Mail”. It sounded odd and oddly lacked detail. I came to the conclusion taking press releases at face value without thinking was a very bad idea.

Reality kicks in for US trolls.

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, October 18th, 2019 - 17 comments

It has been an interesting few days looking at political reality kicking in on politics and the net in the UK and the US. The first story I read yesterday was in the US, about one of the lying dimwitted conspiracy nutcases who claimed that the 2012 Sandy Nook school massacre never happened, but was […]

NRA: a international terrorist organisation

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, September 6th, 2019 - 22 comments

I was joyful to see that the San Francisco board of supervisors has declared what I have long thought; that the National Rifle Association in America has for many years been acting as a terrorist organisation.  We should add them to our register of terrorist organisations as well.