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- David Farrar (95)
- dpf (194)
Farrar illustrates WfF folly
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, March 4th, 2011 - 46 comments
John Key has tidied up the confusion he caused yesterday and says that the quakes will cost the government $5 billion in rebuilding and $5 billion in lost revenue over the next 4 years. Big bikkies but easily covered by an emergency levy and canning the white elephant motorways. So, why are the Nats obsessed with tinkering with Working for Families?
I have to (reluctantly) support Whaleoil on a course of action.
Written By: - Date published: 3:17 pm, February 25th, 2011 - 36 comments
It is with a great deal of reluctance that I have to actually support Whaleoil on a post about a rather obnoxious website blaming the Christchurch quake on ‘depravity’. He actually proposes a course of action that has a good chance of getting rid of this offensive site. Of course being Whaleoil some of his other statements are just stomach churning.
Davey’s dodgy polling
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, February 17th, 2011 - 24 comments
There’s long been doubt over the quality of David Farrar’s Curia polling company. Now, Tim Watkin has produced a first-hand report of Curia’s questioning. The tone of the questions is biased, which is really dumb if you’re trying to get useful data. It’s not really push polling, it’s Farrar delivering what the Nats want to hear to maintain his standing in the party.
Kiwiblogblog is not completely dead
Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, February 11th, 2011 - 35 comments
Archiving websites is a bloody good idea because the public debate and emerging history of NZ society is shifting more and more into these electronic media. So I asked NatLib about one of those political blogs that disappeared from the blogosphere – KiwiBlogBlog. It still exists…
The amazing disappearing blog
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, February 11th, 2011 - 23 comments
Wednesday, Farrar posts a link to a new blog, ‘Whowuddathort‘, running Goff smears and Key-love. – That evening, ‘someone’ posts a comment: “National Research Unit material, anyone?” – Thursday, another comment: “is fisking the standard parliamentary business? – Minutes later: Whowuddathort’ blog disappears.
Dealing with the DIA website-harvest parasite
Written By: - Date published: 2:27 am, February 3rd, 2011 - 13 comments
Periodically I run a scan to identify network parasites that are sucking up our bandwidth and processing resources in excess. Of course I leave the benign parasites that provide search facilities alone. But I stomp on the nasties.
Tonight the biggest parasite appears to have been a New Zealand government department – the Department of Internal Affairs.
Farrar joins call for SOE reform
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, December 24th, 2010 - 95 comments
Say you run a large company. Say the manager of a division in your company chose do a deal that improves the division’s own profitability instead of one that would have made the division less profitable but the company as a whole more profitable. You would be angry. So why are the people who run our SOEs required to act like that?
Bloggers/Blog readers’ survey
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 13 comments
You are invited to complete the New Zealand Political Blog Readers’ Survey for 2010. This survey is a follow up to the 2008 survey, which provided an amazing amount of data about who reads New Zealand political blogs and their thoughts on the medium and its potential. This survey will gain further insights into New Zealand political blogging.
Government Spending Ideology
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, December 16th, 2010 - 29 comments
The Right always advocates for less government spending as a percentage of GDP. Those with ideological blinkers cannot see the high correlation between being a free and stable country and paying for it. The most successful nations are willing to invest in quality public services. Government spending is low in poor, unequal, and unstable countries.
Guest post: Beware Food Police!
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, December 10th, 2010 - 51 comments
To arms! To arms! The Food Police are coming! Remember how I led you in the battle to get junk food back into schools? It was a near-run thing. If we hadn’t acted, the days of the 12 year-old who can’t climb a flight of stairs without wheezing and going red in the face might have been numbered. Now, National has hypocritically betrayed us.
Flip flopping on the beach
Written By: - Date published: 11:02 am, December 10th, 2010 - 38 comments
The usual suspects are accusing Labour of “flip flopping” on its position on the foreshore and seabed. You have to admire their bare-faced gall eh?
Meet the new EFA same as the old EFA
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, November 23rd, 2010 - 66 comments
In developing their replacement for the EFA the Nats have decided to limit what lobby groups can spend on election campaigning — despite strongly objecting to limits in 2008. Interesting how the responsibilities of government mean that the Nats have to repudiate so much of their irresponsible opposition rhetoric! But some of their spinsters are still stuck in the past…
Climategate anniversary
Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, November 20th, 2010 - 102 comments
It has been a year since the CRU emails were stolen and the “climategate” “scandal” broke. There’s an interesting summary at the ClimateSight blog. Meanwhile the record temperatures keep rolling in, the ice keeps melting all over the world, and The Guardian asks “Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?”.
Evidence vs. hysteria
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, November 13th, 2010 - 35 comments
Children bigger than politics
Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, November 8th, 2010 - 35 comments
Game over Tolley
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, November 5th, 2010 - 161 comments
Anne Tolley has lost the debate on national standards. The boycott looks set to gather strength, and even The Herald has come out against them. The empirical evidence, academic consensus and weight of professional opinion has always been against standards. The only ones still defending them are hacks and shills pushing a political agenda.
Simon Canute and the blogs
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 am, October 17th, 2010 - 30 comments
Simon Power is ‘consulting’ on regulating the on-line communities to prevent violations of normal societal and legal standards. Clare Curran asks ‘hopefully’ that this isn’t simply a reaction to the idiocy of ex-National party member Whaleoil in how he chases readership. But I suspect that is why this foolishness has come back on the agenda again. Plus National would prefer that there wasn’t so much criticism of their wimpy leader.
“John Key’s smile only goes so far”
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, October 9th, 2010 - 24 comments
National Party pollster David Farrar must have seen bad numbers on the Mana by-election, he’s already making excuses. Apparently, Hekia Parata is a top candidate but it’s the voters’ fault – they’ll be confused by having two elections close together. It’s Farrar’s comment about Key, though, that is most revealing.
Phil Goff – Evil SuperGenius?
Written By: - Date published: 8:36 am, October 9th, 2010 - 22 comments
Is Phil Goff an Evil SuperGenius? Is Labour still secretly running the country, controlling MPs, cabinet ministers and government departments? Political sleuth David P Farrar makes a pretty strong case! Or does he…
Auckland electoral fraud case
Written By: - Date published: 3:35 pm, October 6th, 2010 - 89 comments
The alleged electoral roll fraud in Auckland has plenty of angles and dimensions for political junkies. But the underlying issue is simple. Electoral fraud of any kind is not OK, perpetrators should be found and prosecuted. We have one of the most robust and respected democracies in the world. Let’s keep it that way.
RWNJs worried msm may awaken
Written By: - Date published: 6:14 pm, September 26th, 2010 - 19 comments
I guess we shouldn’t really mock such unfortunates but this latest missive from the Bog is too hard to resist. Farrar and his merry band of ignorant loons are furious that the ODT, one of New Zealand’s better newspapers, is daring to ask pertinent questions of ACTs replacement for David Garrett. It seems pretty fair […]
An indelible stain on parliamentary lawmaking
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, September 20th, 2010 - 11 comments
Andrew Geddis (Associate Professor of Law at Otago and writer at Pundit) is an expert on democratic theory. He has become required reading for politics junkies. His latest piece — a brutally honest analysis of the recent work of the Law and Order select committee — should be required reading for everybody.
Caption Competition
Written By: - Date published: 4:08 pm, September 14th, 2010 - 43 comments
Cameron Slater, aka Whaleoil, found guilty today in the Auckland District Court on eight breaches of suppression orders and one of identifying a victim.
Lost respect and trust
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, August 26th, 2010 - 20 comments
I was wondering whether to write a post on the very odd things that outrage the tight little circle of right wing bloggers we have in this country. But MikeG in a comment at Dim Post made the point far far better than I could have.
When the science doesn’t suit, Right tries to shout it down
Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, August 22nd, 2010 - 87 comments
The other day, National Party pollster David Farrar had a rant against alcohol experts that boiled down to ‘who cares what the science says! We’re in charge now and booze barons are on our side. Go back to your books, dorks!’.
Big Dog responds:
Kudos to “The Veteran”
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, August 21st, 2010 - 21 comments
Reading about Act ritualistically disemboweling themselves this week has been interesting, and has quite a few implications for the political landscape at the next election. The factor that has been attracting my attention was highlighted by Fran O’Sullivan this morning – where did those defense papers wind up. Apparently with The Veteran at No Minister, who wins kudos from me by acting responsibly to the leak.
Teacher-bashing morons
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, August 20th, 2010 - 47 comments
This government is attacking education at every level. In particular it is attacking teachers over national standards. National blogger DPF’s post yesterday was a particularly disgraceful example. Arrogant, ignorant, and full of lies.
Karma on the beach
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 18th, 2010 - 28 comments
A new lobby group, the “Costal Coalition”, crawled out from under a rock today. Above is their first billboard, one of several planned for Wellington and Auckland. It’s a distasteful, damaging campaign, but National and their associated hacks have no grounds for complaint.
Key voters waking up, pity about the hangover they’ve given us
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, August 18th, 2010 - 81 comments
National is governing like National governs. Anyone could have foreseen this, there were plenty of clues, but its only now are people who switched to Key waking up to the fact that he’s just the grinning face on the same old beast. I wonder: if someone is smart enough to see that Key’s government is a failure now, how were they dumb enough to ever believe things would be different?
PR301: Edwards and Ralston on Lhaws
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, August 16th, 2010 - 27 comments
Brian Edwards and Bill Ralston give contrasting accounts of Michael Laws’ PR handling of his latest relationship issues. Edwards thinks Laws dealt with it well (and reduced the ‘story’ to a molehill), Ralston thinks Laws cocked-up by preempting any other media coverage and giving more away than necessary. On Ralston’s blog there’s a nicely caustic exchange […]
Key and Peters best buddies?
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, August 4th, 2010 - 58 comments
Key hasn’t ruled out working with Winston after 2011. This seems like a huge miscalculation. Not only has he added legitimacy to the re-animation of this political zombie, but he has also cut the legs out from under the right’s “Winston is the devil” campaign. That giant sucking sound you hear? That’s DPF’s head imploding.
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