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Another leftie in the ‘sphere

Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 11 comments

We finally get to welcome Chris Trotter to the blogosphere as he’s started a new blog at http://www.policy.net.nz/blog/ I’ve often thought Trotter’s solid smart writing and love of a robust argument would be suited to blogging and I fully expect his new blog will go on the must-read list of NZ political commentary. It’s also […]

08wire on Nats’ Kiwibank secret agenda

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, August 6th, 2008 - Comments Off on 08wire on Nats’ Kiwibank secret agenda

08wire.org, your videos make me smile.

No Right Turn temporarily off air

Written By: - Date published: 4:40 pm, August 1st, 2008 - 29 comments

A tale of woe from Idiot/Savant: Sometime this afternoon, Blogger, in its infinite wisdom, decided that No Right Turn was a “spam blog” and locked it. I have naturally asked for a review, and sometime in the next two business days (yeah right) someone at blogger “customer service” will be looking at it and manually […]

Trust me

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, August 1st, 2008 - 16 comments

David Farrar says of a scene in Dark Knight ‘I would have voted ‘yes”. Without giving away any of the plot, that means Farrar would choose to hurt many others as long as he would not be hurt himself. But in making that decision he would be relying on the word of a liar known […]

EPMU cleared to campaign

Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, July 30th, 2008 - 39 comments

The Electoral Commission has decided the EPMU can register as a third party under the Electoral Finance Act despite the National Party spending big bucks to try to stop them in the courts. Given the EPMU is a democratic organisation representing 50,000 Kiwi workers and the other unions (dairy workers, meat workers, maritime workers and […]

Electoral Finance Act victory for free speech

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, July 30th, 2008 - 8 comments

The Electoral Commission has ruled that several unions affiliated to the Labour Party are able to register as third parties under the Electoral Finance Act. Their registration was objected to initally by David Farrar, the National Party frontperson who is the principal behind the registered third party known, ironically, as the Free Speech Coalition. The […]

Follow through

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, July 18th, 2008 - 34 comments

Over at Kiwiblog David Farrar has found an amusing error made by the Herald online in its politics section which has listed several stories from 1999 as current. Good for a laugh I thought and so I had a look. Two stories in particular got me thinking. One of them was headed “Clark’s mission: clean […]

Introducing 08wire

Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, July 7th, 2008 - 2 comments

Well, as promised 08wire launched today – “The Smartest Political Fun in the Galaxy.’ After you’ve joined their Facebook group check out their first video – John the Chameleon…

One door closes, another opens

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, July 3rd, 2008 - 8 comments

A shame to hear that our mates at blogblog have called it quits for now but a delight to see that our friends from keepleftnz.org – active at the last election – are kicking off “the smartest political fun in the galaxy” on July 7: 08Wire.org

Geek’s view

Written By: - Date published: 9:40 am, June 28th, 2008 - 24 comments

On the odd occasion I have time to read outside of the confines of The Standard and its ever increasing brawl of entertaining comments. I noticed we don’t have a external reading list, and it is within the range of my writing skills, so here are my oddities for the slow weekends…. From quote of […]

How to harm your brand

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, June 19th, 2008 - 83 comments

Kiwibank, New Zealand’s supreme award winning Sunday Star-Times/CANNEX best value bank for the third year in row, the Socialist Bank of Jim Anderton, the one doomed to failure but making healthy profits, is now advertising on Kiwiblog. Strange, ’cause I wouldn’t have thought that the Kiwiblog right are quite their target demographic. And I wonder how Kiwibank would feel […]

Not funny

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, June 17th, 2008 - 89 comments

Kiwiblog now has a cartoonist and it’s simply disgusting stuff. I’m not going to post the cartoon because I don’t want the image on our blog (you can see it here) – it mocks Folole Muliaga, an ill woman who died needlessly. It’s irredeemably uninsightful, unfunny, and offensive. It really speaks to both David Farrar’s […]

Farrar’s company, Curia, polls for Family First

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, May 29th, 2008 - 16 comments

I’d thought at the time that it seemed a little odd for David Farrar to pass up a free hit regarding the Family First commissioned study on smacking. The headline in Granny Herald was: “Poll shows we’re still smacking our children”. What an opportunity! Turns out though, that it was Farrar’s company, Curia, that did […]

Political Blogs Survey

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 pm, May 27th, 2008 - 2 comments

A survey on political blogs has been on a number of blogs. If you haven’t filled it out, then why not? I can’t write it more succinctly than the 100 Word Blog. So I’m not going to try. Their post is here. I’ve quoted it in full. Andrew Cushen (Ex-OUSA president?) is writing a thesis […]

Down the club

Written By: - Date published: 9:40 pm, May 26th, 2008 - 40 comments

National party activist and spokesperson David Farrar has surpassed himself this time with a post attacking Helen Clark for not having children that features youtube work from his friend and fellow activist Cameron Slater. Now I expect this kind of thing from Slater who is well known for such tasteful moves as photoshopping the face […]

National’s campaign to muzzle union continues

Written By: - Date published: 4:14 pm, May 21st, 2008 - 139 comments

It seems National has succeeded in the first step of its campaign to muzzle the EPMU and the fifty thousand workers it represents. Over at the bog our mate Davey is crowing about the high court win that recognises the union as a legal person for the purposes of the act. This still means that […]

Media policy

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, May 17th, 2008 - 47 comments

As The Standard has grown, we’ve started to receive inquires from the media and requests for a comment or interview. We’ve been a bit hesitant about what to do in this regard. On the one hand, like most bloggers, we blog under pseudonyms and we believe what’s important is the writing and the arguments, not […]

Daily show interview: Blog Wars

Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, May 10th, 2008 - 15 comments

A great interview by Jon Stewart on political blogging. Well worth watching. The part about evolution of blogging in the US is particularly interesting. New Zealand obviously lags behind in some ways but, as is often the case in this small polity, things also have a tendency to move faster once they get going. I […]

Mistakes, I’ve made a few

Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, April 26th, 2008 - 91 comments

David Farrar’s three more prominent weaknesses came together in a speculator PR disaster yesterday. The weaknesses are his ego, his trick of using pictures of naked women to boost hits on his site, and his reverse midas touch, whereby every he touches turns to, well, it doesn’t turn out well. See, Farrar led the campaign […]

Clark’s answers delayed

Written By: - Date published: 4:33 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 25 comments

We had hoped to have the answers for our ‘interview the leaders‘ series from Helen Clark today. I talked with the PM’s office and they explained the questions are with Clark, she’s been busy travelling, and we’ll have them as soon as they come back. So, they’ve asked for an extension and I said ‘fair […]

Ralston sez: leave poor Johnny alone

Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, April 20th, 2008 - 61 comments

In the Herald today, Bill Ralston sticks up for poor John Key who has been the subject of personal political attacks recently. Like Key, Ralston wonders what is “the cost of the Government using countless bureaucrats to endlessly scour records in an attempt to discover inconsistencies in any utterance [Key has] made”. Ralston needs to […]

Bad politics

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, April 13th, 2008 - 91 comments

National’s current attempt to stop the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union from registering as a third party pretty much proves what we all knew. They have no interest in democracy. Rather than accept the decision of the Electoral Commission and move on they’ve decided to appeal the decision and apply for an injunction to stop […]

Davey gets it wrong again

Written By: - Date published: 3:57 pm, April 4th, 2008 - 79 comments

David Farrar’s latest political campaign on behalf of the National Party has, like so many of them before, foundered on the sharp rocks of reality. In an attempt reminiscent of the ramshackle PR fiasco that was the Free Speech Coalition, DPF tried to get the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s application for third party status […]

Ng on fact-free politics

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, April 2nd, 2008 - 17 comments

Keith Ng of Public Address has a long-standing commitment to improving the quality of journalism in this country. Now, he is proposing a non-partisan wiki-style forum for fact-checking politicians’ statements. It seems like a great idea. We constantly see politicians making statements that are not backed by the facts but have time to only cover […]

Belated big-ups

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, March 28th, 2008 - 6 comments

It’s been a bit remiss of us to have failed to welcome The Hand Mirror into the left blogosphere. I’ve only just had a proper look at it and I’ve got to say it is gold. Sort of like one of those action movies where half a dozen superheros get together to save the world. […]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Written By: - Date published: 1:26 pm, March 25th, 2008 - 32 comments

David Farrar appears to be throwing his weight in behind National Party’s “New Zealand Sucks” campaign with another misleading post on migration to Australia. Titled “The exodus grows”, DPF’s take on the most recent stats is that the rate at which people are “fleeing New Zealand” is accelerating. It’s perhaps disguised as one of David’s […]

Free Speech Coalition TV spot

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, March 10th, 2008 - 12 comments

A trusted source tells us that following their most recent failed EFA protest, Cameron Slater (Whaleoil) and National Party blogger David Farrar might be considering buying TV time as part of their civil disobedience campaign. The production company has evidently worked hard to stay true to the Free Speech Coalition’s messages – the ad’s content […]

Mao Zedong features as preferred PM

Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, March 3rd, 2008 - 21 comments

As Helen Clark and John Key continue to jockey for top spot as preferred PM, Mao Zedong has made his first appearance in a Herald Digipoll. Media commentators are pointing to this as evidence that these polls are largely worthless. National aren’t so philosophical. Insiders indicate that National are far from happy with Mao’s appearance […]

Peas in a pod: Family Fist, National, DPF

Written By: - Date published: 4:10 pm, February 26th, 2008 - 55 comments

National Party blogger David Farrar points to a criticism of the repeal of s59 by Sacha Coburn (“a Christchurch businesswoman, lawyer and mother”): The Government should read this column and be afraid… The whole column is worth a read. And Sacha Coburn will not be an exception – there will be many more like her […]

Labour with its claws out

Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, February 19th, 2008 - 31 comments

The Press has a good article on the political blogs. The Standard and our mates Kiwiblogblog are referred to as “Labour with its claws out”. As has been explained before, we are not Labour: we are a loose group of Leftwing writers, some of whom are associated with the labour movement, but the image is […]

Owen Glenn

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, February 19th, 2008 - 65 comments

John Armstrong’s opinion is that: It is inconceivable that Helen Clark would have blithely offered a wealthy donor to Labour Party coffers a seat at the Cabinet table… Anyone who knows what makes Clark tick knows she is far too clever and far too cautious ever to trap herself into making such promises of patronage. […]

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