making shit up

Palino and Slater have to be joking

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:23 pm, October 18th, 2013 - 261 comments

Of course John Palino did not know about the Len Brown Bevan Chuang relationship despite Chuang’s boyfriend who knew of the relationship being on his campaign team and despite Cameron Slater’s father being Palino’s campaign manager. Update: The Herald this morning has reported that Chuang claims to have met Palino for 90 minutes two days before the news of the affair was made public where the disclosing to Brown of the news was discussed.

What’s in the friday dump this week?

Written By: lprent - Date published: 2:10 pm, September 20th, 2013 - 18 comments

The spinners in parliament and government are rather predictable. They dump their embarrassments late on a friday, preferably on a long holiday weekend or with a sporting event. I’m picking that today we will see some material dropping off the rear of DOC related to what Nick Smith saw and can no longer remember….

Key shows how much he really cares about security

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:24 am, August 2nd, 2013 - 89 comments

John Key claims there are Al Qaeda-linked Kiwis in the country and in Yemen. That raises several questions: 1) why haven’t they been arrested? 2) why do you need additional spy powers, if you already have these people 3) why is the PM breaching security and jeopardising the spying on these people? 4) isn’t that an extraordinary thing to do for the sake of political point scoring?

Andrea Vance’s phone records were handed to Henry by Parliamentary Services

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 1:47 pm, July 30th, 2013 - 80 comments

David Henry did but didn’t get Andrea Vance’s phone records from Parliamentary Services and Speaker David Carter said that the information had not been disclosed but had been disclosed.  And they expect us to believe that Henry did not look at the phone records despite asking for them.

Confused?

Truth no longer matters

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:15 am, July 14th, 2013 - 168 comments

A significant proportion of the media is now heavily invested in the narrative that David Shearer is about to be rolled as Labour leader. As Matt McCarten puts it today “Truth no longer matters” and “civil society is poorer for it”.

Much a coup about nothing

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:23 am, July 10th, 2013 - 238 comments

Apparently there was a coup in Labour last night. Missed it? So did Labour. Looks like what really happened was that someone played Garner / Gower. Perhaps the problem lies with relying on well-known Labour insider Cameron Slater as your source.

Show us the money

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:22 am, June 29th, 2013 - 56 comments

National’s spend-up promises in Auckland look like panicky policy on the hoof. Where is all this money going to come from? Key says they’ll just write a cheque!

Caption contest

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:28 am, June 2nd, 2013 - 62 comments

“I have formed a lose alliance of committed fiscal conservatives”

“I have decided to call it the Front Bone Club“

Economic apocalypse – not

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:15 am, April 29th, 2013 - 15 comments

National and their proxies have claimed that Labour / Green NZ Power announcement has crashed the stock market and wiped out savings. Lies lies lies. Here’s the data.

Classic Nat press releases

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 4:28 pm, April 18th, 2013 - 23 comments

The best that the Nats can come up with in response to the Labour / Green electricity reforms is juvenile posturing about Stalinist extremism and “comrades Norman and Shearer”. This from the National Party that brought you cancelled democratic elections, harsh punishments for protestors, and increased powers to spy on the people. Oh, the irony.

Key’s Nixon moment

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:15 am, April 11th, 2013 - 55 comments

Nixon famously said: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”. John Key would have you believe the same thing, that when his agency, the GCSB, has been breaking the law, the problem lies with the law. No – the problem lies with the GCSB and its oversight. Watergate here we come…

Stand back! The English language is evolving! GAY evolving!

Written By: QoT - Date published: 7:00 pm, March 2nd, 2013 - 42 comments

Family First’s arguments against basic human rights continue to be absurd – now apparently we’re all going to forget what “husband” and “wife” mean.

RBNZ lying on manufacturing

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 9:10 am, February 15th, 2013 - 23 comments

Why are Treasury and Reserve Bank presenting clearly trumped up numbers to pretend the economy is doing better than it is? They’ve been caught out lying that the banks weren’t excessively profitable by international standards, that private electricity suppliers aren’t more expensive, and that we’re not unequal by OECD standards. Now, the Reserve Bank is telling blatant lies about the manufacturing sector.

So, that’s what Nats mean by creating jobs

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:35 am, January 15th, 2013 - 111 comments

We all know, because that Nice Man Mr Key told us, the government can’t create jobs. That is, unless it has given away $67m to international bully boys and wants to show a return on investment. Then, it can create 3,000 jobs out of thin air. It turns out, that’s where the claim that the Hobbit films created 3,000 Kiwi jobs came from. But it gets worse.

The political media and the blogs

Written By: lprent - Date published: 10:34 pm, November 29th, 2012 - 110 comments

Chris Trotter, like myself, was at the Labour party conference a week and a half ago. Like myself and damn near every left wing blogger who was there, he saw a massive discordance between what was being reported and what was actually happening in the conference. The hysteria at having a carefully constructed fiction of media and the beltway PR being torn to pieces by ordinary citizens writing has been extraordinary. The implications for the poorly constructed Law Commission report on cyber-bullying is sobering.