spin

Categories under spin

taxpayers union (29)
you couldn't make this shit up (829)

Mediaworks hearts Key

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 7:05 pm, June 11th, 2011 - 33 comments

Remember John Key’s Hardtalk interview? He wilted under real questioning. How would he handle 22 minutes with New Zealand’s most feared interviewer, Sean Plunket? Seems the $43 million bailout of Mediaworks bought a lot of soft questions. 22 minutes of pap. If you can be bothered, don’t watch, just listen. Picture Plunket cradling Key like a newborn. [cheers for the pic, William Joyce]

Flattering to deceive

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:21 am, May 28th, 2011 - 23 comments

Ever noticed the big political journos will do a scathing attack on one major party then, the next day, one on the other major party? It’s about maintaining access. If you only run attacks on one party, you’ll stop getting stories from them (nearly all political stories come from the opposing party). After this, it was Labour’s turn in Armstrong’s sights today, or was it?

Disaster politics

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 11:00 am, May 17th, 2011 - 10 comments

Gee, a disaster can be a useful thing. You can blame it for your pathetic record on economic management and borrowing for tax cuts. Then, you can take the credit for the jobs, growth, and higher wages created by the rebuilding. Course, you have to be a certain type of person to exploit a city’s suffering so.

Freudian slip from Fox News

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 10:59 am, May 4th, 2011 - 15 comments

The mannequin candidate

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:23 pm, March 20th, 2011 - 35 comments

Key was full of excuses and vague promises for Christchurch on Q+A. He ruled out a levy and indicated the rebuilding would be funded out of savage cuts to our public services. He stuck to his script. Maybe the earpiece he was wearing helped. What was being whispered in his ear? And who was telling our PM what words to mouth?

For God’s sake, be straight with us

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:50 pm, March 7th, 2011 - 115 comments

John Key and Gerry Brownlee made extremely foolish comments attacking the coronal staff trying to identify the dead and about knocking down all the historic buildings. Now, they’re lying about those statements. This crisis is too big for this childish bullshit. John, you need to be a real leader, not a naughty schoolboy lying to cover your mistakes.

Farrar fluffs food figures

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:28 am, March 7th, 2011 - 51 comments

I thought that with a devastating earthquake, a record oil/food price spike, an unemployment tsunami, and a double-dip recession that the Nats’ apologists might have realised it was time for honest discussion of the issues and solutions. Instead, they’re still trying to bury our heads in the sand.

Testing Key’s $33 billion line

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:54 am, February 4th, 2011 - 12 comments

One of John Key’s excuses for selling our SOEs is that we need the cash to buy $33 billion of new assets over the next 5 years. Sounds like a lot, eh? It turns out the Crown spent $42 billion on new assets* over the last 5 years without selling our SOEs and even with that $33 billion of new capital spending the deficit will be gone in 4 years … I wonder what Key’s next line will be.

Big Gay Nowt

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 10:26 am, February 4th, 2011 - 75 comments

It’s almost Big Gay Out time again which also means it’s time for some new images of John Key dancing with drag queens and cuddling up to lines of shirtless hunks. I know I’m supposed to admire the fact that a National party PM would take time out of his busy schedule to be seen with us homos but it’s all PR. Key’s record is true blue anti-gay.

Debt an excuse for enriching the elite

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:45 pm, January 27th, 2011 - 24 comments

In 2008, John Key’s line was ‘New Zealand doesn’t have a debt problem, it has a growth problem’. In Budget 2010, he said the Crown would be back into surplus in record time. In December, he said debt wouldn’t force a downgrade. Now, he says debt is such a problem we need to slash and sell. When did he mean what he said? Never. It has never been about debt.

The politics of hysteria

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:44 am, December 27th, 2010 - 39 comments

Reading the Maps recently posted this analysis that takes swings at the extremes in the political debate.

In the twenty-first century we are continually being urged to register and express our emotions. The days of the stiff upper lip and suffering in silence have well and truly gone, as unctuous TV talk show hosts and ‘self-help’ books scream at us to ‘grow emotionally’ by blubbering our deepest secrets and confessing our most recalcitrant feelings to our partners, to our friends, and to perfect strangers.

Diplomatic Stupidity

Written By: Bill - Date published: 11:47 am, December 23rd, 2010 - 13 comments

Do the wikileak cables illustrate just how stupid the diplomatic community is? What’s it all about? And why is our media not focussing any attention on this strange state of affairs where governments are seemingly informed by deaf and blind diplomats mouthing off?

A miss as good as a mile

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 3:45 pm, November 22nd, 2010 - 26 comments

Key talking on Breaskfast about Mana: “we slashed the majority from 6,155 to 1,080. So by any measure, you’ve got to take that as a win.” Apart from the one measure that counts. Eh John?

Of course, this is also the dude who reckons that sitting “pretty much next to” Obama for a few minutes is a foreign policy achievement.

OMG! ING! WTF?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 1:33 pm, November 18th, 2010 - 60 comments

Last year, over 13,000 New Zealanders got some measure of satisfaction from ANZ’s part-owned ING in New Zealand. For over a year, half a billion dollars in investors’ funds had been locked up, during a nasty dispute between ING/ANZ and their investors. How has ANZ made things right for everyone who was hurt? They’ve renamed ING as ‘One Path’

Nats push ahead with ACC privatisation agenda

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:30 am, November 8th, 2010 - 22 comments

The Government is planning to reduce ACC cover and portray it as a cost saving for levy-payers. You would get less income coverage when injured and have to endure a longer wait time of three weeks until your coverage would begin. Levies would be personalised on the private model. This is privatising ACC on bite at a time with no actual cost savings.

The sea-change on the left

Written By: lprent - Date published: 1:59 pm, October 25th, 2010 - 41 comments

One of the strange things about helping to run a left blog like this is looking at the varied opinions of those on the left of the political spectrum, and then looking at the monolithic opinions that the right seem to have of the left. I was musing on this while reading Matt McCarten’s excellent Saturday article. Now you have to understand that Matt and myself are almost at the ends of the spectrum when it comes to politics on the left….

Two conflicts don’t make a right

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 8:37 pm, October 24th, 2010 - 12 comments

Former ACT MP Deborah Coddington isn’t a journo anymore. Shot her reputation with the infamous ‘Asian Angst’ piece. Just does opinion pieces now. Strange, then, to see her by-line on 2 Herald articles attempting to vindicate disgraced conflict of interest judge Bill Wilson. Turns out her husband was Wilson’s lawyer.

How the right kill social democracy

Written By: Michael Foxglove - Date published: 2:00 pm, October 12th, 2010 - 55 comments

When one of the first truly social democratic governments was elected in North America it was attacked viciously from all sides. Read further if you want to know the lengths business, private media, the police, landlords, and lobbyists went to undermine the Rae Government in Ontario, Canada. There are lessons for New Zealand.

Que CERRA, CERRA?

Written By: Bill - Date published: 6:30 pm, September 29th, 2010 - 63 comments

After picking up my award for worst ever ‘Standard’ post title, I’d just like to say that there seems to a penchant these days to leave too many things up to higher powers, or perceived authorities. And authorities and those who are ideologically aligned with them or reliant upon them, naturally enough encourage such a giving away of agency. It’s not always deliberate. And it’s certainly not a conspiracy. It’s just the way it is and is borne of habit. This morning afforded a fairly clear example of it.

English spins on GST with no traction

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:49 am, September 28th, 2010 - 40 comments

It’s worth having a look at Bill English’s performance on Q+A the other day. What’s telling, to my mind, is that English can’t present a real vision or even any spin-free information. Why not? Because his tax swindle is about taking from us and giving to the elite, and he can’t just come and say that.

Spinning while the economy burns

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:12 pm, September 23rd, 2010 - 54 comments

The latest GDP figures are awful. the Reserve Bank had predicted 0.9% growth in the June Quarter. It came in at 0.2% – far worse than anyone expected and slower than population growth. The Key Government’s reaction? Deny there’s a problem and spin, spin, spin.

National’s dodgy tax campaign

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 8:31 pm, September 20th, 2010 - 56 comments

According to the ODT government MP’s are going to be travelling around the country trying to convince New Zealanders that their plan to cut taxes for the rich isn’t actually a plan to cut taxes for the rich at all.

Ralston Attempts Hijack of Radio NZ SuperCity Debate

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 1:57 pm, September 13th, 2010 - 36 comments

In the lecture theatre that the Radio NZ SuperCity debate was held this morning Len Brown clearly and easily won – but how did it appear on radio?

Bill Ralston and his coterie did his best to even up the perceptions…

Wage subsidy a half-hearted gesture

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:12 am, September 8th, 2010 - 60 comments

The unions, business, and Phil Goff have all gritted their teeth and called the Nats’ $15 million wage subsidy scheme for small quaked-affected businesses ‘a start’. The problem is, it’s likely to be the end. This scheme will leave workers and employers severely out of pocket, killing businesses and jobs.

Govt exploiting CHCH to sneak through abuses?

Written By: the sprout - Date published: 7:03 am, September 8th, 2010 - 10 comments

As our msm persist with their increasingly banal fixation on Christchurch’s troubles, I’m reminded of a story that appeared in 2001 not long after the horror of 9/11. It was about a political advisor in the Blair administration who was caught-out doing her job. On the day of the attacks Jo Moore sent an email […]

Paula’s forever blowing bubbles

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:16 pm, September 6th, 2010 - 15 comments

It’s been nearly two years now of Paula Bennett declaring that the unemployment crisis is over. Yesterday, she put out a press release titled ‘More than 6,000 beneficiaries find jobs in August‘. Wow, 6,000 in a month, pretty good. But Bennett must have been hoping we wouldn’t read beyond the title. The fact is that 900 more people went on the dole than came off it. The total number of beneficiaries just keeps climbing.

Crown ownership by any other name would smell as bad

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 6th, 2010 - 13 comments

Unnoticed amongst all the earthquake coverage was a small article in the Weekend Dompost on the foreshore and seabed deal. Apparently, ‘public domain’ will no longer appear in the new legislation. Instead, we’ll have a new name, possibly ‘takutaimoana’, Te Reo for ‘seabed’. That sound you can hear Winston Peters is rubbing his hands with glee.

Cutting through the bullshit

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 11:12 pm, September 2nd, 2010 - 24 comments

Over the next few weeks the nats and other vested interests will try to muddy the waters over the SCF bailout.

This sophistry is designed to distract from the massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few.

And why shouldn’t they try this tactic? It worked for asset sales two and a half decades ago.

English still busy fudging the numbers

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:23 am, August 20th, 2010 - 27 comments

Bill English thinks he has proven that wages grew just 3% under Labour and grew 15.5% under National in the 1990s. How’s he done it? By taking a ridiculous definition of wages and a very convenient timeframe. Bill, this is getting old. Your distortions are transparent and exposing you is too easy. How about, rather than fudging historic numbers, you get on with your job of building a better future?

PR301: Edwards and Ralston on Lhaws

Written By: the sprout - 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 […]