Dirty politics in Dunedin

42 comments on “Dirty politics in Dunedin ”

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1. ghostwhowalksnz 1

   3 September 2014 at 1:14 pm

   PG is a treasure of the old school.
2. Andrew Geddis 2

   3 September 2014 at 1:28 pm

   The key features that indicate that it is a scholarly debate is the long-winded format and that they have scheduled it inside non-academic’s work hours.

   Well, it is within academic work hours, too! What do you think we are, Vampire-like creatures who only operate after the sun has set?

   Seriously, but, the event will be available in clip form on YouTube after its completion. The point of filming it is to make a permanent, publicly accessible record of proceedings for anyone interested.
   • Tracey 2.1

     3 September 2014 at 1:34 pm

     Have sent the details to a retired professor friend of mine in Dunedin. I hope he will come along. Well done Andrew.
   • lprent 2.2

     3 September 2014 at 1:34 pm

     *grin* I thought that might get a reaction.
   • lprent 2.3

     3 September 2014 at 2:25 pm

     What do you think we are, Vampire-like creatures who only operate after the sun has set?

     Confidentially, every time I hear Lyn describing politics in the academic environment, I sometimes to get visions that she is describing the set of some vampire laden sitcom.

     But hey, everyone to their own. I’m sure that the struggle for sparse resources there really isn’t *that* bad 🙂

     (I’m an ardent fan of working away from taxpayers dollars myself)
     • Andrew Geddis 2.3.1

       3 September 2014 at 2:40 pm

       Confidentially, every time I hear Lyn describing politics in the academic environment, I sometimes to get visions that she is describing the set of some vampire laden sitcom.

       You may be confusing your vampires with your zombies, there.
       • AmaKiwi 2.3.1.1

         3 September 2014 at 3:58 pm

         Lyn is a male.
         • lprent 2.3.1.1.1

           3 September 2014 at 6:24 pm

           Actually no. Lynn Prentice (ie lprent) is grey headed male. My partner Lyn is very definitely a female (I have investigated this)

           We just happen to have the same first name with variant spellings.

           My parents call us Grey Lynn and New Lyn…. Funny eh? (not)
           • Rodel 2.3.1.1.1.1

             4 September 2014 at 7:28 am

             hehehe good one
       • lprent 2.3.1.2

         3 September 2014 at 4:18 pm

         Surely not. I’d never describe academics as mindless lumbering slow beasts with an appetite for “brains”…..

         Ummm. Maybe that isn’t a good line to take. I do recall a few nearly somnolence first year courses. Organic chemistry in particular, cost accounting was pretty damn bad (and even worse in second year), that 3rd year course in compiler theory with Bruce Hutton – fascinating and deadly boring at the same time…
   • RedBaronCV 2.4

     3 September 2014 at 7:21 pm

     Possibly at Vic. Floor after floor without the office lights on during the day – semi dimness the rule. Or maybe the “don’t waste power memo” was exceptionally sharp
3. Enough is Enough 3

   3 September 2014 at 1:31 pm

   Bring our Brian Roper.

   He was the highlight of my BA years with that ‘fro, drinking coke and seeing him out surfing.

   It would be good to hear his perspective on all this.
   • left for dead 3.1

     3 September 2014 at 1:48 pm

     Good league man too,watched the warriors with them more than once over a few beers.
4. left for dead 4

   3 September 2014 at 1:40 pm

   He is still banned from here,is he not…(There really is a god) someone else’s quote.Just read Dirty politics this morning,so disheartening.Even the ODT’s political editor Dene MacKenzie called it (Depraved).
   • lprent 4.1

     3 September 2014 at 2:28 pm

     Can’t remember. I suspect not.

     He usually gets a reasonably short ban about behaviour and then huffs away in distaste at being accountable for his behaviour. I then expect to see a pile of links coming through from posts as he declaims the brimstone level here.

     Personally I think he comes here when he starts running out of material..
     • veutoviper 4.1.1

       3 September 2014 at 2:37 pm

       He got the ‘good bye’ from Russell Brown at Public Address a few weeks ago.
       • weka 4.1.1.1

         3 September 2014 at 3:10 pm

         So how many bans is that now? Bet he still thinks it’s everyone else’s fault and he is the reasonable one.
     • weka 4.1.2

       3 September 2014 at 3:02 pm

       HAve you seen the pingback at the bottom of the page? 😉
       • lprent 4.1.2.1

         3 September 2014 at 3:05 pm

         We leave them in when the post is about him.

         But he has been a bit stale recently. Hopefully this should raise his amusing ire again.

         I saw a link coming through this morning. So I thought I’d help him out by giving him something solid to whine about.
         • Lanthanide 4.1.2.1.1

           3 September 2014 at 3:22 pm

           Just had a read of it. PG apparently doesn’t understand how footnotes work, as he claims the post starts and ends talking about him, and the stuff in the middle is just an excuse to talk about him…

           No, really.
           • lprent 4.1.2.1.1.1

             3 September 2014 at 6:43 pm

             Why did you find that surprising. That is genuinely how he thinks…

             The joy of it is that because he has such a conservative frame of reference and so very thin-skinned, he is alarmingly easy to manipulate. For instance I was at one stage considering treating him as a kind of blogging grenade.

             Hopping into kiwiblog or whaleoil on one of my rare incursions, making comments in the context of a Farrar or Slater pompous post using Pete George as an example, and then exiting in the sure knowledge that the posts comments would shortly become trash.

             But then I made the mistake of telling another blogger that. They felt that it was going to reek too much of being cruel to dumb animals.
     • Tracey 4.1.3

       3 September 2014 at 3:06 pm

       was he ever the kind of dirty of dirty politics? His old pal Dunne is determined not to read the book, such virtue
       • lprent 4.1.3.1

         3 September 2014 at 3:09 pm

         Dunne isn’t that notable for his ability to deal with new ideas. You can see why he’d avoid learning them.

         The ‘conservative’ party in NZ really doesn’t deserve the name becasue they have quite a lot of (foolhardy) ideas.

         For true conservatives you can’t go past United Future – the party of Hair and the past.
       • weka 4.1.3.2

         3 September 2014 at 3:09 pm

         He was running his own wee personal smear campaign against karol and other tsers a while back.
         • Tracey 4.1.3.2.1

           3 September 2014 at 3:19 pm

           ah, thanks.

           Lprent

           Good point, the want a higher low end tax free threshold, but other than colinc crazi party are practically Amish
   • Tracey 4.2

     3 September 2014 at 3:04 pm

     now you know why national is determined people dont read itcos it is filthy not dirty, and the water that is wasted by people hving to shower afterwards
     • lprent 4.2.1

       3 September 2014 at 3:10 pm

       And they haven’t fully privatised the water (yet). Is that the reason?
       • Tracey 4.2.1.1

         3 September 2014 at 3:21 pm

         i notice that rather than make farmers clean up some waterways, the nats are going to buy $100m worth of bad water from farmers. Kind of a lolly scramble
5. brian 5

   3 September 2014 at 3:05 pm

   Dirty Politics in Hamilton, as well
   I understand Nicky Hagar will be talking at a public meeting at Waikato University on Monday 8 September. I have no other details at this stage.
   • brian 5.1

     3 September 2014 at 4:17 pm

     The University of Waikato

     Public Lecture by Nicky Hagar
     Monday 8 September, 7.30pm

     Introducing Nicky Hager

     Nicky Hager is a Wellington-based investigative journalist. His previous books
     include The Hollow Men, Secret Power, Seeds of Distrust and Other People’s
     Wars. Nicky will speak about attack politics in the New Zealand political
     environment in the age of social media.

     This is a free lecture – everyone is welcome.

     Monday 8 September, 7.30pm
     S.G.01, S Block, University of Waikato
6. swordfish 6

   3 September 2014 at 3:18 pm

   I miss the sheer existential futility of PG’s daily missives of a year or two back . His comments would proceed something along the lines of: “A number of interesting things have happened in politics over recent months. What sort of factors might account for these interesting things ? And, equally, what sort of factors might not so much account for them ? How interesting it is to contemplate.”

   He always had a kind of Waiting for Godot thing going on. Which is why, unlike many here, I usually found him not so much irritating as (unintentionally) entertaining.
   • Anne 6.1

     3 September 2014 at 3:32 pm

     The other (unintentionally) entertaining aspect of PG was his frequent habit of stating the obvious, believing himself to be the first person to think of it or work it out… such was his belief in his monumental(?) powers of observation.
     • lprent 6.1.1

       3 September 2014 at 6:31 pm

       …his frequent habit of stating the obvious, believing himself to be the first person to think of it or work it out…

       Especially the standard ideas that I learnt when I used to sneak along to my mothers uni lectures back in the 1970s (which incidentally caused my lifelong addiction to reading history texts).
     • Pete 6.1.2

       3 September 2014 at 9:45 pm

       It wasn’t so much his political leanings I objected to – he’s an older fellow and they tend to be more conservative. It was his constant desire to have the last word. In contrast, for all the rage Matthew Hooton engenders, I don’t find myself skipping his comments. Whenever I saw PG in a thread, it made political discussion a tedious act, rather than enjoying my political nerdery. There’s maybe, what, 150 or so regulars involved in discussion threads. Plus lurkers (hi, lurkers). And we’re spread across the left. We all have differences of opinion, but we don’t actively seek to derail conversation, which is what PGs technique amounted to. Maybe it’s the format – I think Twitter might be a better forum for his style.
       • Anne 6.1.2.1

         3 September 2014 at 10:06 pm

         Twitter??? How could he ever manage to fit those interminable and vacuous ravings into a twitter feed. 🙂
         • Colonial Viper 6.1.2.1.1

           4 September 2014 at 12:19 am

           lolz

           by breaking them up into streams of 10-15 tweets
       • lprent 6.1.2.2

         4 September 2014 at 12:10 am

         There’s maybe, what, 150 or so regulars involved in discussion threads. Plus lurkers (hi, lurkers).

         Maybe three or four times that. A lot of the occasional people are really regular commenters having a bit of a sabbatical for a few years or a few months. People come and go.
7. emergency mike 7

   3 September 2014 at 3:52 pm

   Don’t you mean infamously tedious lprent?
   • One Anonymous Bloke 7.1

     3 September 2014 at 5:58 pm

     Infotedium.
8. Paul Campbell 8

   5 September 2014 at 7:28 am

   Well Peter George is not representative of the rest of us in Dunedin, (or maybe the rest of us are just less annoying).

   Dunedin is going through it’s own Dirty Politics scandal of sorts with mass resignations of employees from the DCC as a decades long rort has been uncovered and councilors crying ignorance, even though we elect them to keep an eye on such things (remember the similar situation with the Hospital Board a decade or so ago with some of the same representatives professing ignorance).

   There must be something in the water (oh wait we sold that off to Christchurch ….). Sadly our city is so mired in debt (mostly rugby debt forced on us by the govt and NZRFU for the world cup) the council is unable to do much of anything other than raise rates in a city where jobs continue to disappear …
9. Chloe O'Brien 9

   5 September 2014 at 3:27 pm

   Nicky Hager’s ‘Dirty Politics’ has already overshadowed half of the election campaign and I like many other Kiwis are getting sick and tired of hearing about it. I probably will never read it, so instead I just fall victim to the media and its take on the book.

   However, if all these dirty tactics are what’s really going on in parliament and between ministers how can we feel proud of our government? How are young people supposed to want to vote when all they see is nastiness and corrupt politicians? I for one feel completely turned off, even John Key and David Cunliffe’s responses to the issues brought up by the book have been woeful.

   All the fuss has even brought Dame Anne Salmond out to make comment, in a recent article she said:

   “We have the right to live in a democracy where our leaders do not lie to us, or abuse their powers, or strip away our freedoms. They need to represent what’s best, not what’s worst about New Zealand. We are entitled to feel proud and confident about the way we’re governed, not embarrassed and ashamed.”

   I couldn’t agree more. My question to all you intelligent and open minded individuals is this, who is prepared to take a stand to clean up all the dirt? Lets get it out in the open so we as citizens of New Zealand can actually make well informed decisions about who we want running our country. #independent #high-level #inquiry

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1. I’m a conservative with a strong right lean | Your NZ: posted on 3 September 2014 at 1:53 pm

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