Just some stuff I thought people wouldn’t want to miss…
Mandy Hager on her brother’s book:
I don’t know anyone who is more ethical than Nicky […] He is a deep thinker, with an incredibly sharp mind, and always practices what he preaches. And he is a compulsively thorough researcher and a bloody good writer […] And, here’s the most important thing, folks, nothing of importance that he has written has ever ultimately been discredited or disproved. The ignorant spin that he ‘makes things up’ and is a ‘left-wing conspiracy theorist’ could not be further from the truth. People wonder why he gets such extraordinary information leaked to him. The answer is really simple: he’s easy to talk to, honest, respects those he deals with, and he is totally ethical, therefore they can feel confident in him and assured he will protect their confidences. It’s as simple as that.
Media Take last night had a Dirty Politics special with 2 interviews of Nicky Hager. Jane Kelsey next week on the TPP should be interesting.
We shouldn’t forget Guyon actually holding the PM to account or Garner‘s unhappiness with Judith / Slater.
The passion that’s been inspired is at least something positive – see Danyl and Andrew Geddis.
One of John Key’s responses (other than regular standard lines of “left wing smear campaign”, “conspiracy theorist”, “made it up”, “allegations all falling apart”) has been that the left don’t want to talk about policy, they just want to run smears. Now apart from the fact that Nicky Hager isn’t a member of any political party, and is thus not “the left” he’s talking about, “the left” have actually released a huge amount of policy (see Labour, Green). And far from not wanting to talk policy, they’ve been trying to ever since Key became leader, and might have succeeded a bit more if Key (thru Ede/Slater) hadn’t kept derailing the conversation with all the smears as laid out in Dirty Politics.
So it’s very amusing that the first TV ads from Labour are about Policy, and the first National ones don’t mention it, because they’re busy negative campaigning…
Speaking of policy (and a slight diversion from Dirty Politics), it’s annoying to see the Herald doing their “pork” framing of policy costs. Because obviously doing something about child poverty or housing supply or reducing class sizes is “pork”. And we only mention Labour’s extra $4.85 billion in extra revenue in the footnotes, so they look terrible in the big graphic.
But, at the end of the day, and because Don’t worry. Be happy requested it, you’re another day older – that’s all you can say in the life of the poor.
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