John Key – The Gambler

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, April 14th, 2008 - 19 comments
Categories: humour - Tags:

A reader’s just sent us the lyrics to the song sung at Labour Party social and again at the conference as reported in The Herald today.

We understand they were penned by Grant Robertson, Labour candidate for Wellington Central. To the tune of “The Gambler“:

John Key – The Gambler

On a warm summer’s evening in a party going nowhere
Bill met Key the Gambler; slippery and sleek
When Bill saw that Don’s wanderin’ days were over
he and John got together, and put the Doc to sleep

Key said, Bill I’ve made a life out of gambling people’s money
not caring where it came from, or who would lose their job
so if you make me leader, I promise to be funny
and I’ll be ready every day, to flip and flop

Chorus

You’ve got to know not to trust him (not to trust him), not to believe him (don’t believe him)
know what he tells you, won’t be the truth
we can’t let him run the country, cos he’s just not able
you need more than a cheesy smile, to rule the roost

Now little John boy knows the secret to surviving
Is not telling anyone, what he really thinks
So he’ll just say whatever, Murray’s written for him
But when you’re swallowing dead rats – you begin to stink
and, sitting in the darkness, of his Parnell mansion
John asks the question, can I get away with it?
Cos if you’ve not no policy, and if you’ve got no vision
People soon enough work out – that  you’re full of ….

You’ve got to know not to trust him (not to trust him), not to believe him (don’t believe him)
know what he tells you,  won’t be the truth
we can’t let him run the country cos he’s just not able
you need more than a cheesy smile, to rule the roost.

(repeat chorus) 

19 comments on “John Key – The Gambler ”

  1. mike 1

    Very mature stuff, imagine the uproar from the left if Dear Helen was the subject of a childish jingle.
    Just shows how desperate Labour has become…

  2. Yes Mike – desperate. And I’m sure the latest polls will really upset them. http://kiwiblogblog.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/roy-morgan-poll-2/

  3. Felix 3

    Of course those on the right don’t tend to pen “childish jingles” about Helen, they’re busy cut and pasting “adult images” of her instead.

  4. insider 4

    Bit of a differnece when it is cabinet ministers and candidates doing it though…

  5. insider 5

    PS wonder if they got copyright clearance on the use of the tune…?

  6. Matthew Pilott 6

    PS wonder if they got copyright clearance on the use of the tune ?

    Last I heard, you don’t need copyright to use a tune in your head 🙂

    That aside, I thought this was a bit unfortunate, given the propensity of our media to present ‘infotainment’ to us. This song took up about 40% of the coverage of the Congress yesterday – truly pathetic!

  7. higherstandard 7

    RS

    This link to the Morgan poll is a little less biased.

    http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2008/4285/

  8. insider 8

    Matthew

    I heard they sung it on stage. Hooten said the camera then panned to HC who was looking pained…

  9. Matthew Pilott 9

    Insider – I was also (pained), when I heard in on the telly. However, there wasn’t any backing audio.

  10. higherstandard 10

    Insider , MP

    If this is the cak we have to put up with now you can only expect the electioneering to get even more vacuous as we run up to the election although one wonders how it could get much worse.

  11. Matthew Pilott 11

    Well HS, it was their congress, and not electioneering per se…

  12. Monty 12

    That coven were quite simply embaressing. According to Liala Harre (on National Radio) Clark was far from impressed. While we all acknowledge that most the remaining left voters suffer from KDS, it now appears fatal and death will be in about six months.

    People have been taking the piss out of this all day and it seems this cheap nasty stunt has back-fired. On top of that we have the scandal of Mike Williams telling delegates to use brochures of Government departments as electioneering material and the protesters.

    Seems like the very thin veneer that Labour was relying upon has already worn off.

  13. Pablo 13

    They seem to have forgotten the maxim that something that sounds hilarious when you’re rat arsed is actually the opposite when you are sober. If HC looked pained, I’d have to agree with her. Embarrassing isn’t the half of it.

  14. mike 14

    “Yes Mike – desperate. And I’m sure the latest polls will really upset them”
    Thanks Sod, if its race we are in the lead. The thin red line is looking a bit sad today. Just keep Mike W talking and chicks singing thanks.

  15. AncientGeek 15

    As Matthew pointed out, it was a labour party congress. These happen in an election year and are primarily to make sure the labour activists and organisers are geared up to run the campaign at grassroots level. A secondary level is to make sure the candidates know their do’es and don’ts.

    Of course the mainstream media will cover themselves in glory (choke) and only bother to show the most trivial bits. Even where they actually run a serious story, for instance, Audrey Young’s story on the front page of the herald this morning “Labour’s plan to sidestep ads law”. It is a pile of crap.

    Plan – what bloody plan? It was raised as a suggestion during the conference because there is a shortage of correctly labeled material. Hey, it has only been 3-4 months since the EFA was passed – much of that over the summer vacation period. Virtually no party has reasonable amounts of correctly labeled material done yet.

    This is typical granny herald editorial. Full of absolute bullshit spun to get a headline. You actually get to the interesting bits with some meat in it at the END of the article. Then you find out there is no plan.

    Audrey wrote a reasonable blog on it here later in the day. This is what should have been on the herald front page. It is a good bit of writing and actually addressed the issue, unlike the pile of crap that was on the front page of the Herald.

    The coverage I’ve seen after I got out of the conference all seemed to be like that. Sensationalist crap that had little realtionship to what was going on at the conference.

    Anyone got other links to stuff that is a bit more thoughtful?

  16. randal 16

    better than watching the tories shagging a goat…errr gagging a goat…errrrr bagging a goat…errrr baaaaaaaaa

    [lprent: I suppose that is meant to be funny? I’m not laughing.]

  17. Occasional Observer 17

    AncientGeek seems quite comfortable with Labour Party volunteers distributing publicly-funded public service material, conveniently with the excuse “because we haven’t got our own material printed yet”.

    Do you think any opposition party has the option of using publicly funded material? No.

    In an environment where the Government is spending $100 million on government publicity, and in an environment where there have been major scandals around the neutrality of government publicity officers, and where Madeleine Setchell was fired because a Minister felt she wouldn’t be kind enough to Labour–it is an outright disgrace that Labour’s President should be encouraging Labour volunteers to use publicly funded public service material.

    AncientGeek seems to conveniently forget that Labour wrote the Electoral Finance Act, unilaterally. Labour refused to heed official advice on the consequences of the legislation, and ignored calls from the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission, among many other groups, for it to be scrapped. Labour ignored calls that the legislation was confusing, and ignored calls that various parts of it needed further clarification. Labour ignored statements from the Electoral Commission that they did not understand the law, and would not be able to advise on big chunks of it, and that the Court would have to resolve it. Instead, Annette King proudly proclaimed that the law was clear, and the “law of common sense” would apply.

    So let’s see. Here we have Labour activists complaining that the law THEY WROTE restricts them from campaigning, and the magical solution is to use public service material.

  18. AncientGeek 18

    Oo: you are a total idiot. Filing in an old post – I only saw it because I was looking for an old comment of mine to link to.

    You seem to be able to ignore anything that anyone says to you as being a lie because your chronic myopia makes you always right. It is a tendency I’ve observed in you before.

    What I said was that there was no plan. It wasn’t a deep dark secret plan to subvert the EFA. It was a suggestion raised at congress during a discussion about the shortage of written material. After the weekend, people realised that it was

    Go and read my comment rather than putting your own spin on it. That takes care of the first paragraph. All of the rest of your comments appear to be simple unadulterated whinging of a loser. You didn’t even come up with a single suggestion about how the EFA could be improved. Not particularly productive and it just makes you look like a fool.

    At this point I think I’ll have to pre-file your comments under f**kwit unless I see some thought go into them.

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