Written By:
the sprout - Date published:
3:00 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 5 comments
Categories: employment, Media, national -
Tags: Electorate Office, jackie blue, Joan Nathan, Julie Fairey, Sleepy Sam Lotu-Iiga, the hand mirror
Julie Fairey at The Hand Mirror has posted a follow-up on the curious tale of how National’s Dr Jackie Blue “had told the Herald that Nathan’s job ended because of an office merger with new National MP Sam Lotu-Iiga, when actually they both still have separate offices, in different suburbs.”
Joan Nathan you will recall, is the mother of the girl from working-class McGehan Close that Key lovingly shopped around the media before the Election to show how much he cared about everyday people. Dr Blue happened to bump into Nathan while accompanying Key on an ‘impromptu’ photo-op visit to McGehan Close (by sheer coincidence Blue was also Nathan’s GP), and from there flowed a host of images with Key taking Nathan’s daughter to Waitangi Day celebrations. Blue then gave Nathan a job working in her electorate office – at least until the Election was over.
This story raises a lot of serious questions around misleading the public, misleading the media and improper use of Parliamentary Services funding that need answering. This is an opportunity on a platter for our mainstream media to show they aren’t all complete dupes for National’s PR stunts.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Quoted from The Hand Mirror:
But I’m concerned that Nathan was given the job as an inappropriate form of political patronage – as a PR stunt, or to encourage her to say nice things about National, or to ensure that if she didn’t say nice things about National in the future she could be written off with that damning epithet “just a disgruntled former employee.”
Interestingly enough, the “job” is starting to look seriously like a bribe. The MSM should be all over this.
Good work by Julie.
Shows more and more why I (and I suspect the Herald) rely more and more on blogs for providing me with the news.
Thanks for the promo 🙂
you are welcome
No problem.. We like promoting posts on other blogs – saves us having to think….
Besides, you realise that you still have write rights here from your election night blogging? Use that to promote particularly good posts…