Search Results

  1. LocalBodies: King Luddite and the Green Wave

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 11:41 am, April 28th, 2014 -  31 comments
    Categories: greens, john key, Satire
    Tags:

    King Luddite was resolute in his belief in the power of black gold and he decided to make a public stand against the green tidal wave that was rapidly approaching his small kingdom. On September the 20th he decided would place his throne on the nearest beach and, with his ministers standing behind him, command that the wave come no further. He had once heard a story of another king who had done something similar and thought it sounded like a good idea. Of course he had never been a good history scholar and he had never bothered to consult his wise men.

  2. Outing Nats’ smear machine

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 8:47 am, March 29th, 2014 -  275 comments
    Categories: accountability, blogs, democracy under attack, election 2014, news, newspapers, spin
    Tags:

    Standardista, andy (the other one) nails it: “Two days, two articles, two different media outlets admitting that they know National use Slater/Farrar to smear and dissemble.”  Trotter raises questions about sources.

  3. David Cunliffe’s speech to the New Zealand Institute

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 12:13 pm, March 14th, 2014 -  124 comments
    Categories: david cunliffe, labour
    Tags:

    Speech notes from today’s address to the New Zealand Institute.  “Trickle-down economics and its neoliberal parentage have failed New Zealanders and left many of our emerging businesses starved of investment capital and skills.  The opportunity gaps have widened and there is no clear, shared strategy to a high value, high income future.  That’s something Labour will change. We want an economy that works for all New Zealanders.”

  4. The surveillance state online

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 2:06 pm, February 25th, 2014 -  9 comments
    Categories: accountability, blogs, internet, spin, Spying
    Tags:

    The leaks by Edward Snowden show many ways state surveillance agencies can workaround the legal requirements placed on them.  Selwyn Manning explained about the “Two Hop” surveillance of online targets.  On Intercept Glenn Greenwald explains the information about the use of “online covert operations”. [Update Andrea Vance on NZ spy tactics]

  5. judith collins dumpster diving?

    Local Bodies: First they ignore you

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 10:30 am, February 11th, 2014 -  13 comments
    Categories: greens, Judith Collins, Metiria Turei, national, Politics, same old national
    Tags:

    Local bodies writes on the way that National has been concentrating their personal attacks at the Greens. It is a pretty typical display by National in any election year. But you get the impression they’re going to seriously be dumpster diving for dirt this year – especially Judith Collins. National are getting desperate at their disappearing coalition partners. “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win”

  6. A glorious waste of money for the titillation of perverts

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 9:28 am, February 8th, 2014 -  70 comments
    Categories: auckland supercity, len brown, local government
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

    The fiasco of the wet dick and the perverts shuddered to a conclusion yesterday with the direct bill of around $250,000. Len Brown was strong-armed into paying $40,000 for the audit which turned up nothing much except that his wife brought a lot of hotel nights. Questions remain about who was responsible for the waste caused by the lack of scoping of the external audit. Looks like dirty politics at the ratepayers expense.

  7. SkyCity: they’re toxic

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 8:11 am, December 16th, 2013 -  170 comments
    Categories: auckland supercity, Economy, local government
    Tags:

    The detail of the Ernest and Young report on Len Brown clears him of all significiant wrongdoing on the local government purse. The hotel room upgrade values are just complete bullshit for someone who had a regular family timeouts at one hotel – which did most of the almost all of the upgrades. The type of customer that all hotels want. The political question is about receiving anything “free” from Skycity.

  8. Cameron Slater: So who pays who?

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 4:19 pm, December 12th, 2013 -  203 comments
    Categories: accountability, blogs, dpf, john key, national, Parliament, parliamentary spending, Politics, public services, rumour, scoundrels
    Tags: ,

    Looks like John Key’s communications boss Jason Ede has been busted supplying material for the most disgusting site in local politics – Whaleoil. It has long been suspected that he supplies material and possibly even writes for that site as part National’s dirty tricks team. Looks like we have some confirmation. So how much is the taxpayer paying for this public servant to blog and does he do it for his job? How much does Cameron Slater “demand” from the taxpayer to provide this service?

  9. Jordan Williams and Simon Lusk

    The anti-democrats NZ tea party

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 10:10 am, October 30th, 2013 -  82 comments
    Categories: accountability, class war, democracy under attack, tax, workers' rights
    Tags: , ,

    From the ranks of those working in the murky depths of dirty, disgusting and despicable politics, comes a piss take of a “union” of “taxpayers”, to lobby against a fair, democratic, caring and inclusive state and for the already greedy and powerful.

  10. The Blame Game

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 7:51 am, October 27th, 2013 -  107 comments
    Categories: auckland supercity, democracy under attack, local body elections, spin, you couldn't make this shit up
    Tags: , , , ,

    And so it continues.  Inside the Palino-Wewege-Cook-Slater camp, every one is pointing the finger at everyone else and putting the blame elsewhere for the clumsily executed smear campaign against Len Brown.  Got to wonder who is in the shadows frantically pulling various levers?

  11. Cam Slater: politely being called a lying arsehole

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 2:28 am, October 22nd, 2013 -  130 comments
    Categories: blogs
    Tags: , , , ,

    I’ve been trying to think of a way of expressing my complete and utter distaste for the arsehole of the local blogs and politics. But someone beat me to it. Hamish Price has been attacked in the usual way by Cameron Slater. Here is his facebook statement in response.

    This rings quite true to me from what I know of the people and timelines.

  12. National’s Civil War

    Written By:  mickysavage -  Date published: 11:59 am, October 21st, 2013 -  171 comments
    Categories: national
    Tags: , ,

    It is clear that there is significant concern within the National Party with the behaviour of Cameron Slater and there is worry that a New Zealand version of the Tea party is forming.  There is an interesting battle developing between the civilised cautious wing of the Party and the Tea Party take no prisoners approach of Slater and Lusk.  The future of the National Party is at stake …

  13. The sick state of the right

    Written By:  Zetetic -  Date published: 7:45 am, October 17th, 2013 -  77 comments
    Categories: Politics
    Tags:

    The Herald reports today that John Palino’s campaign team were up to their eyeballs in the Len Brown dirty digging (or should that be “pantie sniffing”) with Bevan Chung releasing evidence that it was a calculated political move.

  14. Why drop on Len today?

    Written By:  Mike Smith -  Date published: 9:22 pm, October 15th, 2013 -  177 comments
    Categories: uncategorized
    Tags:

    Len’s acknowledged affair can’t have been a secret until today – there are affidavits involved. It can’t have been about  the campaign for mayor – otherwise the Slaters would have dropped it  before the election. I think there is a bigger story that may come out tomorrow, involving Len’s opponent in the previous mayoral election. For what it’s worth, I also don’t think Len’s affair is a hanging offence. He’s a good man and has been a very good mayor, for Manukau and for Auckland.

  15. Return of the Hollow Men

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 10:16 am, September 26th, 2013 -  48 comments
    Categories: accountability, brand key, david cunliffe, don brash, election 2014, Ethics, john key, Judith Collins, news, same old national, slippery, spin
    Tags:

    With Cunliffe’s Labour in the ascendance, NAct and/supporters pull out their bag of dirty and deceptively manipulative, Hollow Men, tricks. Adviser to John Key & Boris Johnson, Mark Textor, will most likely be used again: ruthless attack politics, playing on fears & prejudices.

  16. On national’s smear tactics

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 9:34 pm, September 25th, 2013 -  100 comments
    Categories: crosby textor, same old national, you couldn't make this shit up
    Tags:

    As Irish predicted, the Nats continued their desperate smear campaign today with the revelation that David Cunliffe doesn’t actually have a qualification he never actually claimed to have. Honestly, you couldn’t make this shit up.

  17. Labour up 6.8% – Herald DigiPoll

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 6:04 am, September 25th, 2013 -  269 comments
    Categories: Politics
    Tags:

    Sure it’s just one poll but that’s nearly seven percent. And it’s (nearly) all come off National. This goes quite some way to explaining why National are breaking out the desperate dirty tricks…

  18. NRT: The Herald supports oligarchy

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 4:09 pm, August 28th, 2013 -  27 comments
    Categories: democracy under attack, democratic participation, Media, newspapers, you couldn't make this shit up
    Tags: ,

    No Right Turn makes the point on what the NZ Herald considers a “democracy under attack” to be. Their track record indicates it only ever happens if they find it harder to get advertising revenue or some of their audience finds harder to make money off selling other people’s assets. Of course having people participating doesn’t appear to them to be a part of democracy.

  19. GCSB- Questions?

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 2:31 pm, August 20th, 2013 -  58 comments
    Categories: accountability, david shearer, democratic participation, internet, john key, Spying, winston peters
    Tags:

    John Key has been twisting himself out of shape answering questions about spying on New Zelanders by the GCSB under the GCSB amendment Bill that is currently before the House. [Update] Video Qu One & Three [Update] Qu 1 transcript.

  20. Key’s credibility hit

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 7:03 am, June 4th, 2013 -  110 comments
    Categories: polls
    Tags:

    At the same time as Russel Norman was laying out the Key Government’s flagrant disregard for democracy in powerful terms (and weren’t the Right’s pundits quick to circle the wagons around Key after that?), a poll was out showing the public is agreeing with Norman’s view of Key. 43.5% of Kiwis trust Key less than a year ago. 49% think its time for a change of government.

  21. This is what corporate dictatorship looks like

    Written By:  karol -  Date published: 12:45 pm, May 14th, 2013 -  32 comments
    Categories: accountability, activism, capitalism, democracy under attack, greens, john key, Metiria Turei, overseas investment, same old national, slippery, Steven Joyce, trade
    Tags: ,

    The compensation part of Joyce’s and Key’s dirty, undemocratic SkyCity deal, could legally be over-turned by a future government, as proposed by the Greens.   However, the TPPA could weaken NZ’s parliamentary sovereignty and open the government to claims by secret private offshore tribunals. Opposition needs to step up!

  22. Good poll for Shearer

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 6:28 am, March 22nd, 2013 -  36 comments
    Categories: david shearer, labour, polls
    Tags:

    The latest Herald Digipoll is mixed news for the left, but good news personally for David Shearer. Even John Armstrong is cautiously impressed…

  23. Hide confused on underclass

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 10:06 am, March 17th, 2013 -  61 comments
    Categories: act, class war, national, poverty, rodney hide
    Tags: , , ,

    Remember the “underclass”? John Key pretended to be concerned about them for a while as a gimmick for the 2008 election. Thanks to Matt McCarten, Rodney Hide has been reminded of their existence. He then goes on to diagnose the wrong problems and the wrong solutions (of course). I’m sure that Standardistas can do better…

  24. English drained Solid

    Written By:  Ben Clark -  Date published: 11:53 am, March 14th, 2013 -  57 comments
    Categories: accountability, assets, bill english
    Tags:

    Some great work from Labour yesterday as they got the documents showing Bill English being advised about Solid Energy’s predicted lower profits from a lower coal price  – and asking for a bigger dividend anyway.

  25. Espiner on wages

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 7:22 am, February 15th, 2013 -  141 comments
    Categories: wages
    Tags:

    For those of you who’ve missed it Colin Espiner is back on the NZ interwebz with a new Stuff blog, the (rather earthily titled) Bull-Dust. Colin was a bit of a pioneer of journalist blogging in New Zealand. He was, I believe, the first Gallery journalist to run a proper blog and certainly the first to get in amongst it in the comments sections.

  26. 2012 cabinet report card

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 12:25 pm, January 2nd, 2013 -  18 comments
    Categories: national, Politics
    Tags:

    After Eddie dissed the usual beltway year in review style of column/post I was a little chary about doing this one. And then I realised the good thing about The Standard is we do real world and beltway issues. So here goes my once-over assessment of the 2012 cabinet performance and what it’s likely to mean for the future.

  27. NRT: This week’s distraction

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 3:25 pm, November 12th, 2012 -  5 comments
    Categories: national
    Tags: , ,

    No Right Turn on this week’s offering from the Nat roulette wheel of political distractions…

  28. How to sound completely insincere

    Written By:  QoT -  Date published: 6:00 pm, November 4th, 2012 -  53 comments
    Categories: brand key, john key
    Tags:

    John Key is world-famous for speaking unintelligibly, no doubt.  But how do we spot the times when he’s not just being ineloquent, and is clearly parroting lines prepared by someone else?

  29. Labour, WTF? – a collection of posts

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 9:18 am, August 9th, 2012 -  101 comments
    Categories: labour
    Tags:

    We’ve received a set of guest posts arising from the Stab In the Back comments that Duncan Garner reported on Tuesday and Su’a William Sio. We’ll compile the best here. As always, we exercise judgement in not publishing truly nutty stuff but there’s no editorial line, no endorsement of guest posts we publish – they just have to pass the test of being informative, lucid, and left.

  30. Nats’ pollster reveals asset sale plan

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 9:34 am, June 23rd, 2012 -  250 comments
    Categories: democracy under attack, petition, privatisation, referendum
    Tags:

    National pollster and Herald columnist (I know!) David Farrar has revealed what National has up its sleeve for asset sales. No, I’m not talking about how they would put ‘mums and dads’ at the ‘front of the queue’, or any such nonsense. I’m talking about how they will attempt to de-legitimise the referendum or, alternatively, try to slam the sales through before it happens.

  31. Nat Civil War: ceasefire breached

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 6:35 am, May 9th, 2012 -  90 comments
    Categories: Judith Collins, national, Steven Joyce
    Tags: , ,

    Well, that didn’t take long. A couple of weeks of quiet (probably thanks to some good polls more than anything) and, now, the National Party Civil War has re-erupted as the Collins and Joyce factions fight over the post-Key future. The leaking of National Party board minutes shows how serious the fighting is and reveals strong opposition to Slater/Lusk’s tactics.

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