Posts Tagged ‘colin espiner’

Chorus of opposition to Key-Dunne spying Bill continues

Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, August 7th, 2013 - 15 comments

Yesterday Opposition parties filibustered, and successfully delayed the passage of the Key-Dunne spying Bill. This buys more time to protest, and to put pressure on MPs.

We have never before seen in New Zealand such a broad and ongoing chorus of opposition to government legislation as we are seeing with this Bill. Just yesterday alone…

Giving the game away

Written By: - Date published: 2:16 pm, May 3rd, 2013 - 180 comments

Aaron Gilmore, eh? He’s clearly finished in the National Party. Not for the view he expressed when he threatened to get a young waiter sacked, but because by doing so he’s lifted the veil on the carefully covered elitism that drives the national party’s agenda.

Espiner on wages

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

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.

Don’t ask directions from Colin

Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, August 3rd, 2010 - 15 comments

Needed a laugh. Luckily, C Espiner always delivers: “While his predecessor was fond of visiting Europe, Key has virtually snubbed the northern hemisphere since he has been prime minister.”

The more things change

Written By: - Date published: 6:32 pm, June 21st, 2010 - 33 comments

Colin Espiner says MP’s shouldn’t protest but then gets some basic facts wrong trying to show why.

I guess he’s made a point. But not the one he meant to…

Labour concedes 2011 election

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, June 13th, 2010 - 56 comments

In a short statement outside the Beehive today Labour leader Phil Goff conceded the 2011 election to National.

Espiner: Key trust not blind

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, May 31st, 2010 - 39 comments

Colin Espiner sums up Highwater-gate very well: “Basically it comes down to this: [John Key] said he didn’t know he had shares in Highwater when he really did.” No-one’s alleging Key had conspiracy meetings in smokey rooms with alcohol magnates. That’s a ridiculous misdirection being run by Kevin Taylor. This is about the blind trust and how Key handled the conflicts of interest arising from his knowledge of his shareholdings.

Journos on the declining state of journalism

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, April 15th, 2010 - 17 comments

“Gov-Gen to attend PM’s funeral”. To me, it says a hell of a lot about the state of the media in this country that a sub-editor, or whoever they have writing headlines these days, does not know the difference between a president and a prime minister, and that no-one else at Stuff spotted the mistake before it went up.

Espiner on the right-wing smear machine

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, March 31st, 2010 - 16 comments

The Nats run orchestrated smear campaigns coordinated with ministers’ offices, bloggers, and tame journos. National doesn’t want to and can’t engage in real political debate on the issues. So it is reduced to mud throwing. Some brave journo needs to shine a light on what is going on here. It is not good enough for the government to get away with using its proxies to wage secret smear campaigns.

One for the road

Written By: - Date published: 1:49 pm, March 22nd, 2010 - 12 comments

Colin Espiner is hanging up his umm, journalist tools?, and leaving the press gallery to be an assistant editor for The Press down in Christchurch.
I wish him the best of luck but I can’t help but leave him with one more correction of a basic mistake for the road.

Get tough no solution

Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, February 23rd, 2010 - 7 comments

Crime is not, as Judith Collins seems to think, evil people doing evil things that can be repressed by ever greater state violence. Deterrence doesn’t work because crime, especially violent crime, is not a rational outcome of weighing costs and benefits. A crime policy that doesn’t reduce crime isn’t really a crime policy, it’s a con.

Quick thoughts

Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, February 8th, 2010 - 36 comments

It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that a government that spends half its time on holiday and the rest on PR stunts is never going to get New Zealand to catch Australia by 2025 but having the Reserve Bank Governor say its impossible, that’s hugely embarrassing. Of course, Key is refusing to acknowledge the […]

Colin, I missed you

Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, January 28th, 2010 - 44 comments

Colin Espiner’s back with his first blog of the year. It’s so much fun having him back. In his first outing, he comes up with four suggestions for government action in the year ahead. Since the government doesn’t seem to have any other ideas, let’s look at two of them: End interest-free student loans Yeah, […]

Economic illiteracy

Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, December 16th, 2009 - 7 comments

More economic illiteracy from our old friend: Certainly given the rhetoric from the finance minister of late I’d thought the numbers would be worse than the Budget, not better. Um, everyone knew they would be better. We’ve known for months. The recession was over earlier than expected and that improves all the numbers. what was […]

Labour’s flag strategy

Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, December 15th, 2009 - 44 comments

Colin Espiner: After making inroads in the latest TV3 poll, Goff has clearly taken fright after the reaction to his nationhood speech. How else to explain his perplexing decision not to comment on the announcement by Prime Minister John Key that the Maori tino rangatiratanga flag will fly on Waitangi Day? This decision by Key […]

Getting it right

Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, December 14th, 2009 - 22 comments

Colin Espiner has a piece in the Dom Post today attributing Labour’s four point rise in the polls to Goff’s ‘Nationhood’ speech. He goes on, in what can’t help but be interpreted as a wee dig at The Standard: after 30 years in politics, it’s also possible [Goff] knows the electorate a bit better than […]

Not all ETSs are created equal

Written By: - Date published: 2:32 pm, November 24th, 2009 - 34 comments

On his blog, Colin Espiner writes: “it’s also extremely ironic to hear Labour wringing its hands about the impact of the ETS when…HELLO…Labour passed the Emissions Trading Scheme!!!” Oh dear. That’s like saying ‘Labour is opposed to National’s ACC policy but Labour had an ACC policy of its own, hello!!!’ Labour isn’t (and I really […]

Right by accident?

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, October 24th, 2009 - 9 comments

We’ve been pretty hard, although justifiably so, on Colin Espiner recently and I’m loath to do it again. He does put himself out there more than other journos with his blog and that’s admirable. On the other hand, can we let comments like these in his post on the MMP referenda go? We don’t yet […]

Told you so: Right pushes ACC privatisation

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, October 19th, 2009 - 57 comments

Last Thursday, Colin Espiner was mocking all of us who said that National and other rightwing groups were trying to create a sense of crisis around ACC to soften us up for privatisation: “That somehow this is all just a VRWC* to derail the ACC, lower public confidence in it, and then sell it to […]

It’s called politics, Colin

Written By: - Date published: 4:11 am, October 16th, 2009 - 30 comments

Colin, I think we need to discuss your work: the conspiracy theory peddled by Labour and the EPMU (i.e. Labour) that somehow this is all just a VRWC to derail the ACC, lower public confidence in it, and then sell it to the highest (or any) bidder just doesn’t ring true for me. Don’t you […]

Informative journalism

Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, September 25th, 2009 - 4 comments

Colin Espiner: “For some reason that I don’t quite understand, unemployment usually continues to rise at the end of recessions, and there’s normally a lag time of something like a year before it falls.” I can help with that one. When a down-turn starts, employers generally don’t know how bad or how long it will […]

Some stuff to read

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, May 25th, 2009 - 10 comments

A few good posts today that are worth a look if you missed them: Chris Trotter reckons the police and the media are grossly underestimating the turnout at today’s hikoi. If we assume lower Queen Street to be roughly a kilometre in length and about 30 metres wide we get an area of 30,000 square […]

When more is less

Written By: - Date published: 3:31 pm, May 8th, 2009 - 2 comments

Colin Espiner writes: “Another thing that’s being clearly signalled is that Labour’s previous spending promises in health and education won’t be honoured in the Budget. That $3.4 billion of spending Labour planned for 2009/2010… At the same time, Key and English are at pains to say that health and education spending will increase – and […]

Compare and Contrast

Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, April 5th, 2009 - 4 comments

Prior to the last election our fearless MSM media uncritically repeated Key’s ‘NZ Sucks’ Crosby/Textor attack lines, framing an historically unremarkable rise in emigration, as evidence of Labour’s failure and general perfidy. Lots of examples abound, this being fairly typical. Of course since November emigration numbers peaked in January (and have fallen since in line […]

Espiner on National’s use of the crisis

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, March 16th, 2009 - 29 comments

Sadly, I couldn’t find Colin Espiner’s excellent piece in The Press today online. It’s good. Colin’s thoughtful observations derail the government’s PR spin about That Nice Man Mr Key and his commonsense centrist approach. He wonders whether the National government is taking advantage of the economic crisis to push through hard-right reforms Kiwis didn’t vote […]

Govt’s ACC spin working

Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, December 5th, 2008 - 32 comments

We’ve covered the National/ACT government’s latest ACC beat-up extensively already. IB spelled out rather well here the techniques being used by the government to undermine ACC in order to create a sense of crisis and soften up the public for privatisation. And it pains me to say it, but it’s working. And it’s working well. […]

MSM columns – clueless about fact checking

Written By: - Date published: 5:33 pm, September 14th, 2008 - 30 comments

This week the election was announced and the third question to the PM (asked by Colin Espiner) was about whether The Standard possibly knew the date (Helen doesn’t tell us either). Colin thinks we’re being sensitive about the mainstream media’s attitudes to The Standard as shown in a comment he made on his own blog […]

What was it about that Herald poll?

Written By: - Date published: 5:24 pm, July 29th, 2008 - 20 comments

Should Labour be worried about today’s poll in the Herald which contrary to other recent polls showed the gap between the parties rising? Colin Espiner doesn’t seem to think so, suggesting: I wouldn’t take much notice of the Herald DigiPoll. This one’s even worse than the last one. It was taken over THREE WEEKS and interviewed […]

National – more women-friendly?

Written By: - Date published: 4:52 pm, May 20th, 2008 - 52 comments

Colin Espiner pointed it out the other week, National “needs more women. Never over-represented in National at the best of times, the party is looking increasingly estrogen-lite.” So there would have been a sigh of relief in National circles that they can now distance themselves from comments such as these from declared departee Bob Clarkson: […]