Posts Tagged ‘dirty politics’

Watkins – independent media?

Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, August 23rd, 2014 - 43 comments

So, in the midst of a massive dirty politics scandal involving assorted nats and their attack bloggers Slater and Farrar – who does Tracy Watkins turn to to provide commentary? Why, Farrar himself, of course. Classy.

Timeline: Key responsible for SIS release

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, August 23rd, 2014 - 73 comments

Key is responsible for the release of SIS briefing notes to Cameron Slater – one of the main issues summarised in Dirty Politics. Here’s the timeline in detail.

Looking at the big policy picture

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, August 22nd, 2014 - 11 comments

Despite John Key’s key message du jour, the parties of the Opposition are talking policy.

John Key’s Groundhog day II

Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, August 22nd, 2014 - 88 comments

A 2011 press conference video has cast further doubt on John Key’s claim that he did not know about the release of sensitive information to Cameron Slater.

Updated: The recollection of Tucker doesn’t match what John Key said in 2011. What spaghetti explanation will Johnnie give today.

Dirty politics – the South is revolted

Written By: - Date published: 7:08 am, August 22nd, 2014 - 38 comments

Plenty of editorial comment is decrying Key’s dirty politics. Two pieces from the Deep South yesterday were particularly forthright. Can Key walk on sewerage?

Key lied – The smoking gun?

Written By: - Date published: 2:26 pm, August 21st, 2014 - 165 comments

[Updated] John Key 8th August 2011: “”What happened is Warren Tucker didn’t come to me, he went to his legal adviser and his legal advisers told him this is the process they have to follow and when he was going through that process it was at that point he told me he’d release it because he has to tell me that under the no-surprises doctrine.”

John Key’s groundhog day

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, August 21st, 2014 - 52 comments

Poor John Key must think he is in the movie Groundhog Day. The media clearly do not accept his explanation for Dirty Politics. And each day further information comes out which casts more and more doubt on the veracity of what he has been saying.

Polity: Proof

Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, August 21st, 2014 - 100 comments

Here’s a tweet from Felix Marwick this morning that blows a big hole in John Key’s denials about not knowing about the strangely rapid OIS releases from the SIS to Cameron Slater. What is the bet that he is going to argue that he had a sloppy memory lapse – just like the one that he keeps accusing Phil Goff about? Updated: Phil Goff’s response.

Working with senior nats for release

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, August 20th, 2014 - 17 comments

I trust that the media will be interested to know which senior Nats Slater was working with on the release of data hacked from Labour servers.

Dirty Politics roundup

Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, August 20th, 2014 - 21 comments

Pot pourri, grab bag… Nicky Hager’s sister’s response, Media Take, John Key’s wanting to talk about policy, political passion, at the end of the day…

Dirty politics vs accountability – you can’t be smeared with the truth

Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, August 20th, 2014 - 50 comments

Accountability is not dirty politics. You can’t be smeared with the truth. John Key’s lines are as worthless as his promises of ministerial accountability.

NRT: Politics does not have to be dirty

Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, August 20th, 2014 - 30 comments

Writing in The Press yesterday morning, Chris Trotter argues that politics is essentially dirty. No Right Turn rejects that. So do the authors on this site. None of us do this kind of crap. Nor do most people in the political arena. Why taint us with the brush of John Key’s blackops team.

Aaron Bhatnagar – I barely know the guy

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, August 19th, 2014 - 26 comments

BLip has a look at Aaron Bhatnagar and his role in the disgusting events documented in “Dirty Tricks”. In particular the way that Judith Collins seems to have rewarded her crony Cameron Slater’s mate on the taxpayers purse.

How Dirty Politics hurt low-paid workers

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, August 18th, 2014 - 28 comments

While the right tries to distract and deflect from Dirty Politics, it pays to take a look at who got hurt by Cameron Slater and his buddies.

Key denies wrongdoing – the video

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, August 18th, 2014 - 20 comments

A video montage of Key’s denials to recent reporter questions about Dirty Politics.

Key’s farcical “Don’t ask, don’t tell” routine

Written By: - Date published: 3:04 pm, August 18th, 2014 - 40 comments

John Key is sticking to his defensive strategy: deny everything, label Hager’s book a smear campaign, and – when pressed on specific allegations – say he doesn’t know the details. There is of course a very easy way for Mr Key to become acquainted with the details, which he doesn’t seem keen to do, and that’s to simply ask the right people….

Casualty of Dirty Politics?

Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, August 18th, 2014 - 43 comments

Has Jordan Williams been dumped from Franks & Oglivie? Or is it merely coincidence that he disappeared from the web pages within days of the release of “Dirty Politics”? Could this be contributing to his foul mood?

Why does Jason Ede still have Beehive access?

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, August 18th, 2014 - 37 comments

Andrea Vance has reported that as late as last week Jason Ede still had access to the Beehive.  And Key’s replies to her questions concerning this suggest that there is a lot that he does not know.  It makes you wonder why he can be so insistent that Nicky Hager’s allegations are wrong when he has such little information.

Rob Gilchrist On Nicky Hager

Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, August 17th, 2014 - 88 comments

Unmasked by Hager, former activist and police spy Rob Gilchrist says “It may come as a surprise but I have the utmost respect for Mr Hager, He doesn’t write ’baseless allegations’, ’what-ifs and fanciful speculation’ Mr Hager is also not a ‘conspiracy theorist‘, he’s just extremely good at finding conspiracies.”

Was a crime committed when Slater accessed Labour’s computer system?

Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, August 17th, 2014 - 46 comments

Occasionally erudite disagrees with one part of rocky’s analysis of the legality of Cameron Slater and Jason Ede’s accessing and copying the data from the Labour party’s computer. However he still thinks it is likely to be criminal.

Naming and Shaming

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 pm, August 16th, 2014 - 11 comments

Judith Collins naming the eponymous Simon Pleasants to Cameron Slater as the suspect in a document leak is unconscionable.  She cannot remain a Minister, otherwise Key’s claim to a high standard when it comes to Ministerial behaviour is in tatters. This time the John Banks  defence “I haven’t read it” and “I have taken his/her word” will not do.

John Key’s defence to Hager’s book starts to unwind

Written By: - Date published: 4:29 pm, August 16th, 2014 - 155 comments

The Herald is reporting that the first of Key’s denials about the allegations in Dirty Politics has been refuted. National did hack Labour’s crippled server in 2011 and even apologised for it but Key claims National had no involvement.

Some confirmation about Collins and Slater

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, August 16th, 2014 - 31 comments

Over at The Ruminator there is a post corroborates the Judith Collins and Cameron Slater mutual back-scratching in private vendettas. It appears to me that there has been rather a lot of fiddling of the OIAs in recent years. In particular I’m thinking about the OIA requests on Liu for TV3.

 

Who took Slater’s emails?

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, August 16th, 2014 - 58 comments

Some interesting comments on Hager’s book by John Armstrong and Danyl McLaughlan and the nagging question of who is responsible remains …

The Credibility Stakes: John Key vs Nicky Hager

Written By: - Date published: 2:12 pm, August 15th, 2014 - 58 comments

BLip comments on John Armstrong’s article yesterday. Then he updates his “Honest Man” list about John Key and his limited understanding of the truth.

The Hager Book – National fights back

Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, August 15th, 2014 - 91 comments

Two days after Nicky Hager’s book has been released and National’s response has been interesting. They are doing everything from attacking the author to the means of obtaining the information, to saying that it is politics as usual and Labour does it too. But John Key’s recent response to TV3 looked desperate. And the veracity of what he said needs to be checked.

But the door was open…

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 am, August 15th, 2014 - 277 comments

The intention of this post is to examine the similarities and differences between the hacking of Cameron Slater’s communications on the one hand, and the hacking of the Labour Party donor database on the other. There are two important issues to determine in both cases and I will cover them separately. The first is the legality of the hacking and the second is the ethics of using the resulting information regardless of whether the obtaining of the information in the first instance was unlawful.

Irritated and up early

Written By: - Date published: 11:27 pm, August 14th, 2014 - 72 comments

There has been a bit of pestering of authors by media in the last few days and some inadvisable waffling by fools ignorant of the blogging world about this site. I’ve had to bestir myself to talk about it. I’m not too happy about the time wasting. But on a happier note, the site is performing superbly under load..

Slater and Christchurch – your thoughts?

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, August 14th, 2014 - 61 comments

Cameron Slater expresses his thoughts on Christchurch and the effects of the second Christchurch Earthquake. John Key thinks that he is a “pretty colourful character”. What do you think?

Last night at the beehive

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, August 14th, 2014 - 36 comments

Usually all lights are off. But not last night. I wonder what they were talking about on the 9th floor of the Beehive last night? That is John Keys office.

National Response

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, August 14th, 2014 - 155 comments

National’s standard response is to ridicule – other political parties, Jon Stephenson, scientists etc have all had it. It slots nicely with Cameron Slater’s style. Now they’re ridiculing Nicky Hager, but they need to be taken up on each allegation.