Posts Tagged ‘melissa lee’

Caption contest

Written By: - Date published: 7:26 pm, December 13th, 2021 - 31 comments

Keep it seemly …

National has lots of questions

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, January 12th, 2019 - 38 comments

National asked 40,000 questions of Ministers last year. This seems excessive.

Auckland Council Mayoral candidates – Mark Thomas

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, September 24th, 2015 - 21 comments

Mark Thomas who has close ties with the National Party has announced that he is going to run for the Auckland Mayoralty next year.

Leadership and loyalty

Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, March 31st, 2015 - 55 comments

Key ran out on failed candidate Mike Osborne in Northland, just like he ran out on Melissa Lee in Mt Albert.

National hypocrisy about the gay pride parade

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 23rd, 2015 - 86 comments

National engages in Auckland’s Gay Pride parade by sending two MPs who voted against marriage equality and an Auckland Councillor who on Facebook calls a young man who pointed this out as a “little c*ck”.  Way to blow relations with the gay and lesbian community.  Update: And Linda Cooper has apologised, sort of …

New ‘no darkies’ party to form

Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, October 10th, 2010 - 45 comments

Paul ‘dickshit’ Henry, Maurice ‘no shi’ite’ Williamson, John ‘I wish South Aucklanders hadn’t voted’ Banks, Melissa ‘South Aucklanders are all crims’ Lee, Paul ‘cheekie darkie’ Holmes, and Michael ‘brown slug’ Laws have joined forces to create a new political party for ‘real New Zealanders’ standing up to ‘the Brown-skinned elite’.

Banks and the South Auckland bashers

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, October 2nd, 2010 - 27 comments

John Banks has made bashing South Auckland part of his campaign “strategy”.  That didn’t work out so well for Melissa Lee, and it won’t work out so well for others that are now trying the same tactic…

John Banks – another Melissa Lee

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, October 1st, 2010 - 74 comments

John Banks has been slagging off South Auckland.  Ooops.  That’s the same mistake that Melissa Lee made in the Mt Albert by election.  The same mistake deserves the same fate.  Banks cannot credibly operate as mayor of the SuperCity.

The reverse midas touch

Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 8 comments

David Farrar leapt to a “they did it too” defence of the taxpayer-funded ‘survey’ that National MPs are sending to selected voters around the country. I reckon he wrote the questions. It was Farrar’s dodgy polling that convinced National to run Melissa Lee as the candidate in Mt Albert. I guess Lee getting caught out with a dodgy ‘survey’ is just Farrar’s reverse midas touch striking again.

Lee eyeing up Wigram?

Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, April 21st, 2010 - 18 comments

Odds are good Jim Anderton is standing for mayor of Christchurch. By-election will be a chance to rev up the Labour machine again. Safe seat: Labour+Progressive had over 20,000 candidate votes. Also gives Progressives and Labour time to combine their assets, activists, and systems well before the general election. But it looks like Labour isn’t the only one seeing an opportunity:

Key lashes out at random

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, October 17th, 2009 - 16 comments

Key looks like a PM under pressure. He’s started lashing out at random – never a good sign. It happened while discussing Melissa Lee’s repayment of $80,000 of taxpayer’s money that she had somehow managed to forget that she had. (Yes I know – that sort of thing happens to me all the time too.) […]

Lee admits she stole taxpayer money

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 pm, October 12th, 2009 - 20 comments

Just two hours after TV3 revealed that Melissa Lee had stolen $100,000 from NZ on Air, Lee announced she will pay the money back. Just a few hours earlier she had been insisting it was her money, just a confusion over accounting. Her tune has only changed because TV3’s story exposed that cover story as […]

Lee’s fingers in the till covered up by Coleman

Written By: - Date published: 8:07 pm, October 12th, 2009 - 4 comments

A leak has revealed that Melissa Lee is under investigation for pilfering taxpayers’ money. Before the Mt Albert by-election she was cleared of a different rip-off, but it turns out that NZ on Air was still investigating her for keeping $100,000 of contingency funds that should have been returned to NZ on Air. Lee denies any […]

Know when to fold ’em

Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, June 15th, 2009 - 40 comments

A string of high-profile stuff-ups. You were too smug and incompetent to deal with them. A disappointment to your boss. Key put a lot of faith in you. He defended you at first before cutting you loose to protect his brand. A devastating public humiliation. After which it is clear you have no political future. […]

Poor Melissa, well, not so poor

Written By: - Date published: 5:38 am, June 12th, 2009 - 13 comments

She’s really trying her best. Even with only one news cycle to go, Melissa Lee is still out there, working hard to get herself into third place. From NZPA: Appearing in a candidate’s debate in front of members of the Unite union, Ms Lee was asked how she would survive on the minimum wage of […]

Kneecapped

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments

Until now, Melissa Lee’s only remaining selling point in this train wreck of a campaign has been that the party she’s standing for is currently in Government. As she said in her press release yesterday: ‘I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key’s Government.’ Unfortunate […]

The Tory nose-dive roundup

Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, June 9th, 2009 - 34 comments

I never seen a government crash so quickly, so hard. The Standard was saying before the election that Key was a two-faced facade and his government would push a rightwing agenda. The media chose to ignore the signs. Too caught up in the fun of getting their boy elected to care about what would happen […]

Joke candidate cracks a funny

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, June 9th, 2009 - 19 comments

From Lee’s presser yesterday: “I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key’s Government.’ Melissa, you’re not a minister. Only ministers are members of government.

History repeats for Mark Thomas

Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, May 27th, 2009 - 19 comments

The irony is that Melissa Lee’s campaign manager, Mark Thomas, is no stranger to campaigns that start off with a hiss and a roar only to collapse when abandoned by National’s leadership. Thomas was National’s candidate for Wellington Central in 1996, the first MMP election, in a three way contest with Act’s Richard Prebble and […]

Fair weather friends

Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, May 26th, 2009 - 32 comments

Watch as the Tories try to distance Key from Lee. Remember that Lee was Key’s personal choice. Young, pretty, smiley, not too sharp on the detail – he must have seen a lot of himself in her. He believed that she would win on the back of his popularity. In Key’s mind this would be […]

Starting early

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, May 21st, 2009 - 68 comments

I’m starting to feel a little sorry for Melissa Lee given the punching bag she’s become. True, she’s brought it on herself, but even I felt a little queasy watching the events at Auckland University yesterday. But for anyone who looked behind the “rising star” brand National was trying to sell us the warning signs […]

Why Lee is banned from interviews

Written By: - Date published: 7:23 pm, May 19th, 2009 - 122 comments

Rumour has it Melissa has been banned from giving formal interviews by National’s leadership but what’s the harm in answering a few questions from a reporter? Let’s see: Garner tries to tempt her into repeating her motorway comments but she doesn’t need the help. She is totally self-centred. Notice how all her stories are about […]

Priceless

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, May 18th, 2009 - 12 comments

Spotted on Labour’s “Grassroots” supporters’ site.

The real apology

Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, May 15th, 2009 - 34 comments

The PM’s office Melissa Lee has released an apology for her ‘crims on the motorway’ comments. Well, not a genuine apology – ‘it was a heated debate’ is the line, which TUMEKE! exposes as a lie and not an excuse anyway. On Red Alert, Trevor Mallard (who is taking to blogging like, um, a duck to […]

I can see South Auckland from my house! An interview with Melissa Lee

Written By: - Date published: 5:44 pm, May 14th, 2009 - 16 comments

Did your company use NZ On Air money to produce a National Party promotional video? Look, I didn’t keep records of who was working on what when and it doesn’t work like that the only people who have a problem are disgruntled employees but they were volunteers and we were having fun so it doesn’t […]

Ravi back in the running?

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, May 14th, 2009 - 68 comments

Over at Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog, Trevor Mallard points out that nominations for the Mt Albert by-election don’t close until next week. If John Key, as Mallard puts it, “has the balls” he can tell Melissa Lee to stand down and the National selection can be held again. Poor old Ravi Musuku might […]

Lee down, under; about to be reborn

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, May 14th, 2009 - 34 comments

Melissa Lee’s recent interviews on Q+A, TV1, TV3 and RNZ proved once and for all that being able to read an autocue doesn’t mean you’re any good at handling the media. When Lee put her hand up to rob the hapless Ravi Musuku of any chance of ever being rewarded for standing in Mt Albert, I […]

Lee implodes

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, May 14th, 2009 - 73 comments

And the ticking timebomb goes off. From Not PC on last night’s Mt Albert candidates’ debate: Most of what every mainstream candidate had to say on the night was both instantly forgettable and intended only for short-term political advantage.  But there was one thing one candidate said that is now going to dog her through the […]

Melissa keeps on digging

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 15 comments

Here’s Melissa Lee explaining on Checkpoint how her staff volunteered their time to produce a video for National Party list candidates: LEE: Well we were doing a launch, you know, for the Asian campaign and I thought it might be a good, fun thing to actually have a video to put onto Youtube or Facebook, […]

The Nats’ campaign vid that you and I paid for

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 54 comments

I figure the very least the Nats could do after spending our money on their asian-voter campaign video is to share it with us. Strangely, I couldn’t find it on the National Party website as referenced by last night’s Campbell Live piece. Fortunately the YouTube user “NationalAsianTeam” still has their copy up – it’s embedded […]

The challenges for the Mt Albert candidates

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, May 6th, 2009 - 45 comments

Bit of a group effort this one. John Boscawen MP – Boscawen is mad as a hatter and pretty damn ignorant. So he should appeal to the hard-right voters. In Parliament, he has argued against the Waterview tunnel and for a surface motorway. That’s not going to fly with the people of Mt Albert, especially […]