The Standard Week: 25 July-1 August

Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, August 1st, 2008 - 19 comments
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Another week of gonzo journalism and you can understand why people get turned off politics. While the press gallery concentrated on which of them was most offended by Winston Peters, we had a look behind some of the policies on offer and ran a series of posts on the impact of the work rights policies of National and the Left on Kiwis’ wages. Here are out favourite posts of the week:

Nats painted into a corner
The tens of thousands of Kiwi families who pay little or no tax thanks to their WFF tax credits will be breathing a sigh of relief but National now has a real problem. They’re still promising big tax cuts and there’s no money left to pay for them… [more]

CTU critiques National’s employment policy
Last week the Council of Trade Unions issued a devastating point-by-point critiqueof National’s ACC policy. Now they’ve followed up with an excellent and surprisingly balanced critique of National’s employment policy…[more]

So National DO have some policy, errr sorry
So the news went out! National DID have some policy said Colin James…But no, Colin James seems to have got the wrong end of the stick reports Colin Espiner… [more]

Larger slice of the cake for workers under Labour
..when the Left is in power not only do wages go up, they go up as a % of GDP. When National is in power, not only do wages go down, they go down as a % of GDP… [more]

Sickening
Speaking in Rotorua earlier this week, John Key offered the following reason why you should vote for him to be Prime Minister… [more]

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19 comments on “The Standard Week: 25 July-1 August ”

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  1. Matthew Pilott 1
    1 August 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Speaking of Gonzo, I highly recommend viewing of “The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson“. It is on at the Film Festival, and I would imagine some theatres will show it afterwards, or get the DVD.

  2. Buggerlugs 2
    1 August 2008 at 6:24 pm

    “On becoming a Standardista, you will receive your Standardista cloth cap, ‘how-to’ guide for living a PC life, class consciousness, and Notional Party yo-yo that swings from the right to the centre and back again every three years.*

    *you won’t actually get these things, except the class consciousness”

    Yeah, just like your Labour mates – promise lots, give people shit they don’t want.

    [lprent: Was that meant to mean anything? Or are you just here doing a hit and run?
    Besides, I think you just described the current National policy technique. Don’t say anything and hope people will read what they want into it. Pathetic really.]

  3. Buggerlugs 3
    1 August 2008 at 6:48 pm

    Gee, I suppose that pathetic attempt at a reply is better than being banned, as you tend to do with most others who criticise your masters.

    [lprent: Don’t act like an idiot and you don’t get banned. See Policy.

    Try to trash the comment space and find out exactly how much of a bastard I can be. ]

  4. Felix 4
    1 August 2008 at 7:08 pm

    The standard of the trolling on this site has really gone downhill.

    Most of these new ones make d4j look like a great artist by comparison.

  5. outofbed 5
    1 August 2008 at 7:16 pm

    So the latest Morgan poll is interestimg Nats down 4.5
    But best of all Greens 8%
    http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2008/4311/
    Its getting closer 🙂

  6. Anita 6
    1 August 2008 at 7:23 pm

    NZ First on 5% although the entire polling period 14-27 July is during the Peters/donations debacle (The Herald kicked it off on the 12th I think).

    So it looks like the NZF core supporters haven’t been swayed by it all.

  7. lprent 7
    1 August 2008 at 7:40 pm

    That doesn’t surprise me, nor would have seeing the polling go up a few percent. Winston is capable of exploiting any media coverage.

    I’d actually expect him to start showing an upward trend now that the right has succeeded in helping NZF to raise their profile. You’d think that they haven’t seen a populist in back-foot action before.

  8. outofbed 8
    1 August 2008 at 7:51 pm

    If MP gets 7 seats
    them a LAB GREEN MP P NZF Government is possible on those figures
    If NZF drops below 5% its a Nat gov
    I love the MMP calulator
    (which is really sad as it is Friday night and I should be out drinking)

  9. Anita 9
    1 August 2008 at 8:04 pm

    outofbed,

    Did you count in Dunne winning Ohariu. Also, how many list seats did you give the Māori Party? The next parliament should have a serious overhang 🙂

    I also have other things to do, but they’re definitely not better things.

  10. randal 10
    1 August 2008 at 8:08 pm

    this aint gonzo yet…send me 50 grand a car and a driver a month before the election and you’ll get gonzo. GUARANTEED!!!!!!

  11. outofbed 11
    1 August 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Anita This Gives Nat Act and UF 61 and the rest 63
    ACT 3
    GP 10
    Jim 1
    Lab 39
    MP 7
    NP 57
    NZF 6
    UF 1

    Total 124
    You have got to expect Nats top come of a few percent and Lab to firm
    closer to Election I reckon its all down to the MP Its going to be close

  12. randal 12
    1 August 2008 at 8:48 pm

    you are all wrong…ha ha ha. modern elections are stillmysterious things but yu still hve to get out the vote. suggesting the possibiities is ok but predicting the result from a fickle electorate will be difficult if the correct signals are to be interpreted. so far it h as just been the ‘permanent cmpaign’ with keys standing up in th house and comparing his non existent leadership with the prime minister. Kiwis know they have never had it so good and they are not willing to change horse just yet especially in troubled times.

  13. Macro 13
    1 August 2008 at 8:55 pm

    I don’t see Matt Pilott commenting gleefully here..
    Obviously it’s a rogue poll.
    The Morgan poll has been historically a percentage point or two to the right on election day. Yes it will be touch and go.

  14. randal 14
    1 August 2008 at 9:08 pm

    dream on macro. where did you buy your cheap programe from? i thnk its got a few lines of txt on the wonk. it doesnt work like that. baybee.

  15. dad4justice 15
    1 August 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Whatever your doctor has you on randal, they certainly help obliterate reality.
    Are you really phil whoar in disguise?

  16. Matthew Pilott 16
    1 August 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Since when have I really given a toss about polls, Macro? I don’t spend all day and night here either… Think you got the wrong fella there.

  17. Macro 17
    1 August 2008 at 9:37 pm

    Randal – have you been drinking?

    If you look at the morgan poll over the past three elections – it’s polling is about one or two percentage point’s biased towards the right of the actual election result. They actually say so themselves!

    Here is their comment on the last election.

    “The Morgan Poll conducted each night during September 3-13 was the most accurate in predicting the small margin between the two major parties (a Labour lead of 1.5%), however it overestimated the vote for the minor parties, resulting in an average error for both the major parties (2.35%) and for all parties (1.37%) – the telephone Morgan Poll recorded the vote for non-major parties as 24.5%, the actual vote was 19.8%.”

    The morgan poll was 2% points biased towards the right when National and Act are considered together 1.5% bias to Act and 0.5% bias to National. This polling bias has been discussed on here previously. When the polling is conducted by phone – it has to be biased towards those who own one. And surprisingly those sort of people aren’t truly representative of the total voting population anymore.

  18. Macro 18
    1 August 2008 at 9:45 pm

    You do have a Blog don’t you Matthew? – or am I thinking of some one else? – in which case my sincere apologies.

  19. Rob 19
    2 August 2008 at 6:30 pm

    Great week for the Nats all in all well coached by Crosby Textor. Conference of to a flying start smart move by John on the tax cuts to bring forward.
    Winston problem will continue to dog Helen and show her to be weak in terms of not dealing with it adequately. Journos and Nats alike Will Be able to capitalise on this into next week and beyond. All in in All looking very positive for the Boys in Blue

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