The Engkeylish Government crumbles?

Commentary from the right wing and Granny Herald indicate that disillusionment with their favourite sons is beginning to set in.

First: Rodney's favourite: Mr. Garrott: (sorry...... Garrett)

A Government MP has been reprimanded for lewd conduct just weeks after the resignation of National's Richard Worth.

Act MP David Garrett was spoken to by party leader Rodney Hide after making sexual comments to a female member of the party's Parliamentary office.

Hide said last night he had cause to speak to Garrett after learning the fledgling MP had made "off-colour" remarks. He said he hoped the incident would not lead to the end of Garrett's career as a member of Parliament.

Garrett is one of the drivers behind Act's "Three Strikes" policy - and this incident makes for his own second strike. Garrett also came under fire when he compared homosexuality to paedophilia on TVNZ's Eye to Eye show, after he had been drinking.

The new allegations have earned the National-led government a warning that it risks becoming branded as a "government of sleaze". INDEED!!

Second: Key Apologist - Bill Ralston:

In dismissing the need for better political management he shows he is not really a politician. After almost three decades in the business Goff is truly a politician.

Goff understands that a government can be slowly undermined by all the "white noise".

He served as a minister in two governments in which that happened. Labour lost power last year, even though the economy was still strong and it was continuing to deliver the goods to its constituency. It lost because it was gradually overcome by the "white noise" and the public lost faith.

The Government needs to learn it might ignore the "distractions" but that doesn't mean they will go away and the consequences can be fatal.

Third: Matt McCarten: on the Melissa Lee fiasco:

The campaign was deserted by the leadership

Does Key get it that by-elections are national campaigns? Anyone can hold the job as leader when things go well. The test of a leader is when things are not going well. Key failed. He picked Lee against the wishes of the locals, he didn't get his experienced people taking ownership of the campaign and he just wasn't there. But the unforgivable act was Key's holiday on by-election weekend. The best he could do was send Lee a text. None of his senior ministers or even his president was there. Lee was left to face the massacre alone, like a stunned possum in a car's headlights.

If this is how National copes under stress in a campaign, I hope the recession doesn't get too difficult. This by-election shows us that our Prime Minister and his Cabinet can't be counted on when things get tough.

Fourth: Rodney Hide's puppet master - the Nosferatu of NZ politics- Roger Douglas:

"This only enforces the emerging trend we have seen between Mr Key and Mr English. Mr Key announces a stupid idea - be it a cycleway or forced investment in New Zealand - Mr English realises the idea is stupid, and distances himself from it.

"The Prime Minister then becomes hell-bent on scoring another symbolic victory over the Finance Minister - who backs down and Mr Key gets his way. But these battles are only resulting in pyrrhic victories - neither the cycleway nor forced investment will make New Zealand better long term.

"The trend is towards an obsession with massaging Mr Key's political image, at the expense of New Zealand's long term prospects.

Fifth: Brian Rudman: On the decision to waste the Rate Payers' money on a grandiose booze barn or John Key's "Party Central"

Brian Rudman: Government bullies pushing city a wharf too far

Sixth: Christine Rankin's decision to front the support whacking your kids campaign despite the assurance from John Key that she would not be involved in actively campaigning on the issue:

Families Commissioner Christine Rankin's decision to be a face of the "vote no" campaign for the smacking referendum is "quite incredible", Green MP Sue Bradford says.

Ms Bradford was the architect of a 2007 law change which removed the defence of reasonable force in child abuse cases. Ms Rankin vehemently opposed the law change and was spokeswoman of For The Sake Of Our Children Trust.

Tomorrow Ms Rankin will front at the launch of a campaign urging voters to vote no to the question "should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand"?

That is despite Prime Minister John Key last week saying he would not expect Ms Rankin to continue to campaign against the law change, and the Families Commission saying it supported the new law.

One can only echo the favourite word of the National Party Bloggers: "INDEED!!"

Journalism & Blogosphere.. laziness or investigation?

Over recent months I've been intrigued, wondering where the journalists employed by our national media find their stories. The tertiary courses and the journalism textbooks discuss the process of building contacts, talking with and to community leaders and interest groups so that, armed with a "black book" of contacts the journalist can establish the backgrounds and the bases for the stories that are passed on to him or her or, by dint of individual enquiry, can be substantiated and probed with some degree of depth.
However, that text book and journalism course idea is a myth, an ideal from the past, for the reality of our present is, according to a young journalist informant, that the news room journalist is a passive actor in the news gathering process. Today the young journalist is told to, and instructed in the process of, explore the chat rooms of Trade Me and the snippets from a small, quite limited, recommended list of blogs.
The limited range of blogs recommended to my informant did not inspire confidence in the investigative powers of the journalists or the policies of the papers concerned for the sites were all heavily slanted towards the right-wing blogs and the "celebrity sex life speculation" snippet blogs.
One would assume that the editorial policy of the media is to concentrate on the celebrity scandal, the weird and idle gossip then such "news" gathering is acceptable but if one wants more from the media then a diet of Trade Me chat and the salacious "snidery" of the Farrar-Slater blogs one would expect our journalists and media to be far more proactive and responsible.

Can John handle the Jandal?

Now that the election is over and the decision to move N.Z. to the right of the political spectrum has been made the NZ Herald will pull back from its hysterical panicking about Left wing conspiracies and fall into its usual position of campaigning against Trade Unions, State servants and environmentalists of any colour while claiming that it has no bias in any of its editorial directions. Garth George will descend into his monk's cell to contemplate a bluer heaven and worship the apotheosis of John Key and to congratulate himself in self justification for his righteous belief that women are on earth to tempt men from the path to salvation and that with Helen Clark stepping out of the political sphere another temptress has been taken from his dream of paradise here in the Pacific.
However, while the transition proceeds one can offer some comment about the possible stability of the new government.
With a record of policy and position shifting throughout the period since becoming leader of the National Party and in the build up to the election John Key may find that he will be in administrative difficulty once his colleagues get their feet under the Cabinet Table. The difficulties will be compounded with the presence of ACT's Rheinfield - Rodney Hide within the coalition. One recognises that there is no way ACT will want to be sidelined away from its traditional hardline free marketeering, retributive policies beloved of its Nosferatu founder, Roger Douglas and that there will be determined efforts from this quarter to drive National into more radical conservative policy directions.
As well, Hide is very similar in nature to his nemisis- Winston Peters. Both men are driven by ego, both are driven by a single minded belief in their own rightness, both have the natural instinct to hone in on a person or policy with one inclination - to destroy it or come crashing down in their own self destructive nature. One cannot but believe that within 18 months Hide, Rheinfield like, will, with his master, Douglas hive off into the extremities of Friedmanite economics and force a division in the hydra that is the National-ACT-United Futures coalition.
For Key this will mean that he will resort to his usual escape mechanism of making the unacceptable palatable in order to bring Roger and Rodney back into the crypt by flip-flopping on policy, pleading as he does so "political expediency and economic necessity because of the crisis created by the money traders and other free-marketeers."
One predicts that the fallout and consequent retribution on the electors will occur over the following policy areas: Employment Law - as workers rights are scaled back in a return to the elements of the ECA ACT will claim that the process isn't fast and hard enough and agitate for more punative legislation to bring the workers to heel.
Finance - the attacks and raids on both Kiwisaver and the Cullen Superannuation fund will continue with the extreme right of National siding with ACT to reduce both funds to mere shadow of their intended purpose. This will be done with the catch cry of "teaching the worker self sufficiency" and "to reduce reliance on nanny state."
The international credit collapse will be an excuse for the more extreme of the National-ACT coalition to allow Rheinfield Hide open Nosferatu's coffin and allow Roger Douglas to emerge and demand asset stripping, further reductions of workers' rights and conditions, slash and burning of Social Welfare programmes, privatisation of Health, Education, Prisons, Roading and Water reticulation ... so that the "books can be balanced" and "sanity restored to the free market."
The privatisation of ACC - the confusion and fallout as this occurs will see the entire scheme collapse into a miasma of conflicting and reductive insurance policies that extract a lot but provide little while taking the profits overseas.
Education - here the introduction of a failed Bush scheme of National Testing and Reporting (the No Child Left Behind policies) will create tensions in the teaching profession, confusion and resentment among parents and a media frenzy of "let's bash the teachers" which will again lead Key to drop the leader's jandal.
Crime and Civil Liberties - in this area the public will soon come to realise that National - Act cannot deliver on its promise to reduce crime in the community. They will also come to appreciate that the State will intrude even more into their lives as civil liberties are reduced and surveillance becomes a norm.
For Key these tensions will prove difficult to manage as so many of his bench and MPs like, Ryall, McCully, Williamson, Wong, Smith N & L, Brownlee and English, have deep seated and firmly held political beliefs that can be evidenced by their past involvement in retributive legislation that will not be able to be controlled under his natural instinct to gamble for a gain by short term expediency thus opening the possibility of a push by Key's controller, English, to make a push for more overt control of power and a consequent hardening of policy initiatives and true nanny state legislation.
So while the polls may have spoken they spoke for an image not for what lay behind it so that as the next three years unfold and Key's instinctive flip floppery management style fail to control his coalition it should not come as surprise to the more astute observers to see what appeared to be a comfortable majority faction into self destructive quarrelling while Hide and Douglas, like the ghost of Adam, gibber at the table.

Herald reduced to printing all copy in Blue if National Wins election.

A HUGE Scoop written in the breathless adoration style of the National Party's advertising pamphlet - The Herald.

Rumour has it that the Herald management has committed itself to publishing every edition in tory blue if the Nats win the election. Apparently they have undertaken to print every edition for the duration of the presumed National-ACT - Dunne government on Tory Blue with all use of the colour red, mention of the colour red, Helen Clark or Labour banned unless mentioned by Garth George when quoting the Bible as vindication for wishing the hydra monster of Douglas, Engkeylish, Hide and Dunne on the nation in pure Revalations raving.

Mind you, when one reads the sort of reporting being cultivated by the Herald editorial staff one could believe this rumour.
For as another blogger writes:

A week out from the election, Granny Herald has still yet to do any proper coverage of the effects on individuals and the economy of National’s four flagship policies: privatising ACC, gutting Kiwisaver, reducing work rights, and weakening the RMA and ETS.

Yet, they can find the space to tell us which politicians would make the best Halloween character or could mentor according to their online polls (always biased towards the type of people who are sitting in front of computers all day [clue: it ain't the working class]).

Here we are, in the middle of the process of choosing the people who will have the most powerful jobs in the country, and the largest newspaper is engaging in inanities that tell us nothing more than the demographics of its online readers.

How my heart yearns for a decent media in this country.

However, in mitigation of the Herald it did publish a "leader article" admitting that it was mildly annoyed at John Key for mis-remembering his employment at Elders Finance and the H scandal and for the voting public it is important to be assured that its leaders are not dissemblers of the truth isn't it????

Electorate Reporting

Roger Douglas explains his policies to an incredulous voter while campaigning for support for the ACT candidate in Botany.
A photo opportunity Mr. Tan missed while reporting for The Herald







In an earlier post I pointed out the ironies (Ironies on the Campaign Trail ) present at a meet the candidates meeting in the new electorate of Botany. There was a full muster of candidates present on the stage which seems to have escaped the notice of the Herald's intrepid reporter - Lincoln Tan whose report of the same meeting focused entirely on the more incoherent candidates on the platform - one Kenneth Wang who, like Pansy Wong seems to consider that the appellation "Asian" is synonymous with "Chinese". (Incidentally,in keeping with his political mentors Rodney and Roger, the only coherent aspect of Mr.Wang is his billboard)
Any observer, like Mr. Tan, should have noticed that the census data lumps Indians (regardless of origin) in as Asians so the simplistic analysis practised by the Wangs & Wongs in Botany presents a substantial miscalculation of their possible support base.
While on the subject of reporting One does wonder why, if Mrs Wong was so upset about the Wang message on his billboards, that she complained to the Electoral Commission; why the two candidates have taken to placing their billboards side by side like kissing cousins or why Mr Wang has not been forced to remove the Wong name from his boards? One must ask if the noise over the Wang boards wasn't just a ploy to get reporters, like Mr.Tan, to fall in love with them and constantly photograph them for lazy publication in the Herald or, more sinisterly, a real indication of the possible emergence of a Nightmare on Elm Street of Roger Douglas rising, like Nosferatu, from the political grave as National reaches to embrace its long term political lover and enter an unholy alliance in the the manner signalled by the Wang loves Wong Billboards??

Herald donates $500,000 to National??

One wonders if the NZ Herald's $500,000 donation (16 pages @ $30,000 per page as advertising ) to the National Party, thinly disguised as an "unauthorised" ( but fully endorsed by ) biography of John Key will be declared as income by the Party or debted against John Key's own Helensville campaign.
The 16 page "expose" of the life and times of John Key revealed very little about the man and his political philosophy apart from his desire to assume power and to join anything in an effort to secure personal advantage in his quest for power and influence. (An endorsement of the label- slippery flip flopper that has been fixed on him.)
One would hope that in the interests of political balance the Herald would now offer the same number of "responsible journalism" pages and resources to the leaders of the other political parties so that the public are fully informed about those who would be leaders?

Tory Blog gets it wrong - again!!!

Over recent months the National Party advertising pamphlet - The NZ Herald has endorsed several companion bloggers as being credible news sources. This has been especially evident with the rumours being spread about the Botany electorate.
The Herald gleefully published the bloggers' rumour that Labour would put up Raymond Huo as candidate in the electorate.
When that didn't happen the Herald took up the bloggers' claims that they had forced the Labour Party to ask the candidate, Brenden Sheehan, to retire as a result of their efforts to discredit him. The baseless rumour was repeated to my informant by the editor of a suburban newspaper who, seemingly, believed it on the basis that it was "common knowledge" around the computers and water-coolers of the Herald's "news" room.
The Herald never contacted the Labour Party at any level to discover if the Bloggers' inarticulatly expressed claims were correct... but then that is par for the journalistic course here in Auckland.
The bloggers then resumed their claims that Raymond Huo would be the candidate and began running commentaries claiming that his reputation was to be questioned. No doubt the Herald would have repeated these claims as gospel, without checking their veracity, if Mr. Huo had been selected. Thus giving the Tory bloggers even greater feelings of self importance in cyberspace.
So what happened at the Labour Party selection meeting?
There were four nominees, none of whom were names being blogged about, from which University of Auckland Business School Lecturer, Koro Tawa was selected.
So, one wonders where this turn of events leaves both the Tory bloggers and the "journalists" at the Herald in terms of political credibility?
Probably at about the same level as the Herald's claim that it was publishing an "unauthorised" biography of the erstwhile leader of the National Party which had demonstrable access to the Key family archives and, therefore, must have been given some form of authorisation from within the family and party. Incidentally, if the Herald charges around $10,000 a page for advertising the 8 pages devoted to John key in Saturday's tame adverising pamphlet - The Herald would come in at around $80,000 which should be charged against Key's personal campaign in Helensville which should mean that he has already exceeded his advertising budget under the EFA.
On the other hand, will the National Party acknowledge the $80,000 donation in its accounting of donations and funds received from Trust Funds in the interests of political transparency? One doubts it!!