National Party Feuding Breaks Out

Negative polling around Key's credibility has added fuel to internal National-ACT party feuding.

The Palino, Slater, Lusk, Luigi, Cook scandal has reawakened the closet warring within the National-ACT Party and is, according to The Bellman, causing the ABCollins faction much angst.

The Bellman assures anyone who will listen that the ABC faction has been closely tied with the Slater-Lusk organisation in the campaign to recruit National-ACT MPs and aspiring MPs who have entered politics under their tutelege to be ready to take over the leadership of the Party from John "PinoKeyo" Key.

What the polls show... the support for Key's National-ACT party is slipping away.

For a while, the Bellman says, Camp Collins was buoyed up by the increasingly obvious voter swing towards Labour and the Greens being recorded in the different polls (in particular the highly regarded  Roy Morgan polls) and their own internal polling. The Bellman reckons that the internal polling as recorded a growing disenchantment with both the Party and the leadership of Key which has given greater credibility to their plan to catapult "Crusher" Collins into the leadership before the 2014 election.

The ABCers, concerned by the crude and increasingly sleazey attempt to unseat Len Brown from the Auckland mayoralty by the Slater, Cook, Luigi group, has been forced to do a rethink of their strategy and association with the group.

While Collins likes to be seen as being ruthless and Thatcherlike in her dealings with political opponents on both sides of the House she, according to the Bellman, has drawn the line at the underhand and distinctly distasteful tactics being advocated and practised by Slater & Cook.

Slater's declaration on The Nation that politics is a dirty game, using dirty tactics, played by dirty individuals has shaken the ABC camp's confidence as it threatens to destroy any semblance of trust between the public and the politicians and thus destroy any belief that legislation is drafted and passed from an informed and clearly articulated point of view by men and women who have not been blackmailed into a position by vindictive outside agencies such as that represented by those associated with the Slater group.

The Slater, Cook, Luigi campaign, says the Bellman, has played into the Joyce- Key camp as they attempt to shore up both internal party and cabinet forces in order to retain control over the caucus as they seek to continue the programme of selling state assets and trying to take National-ACT into a third term. However, according to Andrea Vance in the SST 27.10.13, the ABC camp is preparing to hunker down to play a long term strategy using Lusk and Slater groomed MPs to create the climate to unsettle the Key-Joyce camp and thus take over the leadership of what looks to be becoming a grossly disfunctional, faction ridden National-ACT party. (see Colin Espiner's Sin City Blues article in the SST 27.10.13 connecting the dots between the Slater described "dirty politics" brigade inside the National Party.)

Key, whose tendency to make up "facts" when put on the spot when playing at being PM at home which negatively affects his credibility rating, has increasingly spent more time out of New Zealand than inside the country as he has adopted a policy of attempting to grandstand on the international stage as he seeks that "bubble- reputation, even unto the cannon's mouth."

None-the-less, the unease within the National-ACT party has continued unabated as relentless bad polling and a distinct feeling that possible coalition partners are heading into extinction ( a point noted by Key's desperate musings that he could have a cuppa with the Craig financed Conservatives), along with a growing conviction among the membership that a Labour-Green coalition is inevitable, continues to show a defeat looming at the ballot box come 2014.

RUMOURS OF LETTER CIRCULATING IN NATIONAL CAUCUS RIFE!!!

Following on the beat up by Duncan Garner last night in which he promoted a malicious rumour circulated by the well known rumour tosser Whale Oil ( http://thestandard.org.nz/much-a-coup-about-nothing/) a new and more credible rumour of a letter being circulated among the National Caucus to unseat John Pinnochio Key has surfaced in the local electorate.

Apparently the letter, written by Slater and Lusk and circulated by the local MP, is designed to hasten the elevation of Judith Collins and Anne Tolley (known in local National-ACT circles as the ABC {All Behind Collins } group) as National Party Leader and deputy Leader after top secret internal National Party polling revealed that Key and English were perceived as being weak on dealings with Gambling bosses and had caved in on funding Auckland transport schemes supported by the arch enemy of the National-ACT party- Len Brown.

Watch out for and listen to Patrick Gower and Duncan Garner on TV3 tonight as they breathlessly uncover the truth about this dastardly plot to unseat the "beloved leader". (PS: the transcript of the interview follows. )
We are expecting Garner to interview the mischief makers at the centre of the coup plot - known as the ABKs- and extract details behind this exercise in self preservation among members on the right of the National-ACT party.

Modern Fables with a political twist

READ TOP TO BOTTOM

There is an 'Old Version' and a 'Modern Version' .... Two Different
Versions! Two Different Morals!

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays
the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!

-------------------------------------------

MODERN VERSION:

The Labour Party ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The National Party grasshopper thinks the Labour ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away and keeps borrowing against any assets he may have. In fact he campaigns for everyone to do the same as well as stating that others should avoid contributing to the good of all in the interests of selfishness.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

The Herald, TV1, TV3 and Maori TV show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. New Zealand is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Good Morning with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

John Key stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house, declaring it to be in struggle street, where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' He then takes a local to Waitangi to show he cares. (I mean: "Really, really cares. In fact he'll resign if he doesn't really care.")

Gordon Copeland then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Michael Cullen explains in an interview with John Campbell that the worker ants have gotten rich by carefully balancing the books, investing in the future and saving the state assets and that the National Party Grasshopper is reaping the results of consuming too much while borrowing and failing to invest in assets. The Herald declares that the Grasshopper is showing "enterprise" and is capable of good management.

Rodney Hide makes a series of complaints to the Privileges Committee and the Fraud Office in an effort to discover who is scamming who thus spending more of the limited taxpayers money in political grandstanding campaigns.

Finally, the National Party grasshopper campaigns on a policy of borrow, borrow and sell all state assets and drafts the Foriegn Investment Economic Equity & Anti-Ant Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined, the assets are sold and stripped, the workers are penalised by having their wages cut, their employment conditions heavily curtailed and subject to heavy private enterprise (PPP) taxes (tolls ) to pay off private debts, his home is confiscated by the Bank which begins to call in mortgages and raise interest rates to cope with the heavy borrowing of the grasshoppers.

Any complaints about the actions being taken by the Grasshoppers against the worker ants are tried before a panel of judges that John appointed from a list of self interested big business men who gave several millions to the National Party Coffers.

The Worker ants lose the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it as he thinks the overseas landlords will do it to protect their assets.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found to have been asset stripped in a sub-prime financial collapse incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of foreign spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighbourhood as they move the income from asset stripping overseas.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be VERY careful how you vote in 2008!!