Hard News: Dirty Politics
2449 Responses
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izogi, in reply to
People behaving like reasonable, responsible, humane adults you mean.
That, and maybe some practical things to introduce more effective impartial oversight and constraints on what's done by elected officials and staff, and what happens in parliamentary offices.
Looking at how the OIA (or similar) can be applied to the Parliamentary Service could be a good part of this, but maybe wouldn’t have stopped it from happening given how intent everyone involved seemed to be in not being seen, and the way in which Parliament can systematically cripple the Ombudsman whenever it becomes inconvenient. I guess all of this is also dancing with constitutional issues around letting elected officials and their appointed staff do their jobs properly. Y’know, if they actually intend to do their jobs properly, which I’m sure many do.
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David Hood, in reply to
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They don't mind losing money on iPredict. They have money, and want to use that money to buy stories about how well National is doing. Spending $200 on national raising the odds -> seed news story about how well national is doing. Compared to the cost of buying advertising, it is peanuts for the news coverage it generates, and it looks more natural.
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With all this generalised talk about negativity and 'reaction to the' talk - no one it seems.is.actually looking into the substance of the allegations themselves. Are journalists afraid? The Herald skips around this by giving Hager an article but that will do nought to convince anyone already zombified or on the fence. The lack of courage or willingness to find the truth is so depressing. National in full control -really they seem to have every base covered. I was also creeped out by the suggestion of 50 cent gang - with the way everything seems to be so expertly controlled and each potential crisis managed with apparent ease, this idea or some version of it does not seem that far fetched.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
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Are journalists afraid? The Herald skips around this by giving Hager an article but that will do nought to convince anyone already zombified or on the fence.
Why not jump in there and ask them? I've called them on a couple of things today. That's what the comments section is for! But yes you are correct. It's pathetic.None so blind .....
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I don’t understand what this, form the Herald, actually means. Is it the heralds writing or my reading? It looks as if Dot Com is complaining that Hager and the National party are in car hoots.
Dotcom told the Herald on Sunday last night that he had been meeting lawyers to seek the source material from Hager’s book.
He claimed the book amounted to collusion in a smear campaign against him and the Internet Party.
“There has been many suggestions made to me that National is behind it and now with Hager’s book there is enough information out there to take it to the courts and get discovery from the National side and see how deeply they were involved and what their role is in that smear campaign,” he said.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
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It’s his job to do the distasteful things so that the rest of the guys on his “side” (a side that, admittedly, fluctuates a little) can do what they need to do to win.
We used to call them "Hired Goons"
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stephen clover, in reply to
Ok so it seems I may have been a little less than clear with my thoughts last night. I was trying to reason my way to a position where Slater is not a worthless p.o.s. As everything I have ever read and had reported about his behaviour doesn't really align with what I know about clinical depression, and as someone who's suffered at the wrong end of a misdiagnosis in the past, my logic lead me to a speculation that he's misdiagnosed and mis-medicated and that his life may see significant benefit from seeing a different doctor -- and all that that brings.
Can we leave the psychiatry to professionals please?
But yes, it was more-or-less idle speculation and I should have refrained. Apologies to anyone I upset :/
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Discovery.
Now there's a word.
but nothing like that would happen until after September 20; the public deserves to know the truth before then.
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Alfie, in reply to
I don’t understand what this, form the Herald, actually means. Is it the heralds writing or my reading? It looks as if Dot Com is complaining that Hager and the National party are in car hoots.
It could be read that way, although Dotcom's words appear to have been twisted a little. I suspect it's more a case of clumsy journalism than foul play.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
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It looks as if Dot Com is complaining that Hager and the National party are in car hoots.
nah but it is poorly worded, (no surprises there, it is "te Herald") Pretty sure DC is suggesting the book reveals info pertinent to National 's smear against him and IMP. To know the source could help him see how deep in shit National are prepared to go.
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Angela Hart, in reply to
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To know the source could help him see how deep in shit National are prepared to go.
Help him prove how deep.
Reminds me of an old palmolive ad www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzmTtusvjR4 -
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Let's try that link again
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Can we leave the psychiatry to professionals please?
But with caution. There are some shoddy quacks out there with little more than polytechnic certificates to say they can subcontract for ACC.
My not professional opinion, is that Graham McCready and Cameron slater are more or less the same beast.
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Fairfax's Kate Shuttleworth is in Tel Aviv with Salter. In Blogging, money and blurred lines she says he was invited to visit by the Israeli government who are paying some of his costs, presumably in return for more positive PR spin. It's full of the now familiar denials from Slater, but the final paragraph is interesting.
While Slater was having his photo taken for this article, a text arrived - from Justice Minister Judith Collins. He wouldn't reveal its content, but exclaimed that it was 4am in New Zealand and wondered out loud what she was doing up.
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So, after four days where are we at? I'm feeling like nothing has changed. We've got the National Party accessing part of the Labour website that was openly accessible. We've got the government ministers having a cozy relationship with a dislikable blogger. And we've got OIA requests getting favourable treatment. To me this amounts to nothing at the end of the day.
The web site access (at least according to the Whale Oil video) was openly available. A little obscure but it was open. Surely it's not unauthorised hacking when you can just type the address into a web browser! I've just recently closed that loophole on a website I have been setting up.
The Labour party might not like it but it was open. I'd be surprised if this would stand up in court and it was arguably in the public interest too (as Whale Oil said "can't secure a web site, not fit for government"). If this does stand up in court as "unauthorised access", I'd be worried about what else might be hacking.
The real message I'm getting here is: hacking Whale Oil's email: good, accessing obscure parts of Labour web site: bad. It's just not a consistent or helpful message.
The government giving favourable treatment to a favourable blogger is also nothing new. Friends talk to friends and information gets passed along. Right or Left. It's what happens. Maybe the scale of it is a little worse here but is there anything illegal going on here? Is this anything that other parties haven't done?
The more dodgy one here is the OIA requests. It looks like the government departments are complicit according to this Ruminator article: http://ruminator.co.nz/the-official-information-act-cam-and-me/ If there are departments forcing OIA requests through in half an hour then that's a systemic problem rather than a National Party problem. We've got no evidence Labour weren't doing that same thing.
Maybe it's worth changing the law so that OIA requests will take at least a day and all OIA requests and responses will be immediately published on the department web site. This would help to resolve some of these issues.
Admittedly I haven't read the book and there are probably things that I'm missing here. My initial excitement has died down a little and I'm coming back to reality.
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“I haven’t read the book and I have a bunch of opinions”.
[Seriously, why not just go read the book? It's quite short! Hager's pretty good at telling a story. It's quite an easy read.]
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
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We used to call them “Hired Goons”
...and occasionally 'gunsels'...
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
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[Seriously, why not just go read the book? It’s quite short! Hager’s pretty good at telling a story. It’s quite an easy read.]
Yes , this!
alsoprobably things that I’m missing here. My initial excitement has died down a little and I’m coming back to reality.
Yep missing everything right there. If it's excitement that you need, maybe House of Cards or Scandal, (a few murders there to get gleeful about although Key has condoned killing a NZer in another country for no other reason than it's the U.S so that's ok, collateral damage an'all) but the reality that you are getting back to is that this Government have stooped to the lowest of low to achieve an agenda that is not in the interest of the NZ Public, (their employer). That may be acceptable to some but I'll never believe we are fodder beside the cows and sheep to be chewed up and spat out with disgust as National seem to be doing.
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steven crawford, in reply to
We’ve got no evidence Labour weren’t doing that same thing.
That sentence sums up your entire comment. Are you a troll?
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Admittedly I haven’t read the book and there are probably things that I’m missing here. My initial excitement has died down a little and I’m coming back to reality.
There used to be these people back in the 90s who the most pressing issue in their lives seemed to be that they couldn't get takeaway in containers like they saw on Seinfeld. Horribly, they appear to have procreated. Ain't a terminally self-absorbed fanboy a wonderful thing,
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JLM, in reply to
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For heaven's sake, we don't all have to march in lockstep here!
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I'm frankly amazed that anyone with a functional brain thinks that (a) we have evidence that one side were doing this, and (b) we have no evidence that the other side weren't doing this, actually leads to the conclusion that (c) both sides are as bad as each other.
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I see on the TM messageboard that Slater's followers there are reporting that a king hit will be posted on Whaleoil at 6pm today.
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It needs more than just another talkfest. Any serious solution would need something on the level of the Leveson or Finkelstein Inquiries, which in this case would probably take the form of a Royal Commission
I'm sorry I don't mean to have a go at your particular post there are many others in a similar vein posted in here & I find it frustrating that so many people appear to refuse to live in the real world.
Leveson is not a good example to make for advocating anything. If you have been paying attention you will see that the englander newspaper proprietors stymied Leveson's recommendations preventing them from being implemented - now or ever.All the major englander political parties have gone along with the editors' traducing of democracy - nothing scares those pollies more than an angry Mirror, Sun, or even Daily Fail editor.
Sure chief labour Derp and wanna be king Eddy the egret Milliband, has made a fuss, pushing for some of the least effective recommendations, but he knows nothing will come of it. Doubtless he hopes the fish-wraps' owners won't take it too personal - they will comprehend that he has to be seen to oppose nasty Dave Cameron. In the tweedledee Vs tweedledum phoney war of the neo-libs.I just cannot get my head around the dream world so many of us live in.
The rights that Kiwis ceded with a casual tick in the ballot box were rights hard won after centuries of fighting against oppression -they cannot be got back nearly as easily as they were given away.
It is frankly ludicrous to expect the fixed game so called democracy has become, can do much more than slighly reduce the velocity with which the bulk of kiwis are being reduced to powerless cyphers.Some of the problem may be that we attained many of these rights (eg universal suffrage, equality of opportunity) by killing and oppressing the indigenous population, not by fighting & defeating the seat of power and those who sought to keep us under their heel.
There was no established seat of power in Aotearoa in the 19th century. There was just the vacuum created by destruction of Tangata Whenua society, people & culture.
Many Kiwis just don't see that the sacrifice and hardship endured by others was what enabled most of us to get that which has since been so carelessly forfeited since.
Of course not all our freedoms came from the barrel of guns pointed at Tangata Whenua - some resulted from guns pointed at young kiwis of all races including Maori, during WW1.Many thousands of Kiwis learned the reality of the iron fist beneath the velvet glove courtesy of WW1.
Of course not all returned servicemen or the families of the fallen agreed with that perspective.Yet following WW1 angry, disillusioned & distrustful citizens pushed hard to change the ways power was wielded in Aotearoa as well as the people who wielded it. They did so to prevent a recurrence of the situation where NZ citizens got treated as disposable units.
A direct upshot was increased support for the NZ Labour Party as it was then.
Yet here we are replaceable economic units once more and the Labour Party played no small role in the reversion.This year, the 100th anniversary of the Great War, has seen considerable revisionismof the causes of WW1 & motives of those who advocated for that horror show.
In a typical "Double Rule" style of the neo-libs young people's genuine respect for what the diggers achieved is being used as the force to push for the over-turn of what many of the returned soldiers had fought for.
The reason I am peddling this 'War & Peace' of a post is not to be a 'wet blanket' attempting to rain on the Nicky Hager parade, but in the possibly forlorn hope that some will realise if change is to be effected, a vastly different approach than merely trying to shame the egocentric scuzzbags who have stolen our nation into submission, is required.
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