Tussock for Mayor!

He invented "Fuck John Key!" too, just quietly.

I mean, I get your issue, Russell, Labour (and Green to some extent) are trying to run a positive campaign about how they are running a positive campaign, vs National's negative campaign, which they totally picked. It's similar in…

I don't mean people who are going to be able to vote at the election that is coming up in the next few months,…

This song dates from 2013. It was dredged up as a counter-play by National (probably their research unit) and fed into a oh-to-willing media via Slater/Hooton/Farrar and Lusk. And yes, you also…

To be fair the the Commission, its main job is running free and fair…

Yes. The usual suspects were very keen yesterday to link 'Kill the PM'…

Peter Fowler is to polite to say it, but you’ve all been played by Slater/Farrar/Hooton/Williams – BlogWatch: Anatomy of misinformation.

This was one of the issues in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the US case that involved a hit job documentary about Hillary Clinton that a…

And an even bigger part of it is the Electoral Commission is there not to be "fair" but to apply the law, even if it's a bit…

Yeah, my memory was based on the words rather than the reaction.

My memory is that the song was very much seen as affectionate.

nice turn of phrase. onya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIzCOdzxjKE

I'm not sure if Ebony were left or right, but "Big Norm" was hardly complimentary to Norman Kirk PM (even if he did wish them luck).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJv_DfMZ7jU

Gray Bartlett's one of the very few overt ones, and he goes way back to "The Ballad of Robbie Muldoon".

Part of it may be that there are hardly any right-wing musicians and…

And then put them on a holding roll until they turned 18.…

The Chch rebuild exodus.

No, as wonderful as the internet is, I think those of you actually in NZ are better placed to be the judge of that. I won't be back for another few months, so my view of what is happening is still…

Really? A wheelbarrow of dirt, a log, a bucket of something being carried on someone's head, a cartload of grass (not even bothering to refine it into milk any more? Shipped all the cows overseas, too?)... I see a lot of extractive…

Leaning on the hedge, as it were?

A fee? Fie! He only reigns until his foes stop fumbling, anyway.

Is it your solicitation, or the purpose of the writing itself that makes it an advertisement? I read it as James making a perfectly valid pitch to raise his profile as an electoral candidate on a widely read medium. If it had been you or…

Nor does it read as such. It's much more "this is what I've been doing" than "vote for me!"

It wasn't solicited as such. I asked readers for guest posts, particularly about electorate battles.

What’s crazy is not that you should be required to carry the promoter statement, but that practically every opinion piece in the Herald shouldn’t have to.

Well,…

Do you have to be born overseas to be a “foreign” millionaire?

I've read plenty of research in the last few years indicating that…

I mean the idea of these statements, so far as I understood, is so that people…

"Hard News" even

Surely PA of all places is a "news media Internet site"?

The same would not, however,…

I do take your point about attacks on democracy. Personally, I'm not partisan right or left but I sincerely worry about how this election is going. Maybe I'm earning my tinfoil hat…

Well, that's a zebra of a different stripe. Details that I wasn't fully aware of.

Wasn't the point that someone (Russell) on 'the left' can quite happily publicly note when they think someone on their…

Didn't Russell describe himself as such? Even then, I'm amused when moderate liberals get the Reductio ad Stalinum…

From that article, I sense the barbarians are tugging at the gate.

More seriously, there’s a very elongated response from the editor posted here, originally posted as a comment on an earlier post of that blog, if you click…

You mean he hadn't actually been selected??

LIARS!

I knew something was up when he didn't run onto the field.

And Key reckoned he got a text message from McCaw that he read out at the National party campaign launch. Tthe rugby union needs to yank McCaws chain…

Those mags were also central to the media strategy that introduced Key to New Zealanders. Not their fault at all: they were presented with "at home with" stories, their stock in trade, that Clark was notoriously…

A few election cycles…

But I guess I am a bit mixed on this. Unlike a lot of people I think this is just all the noise of democracy. I don’t like a conversation of elites. On the other hand, if you’ve got dirty politics and libels proliferating…

I have pointed this out to Tom.

No, but we do have a ban on using Parliament TV footage to do it with.

Like the PM

Mr Key said it was just the latest in a string of attacks on his character and he did not want to dignify it with a response.

Because it's a great way…

Tinakori:
No.

It would be no more acceptable nor better.

Thank you for pointing out my mistake as well as highlighting the rest of these horrid attitudes.

After all, it's not 1912 (is it?)?

the right have enough power that they don't need to resort to singing to change the world.

Why, would it be any better or acceptable if they had stood for office or been part of the political landscape? The tendency to demonise your political opponents…

I listened to the song and thought they had the beginnings of something really great… but after the end of the first verse, then the chorus about what he was going to do to that young girl I found myself really angry and sickened and I shut it…

No, he's not. That's Tom Scott. (Who is is not the Tom Scott who is the father of Sam Scott, who has also commented in this thread.)

However, I take a wee bit of offense at your conflation of MLK's black civil rights "voiceless" who were the products of slavery and a system as bad, if not worse, than apartheid; with your own situation.

Clearly, you're not voiceless. Publicly funded monies have…

If only the Minister of Justice and PM had a similar moral compass.

The National-run activist group…

They're only just barely videogenic
and register in Dorian Grayscale...

"I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard."

let down by such pathetic lyrics – they're way better than this, could have been a great song but alas not so

Must admit I find it funny many involved in Dirty Politics directly have taken such…

Tamsyn Parker: How to "Labour-proof" your portfolio

(Paremoremo's convenient for Warkworth though – maybe they'll give Farrar day release to attend foo camp?)

— Martin Luther King, Jr. July, 1967

They do it sometimes in relation to people who "double vote". But in regards other matters … never, to my knowledge.

Hey – the system works!

Serious question though – when have the police ever actually progressed an Electoral Commission referral to the stage of pressing charges?

Except we *don't* have a ban on that; not explicitly at least. The High Court in Watson's application for review has a chance to make that clear. No vote in Parliament needed, thank goodness.

Safe to say it's…

At the moment it's feeling very difficult…

If you see a poster advertising the cover, feel free to complain about that to…

Yes – but what politician will vote to repeal a ban on satirising politicians?

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean its ruling on Watson's song is correct and I agree with…

That's "news".