Island Life: The Evasive Mr Key Has 2 Million Friends
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Change the subject. This is getting tacky.
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Grant:
Well, if I've got my facts wrong perhaps ypu can correct me. Am I wrong about Kathryn being in a relationship with Maryan Street - in which case the DomPost profile following her promotion to the PM's cheif press secretary I read that rather gratuitous tidbit in was inaccurate -, or that she wasn't while working for Radio NZ. Either way, I'm sure her work as a journalist and a parliamentary press secretary is conducted to the highest professional standards, and not influenced by who she happens to be in a relationship with. I'm sure there are some folks on the right who would quite happily smear Kathryn by innuendo because she's on the 'wrong side'. I'm not, but as I said Grant if you do want to play it like that, it cuts both ways and can get pretty ugly.
And, Stephen, yes I think it's a very good thing that there are disclosure standards for journalists but I think it's not only absurd, but somewhat sinister, if we're going to expect every journalist and civil servant to list what their spouse/partner/CUPcake/'friend with benefits'/casual fuck buddy does for a living.
For example, my partner works for Toll New Zealand and has been in the railways for forty-five years. Oddly enough, our pillow talk isn't about crew rosters, timetables and long-term resource allocation modeling. Nor does he have any influence over my contributions to Public Address Radio, or access to confidential work or party-related documents I've been privy to from time to time.
I don't see what's so complicated about that. Really.
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According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Listener's circulation declined by 5.9% between the end of 2005 and the end of last year. Make of that what you will.
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All right. This same pillow talk stuff comes up periodically and I don't believe anything new is being said. I'm not comfortable with people's personal lives being repeatedly discussed this way. Stop it. And Craig, you'd better be bloody sure of what you're saying.
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And for the record, I couldn't really get too upset many moons ago upon discovering the husband of the Honourable Member for Rongotai held a senior management role in the Wellington City Council. Whatever I thought of Annette King (not much), I assume that she had the wit to establish and maintain a proper firewall between her professional and personal interactions with her husband.
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Sue,
ok seriously people
who cares, can't people have freaking private lives.so let's move on
how about That facebook thingy/ Those all Blacks/The weather -
I think it's not only absurd, but somewhat sinister, if we're going to expect every journalist and civil servant to list what their spouse/partner/CUPcake/'friend with benefits'/casual fuck buddy does for a living.
That is absurd Craig, but as so often happens there is a middle ground which is worth discussing.
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I can't believe people would prefer discussing politics over Facebook. What has the interwebs come to?
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And for the record, I couldn't really get too upset many moons ago upon discovering the husband...
Crikey. Bring out the big stick Russell. Craig seems to have some sort of autorespond feature where every time you tell him to stop, he posts another one.
Stop. S-T-O-P. No really.
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Sue,
I'm with you robyn
next thing kittens will be banned -
Well, if we could discuss this without reference to any particular case - in most corporate or government jobs it would still be proper to let the employer know of your relationship. The employer can then extend their trust to you about how you deal with any conflicts. But journalists have a n important relationship with their readership as well as their employers. That makes them a bit different.
After all the classic solution to conflict of interest is to excuse yourself from situations where your judgment might be called into question. A journalist who owns a company's shares, or is married to a newsworthy subject always has the option of not writing stories about that company or their spouse. Why is it so onerous for a journalist who insists on being in those situations to at least let their readers make up their own minds?
Sue: I CAN HAS INTEGRITY?
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Craig Ranapia come across on these forums as an unpleasant bully. Sorry to make it a personal observation, but there it is.
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Its not all his fault - he's spent too much time soaking in the adversarial political system...
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Sue,
Mr Judd
you is my hero -
re the Listener ... isn't the point really that it is no longer a 'left-leaning' magazine?
What rankles *me* is that the Listener has never run an editorial announcing its new position on the political spectrum. The articles are much easier to read when you realise where they're now coming from.
I far prefer reading the Economist. I don't share its political views, but I enjoy the way it is forthright about them.
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Can we get back to John Qui?
From today's Marlborough Express:
"I went on the campaign trail from the day I became leader," he said, adding that he has not read a book since Nicky Hager's The Hollow Men last year.
Books, eh? So 20th century. No, John relates to the youth, and he can't be doing with the long sentences and ideas and shit.
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Interesting post on No RightTurn, discussing John Key's economic ideas:
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merc,
I think that says more about IS's state of mind of late, than John Key's.
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I agree, Merc. But then, that is John Key. We have nothing to go on, so we can all invent our own version, conquering hero or bogeyman.
In that Listener article, in 7 pages (minus the space for glossy pin-ups) John Key says the following about policies/beliefs/substance:
1. We will spend more money.
2. I agree with the government.He repeats these sentiments several times. And that's it - the sum total of content.
Remember this is not a One News soundbite, but supposedly an "in-depth" article. Now it could be that Key said more and Ralston didn't bother sharing it with us, but I doubt it. It seems there really is nothing there.
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To clarify: the current Listener, not the ones mentioned up-thread.
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All the easier to vote Helen out for Johny boy to walk into the PMs role.
She has a history & with it tread on a few toes. There is no vision, just the boney clenched white knuckles holding onto power.
He has nothing to offer & therefore nothing to offend.
When given enough rope he managed to look a bit out of place when trying to get down with the brown. Didn't have the rapport with Maori youth he would like (& they were too young).
Similarly his photo op with the new Miss NZ, crowsfeet Dawson, & Sally Ridge. I got the feeling Asia Rock was waiting in the back room - all alittle seedy.
Gotta judge the man on what ya see - nothing so far. -
Thanks for the pointer to that No Right Turn article on John Key. As laudable as 0% unemployment is in principle, it certainly seems to make things difficult in practice.
Full employment seems, in practice, to drive prices up. If you need someone for a job, you have to hire them away from the job they already have. That generally means paying them more. So growth is expensive and must come at the expense of some other industry. Life becomes hard because the costs are shared while the benefits only go to those changing jobs (everyone has to pay more for their products and services to fund the new hire who's getting the higher salary). This is already happening--our school has struggled for ages to find a cleaner, and they can't pay what it'd take to draw people away from other jobs.
The other interpretation of John Key's statement is that he believes in importing labour. That, of course, puts pressures on the home market which has its own concomitant craziness.
Does anyone have any solutions to the inflationary problems of the last while? Like, if you were PM and somehow magically had the balls of Treasury and the Reserve Bank in your hands, what steps would you take to solve NZ's economic problems?
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I'll put my head on the block, Nat....
Reduce the cash rate, in steps.
Cap the losses residential investors can claim against tax on other income, and then gradually reduce the cap.
Tighten enforcement of GST and tax rules over the buying and selling of residential property.
Require every fulltime earner to be in a contributory superannuation scheme - with subsidies for those on low wages.
Introduce more scholarships and bonding schemes for tertiary students in science and medicine. The aim is to have qualified people working here for longer.
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Oh, and put more money into trade training, to encourage people into areas with skill shortages.
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Keywatch update: if you saw the news tonight, you might have noticed that when the Next Prime Minister made his grand entrance to the National party conference, he did so to the young-but-safe sound of Coldplay. Which seemed a bit odd, given Chris Martin's well-known lefty political leanings.
But perhaps it was another attempt to follow the UK example set by David Cameron's cool Conservatives, who recently recruited Martin themselves, as this Guardian article explains:
In a coup for the Conservatives, the lead singer of Coldplay, Chris Martin, has declared his backing for David Cameron, releasing a song that the party hopes will become the Tory answer to Labour's 1997 anthem, Things Can Only Get Better.
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"Coldplay's music shines with the kind of optimistic vision I want to bring to Britain as a whole," Mr Cameron said yesterday, at an impromptu press conference outside his local organic microbrewery. "And a forward-thinking party can't ignore the 'information superhighway'. So to anyone who cares about the future of this country, I say, look, let's not get bogged down in the old ideologies. Just click on to the world wide web, and listen to what Chris has to say."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1744447,00.html
So clearly the choice of Coldplay today was to send a message - Cameron and Key are singing the same song. (And only a spoilsport would point out the date of the story ...)
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