Guess I'm just an old pun crock relic...
;- )

See, I would have gone for http://vimeo.com/12694725

More than "afraid", they *know* he won't front to an interview if he thinks he's actually going to have to pull his finger out of his arse about National's policies and priorities over…

Nothing’s changed, apparently.

This morning I switched on TVNZ only to see the PM’s extended commentry on what the Labour Party should be doing about its leadership, repeated from an…

There's your problem right there.

Think of the rainbow.Touch the rainbow ;)

Jeez RNZ, get on to the future or at least the present
stop sifting through the detritus of the past!

Why does Espiner think that any…

http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/interview-media-coverage-of-the-election-campaign-2014092714

Clearly, the media do not take kindly to being criticised.

Probably they will publish carefully vetted comments, at a later time, when none of the audience has remembered about it to check.…

Another one to watch to see what the Eds do. Fran O'Sullivan's article from yesterday – comment stream open, but none posted through yet.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11332285

Wouldn't it be interesting if they just simply…

I like to think of us as "X Generation", although the term seems to almost have vanished. Maybe we won't get our whole 20 years of power, but I think we're…

I also find it ironic that The Herald's online community by a wide majority, don't see it Fran's way either.…

Why don't they apply that to their columnists? Although it's significant that the Herald notes that O'Sullivan is "A columnist for the NZ Herald" rather…

Indeed. I do find it quite off-putting when I return to Kapiti (a place we used to live) as it is just so noticeable how folks with grey hair outnumber the rest…

It…

PS…

Fran's not falling for anything. She's part of the misdirection.

There, I believe the ‘sphere of influence’ is known as The Thorndon Bubble!
(despite NBR's push for the American descriptor ahead of The Thorndon Bubble, and 'Bowen Triangle' – which just sounds like Sherwood's…

It’s more like twenty years since anyone’s prattled about the horrors of ‘postmodernism’. The real assault on academic…

Washington DC (wiki)

"Can we say half of them didn’t?
I think, statisticaly, that is more accurate."

No it isn't. Roughly a million voted for National and another million didn't vote at all. The remainder voted for someone…

Which is why I've always taken a very Reithian view of the media's role as being to "inform, educate and entertain". Unfortunately, to suggest that the public need educating is seen as elitist / snobbish / "beltway" (where did that come from, anyway? It's being…

Media: The peoples journal.

Which is actually a major problem I have with the media in this country. Not picking up on false equivalences, and…

Fran lives on planet Fran, and she is dirty. Cathy O dirty.

Thanks. Good idea. There is some interesting information in the Transparency International 2013 report chapter on the media related to the lack of ethics training, a lack of clarity about codes of conduct, and the…

I'm unsure whether this could be a conventional research project. Wouldn't the polling methods, advisory organisations and spending be a closely guarded secret for all parties?

I'm not sure what I'd be correct about, but I'm concerned.

I've no doubt we'll be getting more land placed under higher protection, simply because that's the most useful thing to do…

I'm in touch with Action Station and we worked together on their democracy campaign before the election and we are in touch about this initiative but it's at a preliminary stage yet and I wanted to test the water on this to see whether it was an attractive…

Yep, that's why it's so dangerous. Team Key are going to cement that which they have been lining up in the past 6 years.

Fancy finding myself cheering on the GOP. Scum. But in this solitary circumstance, useful scum.

@48% #notamajority, I guess, if that's what helps y'all sleep at night. Imagine how much of "not a majority" of voters they'll have after specials. Sweet.…

None whatsoever. Our best bet on dodging this particular bullet remains Japanese resistance. Long may it continue.

Something to keep an eye on on this topic, all three major parties (Nat, Lab, Green) agreed before the election that there’s a strong need to classify NZ’s stewardship land, and they’ve all had an intent to give the process…

What evidence is there of any resistance to the TPPA on Key's part at all?

Small organisations and trusts with these sorts of common objectives need to amalgamate under one banner. The key to any movement toward better democracy is to motivate, educate and enthuse those without vested interests – which means the young and the disenfranchised. This new organisation is to my…

To pay the interest bill and to defend our int'l credit rating, the Government's only choice I suspect will be to sell more assets, as I doubt they…

The conference report is being finalised but conference delegates identified three topics as crucial for future work to re-strengthen our democracy. One is the quality…

All the more so when the middle classes feel precarious and their dreams of making the 1% slip away. Then they start scapegoating the reds/greens/blacks/browns/yellows/pinks/rainbows or whatever colour a ‘hated minority’…

Brilliant commentary. Yes, but when the Jon Stewart watchers want substance over sensationalism for the rest of their viewing/listening week…

Yes, that does need to be remembered. It was an outside shot that power…

And she has no idea. Doubt she reads her comments section or she would not have posted that here.Cortex=Speargun= Bollocks. Dumbing down the masses or is she really blinded by the Key and…

And you would be wrong about that.

Caveat: I didn't read your caveat. If I had I'd have answered

But trying to…

Curse you for posting that before btw – I’m now halfway through a marathon watch of Sapolsky’s entire Human Bio 150 lecture series at Stanford. The guy is a great speaker, and the material is utterly fascinating.

Indeed, the signal is lost in the noise. It needn't be, if voting were compulsory

Exactly why I use nzlemming everywhere ;-)

Well, fear is the vector...

It looks easy,
I could do that...

No just an attempt to reframe her appalling column prior to the election as merely highlighting that both parties were carrying out illegal activities.

Of course it was an utterly false equivalence but rewriting history…

If he’d actually declassified files which had any relevance to the allegations then it might be worth at least arguing about that point in hindsight. He didn't. Now all he’s done is to bring…

Yeah I get that too – problem is they keep making more, I was bullied in high…

"Bizarrely, it is somehow seen as perfectly all right for Dotcom and his associates to use stolen National Security Agency files to try to prove the Prime Minister a liar on how his Government has administered national…

Quite. We hate feeling guilty at allowing poverty so we kick the poor.

It's always worth talking about the way…

Bring back Havoc & Newsboy!

Still, a replacement for TVNZ7 is still a partial solution. If the Leveson & Finkelstein Inquiries are anything to go by, a super-regulator like…

The problem I think is not so much that the media is entertainment and no longer The Fourth…

The difficulty is that these sorts of problems regularly arise in situations where the right answer is known or where the weight of evidence clearly favours the rejected view.

It's at least worth talking…

He's the one that sucks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADgS_vMGgzY

Yes, it is a shame that Nicky couldn’t get the book out prior to Parliament rising. But it will most certainly be pursued with vigour, I’m sure.

In fact, I’d…

I think the difference in tone was pretty obvious :-)

I don't know what we told them and neither does the government, because the election doesn't ask people why they're voting for who they vote for. For all we know, people might have just been saying…

I made this point quite explicit in the post – this is what journalists already do. I think the format of news hides that, but it's always there. When a politician does something which a…

Or, as a friend of mine once put it, 'the News is just another TV programme'.

There hasn't been a question time in a while. Surely it's at least possible that this will come up? :-)

What are the salient facts that mean that Keith is not a hacker? (especially as might distinguish him from from Cameron Slater and Jason Ede and the Labour Party website?)

The majority voted for Not National. 48% voted for National. That's not a majority.

Not "would do" – he actually said they "did do".

I was stunned by the statement, as he said it within the context of the All Blacks looking at the Wallabies accidentally unprotected confidential website data and…

Ah, no, Nicky owns his own house (built it himself) and is mortgage free. He has other paying gigs. This book has been unexpectedly successful…

Character: Some poor bastard whose life is so publicly mauled that they quit out of protection and frustration.

And they're back/still in power.

Also politics, and elections are supposed to be a competition of ideas, even a "marketplace of ideas" if you will – the party that's…

I'm saying they finally are the ones doing anything. I applaud them, just wish they weren't what appears to be, alone. I think your "under-resourced" is telling of itself. Cut funding and a Department gets stifled or…

I thought he changed over to the National Party when the campaign started with Joyce at the helm but had his Beehive pass after, when he should have forfeited it. Until then Ede was in the PM’s office,…

” I did find…

That would be a fascinating piece of analysis, because "forever" is... well, since 2008. Then again, if a week is a long time…

News is supposed to be clean.

You know, there was almost no one on the Dirty Politics side. The Greens put in a complaint to the police about the illegal bits. Labour said there should be an…

Gah I can't find it now but someone has done the analysis and that is exactly the case. National has maintained about a million…

The Ombudsman's Office is in no way at fault. They are completely under-resourced. I've had a lot of dealings with them over the last…

If he was employed on…

The Public Service has been hammered over the last decade or so. The days of free and frank advice are largely gone, replaced by…

Yeah that's called advertising it – they sell it, someone buys it -…

It's a nice idea, but ultimately futile. There is already a defacto audit, the Ombudsman tables a report in Parliament each year that names all those who have not complied with their legal requirements under…

The whole bloody lot need to address it at least. The Ombudsman seems interested finally, but yes scrutiny in the Public Service , FMA, SFO, etc

If he was employed by Parliamentary Services, then is the Speaker is ultimately responsible for his conduct? This issue of Parliamentary Services staff not understanding which branch…

Key's words. He used "secretly" because he was told by headquarters not to. Wouldn't want to misquote him now.

Would also save millions on processing OIA requests. The problem we are at now, with government agencies, is that the…

OIA transparency is a a part of the cleaning.

Not a bad idea — though I'd like to see it applied all the way across the board. The Official Information and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Acts aren't suggested guidelines (if you…

Nope – 2002 National disaster 20 something per cent of the popular vote and a shower of media shit for the party and its leaders before and after…

And not for two election periods in Canterbury where regional governance is concerned.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/3526047/ECan-councillors-sacked

AND

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/no-ecan-election-until-2016-keep-flow-water-management-bd-127847

I see where you’re coming from and the Police were just a hand-wavey idea. I don’t know the perfect solution.

It just seems strange to me that there’s apparently no effective type of authority holding the…

I think that you are wrong about this, but only insofar as it is no longer media's reason for existence. Media is a business providing a…

Not a democracy functioning appropriately in the sense that individual rights are adequately protected from the abuse of executive power ... according to the New Zealand Law Society, that is:

https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/68541/United-Nations,-Universal-Periodic-Review-17-6-13.pdf

The economic drivers of media are very manipulable.

That's fair enough, and I…

Who in turn was appointed by the CEO of the Newspaper Publishers Association, Rick Neville.