Posts by Tom Semmens
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Political parties in NZ tend to run on the smell of an oily rag and don't have money to retain legal departments for interpretations.
The Electoral Commission has accepted there was no intention to deceive, and as a bequest it hardly falls into the category of corporate donations that National launders through it's so-called "blind" trusts, which is a real, actual ongoing political corruption scandal. Like I said, the only people who seemed interested in trying to whip this up are National's online dirty tricks brigade and their usual cyphers.
BTW there appears to be no donuts. :(
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which has disappointed a number of people.
This number of people being exclusively made up of online National Party activists.
I am so concerned that now I am wondering if the boss is going to bring in donuts for morning tea again today or not.
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I don’t believe has declared any intent politically
New Zealanders have traditionally had a strong anti-establishment mentality and I suspect a Dotcom party party opposed to the massive extensions to the surveillance state proposed by our friendly fascist prime minister could do quite well with the youth/geek/libertarian crowd, especially looking at how such “pirate” parties have become repositories for anti-establishment youth votes overseas. Also, if Kim Dotcom managed to get elected I suspect he would prove to be a natural politician and politically the idea of extraditing a serving member of parliament to the United States for anything short of murder is explosive. The public wouldn’t stand for it. So if I were he, I would consider getting electedas another way to twist the knife into the Key administration and a great way to help avoid extradition.
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Brown should go down. A bogus “centre left” captured administrator.
I find statements like this incredible. claiming Brown is simply the “the less bad” candidate tells me the Mana party is either to mean spirited or simply to unfamiliar with the intricacies and mechanics of good government to appreciate the true scale of what Brown has managed to achieve in just three years.
Len Brown was given a hospital pass under his own goalposts by a chortling Rodney Hide who was confident that the dog’s breakfast of his botched super city plan meant even the fly in the ointment of having the wrong guy win wouldn’t materially affect the grand plan to hock the whole lot off to a queue of entitled and greedy rich mates in the Auckland establishment. But under Len Brown’s leadership the council has managed to keep the CCO's in public ownership and largely in line, and keep the city’s administration working whilst beginning the merging of disparate IT systems, work forces and work cultures. At the same time, the council has produced a historic unitary plan based on actual democratic inputs and has kept the flag flying for PT and the CRL. And of course there was that little thing of the largely trouble free rugby world cup as well. These are very significant achievements, especially when you consider the whole time he has been mayor he has had to deal with an unrelentingly petty and spiteful central government and a petulant and boorishly wrong-headed CitRats opposition aided and abetted at every opportunity by the Herald’s resident business Quislings like O’Sullivan and Roughan. In short, Brown has achieved what Hide thought would be impossible without fatal political consequences and in doing so he has confounded the political right whose frustration at their inability to land a significant blow is symbolised by the Herald’s recent resorting to desperate panty sniffing stories to try and whip up anti-Brown sentiment.
I am also furious at Len Brown for not decisively backing the PoAL workers. But I also realistic enough to recognise the constrained political environment he is operating in. The National government is incredibly arrogant and authoritarian and wouldn’t hesitate to pounce if given the chance. The new super city is hardly the political machine required to provide a base to directly oppose central government on anything. Personally, I won’t judge Brown until gets a chance to be mayor with a Labour/Green government in office. Until then, I think his political management has been almost (PoAL excepted) faultless and his general administration better than anything coming from the Beehive. Not a bad record for just three years.
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John Minto is unequivocally in favour of a provoking a showdown with Central government - I presume he plans to procure some sort of CNT-AIT militia from the thin air to man his barricades. The utter futility of electing a man who plans to irresponsibly use his office to engage in a Quixotic war with Wellington should be enough to disqualify him as a serious contender for the mayoralty for any sane voter.
But anyway, he knows he can't win, and it seems to me his real aim is to have a go at Len Brown primarily to raise the profile of the Mana party. So I can only assume the definition of success for Minto and Mana will be getting enough votes to unseat the centrist Len Brown in favour of some right wing candidate owned by the Auckland elite, just so the Mana party can prate about the countryside telling everyone how important they are. Gee, thanks John.
His standing represents the very worst sort of left wing woolly headed, negative, short sighted and irresponsible wishful thinking.
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Hard News: Competing for Auckland, in reply to Graham Dunster,
QUIMBY
QUIMBY FOR MAYOR!
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Hard News: Competing for Auckland, in reply to Sacha,
Thank goodness for TransportBlog
If Kiwiblog is the number news source for commerical radio in NZ, then TransportBlog occupies a similar position in Auckland for opinion makers on transport issues.*
*Except for the government, who appear to think Tony Friedlander is still a cabinet minister.
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Interesting also to see people pointing out the centre-right’s confused position on the Unitary Plan.
The centre-right mainly want is to get rid of Len Brown, whose mayoralty is seen as a daily insult to the Auckland born to rule establishment. So they'll take any opportunity to put the boot in with confused attacks, half truths and hysterical nonsense via their house journal (AKA the NZ Herald).
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The thing about Roughan and Hide (and David Farrar for that matter) is that for some bizarre reason they see trains not as part of a multi-layered transport solution for a growing city but as some sort of thin edge of a bright red socialist wedge. While we see the 7.30am EMU from Henderson to the new Aotea Square station where you will walk to work in an office building, they see a frightful socialist infernal machine with a red banner on top taking a mob to storm the Winter palace’s of finance. Heavens knows what they make of ferries – perhaps John and Rodney and David fret long into the night that the Devonport ferry will suddenly morph into the cruiser Aurora? For these paranoid men, facts are only useful as long as they play Sancho Panza to their Quixotic tilting at socialist windmills.
But recent spate of anti-public transport, anti-unitary plan stories planted in the Herald to my mind smacks of something a bit more premeditated than just the unhappy coincidence of easily frightened men. The Herald is definitely trying to whip up anti-council hysteria as part of a deliberate wider attack on Len Brown ahead of the un-coming local body elections. Public transport and the unitary plan are just unfortunate casualties of the decision of certain senior Herald editorial staff that they will be part of a drive to undermine len Brown by all means necessary.
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Awesome star trek cycling jerseys?
There is a time and a place for Star Trek, and the bike isn't one of them - unless you plan to wear fake pointy Vulcan ears as well.