Posts by SteveH
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to linger,
What Hager actually said was that he initially believed the prisoner moving instruction came from Bennett, but the evidence didn’t positively support it, and so he dropped it from the main text, but left the supposition – marked as a supposition, not as a factual claim – in a footnote.
Wasn't it was Collins he initially thought was responsible? Has anything come to light about who did get the prisoner transferred?
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Pete George,
Phil Goff has revived his history of leaking and using people in his office to leak to leak to try and damage opponents and lying about it.
Not as bad as Whale Oil but not dissimilar to some of the things Slater and National are accused of.
Helen Clark was a well known leaker, even using this to dump on her own MPs.
I'm not talking about leaking politically relevant material. I'm talking about publication of personal information and personal attacks. You can argue the degree doesn't matter, I can assure you that it matters to some people (I'm one).
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Susi Maclean,
My 2 key points were 1) sadly, this is the game of politics, and I am surprised people are even surprised by the sorts of things I was hearing about the book in the media. From what I see, it’s the way the game is played, by all sides, and I am not confident there’ll ever be anything different now that it’s deteriorated this far
From what I see the stuff on Whaleoil is significantly worse than anyone else is doing or has done in the past in NZ politics. I don't think the idea that "everyone is doing it" is valid - if it is then please provide some examples from the left (same challenge goes to Key who also promotes this idea).
I also find your conclusion weak. Why can't the situation be improved?
2) I’d have no idea who to believe, all 3 parties, the politician, the blogger and the author, had controversial reputations.
This seems a simplistic position to take. Are you really suggesting that Key, Slater, and Hager have equivalent reputations?
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
In this case, though, I doubt very much that the PM’s office would have thought this was something they needed to bother the PM about while he was on holiday.
Not only that, but the only justification for his staff not to bother the PM with this sort of thing is if they knew he would authorise it and would prefer not to be bothered, i.e. if his staff had standing orders to allow the SIS to release stuff to Slater. If there is any similar case where he was briefed then it's going to look pretty damning.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Konrad Kurta,
I’m mystified as to how ‘the general public’ don’t seem to give a shit about blatant lies being told to their faces. Key, Slater, Collins et al have been lying non-stop ever since the book came out. Is anybody keeping a tally? It’s unbelievable that people would actually swallow any of this.
And it's not like it just started with the book. It seems about 95% likely that Key lied over knowledge of Kim Dotcom and Collins certainly lied over Oravida. It's depressing that so many people seem willing to give Key a free pass simply because they like him/his personality/his looks or don't like Cunliffe.
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Am I the only one getting a strong sense of deja-vu over this SIS thing? It seems like Key is reading from the same script he used when getting questioned over the GCSB. "I didn't know, I can't remember..."
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I’ve also been wondering what the past descriptive phrase is for a ‘conspiracy theorist’?
– y’know after the ‘proposition’ proves to be true – that a cabal exists that are ‘working together (ie sharing breath) to bring about a particular result, typically to someone’s detriment’, is now no longer in doubtInvestigative journalist?
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Roger Lacey,
It would kind of take the shine off Bill English’s “Look we’re good economic managers, here’s our surplus and if you’re all good we might give you a tax cut” speeches.
The other thing that takes the shine off that claim is the fact that government debt has skyrocketed during these two terms of National government. It's gone from about $10 billion to over $60 billion (35% of GDP). Far lower debt levels (27% of GDP) were enough for the Abbott government to declare a "debt crisis" and use it to justify a draconian budget, though of course all and sundry called BS on that.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Rich; do think seriously about this. A vote for Finlayson means a vote for National.
It won't help National get elected, if that's what you mean. It would only help if National were to win more electorate seats than their party vote gives them. That won't happen.
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Now that the Herald has started verifying the claims in the book I expect Key will switch to "yes but so what?" mode.