Remember how it made you feel 10 feet tall?
...
And the public? Don't get me started on the public. They're jonesing so hard.

Ha, yes, exactly! Great post. I was starting to get the shakes earlier this week, and eventually decided to wield some placards and other volunteery stuff. Whether or not it makes a difference, at least it's making me feel better.

You may be right, but that's a completely irrational conclusion for them to draw. National aren't going to help anyone who isn't in the top 10%, probably really 5% of incomes.

Yes, precisely. If it were rational behaviour, the Nats wouldn't need to engineer a climate of insecurity. Fear makes it easier to convince people to act against their own self-interest/principles.

On the subject of voters wilfully ignoring the Dirty Politics scandal, my personal conspiracy theory is that the Nats are using income inequality the same way the US Right used terrorism in the 2000s -- to keep people feeling vulnerable and on edge, and hence more likely to vote conservatively. And if you're trying not to rock an already unsteady boat, the last thing you want to hear is that the hull is rotten. Cue fingers in ears.

The books says:

in this period when Collins was also minister of corrections, [Slater] appears to have used a prison officer in the department to move a prisoner between prisons on his instructions.

(That's in the text in chapter 4, not the footnote.)

If, as has been suggested, Judith Collins does have dirt on John Key, I don't think that would stop him sacking her now.

Unless she's threatened him with mutually assured destruction.

The 'Simon Lusk's Plan' chapter in the book -- which has barely been reported -- states that there are MPs who are in Parliament principally because they were clients of Lusk, who worked with Slater to deter and even destroy their opponents in electorate selection races. Good people were really hurt.

In all the interviews over the last few days, has anyone asked John Key if he was aware Slater and Lusk successfully manipulated candidate selections in his party, and what he plans to do to prevent that happening again in the future?

I know it's not the worst thing in the book, but it seems so insidious and potentially damanging to the NZ political landscape in the long-run. Also, it's just gross.

/delurking, hi!