What is Mr Glenn getting in return for his largesse towards the current Government and their poodles? Any investigative journos about?

Any halfway decent opposition political strategists about? No? Thought not, based on performance to date. Winston is a Minister… that makes him liable to answer Oral questions. Find some barely related topic for the main question and slip it in as a supplementary. We’d do it all the time before NZF swapped it’s testicles for baubles with first National, then Labour.

The resulting uproar wakes up a sleeping Gallery – even those who’re aware but doing their best not to report it so as not to embarrass their favourite pollies.

A few open questions to Mr Glennie wouldn’t go amiss, either.

The media should do this stuff but rarely does – usually not because of an VRorLWC but because they’re under-resourced, underpaid and, in the main, inexperienced (why get paid $40k by Fairfax when you can get 3 times that in PR?). So it falls to the opposition parties to do it.

Keys’ unequivocal “it’s gone” this morning is a start, but he’s lost a lot of political capital by soft-pedalling. His strategists have let him down badly… he’s not an attack dog by nature so a strategy needs to take account of that, but hasn’t.

What happens if someone contributes their time to an election campaign in some professional role like PR manager? Does their time have to be computed in market terms and added to the election spend, or are such professionals allowed to donate time? If it does have to be counted, then surely too does the salaries of MPs have to be counted as election spending because they will be spending inordinate amounts of time promoting a party? There are so many questions to be answered and so little time being allowed to answer them.

This bill is a dog that needs a good long training run before it can be put out with the sheep.

When of course, every rational person in New Zealand knows that the last election was purchased with big money that Labour thieved from the public purse.

So stop all this whinging and moaning and make an appointment with your lawyer right away!

Mine moved to Sydney 4 months ago. Something to do with better opportunities/lifestyle.

3 comments per amendment – not a bad ratio eh!

171. PhilBest
Dec 5th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

It is just incredible that none of the regulars here seem willing to concede anything about just how bad the EFB is. Even the otherwise surprisingly decent Gruela.

Suppose “Family First” does one leaflet drop nationwide. That’s their $120,000 gone. Then Labour attacks “Family First” in the media, getting wide press coverage for THEIR opinions, smearing “Family First”, Chris Trotter, Finlay MacDonald, John Minto, Tracey Watkins, et al lambast “Family First” in their columns, the Dompost Editorial likewise, and to add insult to injury, a 10 million dollar propaganda campaign by the Health Dept. does a whitewash of the “Family First” criticisms.

Supposing much of this was unfair. What does “Family First” do now?

(By the way, the above is pretty much what happened to the Exclusive Brethren. Even by reading “The Hollow Men”, I can see that these people, and Don Brash, have been set up by a campaign of lies about them. Read my post at 5.59 yesterday. No-one has addressed this point.)

Back to “Family First” (or whoever). What do they do? Is THIS your idea of “levelling the playing field”? Gruela?

If John Boscawen or someone ends up in Jail in the next few months, is he not a “political prisoner”?

And by the way, I agree with Insolent Prick above, that if John Key tried to do ANYTHING LIKE this, he would lose the votes of all the regular rightwing contributors to these blogs AND we would be raising just as much of a storm over it. Plus, YOU GUYS would also be raising a storm over it instead of selling your souls and justifying it. Its called “principles”.

I strongly suspect that the reason YOU’RE not worried is that you KNOW you have the relevant institutions so stacked that prosecutions carried out under this act will only ever be on a completely partisan political basis. Not unlike various “Police Investigations” for the last few years. (Again, see my post 5.59 yesterday).

One expects people to read it carefully and to consult lawyers.

So stop all this whinging and moaning and make an appointment with your lawyer right away!

Actually, as a financial provider to the government coffers, can I make a declaration to the electoral commission regarding these “announcements?”. And if I did, would that limit the government to $120,000 during election year?

Another bauble for Winnie!!

neilm Could you please describe to us what a normal Labour supporter is.
I suspect they may be normal people like us with a distaste for bad governence.

Agreed. The KBB and Standard people are in a race with d4j to prove that their IQ is less than their age, which I estimate to be about 9 yrs.

It’s worth keeping in mind though that they are in no way representative of Labour supporters. They’re a weird fringe.

It seemed as if you cared. You certainly mentioned it enough. I thought it would be wise to clear up the little inaccuracy in your presentation of it however. I’m sure your intention wasn’t to deceive in general, though.

$12,000 is no small amount, I agree. There are two thoughts around this for me. First is that as Erin Leigh and a number of earlier examples have shown us, if you dare to publically oppose this government you should expect backlash. Boscowan, for engaging in public and democratic action to oppose what he believes is a poor show by this government, is already having the Green smear machine retaliating against him by trying to create the impression that he is one of the big money, big business backers that attempt to steal elections. The right to remain anonymous protects citizens against a government that will vilify and react vindictively against anyone who opposes them.

The Labour led government has shown us two things. The first is their reaction to dissent or criticism. Mallard’s cowardly attacks on public servants stands as one example, but there are many in the years that Labour have held power. To have your name attached as opposition to this government makes you vulnerable. It seems almost surreal writing that, but the real world examples show us that this is the case.

The second is that they have no respect for electoral law, after all, they were the ones who ignored the Electoral Comission last election after indicating they would include all their spending and overspent by $800,000.00. They then went on to introduce retrospective legislation to legalize their illegal activities. No matter how people like Roger try to spin it, that is the one true example of electoral rorting in New Zealand.

And these are the people asking us to trust them implicity when they re-write electoral law without proper bi-partisan support and public consultation? Imagine this happened anywhere else in the world bar a dictatorship. What do you think the reaction would be if the Republicans rewrote electoral law in the United States to unequivocially favour themselves?

There’s a big difference between freedom of speech and outright abuse or slander, and Stanley, Dad4J and roger nome all crossed the line last night.

QFT, Inventory. And as I said, I respect this is DPF’s blog and we all have to abide by his rules even if we’d do some things differently in his position. I also understand that – unlike some other blogs – David has practical and philosophical objections to being a micro-moderator or not having comments open at all. I just wish some folks – on both the loony left and the rabid right – would realize this is a privilege not an inalienable human right and just calm down. (And before anyone calls me a pompous hypocrite, yes I’m perfectly aware that I don’t always live up to my own standards. But at least I have standards.)

Darn it! There goes the plans I had for getting them schooled up at a good Islamic institution!!!