The Standard hosted by the Labour Party?
Paul M in this thread made the following comment:
it’s actually quite easy to see why The Standard reckons it costs nothing to run their blog, and, of course, who *really* pays for the blog.
www.thestandard.org.nz is hosted on a server at 202.74.226.119
A WHOIS on that IP address gives us:
inetnum: 202.74.226.112 – 202.74.226.127
netname: LABOURPARTY1-2DAY-NZ
descr: New Zealand Labour Party
country: NZOh dear.
It appears their server is hosted on an IP block purchased by THE NZ LABOUR PARTY from 2Day. Personally I’d find it incredibly unlikely for Labour to pay to put up a “blog” with comments from what would appear to be professional comms people (”spindoctors” posting propaganda) without said comms people also being paid by Labour, or perhaps one of their Labour-affiliated member unions.
Now I have verified this information. If you do a command line “ping www.thestandard.org.nz” it does indeed resolve to 202.74.226.119.
And if you go to APNIC and do a whois on that IP address, it does indeed confirm that IP address is in a block registered to the NZ Labour Party.
So it appears that The Standard is hosted by the NZ Labour Party. If this is the case, and the evidence is compelling, this raises real issues under the Electoral Finance Act.
I would suggest the blog’s expenses could well qualify as party advertising, as a blog hosted by the Labour Party can not be considered non-commercial. They may be in breach of the law for not having a proper authorisation statement.
One also has to wonder who at Labour authorised the blog. One can’t just use their IP address space without permission. You need to have the username and password for their account with 2day.com.
Many many questions. Hopefully some answers will be forthcoming.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Labour should be strung up for this. They are the first to fall foul of their own law; was bound to happen sometime; didn’t think it would happen as soon as January 20.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Worse stil DPF as the taxpayer pays for the Labour Party website and we know this because of that little parliamentary crest down the bottom does this mean that public funds are paying for theverydoubleandsub-Standard as well……I wonder if the MSM will investigate this….I wonder.
hollow, hollow men exposed.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Is this what one could call a `GOTCHYA’.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Dishonest little cretins.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Hollow men?
Far to gentile a description.
How about lying, duplicitiuous, hypocritical crooks.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Hey Davey, I’ve already addressed that in the previous thread:
January 20th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Why is the “About” page on that site blank?
Why is there no name and address, as required under the EFA?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
So thats the end of The Standard’s credibility then. Demolished, nuked and microwaved in one fell swoop.
The same disingenuous nasty little liars from The Standard who railed and foamed against “nameless trusts” and “hollow men” have turned out to be as dishonest, mischevious and deceptive as their own leader over the pledge card scandal.
You know, it’s moments like these that DPF will want to kick back, savour a whiskey and smoke a nice cigar in appreciation for the day.
I hope you find out their names DPF, and give them a second serving exposing once and for all who is really are behind The Standard.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
What a lying pack of arseholes.
Don’t vote liarbore.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Blogs are exempt from needing authorisation under the EFA.
[DPF: Only non-commercial blogs. I am unsure whether a blog hosted by a political party qualifies. It would be an interesting point of law]
January 20th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Tane, does this mean that if I keep visiting your site, that I’m costing the Labour Party more of its precious money [evil laughter].
Or is it just costing me and the rest of the taxpayers more?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Tane: Just as I voluntarily disclosed when I took on a temporary contract helping National HQ with some IT work, don’t you think it would have been wise to disclose at the time you transferred across, you were temporarily being hosted by the Labour Party?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Tane is a first class liar.
“We set The Standard up as an independent left-wing blog”
It’s not independent when you accept hosting space from the Labour Party.
And who is we? Go on, tell us, who are you really?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Oh apparently the Standard is just “resting” with the labour party server.
Enter Tui ad stage left
January 20th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
isn’t it interesting. Labour wants everyone to declare their names, addresses and even register when it comes to expressing election opinions.
but not for their own bloggers. Being caught out as a grade A hypocrite is a bummer dude.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
David, yeah probably in retrospect it would have been a good idea, but it’s the things you learn as you go along. Suffice to say the offer of hosting didn’t come with any strings attached or we wouldn’t have accepted it even as a temporary measure.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Who pays for your “substantial traffic” bandwidth?
Come on Tāne, your excuses are sounding hollow.
On the other thread you said your hosting cost you $10 a month….that sounds like bullshit to me and I called you on it.
Now we find out that Labour is hosting your “independent blog”.
So either you lied then or are lying now…or more likely you always lie.
Your excuses are hollow, you are hollow.
So come clean Tāne, tell us why the Labour pArty would host a site of someone who doesn’t vote Labour, doesn’t work for them and tells people to vote Green….well I’ll tell you because your words are hollow and are bullshit.
Come clean, we now know that your site is at the very least subsidised by labour how about you declare now for us all your affiliantions, you co-bloggers affliations, where you receive funding from?
These questions need to answered because it goes to the heart of our Electoral System that “big money” isn’t being used to buy elections and as we have seen today Labour has real big money at its disposal for communications people, and what is most useful to them in the internet is countering the effectiveness of blogs.
Transparency Tāne, come one come clean you hollow bunch of Labour poodles.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
If the tedious lickspittlery of ‘The Standard’ is the best attempt at new media the Labour Party can come up with than they’re in an even more dire state than I thought.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Why are we expected to believe such a transparently false excuse, when these numpties have underwritten a huge conspiracy fantasy based on less substantial electronic data (Hagars fairy tale)
Hollow Hypocrites of the highest order
January 20th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I posted a comment on the thread at The Standard, and it was obviously to their distaste, as it has since been deleted. There one minute, gone the next!
January 20th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I never thought I’d see Tane use the word “retrospect” in relation to his blog. Pledge card perhaps, but not his blog.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Whale bro, I’ve told you, I’m not a member of the Labour Party, I’ve never worked for them and I’ve never even voted for the guys. They obviously liked what we did (providing a counterbalance on the web I guess) and offered to help us out in a time of need.
Anyway bro, everyone’s been asking for ages where the free speech coalition gets its funding from. Any progress on your disclosure statement?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I recall a conversation with a documentary maker who told me about the proliferation of blogs in the USA which were sponsored by politicians, and set up to appeal to certain demographics. It apperas here that Labour are doing the same thing.
But wait!
Didn’t Helen Clark cite ‘the Americanisation of New Zealand politics’ as one of the pernicious developments that the EFA was designed to address?
Of course this puts a whole new slant on Tane’s coyness about his identity.
I do hope that last remark won’t be seen as an invitation to Tane to remark on my ‘obsession’ with him, which even if it were true would pale into insignificance next to Tane’s obsession with The Hollow men.
Like Auden said:
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;”
So you don’t work for the EPMU after all, Tane? My bad.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Tane, could you please hurry up and put a Parliamentary Crest on The Standard so we know who is paying for your blog?
Maybe Whaleoil could put it on the youpaidforit website that Tane was quick to mock the other day.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
You probably didn’t get the captcha right. We don’t delete comments except for defamation or extreme abuse.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
FSC will be updating the donors list in next few days, in line with the voluntary full disclosure policy. Parties and other groups only have to file annual disclosure statements, but we are exceeding our legal requirements
January 20th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
yes stayathome – i found the same thing happen – I even repeated the post and resent it – nada!
that was the last time I posted there.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Tāne, I am not your bro, How about you answer the very valid questions that you have faced and ignored all day.
Your obfuscation is hanging you right now.
Hollow man, hollow blog….I want to know that my taxpayer funds aren’t paying for your site?
Answer the questions.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I posted a comment on the thread at The Standard, and it was obviously to their distaste, as it has since been deleted. There one minute, gone the next!
You probably didn’t get the captcha right. We don’t delete comments except for defamation or extreme abuse.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
“but it’s the things you learn as you go along.”
In your eyes others (ie right supporters) are supposed to have learnt these things before they start.
Ungracious, hypocritical, hollow scumbag.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Whale, I’m certain no Parliamentary funds are being used, it’ll be the party itself that’s helping us out with server space. You’re welcome to do an OIA request if you like. You do know how to do an OIA don’t you Whale?
By the way Whale, if you were half the sleuth you thought you were you’d look up the Labour Party IP address and find it was hosted in Tokyo (what the hell happened to buy NZ made?). The Standard server is hosted in New Zealand.
[DPF: The Parliamentary Service is exempt from the OIA]
January 20th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Funny how Tane is normally very strong in his defence and yet now that these allegations have surfaced he seems to be eating a spot of humble pie.
It’s all a little convoluted, though that makes this funny as most things Labour do are anyway.
If your excuse of “offered server space” is true and you know see the immorality of this agreement, will you change over to a true independently hosted site?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
A quick check using http://www.freeparking.co.nz gives the information on the person who registered the webiste. But perhaps more interesting is the DNS names at the bottom
left.org.nz and
lyn.gen.nz
Now do we wait for an apology for the dissing of Tim the Mayors suporters or would that be like waiting for treasury advice on tax cuts?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
The Labour Party has been funded and run from Parliament for many years. Without that support the Labour Party would cease to exist.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Hang on a second. We’re all accepting Tane’s excuse far too quickly. The onus is on him to prove that he is only temporarily hosting his blog on Labour’s taxpayer funded servers.
How about you publish the email communications between The Standard’s bloggers and the Labour Party to confirm the arrangement?
If he’s not prepared to be upfront about who is hosting and paying for his website, when why the hell should anyone else have to be upfront about the political activities they get funding help from?
And more to the point, if he doesn’t confirm the arrangement with evidence, it can only be proof that he has something to hide.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Pique Oil, Lyn’s the guy who helped us with setting up the website, as Whale will tell you.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
“it’ll be the party itself that’s helping us out with server space. ”
How much?
To what extent?
what is your name?
What is your address?
All political adverts should be equal, but left wing ones are more equal than others.
Hypocrite!
January 20th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
If your excuse of “offered server space” is true and you know see the immorality of this agreement, will you change over to a true independently hosted site?
Jeff, I don’t think it’s immoral, but certainly not an ideal solution, that’s why it was always just a temporary measure. As I said we’re planning to switch to a new server some time within the next month.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
ha ha ha ha ha ha … infinity
where to start.
is this what Klark refers to as a ‘front’?
is this what Klark refers to as ‘ secret backers’?
as Klark says ‘the public of NZ likes to know who is behind electioneering, etc’.
HYPOCRISY IN THE EXTREME.
I hate the labour goons more with each passing week. and to think I once supported them (long ago)
January 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
“Jeff, I don’t think it’s immoral, but certainly not an ideal solution, that’s why it was always just a temporary measure.”
And certainly not a solution you elected to advise everybody about at the time it was implemented. Not even in the interests of the “transparency” that you guys hold so dear?
One word: Bollocks
G
January 20th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
The Standard has since its inception been a hive of hysterical, hypocritical rantings by people paid by the Labour Party, Parliamentary Services, and the union movement to attack the National Party. Very rarely do they even deign to put up a half-baked defence of Labour Government actions. John Key posts outnumber Helen Clark posts by a factor of at least 5-1.
It has long been known that the Standard is a Labour Party attack blog in drag. For all the shameless obfuscation and spin, and their hollow shrieking over any right-wing blogs expressing an opinion, they have the astonishing gall to have as a leading post, right now, on the spin of the media, as some kind of justification for doubling the number of spin-doctors in the civil service.
All the while, the Standard has championed the cause of disclosure of political interests by other bloggers, the mainstream media, and media commentators. The Standard has championed disclosure of campaign funding and expenditure, and howled down the right of anonymous persons to contribute to political debate.
Yet the Standard remains written by anonymous bloggers, who we now know have been directly supported by the Labour Party.
The Standard’s credibility has just approached zero.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Forget about the EFA, though there are some rather interesting implications. I just find it rather amusing that Tane — who does like accusing others of being, shall we say, economical with the veritas — appears to have flat out lied, repeatedly. Though to be fair, he might credibly have some plausible deniability, of the kind that says you don’t ask questions when you know the answer might we rather embarrasing.
And Lee C., ‘The Hollow Men’ was written by T.S. Eliot not W.H. Auden. But I can think of a piece of doggerel that might be a better fit for Tane and Co.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
But when we’ve practiced for a while,
How vastly we improve our style!
(J.R. Pope, with apologies to Sir Walter Scott)
January 20th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
because Tane and The Standard are saying this is all some kind of misunderstanding, perhaps they could all allay our concerns by reimbursing the taxpayer for the server space they’ve been using.
No donating the money to a charity now – send funds to Kevin Brady, Office of the Auditor General etc etc etc
January 20th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Prick you really are getting a little hysterical. The reason we don’t often defend Labour is because we don’t agree with everything they do and we’re not going to try and defend them. The rest of your comment is just the usual lies and misrepresentations we’ve come to expect from you.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Since the cat seems to be out of the bag, I think that The Standard should just come clean about themselves and make an honest declaration on the blog. While I see nothing inherently wrong with a trade union putting resources into a political party that they support, some transparency is probably a good thing – especially since The Standard has been such a strong supporter of the Electoral Finance Act and its requirement for commercial blogs to make a declaration.
I will come as no surprise to anyone that The Standard is run from the Communications Unit of the Engineers, Printing and Manufacturing Union. I don’t see why the EPMU don’t just be up front about this. It does indeed make them look like Hollow Men. They also appear to be hypocrites, because the EPMU pays for the blog to be published, which means that The Standard is indeed commercial and falls under the rules of the EFA.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
January 20th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Tane (tree)
I hear the noise of chainsaws ……
January 20th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
That blog has had the stench of hypocrisy and deceit right from the start. They’re just another gang of amoral power obsessed leftist thugs. Not surprised at all by this event. Just normal leftist dirtbag behaviour. Remember readers- these are the scum that by majority vote, presently control this country.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Bryce, that’s absolute gold.
So the Standard was funded and supported by the EPMU (either directly or indirectly), who then got Labour Party/Taxpayer funded support to host it on Labour’s servers.
Game over Standard.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Got im Whale !!! you da man! Did anyone really believe Tane? The Labour Party and its politicians will leave no stone unturned in its` quest for a fourth term, it is the nature of the Beast to lie ,cheat and threaten. The lesson to be learned by oponents to Labour is `never take a knife to a gunfight` you will come off second best. so load up Whale and co the real battle is only just beginning.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
This is incredible. The far-left radical stuff that gets trotted out by the regular “Standard” contributors should now be used to BITE Liarbour’s arse BIG TIME. If Rob Muldoon was still around…….
Lets see how good the current Nats team are at attacking the closet Commies.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
The word corrupt bastards springs to mind, opps naughty word, but stuff who cares when a killer walks our streets.
DONT VOTE CORRUPT LIARBOR
January 20th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
ah the epmu too!
to be expected
pathetic and useless.
why doesnt the epmu just come out and be a political party
January 20th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Tane:
“All the while, the Standard has championed the cause of disclosure of political interests by other bloggers, the mainstream media, and media commentators. The Standard has championed disclosure of campaign funding and expenditure, and howled down the right of anonymous persons to contribute to political debate.
“Yet the Standard remains written by anonymous bloggers, who we now know have been directly supported by the Labour Party.”
Which part of that is untrue?
Bryce, that is a very serious allegation. Perhaps Tane will be good enough to refute your claim. If he does so, you should accept his word and apologise.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
And Tane said:
“Jeff, I don’t think it’s immoral, but certainly not an ideal solution, that’s why it was always just a temporary measure. As I said we’re planning to switch to a new server some time within the next month.”
And all the animals chanted: “Four legs good, two legs bad!”
January 20th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Bryce, I can assure you the EPMU does not pay for The Standard to be published.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
But I bet the EPMU turn a blind eye to its staff members running a Labour hosted blog on EPMU time.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
“Lets see how good the current Nats team are at attacking the closet Commies.”
Already know that. Lame politically confused inarticulate losers. If they weren’t, NZ would never have sunk so low. Like the Republicans in the US, the Nats in NZ won’t bring the changes that the citizens yearn for. Too many of the old guard who capitulated so weakly to the left still hold sway there. Change will only come from a new party or new people. People who understand the viciousness, power and objectives of the global leftist political machine.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Why should we believe a thing Tane(ted) says.
Sorry but once a hollow hypocrite, always a hollow hypocrite
January 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Here’s the other sites hosted on the same server:
1) bgo.wallmannsberger.com
tonymilne.org.nz
2) civilunions.org.nz
3) cunliffe.org.nz
4) herodebate.org.nz
5) rainbowlabour.org.nz
6) thestandard.org.nz
7) timbarnett.org.nz
9) wallmannsberger.com
10) younglabour.org.nz
Very interesting, really. Michael Wallmannsberger’s name comes out a lot.
It also seems to be the same server (although slightly different IP) as the NZ Labour’s secure “donate” site (https://secure.labour.org.nz/donate/). One has to wonder if this server would therefore be taxpayer funded.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
That isn’t the point Bryce made, Tane, and you haven’t denied that the Standard’s authors work in the communications unit of the EPMU. I think you should refute that allegation, and that Bryce should apologise for making it.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Bryce, I can assure you the EPMU does not pay for The Standard to be published.
So who does Tane?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
This whole thing is bloody hilarious. The Standard has spon TANE iously combusted. It probably doesn’t matter too much though. Nobody who counts for anything ever read their childish drivel.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
“Bryce, I can assure you the EPMU does not pay for The Standard to be published.”
Weasel words, they just pay the people who run it.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Keep spinning all you like, Tane. You haven’t suddenly gone off to dinner. You’re watching every comment as it comes up, reading comments tear your shoddy spin to shreds.
But answer Bryce’s point directly. Stop lying and trying to spin. Are the Standard’s authors part of the communications unit of the EPMU?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Tāne, best you come clean, the evidence is mounting and so far you haven’t even offered even one reasonable explanation.
As each post of yours goes by without any of the very real questions being answered we are left with no other choice than to believe that you lie, and as we now see not even convincingly.
It turns out that you are hollower than the pants that now rest around your ankles.
Come clean and explain just who you and your fellow bloggers are so that we can at least attempt through sunlight to remove the stench of dis-honesty that now hangs around your (is it really yours) blog.
We need to know who the authors are otherwise the charges remain. Right now your are looking at 10-15 with no prospect of parole metaphorically speaking.
Hollow excuses from Hollow bloggers.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
A quick google search says that Neale Jones and Rob Egan worked in the EPMU Communications Unit as of mid last year. So, who are these geezers on The Standard?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
““Bryce, I can assure you the EPMU does not pay for The Standard to be published.”
Weasel words, they just pay the people who run it.”
————————————————————
Perhaps we should be asking Mr. Farrar if Kiwiblog’s server bandwidth and hosting costs are sponsored, and who those sponsors in fact, are – if we are going to go down this track?
Not that I have a problem with this in the slightest, I simply believe that those who reside in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
[DPF: Inspire Net, a Palmerston North ISP, provides me with free bandwidth and hosting, plus superb service on top of that. This is in my disclosure statement. I also posted publicly on this at http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2006/08/inspire_net.html.
I don't wait for people to find out, before I make disclosure statements]
January 20th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
We now also find that Tony Milne is a hollow blogger as well.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
ssssshhhhhh Tane is setting up a new name.
Watch this DPF.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Tane said: “Bryce, I can assure you the EPMU does not pay for The Standard to be published.”
Thanks for clarifying that Tane. But can you be a bit more clear by stating that “the EPMU has nothing substantial to do with The Standard”? I.e. EPMU staff aren’t involved in running it. If so, I apologise for my erroneous statement.
I’d also add that I think The Standard is a healthy addition to NZ political blogosphere, and that I think that unions such as the EPMU should indeed being making a political contribution to the blogosphere. But, if they are, it would be desirable for them to be upfront about it.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
January 20th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I disagree, Whale. The Standard are welcome to keep their anonymity, as far as I’m concerned.
The issue is whether the Standard should disclose that it is hosted and subsidised by the Labour Party, and whether, following Bryce’s allegation which Tane refused to directly answer, making the issue even murkier, the Standard’s authors are simultaneously employed by the EPMU, and weather that should be disclosed. The third issue is whether the Labour Party’s subsidy for the Standard constitutes an authorisation of election expenditure under the Electoral Act.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Policy Parrot – DPF does disclose this.
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/disclosure_statement
He also gets ad revenue too. Smart fella.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Ha ha ha ha! I was having a shithouse day until now! What a beauty…once again Tane Tutae gets kicked in the nuts, this time with the steelcaps.
See ya Tutae – perhaps you could have a Big Whip Round to pay for your new blog, seeing as you lefties have gorse pockets…
January 20th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Answer the questions Tane, or need approval from the 9th floor?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
<i>I would suggest the blog’s expenses could well qualify as party advertising, as a blog hosted by the Labour Party can not be considered non-commercial. They may be in breach of the law for not having a proper authorisation statement.</i>
Whether a website/blog is commercial or not is immaterial to the question of whether it qualifies as party advertising. The exceptions in the definition of election advertisement (such as the blog or newspaper exemption) in section 5 are only exceptions to the definition of election advertisements, they are not also exceptions to the definition of party advertisement.
The definition of election advertisement is important for questions of authorisation statements, however, it is the definition of party advertisement that matters for determining expenses. It may be that the Standard falls outside the definition of election advertisement because it’s a ‘blog, but it won’t fall outside the definition of party advertisement (there is no blog exemption from that definition, or indeed a news media exemption or book exemption).
In determining whether the cost of the hosting is an election expense for the Labour Party, the question then arises as to whether the hosting of the site has been authorised by the party secretary or financial agent, but it probably doesn’t matter – Labour will be on some plan for hosting, and should (and I imagine will) be including that cost in their expense – I doubt they will apportion out some cost of the traffic going to The Standard (and if they’re on a fixed plan, such that the Standard are just using some of the cap) then that wouldn’t even make sense.
On the point of authorisation statements, I note that the National Party website still doesn’t seem to have one, DPF (not that that’s at all your fault, just sayin’).
[DPF: Graeme - I know a bit about 2day.com and they do tend to charge per website, but may be different for an IP address range. I am interested still in whether The Standard still qualifies for the blog exemption, because it says "the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal political views (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog)" as if the Labour Party owns the server, it is arguable the Labour Party are the publishers and they are not an individual]
January 20th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Tāne, Tāne, where are you….oh that’s right probably got called by Mike for a urgent telecon to work out the damage control….you’ll be back soon with the talking points.
Then after you do we will see how they match up with your claims on this thread and others.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Come on Tane(ted), answer the question.
Disclosure is the only way to stop shadowy forces unduly influencing the electoral process.
You know this Tane(ted).
Walk the walk……bro.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Forget the National Party Website, this is about TANE who needs to do some explaining
January 20th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Is Tane any relation to Tony Wilton , the General Counsel of the EPMU?
be a big coincidence if he was.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I like the cut of your seaweed Shushi.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Sushi
January 20th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Actually, I’ll simplify my answer (and add to it):
If the Labour Party general secretary, or financial has authorised spending on a blog, then that spending is an election expence for the Labour Party.
The blog exemption does not apply (in terms of spending calculations) to parties or candidates.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
To be far to Tony Wilton I don’t Tāne is him. Tony Wilton is a lawyer and would know better than to obfuscate and lie about the connections with Labour.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Tane, last comment was at 7.59
We are waiting
[DPF: Guys Tane doesn't have to post here, and people do take breaks. No need to do a countdown of how long since someone has posted. Annoys me when people do that to me. ]
January 20th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
fair not far and don’t think…note to self type slower.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Telecon with Mike Williams still on probably…let’s wait to see the talking points.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
From the sounds of it, and given Graeme Edgelers 8:31 post, the Standards web hosting arrangement with Labour does place both parties in a tenuous position.
As I see it, we have an agreement between Labour officials hosting a blog which is run by a third party who espouses beleifs against Labour’s political opponents.
Can someone explain how this differs from what the Exclusive bretheren did, aprt from the fact that in the case of the latter, no political party funds were involved?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Slightly,
Well the EB’s didn’t break the law, which is clearly the modus operandi of the Labour Party
January 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Mmmmm I wonder who hosts KBB then?
G
January 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
ha….nice one The Standard the EB’s of the left……
Hollow bloggers, on a hollow blog funded by a hollow party led by a hollow woman.
Of course I can imagine the talking point from Dear Leader will bee,” just a beat up by the usual suspects.”
January 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Priceless……… The axis of stupid lives up to it’s name.
Tane BRO, where fore art thou?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
It’s sloppy work. In short the boys (and girls?) at the Standard were either dishonest or incompetent. Looks like Tane is choosing the incompetent defence at present – may get him off the hook for the moment, but not exactly a great advertisement for believing anything they say is it?
January 20th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Slightlyrighty, these are extremely unholy brethren. You don’t seriously think party funds are involved, do you? They are broke. London to a brick it’s your funds and mine which are being used. These people are the most skilled thieves the country has ever seen.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Grant, KBB is on wordpress.com. I think they are a free blog site, so really nothing to see there. It does tell you something about their traffic tho – small enough to remain free.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Adolf, or it may mean that the Labour Party purchased some sort of capped plan with lots of space. Since they are so crap at putting any interesting content on their various websites, and nobody visits, they find themselves with spare capacity. It costs nothing to them to allow someone else to use that capacity, and helps our their union mates. Stupid, yes. Our money, sort of, but not in the “sunk cost” sense of the term.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Thanks Paul. Their traffic may be small but it may grow somewhat as Tane is now making his lame protestations of innocence over there.
G
January 20th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
PaulL, then the question is, did they pay for their ‘capped plan’ with their own money (you know, the stuff you get from sausage sizzles, chook raffles and party membership fees) or did they pay for it with your money and mine? (You know, thar stuff we pay which is called tax.)
January 20th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
The Labour party has been making an anonymous donation to The Standard. It is not a donation in money, but a donation in kind. The exact same principles apply as to other anonymous donations. I want to know who is trying to influence my vote by secretly supporting other people’s arguments.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Cash for blogging scandal?
Looks like it.
Tāne has dropped offline, even IrishBill has stopped trying to defend their rather tenuous position.
Yes milo it certainly looks like someone is trying to influence the blogosphere through anonymous donations. The Labour party.
Very Hollow.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
DPF…..
We need you to run a book on how long before their hosting is moved somewhere else.
My pick is by Noon tomorrow.
What an incompetent shower of shit labour are, the last year has been a constant barrage of incompetence.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Anyone have a real idea whether this sordid little hollow affair will make the MSM?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
If the Standard is paid for by the Labour Party then it will be paid for by the taxpayer. The Labour Party is funded by the taxpayer, confiscated money from Union Members and the tithe on members of parliament. They do very little fund rasing from the general public. They prefer to plot and scheme instead.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I like the way that people getting into the standard over this are now termed “fascists” by one of the posters over there. A major nerve has been touched for sure. Gone by lunchtime BB? 9.30am at the latest unless a decision has to be made in Wellington, in which case Tuesday.
G
January 20th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I’ve just advised my 220 + media contact database of this issue – lets see who picks it up?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
People who have been mosting messages to the Standard critical of the Labour Party may be a bit concerned to learn that their IP addresses and consequently some of their personal information is available to said Labour Party through their web server logs.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Oh, this is classic! Those paragons of virtue, the boys and girls at the Standard turn out to be trough-snouters, just like the rest of the left. This is too good to be true. Big ups to Paul L for breaking this story!
January 20th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Tomorrow morning on Russell Brown’s Hard News, I’m predicting his mothers lamb chops recipe gets blogged again.
Those lousy leatherfaced frog-eyed motherfuckers from the Standard just got caught out royally.
Anyone want to predict the nature of the emergency morning meetings at EPMU and the Labour parliamentary unit?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
dc: I think that would be illegal under the privacy act. There are strict controls over databases and the use of personal information. I think political parties have some exemptions, but the The Standard is not a political party.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Brilliant!
Lets hope Tim Shadbolt and co have permanant records of posts involving them before the site disapears.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
“dc: I think that would be illegal under the privacy act.”
Milo, do you think that would matter to these guys?
G
January 20th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Contary to some of the idiotic statements in the comments on this blog, TheStandard.org.nz is a voluntary blog site, not run by the labour party.
Because it is voluntary, it takes donations to help run the site. In this case a donated block of static IP’s pointing to a server cluster. In this case I think that the IP’s were donated to the NZLP, who donated them to help our blog. The volume of traffic was growing fast enough that we needed to move to a more distributed cluster than the origional test site.
The NZLP doesn’t pay for thestandard, in exactly the same way that I trust (or at least hope) that the national party or act doesn’t pay for this blog.
The comments in this blog are on the same crass standard as when Whaleoil previously attempted to do some kind of greenmail on my previous employer, because a cut-copy-paste left a DNS entry pointing at their DNS as a secondary server.
I help run the tech end of TheStandard, and seldom actually get time to read it. That is left to a group of moderators. I don’t really know what they run as a policy, and they don’t know what my team does to keep the site running.
If you want to ask about the technical areas of the site – ask me and tell me why you think you need to know it. Probably I’d have to question your ability to understand the explanation after looking at some of the stupidity displayed here about technical issues.
Cheers
Lynn Prentice
[DPF: Lynn I don't see how you can claim The Standard is the same as Kiwiblog in not being funded by a political party. Kiwiblog is hosted on servers at an ISP, and paid for by that ISP. The Standard appears to be on a sever owned or controlled by the NZ Labour Party, whom I presume pay 2day.com for rental, bandwidth etc etc. Unless 2day.com is provided server space and bandwidth and IP addresses for free, someone is paying them for it. And it appears to be the Labour Party based on the IP lookup of that range being in the name of Labour.
The issue for me incidentally is disclosure. The Standard has attacked me on dozens of occasions for my voluntary disclosure of my links to National. To not disclose that someone in Labour was lending them server space, isn't exactly practising what you preach]
January 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Tane? Knock, knock..anyone home [tumble weeds, howling wind]
January 20th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Lyn Prentice who runs the tech end of the Standard has confirmed that Labour is helping them.
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?p=971#comment-13913
His disclaimer really raises more questions, who donated the IP block that enable Labour to donate the IP block the Standard?
Who is behind the Standard if not the Labour party?
There seems to be some sort of coverup going on here proving that some significant sums are involved.
I’m not sure how much an IP block costs but it isn’t nothing. That is quite some donation to the Standard.
it also proves the lie of Tane’s that the situation was temporary.
Seems the lies and obfuscations are set to continue.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I just posted a message that is awaiting moderation on this topic.
Why does it not surprise me that Whaleoil is at the centre of another (polite explicitive deleted) lack of technical nounce.
Lynn Prentice
January 20th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Lyns attempt to defuse the situation really raises more questions, who donated the IP block that enable Labour to donate the IP block the Standard?
Who is behind the Standard if not the Labour party?
There seems to be some sort of coverup going on here proving that some significant sums are involved.
I’m not sure how much an IP block costs but it isn’t nothing. That is quite some donation to the Standard.
it also proves the lie of Tane’s that the situation was temporary.
Seems the lies and obfuscations are set to continue.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
*sigh*
More FUD from Kiwiblog.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Whaledreck
a. A small block of static IP’s costs very little – at least if you aren’t buying them retail.
b. Who is behind it is basically me – I got the site operational, and then passed it off to number of like minded people to moderate and post main articles.
c. The most significant sum is my time – just ask the people who have to pay me to write code. It is fairly obvious that you’d never get paid for this type of work.
Basically you are whaledreck – look it up and find out why it is an insult.
Lynn
January 20th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Wasn’t Helen Clark going to sort out anonymous donations? Oh, silly me, that was anonymous donations TO political parties wasn’t it! Not anonymous donations BY political parties to their union cronies in return for lots of Labour-friendly blogging (with the occasional thread lightly criticising the Govt to muddy the waters and not make it look too obvious).
Caught. Hand. Cookie Jar. ‘Nuff said!!
January 20th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Ah yes we have it,
“*sigh*
More FUD from Kiwiblog.”
courtesy of illuminatedtiger
The “nothing to see here move on” debate has been invoked
January 20th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
This is what really worries me. It’s not the policy differences, it’s the “born to make the world right”, “we can do no wrong” supercilious certitude of some bloggers. If you believe you are morally superior, you can justify any kind of outrage in the name of the greater good. So it is particularly delicious to see that moral superiority brought crashing down by such an extraordinary example of hypocrisy. It is even more delicious to see the perpetrators cannot even understand how hypocritical they have been!
This is why I believe in principles and institutions. We don’t need protection from the other guy, we need protection from ourselves. I’m as fallible as the next blogger, but I hope I will admit when I’m wrong and listen to argument. Yet we have seen reason, principle and constitutional principles thrown out the window on the the Electoral Finance Act. The Greeks had a word for it …
Hubris.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
So let me get this right.
Are we the public, actually paying for the swine at The Standard to conduct the grubby little John Key smear campaign that has been going since its inception?
And, BTW, what’s with all of this ‘bro’ shit ?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I distinctly recall the fanfare that marked the arrival of The Standard and Kiwiblogblog. Their purpose, so we were repeatedly told, was to reclaim the blogosphere. What we now discover there was more to “reclaim” than met the eye.
Tane:
Some questions for you:
- When precisely was “at the end of last year”?
- Who precisely was “someone from Labour”? And will you be posting the unredacted email?
- What does “until we worked something out” mean in terms of specific options under consideration – and how long until a decision is made?
I wouldn’t normally expect you to answer such specific questions. However, I think they’re very reasonable questions, given the constant references on The Standard and Kiwiblogblog (never discouraged by you or Irish Bill et al) to Kiwiblog and (according to your followers) its National affiliations.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Inventory2: It was Paul M, not myself. I would prefer he had picked a handle not so close to mine, but I have no control over that. I’ve been posting as PaulL here and elsewhere for some time, so no desire to change, and of course some of my friends here would immediately claim I was posting under two identities if I did so.
Funny thing about posting under pseudonyms – at least you’re unlikely to find someone with a similar handle (Whaleoil, Adolf, RedBaiter, D4J, Sonic etc are all rather unique handles). Unfortunately all our parents weren’t quite so inventive, so when using your real name we get clashes.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Because there really is nothing to see here. Quite frankly I wouldn’t give a flying f*ck if The Standard was hosted on a server in Helen Clark’s basement. Judge the blog for it’s content and you will see there is nothing there, not a single image, not even a sentence blatantly praising or advertising for Labour.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Illuminated Tiger
Given this clanger of yours yesterday, Illuminated Tiger, you’re no-one to complain about economy of truth.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Funny you should say that PaulL. Grant S and I must share the same initial letter of our surnames and I’ve often done a double take when I see his posts on here. Not that we’re ever in disagreement it must be said.
G
January 20th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
So what’s the subbing then?
“Labour Secretly Funds Attacks on Key”
January 20th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Err- “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!”
January 20th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
The going rate seems to be about $20 per month per Static Ip address. This is a block of 15 so that is $300 per month just for the IP addresses. or $3600 per annum. (Woosh, Telecom, TelstraClear, Orcon)
That doesn’t include the server costs yet. Nice handy gift from the Labour party of $300 bucks per month. Nice if you can get it.
Now tell me again labour isn’t paying for the site.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Who here actually reads The Standard anyway? I’m interested in Left-wing perspectives but the layout there is just too shit for me to want to bother going through all their posts.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Whaledreck – that is the going rate for RETAIL. I realise that you probably have to pay that – I wouldn’t.
It does indicate what a ripoff retail IP’s are. Try orcon – they have ‘free’ static IP’s – just part of every broadband account.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
lprent……………clearly you DONT pay it!
January 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Yeah, we are ALL paying it.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
People in the IT industry (myself included) often get a lot of their stuff for free. It’s pretty much a matter of: You supply the server, we supply the telehousing.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Certainly not – and may I add that Tane has repeatedly made categorical denials on this blog (and elsewhere) that the Sub-Standard had any links with the Labour Party whatsoever. Well, darlings, Tane is a very Hollow Man indeed. And I think its entirely fair to wonder if the Sub-Standard boys aren’t being enitrely candid about a few other things.
And Illuminated Tiger wrote:
Well, darling, that’s not how smart sock puppets work. Judging the SubStandard on its content, I’ve seen relentless attacks on John Key personally, the National and ACT parties and various folks on the center-right (especially DPF) that are of dubious accuracy or taste. I don’t think Labour would find much of it quite politically convenient, but not want to be associated with it directly for fears of an anti-sleaze backlash.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Sorry, that last sentence should read:
“I DO think Labour would find much of it quite politically convenient, but not want to be associated with it directly for fears of an anti-sleaze backlash.”
January 20th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
“John Key attack-site funded be secret donations”
January 20th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Illuminated, I can understand that, one cancels out the other so it’s free.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Lprent, unfortunately for you the donation in the law must be counted at RETAIL so tough shit if labour got them for free and donated them to The Standard.
You really should stick to configuring servers because a spokesman you are not.
All you have done is raise a great many more questions about the integrity of the Standard, of Tane’s fatuous and disingenuos answers and now your own credibility.
There has not been one single story from the Standard all night…in fact there have been over 6 so which one is correct? Who do we believe?
The one thing we do know is that Labour owns the IP block and Labour “donated” it to the Standard at a retail value of $300 per month. you yourself confirmed it. You yourself have condemn the Standard and labour with your own technical description
There is no other way to look at it. Unless of course it is all lies, which wouldn’t in the slightest surprise me.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Surely someone could “find”, the emails between the EPMU, Labour Party and the sad little hacks at the VDSS with regards to this rort of political advertising in the enlightened era of the EFA
Christ there is a best seller and a musical to be made here!
January 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Gee you “Blue-balls” are such a winging bunch so far there is 120 odd posts from bleating blue bellys.
DPF. Have got to congradulate you on turning a blog that a few months back had some reasoned posters and was interesting to read.
all it has now turned into is entertainment value.
the bleating, winey, vitriolic abuse that most of your contributors come up with shows how small and petty minded your right wing bleaters are.
Whats even more entertaining is that in the main is winging males.
Good at least to see that in the mainwoman stay away.
Probably got better thing s to do with their day.
John Key should be proud of you guy. If this is the supporters of the National (in the main) party, it’s got to be a vote winner.
Have fun losers.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Dalley, your bunch are the losers, caught out with their hand in the cookie jar, you lefties are the whingers here.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Hi DPF – long time no see. Back in the usenet days I think…
I take donations from anywhere (you’re welcome to contribute). In this case old hardware running with donated services from a number of sources. Most of them from various peoples contacts around the IT industry.
What you are seeing is a block of static IP’s that were given to the NZLP, and then given to us and used to access a server area – that is used for more than TheStandard. We only just got it running over Xmas, so there will be a lot more sites hosted on the same system, and it will be used for testing other services during development and trialling.
“The issue for me incidentally is disclosure. The Standard has attacked me on dozens of occasions for my voluntary disclosure of my links to National. To not disclose that someone in Labour was lending them server space, isn’t exactly practising what you preach”
Disclosure… Well I do give the LP $15 per year as a member, and I have been known to support them with my skills around election times. Of course I’ve been known to support ActionHobson, soap manufacturers (and pay for their soap), various vegan sites (but I eat meat), tree-huggers (but I’m a wicked hand with a chainsaw), pointing out problems with the Crimes Act at the high court (that cost me $30k) etc etc… Can’t remember ever being part of a union (or even employed by them), in the same way that I’ve never been employed directly by the goverment aprt from one time someone insisted on paying for a couple of days.
Basically, some people asked me to help get a left-leaning blog site running – so I did. Commentary is normally a bit suspect – just like I saw in here today. Some of it might be accurate, some not (like here today).
However the blogosphere was a bit one-sided and unfortunately seems to be populated by people with knee-jerk opinions and little fact. So TheStandard is an attempt to correct the imbalance. Seems to be working ok so far apart from Whaledreck going off the handle at me periodically.
Lynn
January 20th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I notice John Dalley didn’t bother to argue the substance of thread.
Attack is not always the best form of defence dalley, particularly an attack as childish and ineffectual as that one.
G
January 20th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Let these fuckers squirm in the sebaceous exudate of their own lies, hypocrisy and politics of denigration.
I wonder if KBB is being sponsored with public cash as well ? Colour me surprised [not]
January 20th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
An interesting exchange on The Standard last year (edited for brevity):
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?p=616
Tane on 14 December 2007:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2007/12/disclosure-2.html#comment-382475
Comedy gold!
January 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Yet another story from Lynn, cripes they can’t even sing from the same song sheet.
The fact remains, again confirmed by Lynn, Labour is donating (paying) for a block of Static IP’s with a commercial value of $300 per month.
What does labour get in return?
What does labour expect for their $300 per month?
Who actually pays for the Static IP addresses?
Lynn, you are just getting these guys more in the crap with your explanations.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Iprent said:
‘What you are seeing is a block of static IP’s that were given to the NZLP, and then given to us and used to access a server area – that is used for more than TheStandard. We only just got it running over Xmas, so there will be a lot more sites hosted on the same system, and it will be used for testing other services during development and trialling.’
So, are the Labour Party going to run more blogs on the spare static IPs? More tax funded propaganda?
January 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Whaledreck – actually someone put the LP’s name is on the IP block Doesn’t mean that they ‘own’ them. You should have a good look at terms and conditions of IP block’s. You don’t own them – you lease them.
I could quite happily put the National parties name on an IP block… In fact I should do that now….
January 20th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
At least one thing has been proven, Klark is not Tane. Why? Well she went and screwed up another sporting moment today. Four things to notice, one she wasn’t in Taupo for the first race, 2nd, she wasn’t in Chch for the bowls, she wasn’t at Takapuna for the windsurfuring and she was at the feature race in Taupo. Now seriously, does this smell of something???
So, if she isn’t Tane, who might be?? Guesses???
January 20th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Lynn – I respect your integrity, and the responses you are giving. I think there is a serious problem, but it arises not from your actions, but from the Electoral Finance Act and the entire political discourse that surrounds it.
The fact is, Labour has entered the era of the EFA by making secret donations to John Key attack site. It may be legal, or it may not – not sure. But the hypocrisy, in the light of the Exclusive Brethren criticisms, is so unbelievably breathtaking that it really undermines both Labour and The Standard.
Now don’t get me wrong, I respect the ideals and actions of many at the The Standard. But having made such a massive song and dance about secret influence, and been such cheerleaders for the EFA, The Standard is well and truly hoist on it’s own petard.
I rejoice, but I’m sad. The fact is, this is what a number of us have been saying all along. The EFA was appalling, and the left-wing paranoia that suffused the debate was just plain silly. Now we are seeing the consequences of this hubris.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Yes POC and Tane’s lies exposed for all to see.
Of course a blog costs nothing to run especially when the labour Party “donates” you a block of Static IP’s worth $300 per month.
Labour’s cash for blogging content scandal.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Iprent:
‘I could quite happily put the National parties name on an IP block… In fact I should do that now….’
So we are going to frame the National Party now ah?
January 20th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
John Dalley,
Why has covert political funding of anti party campaigns become so ho hum all of a sudden?
Please tell me you can’t see the hypocrisy of a blog claiming to be independent, but is in effect funded, and I contest organised, by the Labour party being outed?
When the half empty treasury benches railed against undue influence in New Zealand during the EFB debate, was their other halves absence due to their covert activity on an undisclosed political mouthpiece of their party?
Funded by by the taxpayer!!!!
Shame honorable lefties, shame
January 20th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Lyn, I’m a little lost on your description. You needed a block of IPs to run a cluster? Last I looked the point of a cluster was that a single IP could be shared transparently across multiple servers. Then when one server goes down, the IP is still served. Having multiple IP addresses would take the point out of the clustering really. I’m sure you are as technically literate as you say, so I can only presume the block of IP addresses had some other purpose?
January 20th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Peter…
Just at present I’m running about 40 sites on my home server – on a single static IP. They’re called virtual server’s – single IP – multiple URI’s. One server I worked on had about a thousand of them on a single apache server.
If you’re going to comment it may pay to know what you’re talking about.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Lynn gives us yet another explanation of the Static IP’s. This is really getting farcical.
What’s that about 10 different stories, not one the same as before.
Tragic really, perhaps they have Pete Hodgson advising them on talking points.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Lynn – follow up. I wouldn’t put the National Party’s name on a block of static IPs if I were you. It’s conceivable that you could thereby be committing an illegal practice or a corrupt practice under the Electoral Finance Act.
Be very careful, given the existence of this draconian legislation.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
PaulL,
We actually needed 2 IP’s to provide two seperate routes to two seperate servers. The rest of the block came because you can only get blocks in multiples of 1, 4, 16, etc to 256
January 20th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Lyn, your last comment was closer to my expectation – a single IP hosting multiple sites, with that IP allocated to a cluster. I still don’t understand why there was need for a block of IPs. The donation of that block is what has caused the problem for you, and by your description a single IP was all that you ever needed. There must be some rationale for why a block was needed?
January 20th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
milo – yeah might not be a good idea doing that. Who cares about the EFA. The sysop’s would down on my arse – that is considerably more dangerous
January 20th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Iprent – must be a busy night for you, all of this damage limitation going on. How are the teleconferences with the ninth floor going?
Have you got which lie you are finally going to settle on sorted out yet?
What other sites will be run on the donated IPs from the NZLP?
January 20th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
psst, found Tane, he’s hiding over at Whales site but not talking much!!
January 20th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
which was?
January 20th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Ah. Two IP’s needed, the rest came for the ride. Why did Tane think that the hosting had been shifted for a short period to Labour-party provided servers? Seems that he was aware that something was happening, and seems that he thought the servers were provided by the Labour party. Seems to be suggesting that there is more than just an IP address block that has been donated – obviously anything else that was donated (other than, perhaps, bandwidth) wouldn’t come with finger prints that were quite so clear.
Would you be so kind as to categorically deny that the hardware, the bandwidth, any non-open source software, and in fact any other portion of this new setup, were passed on by the Labour party from donations that they had received but didn’t need?
It just sounds suspiciously like there was a big bundle of kit passed on from the Labour party, and that perhaps there was some discussion around the standard about whether it was really a good idea to accept it. And that then they decided “screw it, nobody can tell where it came from.” Otherwise it is hard to work out why Tane would have thought that you were running on Labour party hardware.
Or was there a different configuration earlier this year/late last year, and you were actually running on Labour hosted hardware? And you just recently got your own kit up and running and moved across?
There just feel like some gaps here, I’m sure there are good explanations but they aren’t leaping out at me.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Thank you Craig for the correction I haven’t got a clue why i put Auden – rush of blood…perhaps
January 20th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
PaulL – needed 2 static IP’s for two seperate servers.
In the routing tables that allows us to send via two seperate routes to two seperate servers. There isn’t a lot of point in having a single IP pointing to two seperate machines – that only covers you for having a server box failure. It doesn’t cover you for a link going down.
The way the system is setup at present (after we finish configuration) the single point of failure is at the db. I’m planning on setting up database replication at a seperate server to cover for that as a tertiary fallback.
I like multiple redundancy – stops those early morning wakeup calls
January 20th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
So very very hollow.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
If I get the replication running correctly, then I’ll probably spread the whole system out a bit further…
Anyway enough of all this – got to finish playing with xorg.conf because it doesn’t like my video card
January 20th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Shouldn’t anonymous donations be sent to the Electoral Commission to be passed on? In that case, this donation in kind, not having been sent to the Electoral Commission, could be an illegal practice.
But I’m not sure:
- Is it above the threshhold?
- Is The Standard caught by the EFA as an election advertisement?
- If not, are they caught by the “associated group of persons” rule?
- If not, can any political party launder it’s donations in this way?
Pretty murky … Oh G R A E M E E E E E E .. can you help interpret?
January 20th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I know all about the early morning wakeups. Once upon a time I spent about 3 weeks getting a call every night around 2am to fix a database replication problem on Sybase. Turned out to be a defect in the damn product, and I was mighty short of sleep by the time we got a fix. I presume you’re using MYSQL as the back end – I didn’t think their clustering was ready for prime time yet? Although I suppose a blog doesn’t really count as prime time
Xorg – that is my recent friend. Didn’t like my Intel video card. Upgrade to latest kernel and Xorg fixed it.
I would like some comment on why Tane thought you were hosted by the Labour party – if it were just a case of donated IP addresses as you say, there would be no reason at all he would know of any connection to Labour. So he should have been saying “no bloody idea, but we don’t have any connection to Labour.” Instead he had a story about temporary hosting. There is something not quite right there…
January 20th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
PaulL says……”I’m sure there are good explanation’
Yes. Whilst Tane(ted) and co have been esposuing vitriol against those that dare question the validity of the EFA, whilst invoking the ghost of the evil EFB and “American bagmen” they have been shamelessly taking Labour Party money (possibly taxpayer money), to fund an anti Key site whilst not disclosing, funding, identity etc of their own identities or funders,
I’ll say it again, and hope many follow
Hollow, Hollow, Hypocrites
January 20th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
And possibly the Labour party should have provided disclosure on the website. If this is funded by the Labour party, it would appear to be an election advertisement. By failing to include their contact details, Labour may then have committed an illegal practice.
May need to be tested in the courts though.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
“We put out a call and at the end of last year someone from Labour emailed us”
So how exacty did you put out a call? Did you ask them directly? How many people/organisations did you ask? Did you just put a post on the blog asking for help?
January 20th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Hmmm… well. a bit of digging lets us know that the server identifies itself as
mail.labour.geek.nz on port 25
It is happy to relay mail for
younglabour.org.nz (they seem to have a wildcard address map)
thestandard.org.nz
rainbowlabour.org.nz
timbarnett.org.nz
and I dare say several others.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
> I like multiple redundancy – stops those early morning wakeup calls
FWIW… Multiple redundancy to that level is worth a few $k per month @ retail.
Suggest this would make a great test case.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
““We put out a call and at the end of last year someone from Labour emailed us”
So how exactly did you put out a call?”
MC, they probably canvassed donations from all across the political spectrum, Labour, Progressives AND the Greens.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I laughed so hard at this my kids wondered what was wrong.
To summarise my understanding of facts & inferences so far.
Labour party rented servers & one of a block of reserved IP addresses are used to host the standard. – not in dispute
The fact that the labour party pays for but does not authorise the site appears to be a breach of the EFA – not yet disputed
The standard bloggers are self described not members of the labour party. – Whilst not being paid up financial members allows them to truthfully assert they are not members I wonder whether d4j or redbaiter would get the same charitable offer of server space from the friendly labour party.
Some of the Standard bloggers appear to work in the communications area for EPMU. – not disputed yet. But there is a difference between someone whose job description is to blog and someone, whose bosses understand that these staff are “fighting the good fight” by spending part of their working hours blogging. The output from the standard is to high to be done in that limited time outside working hours with a normal social life.
I pay for my own site on sixapart. It costs me about $10 a month. No doubt dpf’s costs are worth substantially more due to the higher traffic.
The biggest cost is time. I surmise that some of the standard bloggers have moved gradually to a situation where they spend part of their working hours at EPMU blogging on labour party hosted servers. Under the current law that would appear to require authorisation and disclosure.
We are not talking huge sums of money. It is the principle. It would be the highest delicious irony for the first breach of the new law to be a labour supporting group. I can see a complaint to the electoral commission coming on.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
What I really love is the symmetry of all this. Wasn’t it The Stanturds that were wanking on about WhaleOil hosting something?? SNAP!
January 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Kimble: LoL. Inspired by the Blue Brothers in Hicksville?
Blues Brother: What kind of music do you play here?
Barmaid: Oh, we have both kinds. Country and Western.
PS. Don’t you just love the EFA? I warned The Standard months ago to be careful what they wished for, and to be ready for the consequences.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
PaulL says……”I’m sure there are good explanation’
You know the saying “If you hear hoof beats, think horses—not zebras”?
Moving a blog is an effort. It involves resetting up the blogging platform, reinstalling plugins etc. Backing up the database, moving it across. Then you have to take down the old site and update the DNS. DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate (although often the DNS info is disseminated within 24 hours) . During the DNS prorogation the site will be down for people until the their ISP gets the update.
No one in their right mind switches to a temporary host few a month or so.
Creating an account at any number of web hosting companies world wide is easy and cheap. Webdrive for example charge $30/month.
What happened was that someone offered Tane hosting, tane accepted, and now tane says it was temporary. He will not move the blog tomorrow, in keeping with his story he will move it over in a month.
I hope the mainstream press pick up on this! This is classic EFB.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I don’t know if this has been asked yet, but is there a reason that both secure.labour.org.nz and thestandard.org.nz are hosted in the same building, both using Windows Server 2003 (which could indicate the same web hosting package) ? For a server using old donated hardware, why would you run several sites on such a resource intensive operating system? It was also very nice that someone donated a license for Windows Server 2003, how much does that cost again?
January 20th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
sagenz –
“We are not talking huge sums of money. It is the principle. It would be the highest delicious irony for the first breach of the new law to be a labour supporting group. I can see a complaint to the electoral commission coming on.”
Yes – a complaint should be made in the interests of transparency. Who will be making it? to work effectively it needs to be someone with a high enough profile to command some msm attention.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
National won’t – they’ll be afraid of getting caught themselves.
The ideal person is Tim Shadbolt – after all, he has been attacked by The Standard. He has a right to know who is funding these attacks. They are attacking him for planning to breach the EFA, so it seems pretty reasonable for to ask if they are in turn breaching the EFA, as it would seem to prove his point.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
yes milo – i think we were saying something along the lines of: ‘The EFB is a turd, it’s all very well supporting it because you think it promotes your own narrow views, but just wait till it comes and bites you on the ass – then what will you say?’
January 20th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
yup my money is on him or Boscawen – let’s face it these people have made a career of creating enelies, coming – roost – chickens -home -to etc
January 20th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
sorry ‘enemies’ blame Jack Daniels 4 tht
January 20th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Lee,
“to work effectively it needs to be someone with a high enough profile to command some msm attention.”
I nominate Hone H.
He nailed his colours to a change of government in his electrifying speech during the final reading of the EFA Time to back it up.
Vote National /Maori/ACT. the only votes that will count.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Though that’s a bit harsh – it’s not like Jack lead me a gun-point and made me pour the bourbon, add the ice, then consume the said liquids.
No. That was Stan’s doing.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
sorry ‘Satan’s’.
Yes Boomtown, I like that choice BIGSTYLE.
hone, like Guido Fawkes, appears to have entered parliament with honourable intentions….
January 20th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Let’s be quite clear.
The suppor provided is far more than IP addresses.
The very same server is providing SMTP mail for several other Labour associated sites. All this talk of clusters and so forth is just crap.
Thestandard.org.nz
and various other labour associated sites are listening on the 202.74.226.119 IP address. Now unless this is a reverse proxy of some sort (in which case who is paying for the reverse proxy) it’s pretty clear that there is an assocation here that goes well beyond the loan of any range of IP addresses.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Lynn, you are not able to update the information on any IP block allocation.
You are not the maintainer – simple as that. This is why netblocks have maintainer objects – so others can’t play silly games.
BTW, I’d fix the DNS servers too – they aren’t set up properly:
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=thestandard.org.nz
January 20th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Now I have a serious question. Are we all getting excited about nothing? I mean yes this is a effin big deal, but does it have the legs to translate to the msm and the public as a newsworthy issue?
If an issue like thies, which is esoteric is to have the attention it deserves, it needs proper handling. Otherwse it will be vapourised by the spin-factory within 48 hours.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
“Labour Secretly Funding John Key Attack Site”
January 20th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
“Labour Secretly Funds Attacks on Tim Shadbolt”
January 20th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
“Denials of Labour Funding Disproved by Bloggers”
January 20th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
“Labour First Victim of it’s Own Electoral Finance Act”
January 20th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I liked that last one best.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Lynn Prentice:
Your technical explanations have, unfortunately, not addressed the matters canvassed in my 9:55 pm post – which, to be fair, was addressed to Tane.
Despite Lynn’s protestations to the contrary, Tane’s comment (someone from Labour emailed us and offered us some temporary server space until we worked something out) was specific enough to establish: there was an email.
So I’m hoping Tane (or someone else from The Standard) can answer my three simple questions. Or even just one simple question: who precisely was “someone from Labour” and will the unredacted email from that person be posted online?
January 20th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
“Labour’s Hollow Site Resonates Wildly”
Today it has been revealed that in direct contravention of its own recently introduced laws, labour has been canvassing for votes without entering into the “correct’ process for being allowed to participate in political debate.
Many in the political circuit are wondering as to how Labour will discipline itself over this issue. Word is David Benson Pope and his(the) party whip will be involved.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I’d like to congratulate Lynn Prentice for having the integrity to actually sign his name to his postings. And he appears to have a real job (ie not working for a political party or trade union or govt dept…)
I also like the fact that Lynn tries to give what appear to be factual explanations (compared with the obfuscations that preceded him).
But answers to many questions, which are not technical, such as that from POC above, have not been forthcoming.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:05 am
“What you are seeing is a block of static IP’s that were given to the NZLP, and then given to us and used to access a server area – that is used for more than TheStandard. We only just got it running over Xmas, so there will be a lot more sites hosted on the same system, and it will be used for testing other services during development and trialling.”
What I’d love to know Lynne is who owns the box that listens on 202.74.226.119. If it’s owned by 2Day then who npays the monthly rental on it.
The IP addresses are a Red Herring… The ‘Server Area’ (WTF is a Server Area!?!) is the bit that is of real interest.
Is the server that listens on 202.74.226.119 and identifies itself as mail.abour.geek.nz on port 25 paid for by the Labour party of New Zealand? Parliamentary Services? Someone else?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:07 am
Okay, so we’ve now established that the Standard, being subsidised by the Labour Party, is an election expense, and is in breach of the EFA for not having an authorisation statement.
If the Standard’s authors are also employees of the EPMU, and working in the EPMU’s communications unit, it would be interesting to see whether the EPMU is in breach of the EFA also, for its failure to register as a third party.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:09 am
No lynn is spinning the spin too. His time, like all in the IT industry doesn’t come cheap, starts at $120 per hour, and
“I help run the tech end of TheStandard, and seldom actually get time to read it. That is left to a group of moderators. I don’t really know what they run as a policy, and they don’t know what my team does to keep the site running.”
My team?
Tane gets called out and soon after Lynn appears first time since usenet days.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:12 am
Lee C.:
Hey, I’m impressed you even know who Auden is — despite his centenary falling last year, he was something of a back number when he died in 1973 and his reputation hasn’t really stood up that well. There is, though, a rather charming photo of Eliot, Auden, Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes together at a cocktail party for Faber & Faber authors — a pretty impressive roster of names to have on your list.
lprent wrote:
I could quite happily put the National parties name on an IP block… In fact I should do that now….
Please do, and I’ll be quite interested to see what the relevant ISP has to say about fraudulent misrepresentation. I’m fairly sure the National Party (and its legal representation) would have a few things to say as well. Then again, nice attempt at firing a weapon of mass distraction.
Still, if we buy the current spin, I hope the Labour Party is going to do a detailed audit of their IT operations. Looks like any monkey can get absolutely anything hosted on their servers – let’s just hope there’s nothing illegal, inappropriate or just downright politically embarrassing in some corner.
While I don’t speak fluent technobabble, I suspect the spin here could be translated into a catch phrase from Hogan’s Heroes: “I see nuffink. Nuuuu-fiiink!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:13 am
So how does one complain to the electoral commission?
What is their scope, re investigation of this miss use of public funds?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:18 am
There’s a tangential aspect to this discussion. Unfortunately Lynn’s moved beyond his area of expertise, IT, to the law – with disasterous consequences:
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?p=971#comment-13979
So, according to Lynn, anyone can post a disclaimer (we aren’t affiliated with the National Party, but these are reasons why you shouldn’t vote for the Green Party) and then freely flout the Electoral Finance Act. Can anyone say: Exclusive Brethren?
Of course, this is a nice attempt by Lynn to deflect the discussion away from that mysterious email.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:28 am
“The New Zealand labour movement used to have its own newspaper. A group of us thought that now might be a good time for it to be digitally reborn: The Standard v2.0″
Note that is not the NZLP – it is the labour movement. Of course some of the rednecks don’t bother to engage their brains enough to distinguish the difference.
The Labour Movement in the days of the original standard was the Labour Party and the FOL.
So, IPrent, care to name the other political parties in “the movement” at the time the Standard was around????.
It’s Labour through and through and you know it. I suspect the word “movement” was there to put bloggers off the scent that this was run out of the Labour Party and the EPMU – or as you say, part of the “movement”.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:33 am
IP blocks cost bugger all Whale. I get them cheap, about $1 per ip.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:33 am
That figure is a monthly cost excluding gst.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:39 am
PaulL – i740 video card (its an old box) turns out to only like 16bpp – not 24bpp… Trivial really. I’m not going to play games on an antique Althron – but it is good for doing some cross-compiles
MySQL replication seems to have gotten pretty stable in version 5, and a blog site is a good size to do some medium term testing on something that is a bit more dynamic than the testing I’ve done on it. I want to gte a feel for the lagging on the updates.
The group of tech people that run the guts of TheStandard know what is going on. The chattering classes (like those here) really don’t.
BTW: jonny08 gave me a bit of a laugh. “No one in their right mind switches to a temporary host few a month or so.” If you have command line access to the server, it isn’t like doing stuff at an ISP hosted site
Basically you set the TTL’s prior to the move. Set a redirection index.html on the old site to a temporary URI have a recipient page on the new site saying ‘working on it. Rest is in a single batch file.
Because the db is so small you just stop the db, zip the data directory (its MyISAM), and then start the db in a batch file. Takes about 20 secs. Takes a bit longer if you do it using the mysqladmin command line – but I didn’t really need to. Rest of the batch file zips the site files – that takes longer because of the images. Then it ftp’s the lot over to the new server.Total time ~5 minutes.
Unpack the two zip files in the appropiate place. Remove the “working on it” html, restart MySQL, and change the DNS CNAME to point to the new server and adjust its TTL. That takes another 5 mins.
Doesn’t matter what your client thinks is the correct address – it jumps to the correct location with or without a 302/303 redirection. Note that you do not change where the domain name registration says where the DNS is located – because that takes a while to change. You do that a few days later after all of the DNS’es servers have caught up with the new address and TTL.
Really the only time taken to shift a site is in removing the db and bloody images and shifting it. I’d HATE to do it the way that jonny08 describes. Thats what I have to when I move GB sized db’s around – they take some time to move – but it is usually easier to replicate those first.
Well its been fun looking at the illiterate ravings of the chattering classes … But I’d better get ready for some serious c++ by getting some kip.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:42 am
C++ is so 90’s
C# baby
January 21st, 2008 at 12:44 am
Not really the point though, is it infused? If DPF had anywhere at all in his site anything that was provided by the National party, do you think that the haters and wreckers at KBB and the Standard would let go of it? And he is pretty up front about his relationship with the National party such as it is.
The Standard consistently claim that they are nothing to do with Labour, and they turn up with some donated bits. Someone didn’t cover their tracks well on the IP addresses, so they are clearly visible as coming from Labour. Whatever else is being used to run the site doesn’t come with those finger prints, so we are left guessing as to whether it comes from Labour or not.
The stories being fed by the folks at the Standard are changing, and don’t quite add up. If Tane was so non-technical that s/he didn’t understand the difference between an IP address and being hosted by Labour, and if the IP addresses are such a small deal, why did Tane ever know about it? Why do some other Labour sites and/or services appear to be hosted via the same IP address? Why is anyone so silly as to run a server on the internet on a Microsoft operating system? These questions and more need some answers, and based on the history to date they need more than bland assurances of no linkage – we have been there and it was proven to be wrong.
So, maybe it is a donated IP address range only, but maybe it is a full server setup including bandwidth and IP addresses that was donated. Maybe it is a short-term arrangement, and maybe it is as Lynne says and is the new long-term platform. Or maybe there was a short-term arrangement that we didn’t notice, and they have already moved to the new long-term platform, and Lynne is trying to hide that the old arrangement existed. Or maybe they haven’t actually moved to the new platform yet at all, and Lynne is betting that we can’t tell the difference.
And finally, I’m still having a giggle about the “I’m really right wing, I just happen to support the left.” I see why they don’t have Lynne doing the blogging…
January 21st, 2008 at 12:45 am
wow,
ten paragraphs of tech obfuscation without answering the question ?
funny that
January 21st, 2008 at 12:50 am
Lynne, if you’re writing some C++ tomorrow you may get a kick out of this:
http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/tour-de-babel
A bit dated, but amusing nonetheless.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:51 am
You guys really need to learn you shit about IT. It is kinda painful to read basing assumptions on something you have no understand about. I am in no way supporting them, but man, some of the stuff here is pretty whack.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:52 am
As always infused. That’s the joy and the pain of the internet. You have to admit there are still some serious unanswered questions though, don’t you?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:53 am
Lynn:
Gee Lynn, such disparaging remarks show you up as insecure. It’s been fun watching you (1) steadfastly avoid commenting on this mysterious email Tane’s referred to (no doubt because it’s not “technical” enough for your liking); and (2) misrepresent the legal requirements of the Electoral Finance Act (what were your “legal” credentials again?). See this from Tane above:
Thanks for playing, Lynn.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:03 am
milo – happy to help:
Donations made to The Standard, which has not registered as a third party, are unregulated by the Electoral Finance Act.
If the Standard is run by the Labour Party, then any “donation” from it to itself isn’t really much of donation, is it?
Is The Standard caught by the EFA as an election advertisement? I don’t have enough information, but on the face of it, probably not. Blog’s are exempt from the restrictions the EFA places on election advertisements. It appears to be a blog, though if any of the authors is paid to write it as part of any job etc. then it would probably be commercial and their posts at least would be regulated.
I’m not really sure what the “associated group of persons” rule you mention is. And what laundering are you suggesting is occurring?
January 21st, 2008 at 1:12 am
I’ve been doing some tracert on that IP block and it’s quite interesting that the final hops (router interface IP address) before getting to the server IP addresses in question are:
3. ge-0-3-0.air01-jcore.iconz.net
2. ge-1-1.cat01-air01.iconz.net
1. IP address from the range 202.74.226.112 – 202.74.226.127
My guess is that air01 is a reference to a major Telecom NZ building in Auckland Central that houses telecoms & internet infrastructure. Called Airedale House, Obviously ICONZ lease space off Telecom (or the building owner) for their internet infrastructure.
Nothing strange there, just a normal setup, but it does give you an insight as to where it’s hosted. I would guess that the cat in cat01 is a reference to a Cisco Catalyst L3 switch, in which case it’s possible that the physical interface could be ethernet and the actual server(s) would be very close, if not inside, the Airedale building. Again, just a normal setup from a technology POV.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:17 am
I’m sure I do, infused — and the lovely folks at my ISP’s help desk could testify just what a tech-retard I really am.
As the old saying goes: The first and greatest wisdom is to know just how ignorant you really are. Of course, it would help if folks like Lynn were able (or willing?) to give a straight answer to a straight question for those of us who don’t speak fluent technobabble.
Graeme Edgeler does a pretty job of explaining involved legal mumbo jumbo in terms even this bear of little brain can grasp. Any disinterested tech-savvy person want to weigh in?
January 21st, 2008 at 1:18 am
In other words you’ve found a server room. Congratulations.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:20 am
Matthew, normal from a technology POV, but not exactly a donated setup now is it. If the boxes are hosted somewhere like that, and they are a new cluster for hosting left wing sites as described by Lynne, then someone is donating a decent chunk of “in kind” hosting. That is a lot more than the cost of a lease on a block of IP addresses, and it certainly isn’t a case of a few donated servers in a back room at someone’s house.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:26 am
Incidently the labour website http://www.labour.org.nz has an IP address of
203.163.70.178 – so a completely different range.
So perhaps we can get some incriminating labour websites that resolve to the IP range above we might get somewhere.
All on all this is great publicity stunt for the standard and I congratulate Lynn on tricking DPF into giving you such a boost in traffic.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:27 am
Reading through this it’s quite obvious it’s gotten out of hand.
At the end of the day you’ve most likely got Labour hosting a few DNS records. Nothing major about that. A DNS record is nothing more than a map between a URL and an IP address.
As lprent says the setup has been cobbled together through donations. No biggy really, doesn’t cost a lot to build a server especially when you’re using open source software.
Housing the server in a server room is no biggy either. Every man and his dog knows someone who can get a box telehoused for no charge.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:30 am
Before I get trodden on for oversimplifying DNS I have only described it in essence. If you want to read more on it go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dns
January 21st, 2008 at 1:33 am
Actually tiger, what we’ve found is that thestandard.org.nz and secure.labour.org.nz are both connected to the same router, ge-1-1.cat01-air01.iconz.net [210.48.5.102]
So the two web servers which were claimed to be sharing nothing other than a block of ips are actually hosted in the same room and are connected to the internet through the same router.
Not only that, they both use IIS on Windows Server 2003, even though thestandard.org.nz is supposedly running on old hardware.
It seems more like the two sites are running on the same web hosting package.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:35 am
natural party of govt: thestandard.org.nz resolves to 202.74.226.119 and secure.labour.org.nz (the site you use to give money to Labour) resolves to 202.74.226.121 and 202.74.226.122
January 21st, 2008 at 1:35 am
Graeme – “if any of the authors is paid to write it as part of any job etc. then it would probably be commercial and their posts at least would be regulated.”
It is nice to see some sense here. No-one is paid anything. It is a simple left leaning blog done on a voluntary basis. It is hard to see how a donation from a party to a blog that doesn’t carry advertising at all can contused to be governed by the EFA as it was passed. I can’t even remember seeing a post that said vote any particular way (there is a lot of poking fun at the right though).
PaulL… good link… there are no perfect languages – I have no idea how many I know now. They all suck in some way (never got into emacs/lisp though..)
“Why is anyone so silly as to run a server on the internet on a Microsoft operating system?”
Because it was available… If I’d had an operating linux system and current skills in it I’d have used that. If I’d had a dual-core CPU, I’d have used that.
“And finally, I’m still having a giggle about the “I’m really right wing, I just happen to support the left.” I see why they don’t have Lynne doing the blogging”
Yep – but I’m a tech from everything from management (MBA), history (BA) to programming (BSc)… You have to understand that I like stirring regardless what side it is on. Its only by racking over the manure you get some idea of what is really there and what you can use to make a system work.
What always gets me about the Right is their habit of saying that if everything gets left up to the market it will all work out over the long term. It works ok on short-term, doesn’t in the long-term on infrastructure or developing peoples skills. Even the net doesn’t really operate as chaotically as the media like to present – gets a lot of forward looking in the form of RFC’s and other standards. Then the competition runs on top of that intellectual infrastructure.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:48 am
Craig, I can try.
The IP addresses that we are talking about are just leases on a range of addresses. These addresses are “owned” by the internet – I guess by Domainz in NZ? Anyway, if you want a static IP address or an address range, you have to pay for it from a company with the right to lease it to you – there are a limited number of the things, and you can’t just go making one up for yourself – how would you know someone else didn’t make up the same one?
So what we know is that there are a set of addresses, one of which is being used by the Standard, that have the Labour party name on them. We are told by Lynne that these were donated to the Labour party, who had no need for them and therefore on-donated them to a group that are going to use them for hosting a range of left-leaning web sites.
Lynne says they are using these addresses to set up a cluster. A cluster is just a bunch of computers that share information between each other such that if some klutz pours coffee into one of them and it fries, you don’t lose anything – the other machines in the cluster take over. Kind of like a Borg collective I guess. From the point of view of anyone outside the server room a cluster looks like a single machine, just one that never (in theory at least) breaks. This cluster can host many web sites – it looks at the URI (the web address you typed into your browser address bar) to work out which site you are trying to connect to, and serves that up to you. You are unaware that the same machine actually serves up some other web sites as well – the only external indication that they are sharing a machine (or a cluster) is that the IP address is the same.
If you have created this cluster, it also makes sense to have multiple internet links into the thing. No point in having a machine that is always up if every outage at your ISP takes you off the air. The way Lynne is describing this they are using two IP addresses for this – one for each network link into their server room. This sounds reasonable, although I suspect there are other ways to achieve the same effect. Networking isn’t my strong suit.
Next, we had the discussion about replication of the database. It sounds like Lynne has the core web server clustered, but has only a single machine for the back-end database. Again, this is a “single point of failure” (so-called because you only need one bit of kit to fail and your whole site comes down in a screaming heap). Lynne was talking about setting up replication and/or clustering for the database so that if one database server fell over in the middle of the night there wouldn’t be a phone call to come and fix the damn thing – another box would take over until morning.
Finally, Matthew was using tracert, which is a tool that tells you every machine on the path between your computer and another computer. What he was saying was that the last few machines before Lynne’s cluster appeared to be in Airedale house in Auckland. If the second-last machine was indeed an ethernet router, then it is a fair assumption that it is in the same building, and more likely room, as the final server/cluster. This is because you don’t generally run ethernet for distances longer than a hundred metres or so. So that tells us that Lynne’s cluster is probably sitting in a server room in Airedale house in Auckland, probably hosted by ICONZ.
What all that tells us is that we are talking about a reasonably sophisticated server setup. Not out of the ordinary by any means in the commercial world, but definitely a lot more than some guy putting a couple of servers in his back shed along with a web link (as I think Kiwiblog was hosted for a number of years – by nzpundit?). Space in a properly maintained server room isn’t cheap, and there are at least a handful of servers involved. The block of IP addresses is just the tip of the iceberg in what is going on, the real question is who is paying for the hosting, and who provided the servers.
Finally, Cauld earlier on has tried to see what services are running on the server. There is obviously an HTTP service running to serve up the web pages, it looks like there is also a mail server. That mail server is providing some information when you connect to it, and tells us that it accepts mail for mail.labour.geek.nz, and that it is also happy to accept mail for some other labour type addresses and forward it on, the addresses being:
younglabour.org.nz
thestandard.org.nz
rainbowlabour.org.nz
timbarnett.org.nz
It would be unusual to accept a relay from a server that you didn’t have some control over or affiliation with, so it seems a little unlikely that the only connection was that labour on-donated a block of ip addresses without ever using them themselves. It is sort of possible that whomever set the server up copied some configuration across that didn’t belong there (and so it is relaying that mail by accident), but that would imply that the person had set up these servers by copying some Labour servers, or had received the servers from Labour and not cleaned them properly before using them. Which would again be evidence of a relationship.
Alternatively, Labour might be using the IP addresses for mail whilst having allowed the Standard to use them for HTTP (which is technically possible). But that would generally imply that the Standard servers were in the same room as the Labour servers, which would be pretty strong circumstantial evidence of a relationship.
Finally, Labour may have been using the IP addresses before on-donating them, and forgotten to de-install whatever mail servers were listening to them. That doesn’t really square with Lynne’s suggestion earlier that Labour didn’t know what to do with them – as it would suggest they were using them before passing them on to the Standard, and therefore that they had value rather than being just lying around unused as was implied.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:53 am
“So the two web servers which were claimed to be sharing nothing other than a block of ips are actually hosted in the same room and are connected to the internet through the same router. ”
As I said we used 2 IP’s. .119 and an adjacent one. I have no idea what the other ones in the block were used for.
“Not only that, they both use IIS on Windows Server 2003, even though thestandard.org.nz is supposedly running on old hardware.”
Care to look at my test server at home. Runs on a 5 year old Althron 2800 with 2GB RAM and Windows 2003 R2 and IIS 6. Thats where thestandard started life. Thats because I write quite a lot of code on that OS configuration and I need somewhere to test it.
The servers that thestandard is running on are slightly younger, with less RAM and with a seperate database server. That get rids of the CPU thrash.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:53 am
Lynne, I think you are providing a straw man of the right. Sure, some on the far right think that markets should do everything, and any government at all is a crime. I don’t think you’ll see many in the National party suggesting that, and certainly DPF isn’t in that camp – witness his ongoing belief that the government should do something about broadband.
The difference is a matter of direction. The Labour party think that government can solve more problems than I believe it can, and in particular think that regulating about something is doing something about it. Regulations typically impact the already law abiding, whilst those who have behaviour outside the norm of society ignore the new laws just as they were ignoring the previous social norms. I have worked in government for long enough to understand just how few problems government can actually solve. The benefits of any given policy are always substantially overstated by those with an axe to grind, and both the direct administrative costs within government, not to mention the costs on society as a whole, are under stated.
My biggest bug bear with the current left is the complete inability to ever, under any circumstances, offer tax cuts. There is no justification for having absolutely zero tax cuts, and also no justification for preparing government accounts on a cash basis instead of accrual in order to attempt to hide the surplus. I was working in NZ government when we dragged them through the introduction of accrual accounting, and the reasons why you do accrual accounting are very clear. Moving back to cash accounting (even if only at the political level) is just fiddling the books. Nobody counts that way.
I could go on and one, but it is getting very late, and I do have work to do tomorrow. I was kind of staying up on the basis that the weekend isn’t over until I go to bed, but I have probably stretched that concept as far as it will go. I suspect that tomorrow will be an interesting day for the folks at the Standard.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:55 am
“Why is anyone so silly as to run a server on the internet on a Microsoft operating system?”
People that say that are retarded.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:59 am
Thanks infused. It was a small joke.
If I was setting up a low cost environment using donated hardware, I’d put a free operating system on it. Most of the internet runs on LAMP, why you’d go outside that had me guessing. Lynne has given a reason – the boxes came that way, that is what s/he is using at home for development kit, and what the site was already on.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:03 am
Lynne: althron = athlon? CPU thrash = disk thrash (swapping?)
2GB is quite low for Windows Server, if your production machines are smaller you are cutting it quite fine…OK with only a few sites on it, but I suspect as you start loading extra sites it will be a problem. RAM is cheap these days? I put 2GB in my server last week for under $100, admittedly not ECC, but sounds like you aren’t running server class hardware.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:13 am
The net is really funny place – everything goes everywhere and ‘ownership’ is an interesting concept that often isn’t easy to see especially on webserver boxes and server rooms.
For instance the other machines in my home cluster are a Mac, a dual CPU dual core XP workstation, and now an elderly box running Slackware 12.
Some of those machines are running various services that are cross-connected as backup systems for mail, ftp, and http to other servers in NZ and the US. They cross connect between the machines to provide backup for each other (well except for the workstation – I crash that occassionally)
TheStandards primary DNS runs from here, along with a pile of other domains. It is easier to run locally and cascade to the secondaries which are listed as primaries at the registrars.
The linux box I just set up is currently doing a replication of TheStandard’s database to test running TheStandard under linux and test replication and possibly be a tertiary system – just have to replicate the images (why didn’t WordPress just dump those into the db – time to do some php coding).
I can guarantee that my bandwidth use on this home system is a lot larger than thestandards servers (at least at present). And it is still less than 30GB per month.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:26 am
I get the idea that you’re trying to type as much computer jargon as you can so people don’t know what’s going on and stop replying.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:37 am
“paulL: If I was setting up a low cost environment using donated hardware, I’d put a free operating system on it. Most of the internet runs on LAMP, why”
Also because my linux skills were well out of date because I’d been writing windows API level code for quite a while. Been working on linux most of last year from xlib and below, but preferred to stay with what I was confident about. Besides if you drop most of the microsoft addons, the NT kernel that underlies everything in NT to 2003 is pretty robust from 2000 onwards when they reduced the weight of the threading model.
“paulL: Lynne: althron = athlon? CPU thrash = disk thrash (swapping?)”
Yeah – its late.. We got actual context switching problems with the db on the same system as the website. Effectively there was so much jumping going on inside the CPU between active processes that something was occassionally locking up. Wasn’t helped by my playing with other rather large databases.
“paulL: 2GB is quite low for Windows Server, if your production machines are smaller you are cutting it quite fine…OK with only a few sites on it, but I suspect as you start loading extra sites it will be a problem.”
The servers aren’t currently doing much. Eventually we’ll either upgrade the hardware or find better retirement boxes for the system. The hardware and network side of all of this is pretty much a hack in progress.
I have views on the political stuff – but definitely agree on the accrual accounting. If bloody muldoon had to face accrual accounting then we wouldn’t have had to carry some of this debt that we just finally got clear of last year. Accounting for the superannuation system and health system costs over the next 30 years or so is really important. Effectively we are managing to actually start to prepay for some of it. I have no particular wish to pass all that implied debt on to my younger relatives. As far as I’m concerned we should have taxcuts after the forward liabilities are at least 50% covered.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:38 am
ryan: now you can see why I don’t blog on political sites. Politics is so boring compared to networks and computers…
January 21st, 2008 at 2:39 am
Ryans:
Indeed, like you, I’ll leave the technical obfuscation to others – although PaulL’s done an admirable job in providing a plain-English translation for e-dummies.
I’m ever hopeful that the good folk at The Standard will release the email from (in Tane’s words) “someone from Labour“, and any related correspondence. That way, the nature and extent of this arrangement (loosely described) can become a matter of public record. It’s about that stick called “transparency” which DPF’s been hit over the head with recently by – yep, you guessed it – the good folk at The Standard.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:03 am
Wow, talk about squirming. How many different stories now? “Temporarily moving everything over to Labour’s servers” vs “They gave us some IPs” vs “Setting up a permanent arrangement ourselves”, etc. Bye bye credibility, I guess.
One thing’s for sure, however. Whilst they were crowing on over there about being “independent” and denying all involvement with Labour, Labour were paying a big chunk of their costs! Wow.
And some of these kneejerk explanations also really need further explanation in light of the fact that there are a bunch of other Labour and Labour-related sites on the same server.
Firstly, some quotes from the person who claims to admin this server:
“I help run the tech end of TheStandard, and seldom actually get time to read it. That is left to a group of moderators. I don’t really know what they run as a policy, and they don’t know what my team does to keep the site running.”
“Who is behind it is basically me – I got the site operational, and then passed it off to number of like minded people to moderate and post main articles.”
“Basically, some people asked me to help get a left-leaning blog site running – so I did.”
So “his team” administers this site, after being gifted the IP space (and presumably the bandwidth and server) by the Labour Party. All above board, mind. Honest.
The thing that really gets me is that this site doesn’t *just* host The Standard. As listed above, it also hosts:
bgo.wallmannsberger.com
civilunions.org.nz
cunliffe.org.nz
herodebate.org.nz
rainbowlabour.org.nz
timbarnett.org.nz
tonymilne.org.nz
wallmannsberger.com
younglabour.org.nz
So Lynn’s “team” are also providing the sites for a number of Labour MPs, candidates and Labour-sponsored or related websites on the *same* server. The server that was gifted to them by Labour… But it’s all above board, apparently – no real link between The Standard and Labour. Just coincidence, really…
Lynn, is your “team” paid by Labour (or anyone else) to provide all those Labour sites? If not, do you know if they’re declaring your “in kind” donation of time and resources?
Personally I hate it when people start talking about Tui adverts, but really, how can one resist in a case like this? I mean, really, Lynn, Tane et al, are you honestly asking us to believe this?
Why not just come clean and admit it? There’s nothing *wrong* with a political party and Union putting together an attack site, but given the rantings about the EB, you’d have to agree that the best thing would be to do so openly and honestly rather than disguising it as “an independent blog” to get around the law your party just created.
Anything short of being open and honest simply doesn’t meet “The Standard” expected of election participants and, as an ex-Labour voter from way back, makes me sick.
If there is no better explanation for this fiasco this is indicative of exactly why voting for Labour is no longer tenable.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:01 am
Some of these sites dont look that political
http://wallmannsberger.com/photos/space_4.jpg
http://bgo.wallmannsberger.com/2007/photos/IMG_3085.JPG
I like this last one the best.
http://bgo.wallmannsberger.com/2007/photos/IMG_3224.JPG
There are so many inducements to safe sex there I don’t know where to start.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:03 am
Hahahahahahahaha! This might not be the most intelligent comment, but seeing Tane exposed like that is just comedy gold.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:15 am
Ohhhh…which one is Tane?
Last photo right on the left?
January 21st, 2008 at 6:06 am
If this was any other left-leaning blog I wouldn’t give the slightest toss who was hosting them, but the sole purpose of the Standard seems to be to offer up the most spurious smears and vitriol directed at anyone who doesn’t support the government, and especially DPF and this blog.
Now they have to deal with a spurious smear of their own, and deservedly so. Suck it up, fucktards.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:40 am
SageNZ: I pay for my own site on sixapart. It costs me about $10 a month. No doubt dpf’s costs are worth substantially more due to the higher traffic.
Well, as an example of how you can host yourself cheaply.
http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml
Those are the guys I use. For US$12.95 I get 1,000gb of disk space, unlimited domains (I have to pay for the registration) and unlimited traffic. Plus all the fripperies of MySQL, blah blah blah.
In the 2+ years that I have been hosted with them I have not had any downtime at all and their support staff is available 24/7 and all my problems have been resolved within about half an hour.
So realistically, if DPF was paying for his hosting it would not cost him more than ~NZ$205. Or not that much more than what yours costs, really.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:49 am
Can we ask if calling people pedophiles (I am sure Whale has cache examples of the pages as they will disappear within minutes now) is directly from the ninth floor? Had a chat to a main stream Journo (big daily) who is hot on the trail of this . By implication it pulls in the boys from Public Address according to said journo. Oh let the fun begin.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:34 am
The protestations from simethat there is nothing going on all is remeniscent of a scene where a cheating husband is caught out in a hotel with ‘Jane from accounts’ by his wife.
‘No darling really, there is absolutely nothing between us! We just happened to bump into each other! Booked in the same room? Oh that’s easy, I can explain, you see Jane got a flat tire, and I said I’d put her up for the night till she well and truly pumped up again. The champagne? Oh we’d just stuck it to Bill in Marketing and thought we’d celebrate. The trail of used condoms? I was just showing Jane some party tricks. No darling, I didn’t actually use them… don’t be ridiculous! honestly darling, there is absolutely nothing between us, it’s just a series of unfortunate coincidences….. tomorrow we’ll laugh about the misunderstanding, and what a silly goose you were about all this…’
Or something.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:43 am
G’day all, sorry for my absence last night, I had family commitments to attend to. I see Lynn’s done a pretty good job setting the record straight in the face of some rather ill-informed comment (including from myself). Lynn’s really the dude to go to on this – my involvement and information about the techie side usually comes third hand. I don’t understand it, it doesn’t interest me and I’d rather focus on the content.
Bryce, I’ve long had a policy of not confirming or denying where posters on the standard are employed. NZ’s a small enough place that if you start showing you’re willing to deny you’ll just end up starting a process of elimination. I’ll put your mind at ease though – no trade union has endorsed, paid for or even been consulted about the standard. Everyone who contributes to the standard does so on top of their day jobs and in their own capacity as private citizens. That’s one of the many reasons we’ve chosen to work as a collective.
There are very good reasons why our contributors have chosen to keep their identities anonymous. Firstly, seeing as they’re not working in an official capacity they’re conscious not to have their employer associated with their comments. People do have a right to engage politically outside of their place of employment.
Secondly, given the amount of hate, abuse and even threats that come from many on the right of the blogosphere can you blame people for wanting to keep their identities to themselves? I know of at least one left commenter who claims to have had to remove his name from the phone book and gone on the unpublished electoral roll out of fear for his safety after his identity was outed on a right-wing blog. That’s something that I and others on the standard would rather not have to deal with.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:49 am
Secondly, given the amount of hate, abuse and even threats that come from many on the right of the blogosphere
Pot kettle black.
You’ve been caught in the cookie jar, and now you’re fucked. Can’t wait for someone to ask Clark about this little ‘oversight’.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:54 am
no trade union has endorsed, paid for or even been consulted about the standard
another straw house about to be blown down…
January 21st, 2008 at 7:54 am
Tane – I therefore apologise for suggesting the EPMU Communications Unit has anything to do with The Standard.
Cheers
Bryce
January 21st, 2008 at 7:56 am
THE LABOUR PARTY SECRETLY FUNDS ATTACK BLOG USING TAXPAYERS’ MONEY.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:57 am
Tane, you open your last comment with a lie and then descend into misleading and evasive comments.
You were posting all over the axis of stupid last night while you were not replying to some fairly direct and relevant questions here.
What little credibility your blog had is now gone. Clearly this is a labour funded blog with posters who are working with the complicit agreement of their employers. Everybody now believes that you are all either union communications hacks or worse…. Govt dept communication hacks.
Just another disgrace aided and abetted from the labour Party.
Have we ever had a more dishonest and corrupt bunch running the country?
January 21st, 2008 at 7:58 am
Tane, you are a liar…..
….just like the pervert Benson-Pope, the thug Mallard, the drink-driver Dyson, the racist Cunliffe, the thieving Cullen, the fraudulent Clark, the pisshead Barker, etc, etc…..
….a filthy, stinking Labour liar.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:59 am
No tim, haven’t you read the clarification above? “Labour Party Has IP Block Mistakenly Stolen By Illiterate Unionists” or perhaps “Clark Blames Poor IT Security for Oversight – Fires Communications Minister”
January 21st, 2008 at 8:02 am
Cheers Bryce.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:07 am
“Clark says “The Labour Party secretly funding a John Key slur-and-innuendo site isn’t a hanging offence. Nothing to see here, move on…”"
January 21st, 2008 at 8:18 am
“Everyone who contributes to the standard does so on top of their day jobs and in their own capacity as private citizens. That’s one of the many reasons we’ve chosen to work as a collective……
There are very good reasons why our contributors have chosen to keep their identities anonymous. Firstly, seeing as they’re not working in an official capacity they’re conscious not to have their employer associated with their comments. People do have a right to engage politically outside of their place of employment.”
Yes people do have a right to engage politically, wherever they are. But if they using theior employer’s time and resources, isn’t that a species of theft?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:24 am
“However the blogosphere was a bit one-sided and unfortunately seems to be populated by people with knee-jerk opinions and little fact. So TheStandard is an attempt to correct the imbalance.”
what a joke. The Standard offers nothing of any intellectual merit on any issue – it’s pure partisan hackery. And what it lacks in entertainment value it makes up with in paranoia. It’s the worst advertising for Labour around.
If you guys could offer anything of substance rather than your creepy obsession with DPF then maybe you’d get taken seriously.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:27 am
“no trade union has endorsed, paid for or even been consulted about the standard. Everyone who contributes to the standard does so on top of their day jobs and in their own capacity as private citizens.”
so, re any union employee involvement in The VDS have we now graduated from theft to plausible deniability?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:28 am
Exactly Lee – I post a bit during the daytime, but being self-employed, that is a judgement call on my part – I know how much work I have to do each day, and I know the consequences of not getting it done. Not so for those who work a “fixed-term” day for an employer who may or may not know the employee’s liking for “time-outs”. There’s a significant difference.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:28 am
If that’s the case Lee, then most of the people who blog or even comment are stealing their employers’ resources. But the way I see it, if you do your eight hours for the boss (or in my case usually 10-12) then an hour on top of that writing blog posts or comments isn’t really anyone else’s business.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:29 am
The Labour Party will only allow political activity if they REGISTER with the Government, they are limited to they amount they spend and if they are someone like a Government employee they will be pressured to support the Labour Party or face the sack. Meanwhile the Labour Party secretly funds a politcal attack blog using the unlimited resources of the taxpeyr. And they do not REGISTER the attack blog and all its contributers are anonymous.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:35 am
This thread delivers!
January 21st, 2008 at 8:38 am
Tane said “But the way I see it, if you do your eight hours for the boss (or in my case usually 10-12) then an hour on top of that writing blog posts or comments isn’t really anyone else’s business.”
Come on Tane – you can do better than that! You don’t REALLY expect anyone to believe that all the posts you do, day in, day out, are composed in ONE HOUR?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:43 am
Deafening silence from all the other trolls………………
G
January 21st, 2008 at 8:44 am
“If that’s the case Lee, then most of the people who blog or even comment are stealing their employers’ resources.”
Yep……
G
January 21st, 2008 at 8:50 am
And what happens if we learn that one of the Standard’s authors actually works for Labour or Labour’s parliamentary unit?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:51 am
The most telling point for me is this.
Tane has been in front of the pack clamouring for disclosure from DPF and any and every site that opposed the EFB. Along with friends from the Standard, every opportunity to paint DPF as a National Party staffer that maintains Kiwiblog at the behest of the National Party was used.
Now it turns around that Tane’s Standard has been run using Labour Party resources without it being disclosed. And while there is a large amount of spin and obfuscating around it, the simple fact remains.
The Double Standard is the most appropriate monniker for them.
It’s a minor issue in the larger political spectrum, almost negiligible. But to me they have lost all credibility now and all their challenges and assertions will simply ring hollow. Tane has lost any right to claim somebody is being dishonest or hiding the truth.
If they did have a desire to be honest they would have posted disclosure, similar to what DPF does, and said:
“For a few months we will be using an IP block donated by the Labour Party. Blah blah blah”.
They did not. Mud on the face and all that.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:51 am
IV2, I don’t even write most the posts on the standard. They’re shared out among a range of contributors (that’s why we’re a collective). For example, if you look back at the last thirty posts I’ve only written five, and that’s going back a month or so. It’s not really any of your business, but I can assure you it doesn’t stop me working very long hours for my employer.
In any case, I’m off to enjoy my day off. Apparently it’s Wellington Anniversary Day.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:52 am
I can’t add anything further. I think it’s all been said.
One thing though – are there any ‘left’ bloggolites on the standard or here who are not employees? It is no wonder they have the unbalanced outlook they do.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:53 am
Moreover, Tane has claimed that fears of reprisal and a desire for privacy keeps them anonymous. They are keeping their political activities and opinions anonymous.
And yet, Tane has been the most vocal supporter of a bill that forces people out of anonymity for even something as simple as saying “Do not vote Labour”, as the other website showed us.
Different scales, but a definite lack of principle. A Very Double Standard.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:53 am
So tane not only is a hollow liar, he drags his family into it. Shame on you. And then to be so devoid of any relevance he uses his family in a lie. No wonder he calls everybody Bro, his own is probably to ashamed to associate with a barefaced liar.
Conversation “Daddy, why did you say you were with me while you were posting at the standard…?”
January 21st, 2008 at 8:54 am
IV2, I don’t even write most the posts on the standard.
And what about the comments? It seems you make quite a lot of those here and on that Labour party rag piece you call an independant blog?
January 21st, 2008 at 9:07 am
As others have noted above, the most incredible part of this is Tane’s comment:
“There are very good reasons why our contributors have chosen to keep their identities anonymous. Firstly, seeing as they’re not working in an official capacity they’re conscious not to have their employer associated with their comments. People do have a right to engage politically outside of their place of employment.
“Secondly, given the amount of hate, abuse and even threats that come from many on the right of the blogosphere can you blame people for wanting to keep their identities to themselves? I know of at least one left commenter who claims to have had to remove his name from the phone book and gone on the unpublished electoral roll out of fear for his safety after his identity was outed on a right-wing blog. That’s something that I and others on the standard would rather not have to deal with.”
This is the same guy who has said that everyone who donates to a political party, carries a placard at a protest march, prints a brochure etc etc should be forced to reveal not just their name and PO Box for their organisation but their NAME AND HOME ADDRESS!
How stupid is he that he cannot see the inconsistency?
January 21st, 2008 at 9:09 am
I know of at least one left commenter who claims to have had to remove his name from the phone book and gone on the unpublished electoral roll out of fear for his safety
And that commenter was………….
Robinsod/Mike Porton
Who as most of us here know has never abused/threatened to out/talked of having sex with anyones mother/wife etc etc.
In the immortal words of J Sleep esq -
Cry me a fucken river.
Sod was one of the most abusive arseholes this blog has ever seen, bar none, now he’s the innocent party?
I don’t think so.
When you act like an arsehole you get treated like one.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am
Tane, nothing has been answered in fact it was really bad strategy to leave your tech-head propeller boy on the blog last night running interference.
As a result of his obfuscation it has proved all of your spin was in fact lies. Viz a viz Tane is a liar, proven categorically. Anything you do say from now on cannot be believed.
Also Lynn’s explanations only show us that the issue is far greater than simply a temporary arrangement. Having the cluster hosted at Airedale Street is not a cheap option. How do I know that, because i used to sell hosting out of Airedale Street.
You guys are hollow, hypocritical liars and have been shown as such.
We don’t believe your “private citizens” line. For a start the IP addresses you comment from don’t match up with that comment….oh dear, whoopsy forgot about that did we. Another lie.
How many more are you going to spin?
January 21st, 2008 at 9:15 am
Robinsod/Mike Porton
Oh really……….
January 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
Bevan maybe your mum would like that info. Maybe a nice little payout for sexual harassment there. EPMU is well-known for protecting sexual harassers. Dealing with a friend at the moment who was a member, harassed by another (official?) and told to shut up and go away.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:25 am
I can see the headline now “Labour Party Spin-doctor involved in sexual harassment” or maybe “Labour to answer questions on sanctioned attacks on women in blogosphere”
January 21st, 2008 at 9:26 am
Tell me this Burt – do you think it’s fair that I’ve had to change my status on directory services and on the electoral role just because Whale and his psychopathic friends decided to out me?
sob, sob
January 21st, 2008 at 9:31 am
Tane said “IV2, I don’t even write most the posts on the standard. They’re shared out among a range of contributors (that’s why we’re a collective). For example, if you look back at the last thirty posts I’ve only written five, and that’s going back a month or so. It’s not really any of your business, but I can assure you it doesn’t stop me working very long hours for my employer.”
Tane – you may not start the fires, but you would have to admit that you are pretty handy at fanning the flames – which is as close to a compliment as you are ever likely to receive from this correspondent!
BTW – if your employer expects you to regularly work 10-12 hour days; maybe you need to renegotiate your Employment Contract. Maybe you should get the union involved. Oh, silly me; you ARE the union!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:31 am
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:34 am
Tane said “But the way I see it, if you do your eight hours for the boss (or in my case usually 10-12) then an hour on top of that writing blog posts or comments isn’t really anyone else’s business.”
Tane – it IS my business if you are in any way, shape or form employed by the government – in which case I am paying for your extra-curricular activities; and it IS my business if you are employed by a Trade Union to which I am paying or have paid membership dues.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:35 am
Tane:
Enjoy your day off (Wellington Anniversary) – then could you answer this simple question:
Your comments above (at the start of the thread) show you were quite able to focus on the content of an email from “someone from Labour” (your exact words) concerning some kind of arrangement between The Standard and Labour. It seems fairly clear that this Lynn, as the resident tech guy, wasn’t the go-between but became involved after this arrangement was finalised. So to clear up all these allegations, will you – or someone else at The Standard – post this unredacated email and all related correspondence? If it’s as simple as you and Lynn make out, what’s the harm in releasing the email?
January 21st, 2008 at 9:43 am
“most of us here know has never abused/threatened to out/talked of having sex with anyones mother/wife etc etc.”
Well Chicken, you and your chums all did your best to find out where I worked so you could grass me up to my employer. IIRC “Bok’ even claimed to have lost some innocent company business because he thought I worked there.
As for WhaleOil, where to start.
So save us the fake moral outrage guys.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:46 am
Oh I see “Bok” is still at it.
Thanks for proving my point Bokky baby!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:48 am
“Tane – it IS my business if you are in any way, shape or form employed by the government – in which case I am paying for your extra-curricular activities; and it IS my business if you are employed by a Trade Union to which I am paying or have paid membership dues.”
I wonder
Inventory, where do you work, it IS my business if you work for any company I dal with, I am paying extra money for your companies goods and sevices so you can waste your time on here?
Oh sorry, it never works that way round now does it.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am
Babbling again Sonic?
January 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am
Jesus this really rocked the boys at the standard. They have pulled out the old has been Frank to come out of retirement to bat. It’s a bit like the black caps running out Mark Greatbatch. Frank(sonic) your kudos increased 10 fold over the last 3 months because of your silence. Dont blow it now. Yo are the ones asking for transparency… front up. (Jesus I just broke a promise to myself not to waste time on you, now I have to start the 12 step programme “Dont argue with ijits” all over again. Shit, Damn, Bugger)
January 21st, 2008 at 9:51 am
It looks like the left are in damage control, Sonic seems to have drawn the day shift.
Watch out for baseless accusations and lies as they desperately try and focus the attention away from this latest nightmare.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:52 am
I’m making points Chicken, I leave “babbling” (oh and silly threats) to you.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:52 am
Tane is probably a multi headed hydra and is a name that is used by various individuals who are paid propagandists for the Labour Party. Paid by the taxpayer no doubt. The Labour Party despite have millions of dollars in property never pays for anything.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:52 am
“Sonic seems to have drawn the day shift.”
It seems right-wing paranoia lives!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:54 am
“Tane is probably a multi headed hydra”
I see right-wing paranoia is reaching psychosis levels!
Keep it up guys, this is getting funnier by the second.
Someome borrows some sever space and suddenly is a vast conspiracy!
Nice work chaps
January 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
You really are quite a funny guy Sonic!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
There is good old Bok proving my point yet again.
Whats your name “bok”? just in the interests of balance you understand
January 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am
It’s this thread that is funny 3-coil.
I’m voting for Tim’s “multi headed hydra” comment as most hilarious, however I’m sure someone will top it by day’s end.
Off to stick my sides back together, back in a bit!
January 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am
Sonic pumped & smokin’ up the keyboard…I can see those veins a-poppin’…
January 21st, 2008 at 10:02 am
Ignore the distraction.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:02 am
Sonic my name is Bok.
Here is your problem. The standard is run by the Labour Party. Your mates have been , like you have every other day, sprung as liars. The funny thing is that even they found you too irrelevant to invite you to join their merry band.
Oh my. not even the liars wanted you.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:04 am
# boomtownprat Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Vote National /Maori/ACT. the only votes that will count.
Dude, the debate about The Standard being double and sub-standard was going good and you threw in a few points but you gotta be pretty retarded to endorse voting for National or the Maori party.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am
Anyway distraction over.
Back to the thread.
Suggested book titles for Hagar
Tane – will the real hollow man stand up.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:13 am
Well, having slept on it, it seems to me that the real issue here is EFA hypocrisy. As such, it is a delicious political issue, and (in my view) highly deserved comeuppance.
But I don’t think the problem lies with the authors of The Standard. It is fair enough for them to be anonymous (as I am), and I think fair enough to blog even though they may be union members. If they used a substantial part of their work time on it, I would want to see disclosure, not otherwise. And Lynn and Tane have been quite upfront in trying to respond quickly. Too quickly for it to be organised spin. Good on them for fronting up.
It does seem pretty clear that there is Labour party support, but it seems relatively minor. Now that may be a big mistake for the Labour party to have made, and it will need to be cleaned up from an EFA point of view. But I don’t think it is The Standard’s mistake.
So while this is highly embarassing for Labour and supporters of the EFA, I would rather have The Standard operating, contributing to the debate, participating in the contest of ideas, than not. Keep it up guys.
I may not like what you have to say … etc.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:14 am
“MySQL replication seems to have gotten pretty stable in version 5″
He keeps talking about MYSQL replication. Replication is a process where you have a master server which replicates its contents over to slave servers.
lprent, is the standard so popular you need a cluster of mysql databases to run it? This blog does not need such a setup, why does yours? In fact if the kiwiblog traffic tripled DPF would not need a cluster. If blogs took up so much resources wordpress.com and blogger.com would be out of business.
Sounds like you are being donated a lot of hardware you don’t need!
lprent, you may have found my previous comment funny, but you know as well as I do most people do not have their own server or VPS with root access. running mysqladmin to backup a database for a blog, then scp is to another server, hardly takes much time, and avoids logging in as root.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’m amazed that anyone reading the standard work out it is written by Labour supporters, I mean it is not as if it has pro-Labour leanings!
“The standard is run by the Labour Party.”
Bit of a flying leap into nonsenseland there “Bok” the Standard is clearly “run” by people who support the Labour party, it does not tale Sherlock Holmes to work that out. The fact is on a server block with the Labour party is also public information, available to anyone who cares to look.
So there is your vast conspiracy, the world’s most public, secret plot in history!
As for me Bok (as if thats your name, but I digress) I have a blog, feel free to have a look.
However please do not comment, I don’t want to lower the average IQ.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:18 am
Sonic said “Inventory, where do you work, it IS my business if you work for any company I dal with, I am paying extra money for your companies goods and sevices so you can waste your time on here?
Oh sorry, it never works that way round now does it.”
No problem with disclosure Sonic. I am self-employed, work from home, and have the flexibility to structure my day/night as I wish. The bottom line is this: if I manage my time poorly, there will be consequences. Today is a public holiday, but I am working anyway, as I am still in catch-up mode from my overseas holiday. If I spend too much time blogging during the day, I know that I will be back at my desk in the evening – which, considering that my desk is around twelve paces from the sofa, isn’t too much of a hardship.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am
Sonic: And did Tim Shadbolt have a right to know that attacks on him were partly funded by the Labour party? It seems to me to be exactly analogous to the Exclusive Bretheren. Secret support for political attacks during the regulated period.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:20 am
Sonic – did you not just sneak off early to that morning tea break?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:22 am
sonic, you need to get your talking points straight. Over at the standard they claim that they aren’t Labour supporters. And until Paul M posted that the IP addresses were in a Labour party address range nobody knew. You’re right that it is public information, but it sounds like that information changed recently, and it isn’t really common practice to check every couple of days whether the ip address of a site you visit has changed. Your spin is just that.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:23 am
fair enough inventory, I’ve no beef about people staying anonymous online (I do it myself) however a section of the right’s constant attempts to “out peopel” is based on an inabilty to come up with real arguments, so they need ammunition for personal attacks.
Milo, you know my views, open the books, let everything come out. All donations (over say $1k) should be public on all sides.
As for Shadbolt, do we have a right to know if National is helping him?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:26 am
Graeme – the point about laundering was this. If Labour receives donations but then passes them on to another group, whose electoral return should these fall under? In this case it’s clearly a pretty minor case, but it does raise and interesting broader point.
On the associate group of persons, I was thinking of the part of the EFA directed against the seven dwarfs – the seven EB businessmen – that prevents people splitting a campaign between several individuals to get around the cap. Similarly, the provision for campaigning for or against a “type of party”. In this case, as you say, this is probably a non-commercial blog. However, were it not, I wonder how and with whom The Standard’s expenditure would be counted.
Irrespective of the outcome here, it starts to raise all sorts of interesting questions and potential loopholes. Does it need test cases to sort these kind of things out?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
“Over at the standard they claim that they aren’t Labour supporters.”
Never seen that (I read it usually, must have missed that)
“You’re right that it is public information,”
Exactly, if they were getting secret support you’d think someone would have attempted to keep it secret eh?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Sonic: fair enough, I agree. And on Shadbolt – yes. BUT I see any opposition to Labour frequently being lumped in together as right wingers / national / exclusive brethren. That is untrue, and a very dangerous style of rhetoric. People should not be vilified for their political views. Rather, their views should be taken on their merits.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:29 am
Sonic! FFS.
You say: “a section of the right’s constant attempts to “out people” is based on an inabilty to come up with real arguments, so they need ammunition for personal attacks.”
The Labour Govt has just spent many months and lots of political capital in a legislative attempt to “out people” who want to get involved in politics – not from $12,000 or from $120,000 but from the very first dollar, a name and home address is required on all political communications.
At the same time, it is hosting a pro-Labour, anti-John Key website, which it has kept secret, and whose posters write anonymously.
Yes, you are entitled to be anonmymous, but do you not see how hypocritical this is of the Labour Party?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:29 am
This revelation pisses me off.
There’s a lot of very robust debate goes on on this blog and a couple of others, and a hell of a lot of political posturing. Lately with the influence of the standard and blogblog it’s got a hell of a lot more personal and nasty, but one thing you could kind of depend on was people being honest. Sure, a few of the pinkos around here have always been dishonest, but you can spot liars like nome, dixon and GWW straight away usually.
This story about the standard is a hell of a big deal. The standard crew are always bragging about how they are independent, and not funded or supported by the labour party, til they are blue in the face. One of their main attack lines is the criticism of DPF for having ties with the national party.
I guess my point is, while you expect a little hanky panky in this kind of forum, generally I like to think you can take someone at their word, their comments represent either the truth or a genuinely held opinion. But here, Tane and the standard idiots have have been shown up to be deceptive and dishonest to the highest degree. trying to conceal the fact that they are supported in a major way by the NZ Labour party, and pass off their blog as an independent, grass roots opinion forum is so fucken slimy I’m actually pissed off that any of us ever gave these wankers the time of day to begin with. I used to think you could more or less take someone at their word around here, or at least give them the benefit of the doubt, but this deliberate attempt to lie and conceal information that ought to have been disclosed means that from now on all you can do is assume that if they’re a pinko, ( and certainly if they’re one of the standard crowd) they’re lying, unless there’s concrete evidence to prove otherwise.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:31 am
“which it has kept secret”
For goodness sake it was public information, accesable to anyone with an internet connection.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:33 am
Tane wrote:
At the risk of sounding nasty, and without wanting to condone totally unacceptable behaviour, is it possible that what goes around comes around? I wonder if this ‘left commentator’ you speak of is the kind of person who comes here spewing hate, abuse and even threats then plays the vicitm upon getting exactly the response they’re so blatantly flame-trolling for?
Tane: To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the hypocrisy, stupid. And you and the other Sub-Standard Boys stink of it.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am
“this ‘left commentator’ you speak of is the kind of person who comes here spewing hate, abuse and even threats”
Care to name names Craig?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:39 am
“this ‘left commentator’ you speak of is the kind of person who comes here spewing hate, abuse and even threats”
Care to name names Craig?
The commenter has already been named as Robinsod/Mike Porton.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:39 am
“I wonder if this ‘left commentator’ ”
i’d condition that with “extreme left”. there’s quite a few centre left people who frequent here that have not truck with extremists like sonic.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:40 am
But, Sonic, Hollow Man Tane didn’t know anything about it so why should the rest of us? Perhaps I should err on the side of generosity and say we’re talking about a lie of omission rather than a lie of commission. But it sure seems that you’re willing to extend the Sub-Standard a benefit of the doubt you’re not willing to extend to anyone on the right. And however you cut it, I think the SS has been quite clearly caught not practicing what they preach.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:42 am
Craig, just pointing out that this super-secret was two mouse clicks away for anyone who bothered to look.
Slightly takes the wind out of the sails of the conspracy theorists don’t you think?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:44 am
This coming from possibly the most angry and abusive troll in the NZ blogsphere? It’s like the brutal rapist, crying in the docks, complaining about how he was kicked in the balls by his victim. Too much……
January 21st, 2008 at 10:46 am
Well, if Tane’s not just making shit up I don’t have access to the unpublished roll or files of unlisted phone numbers. Even if I did, I wouldn’t be ‘outing’ anyone who was for blindingly obvious reasons.
I’ve called out folks like you and Tane before for giving a pass to the rabid left-wingnuts, only to be greeted with the predictable denial and enabling. I don’t expect you to change, so ‘naming names’ (again) would be an exercise in futility.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:48 am
“I’ve called out folks like you and Tane before for giving a pass to the rabid left-wingnuts,”
Oh for goodness sake Craig, now you are just making it up as you go along.
I’ll ask my original question again
“this super-secret was two mouse clicks away for anyone who bothered to look.
Slightly takes the wind out of the sails of the conspracy theorists don’t you think?”
Well don’t you?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:50 am
And the Hollow Men at the Sub-Standard could have posted a simple disclosure on their actual blog for all to see. It’s about the Sub-Standard practicing what they preach to everyone else (at least what they preach when they’re spinning elaborate conspiracy theories about DPF) – not really that complicated.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:50 am
Milo – If Labour receives a donation – and that donation is valued at over $10,000, they should declare it in their donation return.
The Standard, which hasn’t registered as a third party, doesn’t have to file a donation return. If The Standard did register, and the donation was valued at over $5000, they would have to declare it as well.
If Labour’s party secretary or financial agent has approved spending money on “The Standard” (e.g. on hosting it) then that spending should be included in Labour’s expense calculation – whether the The Standard falls within the blog exemption or not.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:52 am
Oh and by the way – we see a lot of comparing the abuse of the left blogsphere the right blogsphere here, but frankly I think it’s a little overblown. i.e. I’ve lost count of the number of time that I’ve been threatened with physical violence by right wing bloggers, but have yet to see anyone on the left use that kind of intimidation tactic.
I do however agree that KBB has at times gotten a little over personal with DPF, as he generally doesn’t “go there” himself. Whaleoil on he other hand deserves every bit of public shaming he gets.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:52 am
“the Sub-Standard”
I see you attempts at being funny as are unfunny as usual.
Anyay have to go out, Perhaps when I return you may have made a point or two Craig, I doubt it but hope springs eternal.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:52 am
No Sonic, it does not. The boys from the Standard (And I include Philip John in that collective) have aggressively painted DPF as being a blogger paid by the National Party to run Kiwiblog.
They’ve been caught out with their hands in the cookie jar in a manner which, no matter how easy it is to techies, is beyond the capabilities of your average internet denizen.
The ease with which the information can be obtained by somebody who understands IP addresses, DNS and knows the fundamentals of those sufficiently to make sense of a WHOIS request is irrelevant to the plain and simple fact that they have not disclosed their association with the Labour Party of New Zealand.
Despite making frequent and rabid claims that Kiwiblog is a paid for enterprise of the National Party.
Stinks of hypocrisy, don’t you think?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
Projection, thy name is Sonic. I know you can confront wing-nutters (both left and right) with chapter and verse exposing their distortions and outright lies to no effect, but it still gets me how they do love to accuse others of their own sins.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
Craig said “..so ‘naming names’ (again) would be an exercise in futility.”
Well said. An exercise in futility indeed.
Although when dealing with these kind of “political” gangsters is always handy to carry truth as a weapon.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
It’s not worth it Graig. The extremes at both ends of the political spectrum are beyond reasoning with.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:54 am
“I’ve lost count of the number of time that I’ve been threatened with physical violence by right wing bloggers,”
Got any examples Roger?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am
@ Graeme Edgeler:
How come dontvotelabour.org has been pinged by the Electoral Commission for being a private citizen expression a political opinion, while The Standard, a blog that has been shown now to have ties to the Labour Party of New Zealand, is not pinged?
They do make commentaries on who to vote for and who not to vote for, even though those are at times obfuscated.
If I follow the logic on this correctly, the National Party could then donate an IP address and hosting to donotvotelabour.org and any other pro-National website and get away with it, as the Standard has done?
Or am I not understanding something correctly here?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
reid: Got any examples Roger?
FFS, D4J threatens Philip John on just about a daily basis. Philip John doesn’t mention that he taunts and torments D4J to get those types of reactions, but he has received a number of them over the last while.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:01 am
Nome whines “This coming from possibly the most angry and abusive troll in the NZ blogsphere? It’s like the brutal rapist, crying in the docks, complaining about how he was kicked in the balls by his victim. Too much……”
Philip Mason, I suppose that even though I’m always f#@king your arguments in the ass (without permission, no less) I honestly find being compared to a rapist quite offensive.
You are lowering the tone of this debate with comments like that, and I’m asking you politely to clean your act up.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:01 am
The best thing about this revelation is that any said by the bloggers on The Standard from now on can be attributed to the Labour party!
January 21st, 2008 at 11:05 am
To be fair to D4J, if Nome spouted the same shit that he directs at D4J, down at the local pub, he’d get his face smashed in, so I’m not too concerned that he gets a few threats every now and then.
Anyway, a threat from D4J is about as credible as an argument from Roger Nome, if you ask me.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:05 am
“The best thing about this revelation is that any said by the bloggers on The Standard from now on can be attributed to the Labour party!”
that might be good sport but it would be wrong. The Standard people are just a very small group. I doubt whether their antics would go down well with most Labour people. They don’t represent Labour whatever they claim to do.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:06 am
How come dontvotelabour.org has been pinged by the Electoral Commission for being a private citizen expression a political opinion, while The Standard, a blog that has been shown now to have ties to the Labour Party of New Zealand, is not pinged?
…
am I not understanding something correctly here?
don’tvotelabour.org.nz is not a blog. On the evidence we have seen so far, the Standard probably is a blog. Blogs do not have to place the names and addresses of those authorising them on-line. Non-blog websites do.
Why hasn’t Labour been pinged? Well, they’re yet to break any laws. If Labour has authorised the spending of money on The Standard they will have to include that expense in their expense return after the election. We haven’t had the election yet, so they haven’t had to file their expense return. Once they do, if the any costs approved in the hosting of The Standard are included, then we can talk.
How has anyone gotten away with anything (yet)? If National gave hosting to dontvotelabour, they’d have to include that expense in their total spending limit too.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:11 am
Firstly I’ve never even insinuated that DPF is paid by the Nats to Kblog. personally I don’t think it matters. He has extensive connections with that party going back a decade and a half – his loyalty to the Nats is unquestionable. The Standard on the other hand seems more pro-green party, and anti-National/Act than pro labour. So to me, the fact that they get some tech support and a bit of band-width from a guy who works for the labour party just doesn’t come anywhere near the “bombshell” that many on the rabid right here are making it out to be.
It always gives me a little chuckle when people like craig rabidpia goes on about “wingnuts” – I mean the frantic little panics he gets himself into over such uninteresting things as this leaves him looking more than a little hypocritical. A frothing black kettle that’s continually at boiling point, pointing the finger at other such kettles. Too much.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:12 am
Anyway, a threat from D4J is about as credible as an argument from Roger Nome, if you ask me.
Better watch your mouth there helmet, D4J will probably take you to Court for that, THE POLICE ALREADY HAVE YOUR CONTACT DETAILS,,, YOU WICKED LIABOUR PARTY SNAKE,,, YOU BETTER BRING A WEAPON YOU SICK TWISTED VIPER.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:13 am
Graeme Edgeler: don’tvotelabour.org.nz is not a blog. On the evidence we have seen so far, the Standard probably is a blog. Blogs do not have to place the names and addresses of those authorising them on-line. Non-blog websites do.
That’s a reasonably clear distinction, thank you. The “ping” I was referring to was the Electoral Commission requiring the name and home address of the authorizing agent.
So the Standard is a non commercial blog hosted with in part support of the New Zealand Labour Party.
And they do not require an authorization statement of any form, despite using resources owned by one of the political parties and offering a political message that can be read as “Do not vote National or for John Key” ?
This seems off.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:14 am
Tane said “no trade union has endorsed, paid for or even been consulted about the standard.”
You still haven’t answered the question of whether posters on The Standard work at the Comms wing (or any wing, for that matter) of a Labour-affiliated Union. Why won’t you answer that simple question? You keep running circles around it, but won’t actually answer the direct question!
And you must realise that if said Union comms people *are* posting during their working hours or from Union HQ then they *are* actually being paid for by the Union. If this is the case, you better clarify before someone else does, causing this to become headline news.
Not that you have to worry about losing credibility anymore, of course. Credibility’s kinda like virginity – once it’s gone you aint getting it back. And one could argue you’ve got yourself well and truly f….d by this one!
January 21st, 2008 at 11:16 am
Has anybody checked to see whether they have been moved off labour’s IP block yet?
My bet was by noon today.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:16 am
“To be fair to D4J, if Nome spouted the same shit that he directs at D4J, down at the local pub, he’d get his face smashed in”
Pot, meet kettle. To be sure, you’re an abusive arse helmet, but even people like you don’t deserve to be threatened with violence. From what I see of your various gnashings and whailings in the blogsphere you’re quite the tortured soul already anyhow.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:18 am
Barnsley Bill:
You mean, like, gone by lunchtime?
January 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Thanks for making my point. There’s a reason why I (with very rare exceptions) avoid responding to D4J – and just scroll past his, shall we say, more excitable comments. I don’t think blog-bullies of any stripe should be tolerated (and threats to kill should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law), it is damn hard to feel much sympathy for people who play the victim when they get exactly the reaction they’re blatantly trolling for.
And despite what Sonic, Tane and Co. assert, I think DPF doesn’t deserve criticism for crushing lefty dissent. IMNSHO, he’s way too tolerant of toxic waste wingnuts of all stripes — but like everyone else, I’m (figuratively speaking) a guest in his house and have to abide by his rules whether I agree with them or not.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:21 am
BB, still there. Still being subsidised by Labour, still hollow,
January 21st, 2008 at 11:23 am
“I honestly find being compared to a rapist quite offensive.”
Sorry helmet, was just the analogy that came immediately to mind when thinking about you in that context. Not sure why.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am
Phillip John/Roger Nome:
This may be correct, but I seem to recall you casting aspersions in the past about DPF’s professional polling activities.
Do you chuckle at your own jokes? Other gems from you in the past have included HyPOCrisy and InvenTORY2. And let’s not forget your highly offensive comments about Pascal’s wife.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am
Tane, appreciate your efforts at a defence here. It would be easier to just not post, so kudos.
Whale, I’m certain no Parliamentary funds are being used, it’ll be the party itself that’s helping us out with server space. You’re welcome to do an OIA request if you like. You do know how to do an OIA don’t you Whale?
We know the Labour party web site is publicly funded. So what you’re saying is that the taxpayer pays for content and code that makes up the Labour Party site, but Labour itself pays the server fees.
That is an unusual arrangement, although it is certainly possible to do it that way.
But then why would Labour do it that way? I mean a server is always required to host a site, so why does Labour pay the server fee when the code and content is publicly funded? Why not take out a separate contract with a server for the sites the taxpayer pays for, and another contract to fund Labour party stuff paid for by Labour. Under the arrangement you say is there, Labour is, in effect, subsidising the taxpayer by bearing the server fees for its party site.
A far more believable arrangement is that the taxpayer is paying Labour’s server fees and that the Standard is being hosted at the taxpayer’s expense.
Also: it is two months since your server went down. What’s hold up getting another server out of your own pocket? Its a 5 minute job renting server space. Let me guess – is it the taxpayer funded free server space you are getting?
I can’t believe you didn’t think this would look bad.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am
… and Nome goes on to prove my point. ‘Rabidpia’? Golly, Mr Nome makes a punny in his pants that’s about as amusing as ‘Hullun Klark and the Liarbore Party’.
Sorry if the truth hurts, Nome, but that’s your problem not mine.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:29 am
“it is damn hard to feel much sympathy for people who play the victim when they get exactly the reaction they’re blatantly trolling for.”
Yeah, because I just love being threatened with violence … really does it for me. But yeah, seriously, i agree that it’s wisest to stay clear of D4J most of the time – just a little undisciplined i guess.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:36 am
“Nome goes on to prove my point. ‘Rabidpia’?”
Yeah, more of an ephemeral piece of amusement than a knee slapper, but you get that.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:37 am
roger nome said “The Standard on the other hand seems more pro-green party, and anti-National/Act than pro labour.”
Are you basing that on the one thread which appeared last week that was mildly critical of Labour? I think we need to contextualise things here roger. There are only two parties who can realistically hope to form a government after the next election – National and Labour. If The Standard is NOT pro-Labour, why do the correspondents there devote so much time to scurrilous personal attacks on the person who represents the major threat to Labour’s re-election?
January 21st, 2008 at 11:37 am
roger nome, D4J – why not just go some where else to play.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:38 am
I have nothing to contribute to this thread except my disgust if matters are as alleged.
Would it be possible for DPF to draw a diagram of the server arrangements [as alleged]? Then possibly Lynn can correct any errors.
[DPF: It would not be possible! My technical skills are probably somewhere between Tane's and Lynn's, closer to Tane's end. I'm not the one who actually did the detective work - that was a commentert - Paul M. I merely repeated his comment. I had never bothered to check where The Standard was hosted]
January 21st, 2008 at 11:39 am
Neil M said:
“They don’t represent Labour whatever they claim to do.”
Maybe, and the EB pamphlets say vote for National either. They just opposed National’s opponents, much like The Standard does.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:39 am
Somewhere where the walls are padded and there’s no knob on the inside of the (locked) door, for preference.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:40 am
And the Nome tries to threadjack again, folks back to the point. Tane and co lied. Flip Flopped, spewed hatred and both racial and sexual slurs while being supported by Labour.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:42 am
Oops, ‘..didn’t say vote for National either….’
January 21st, 2008 at 11:44 am
InvenTORY2 (special for you POC
– Without doubt the guys at the standard would rather see a center-left blockcome 2009 than a centre-right one. That doesn’t mean that they don’t prefer the greens to labour though. Actually they’ve said “vote for the greens” on their site. So to me it’s pretty clear they aren’t labour party activists any more that I am. i.e. I’ve never voted for Labour and neither has Tane. Still that doesn’t stop the various right-wing dullards calling me and tane “labour party stooges” etc etc….
January 21st, 2008 at 11:46 am
“roger nome, D4J”
D4J no longer lurks these blog pages, so I’m not tempted. Can’t say I mind too much..
January 21st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
roger nome said “InvenTORY2″
Thank you roger – I’m flattered! And your soubriquet fits me like a ‘T’!!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:18 pm
The Labour public spin machines are at work on the very busy Trade Me OPINION site.
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/MessageBoard/Messages.aspx?id=23339168&topic=7&L=1&C=1
January 21st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I don’t care about the names of the Standard’s authors, where they live, or how much they earn. But for a group of people who regularly champion the cause of transparency, using Nicky Hagar’s book as their bible and insisting that DPF be named as a National Party stooge every time he is quoted in the media, it is astonishing that the Standard have done everything to conceal their direct subsidy by the Labour Party. It is equally astonishing that several of the Standard’s authors are, according to left-wing political science academic Bryce Edwards, employees of the EPMU, and that the Standard has done everything to obfuscate and lie about that connection.
The Standard’s authors’ identities isn’t material. Their connections to the Labour Party, and its largest affiliate union, is material and absolutely relevant. It makes a sham of the Standard’s claim to be an independent, left-wing blog.
An appropriate disclosure statement by the Standard should read:
“The Standard is proudly supported by the Labour Party, which subsidises the hosting of this blog. Some Standard authors are active Labour Party members. Some Standard authors are also paid employees of the EPMU. Some Standard authors are employed by Parliamentary Services and work in the Beehive.”
That would be an honest, spin-free disclosure statement disclosing the relevant political links of the Standard’s authors, without identifying the personalities involved.
Unfortunately, the Standard is only concerned with exposing the links of right-wing commentators, while doing everything to conceal and lie about its own political connections.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
So, chaps and chapesses, how’s aboot a ‘Standard’ para to be added by all commenters to said site, along the lines of:
‘I hereby formally aknowledge a contribution of my time in making this comment, to the Labour Party, amounting to $z, being x hours at my Standard chargeout rate of .”
For those not into maths and all that absolutist meme, z = x times y. A smallish example:
I hereby formally aknowledge a contribution of my time in making this comment, to the DPF blog site, amounting to $40.00, by 0.2 hours at my Standard chargeout rate of $200.”
A tenth here, a tenth there, pretty soon you’ve got some serious hours.
And as Sec 21 (2) of the EFA says:
“contribution means any thing (being money or the equivalent of money or goods or services or a combination of those things) that makes up a donation or is included in a donation or has been used to wholly or partly fund a donation, and that—
(a) was given—
(i) to the donor; or
(ii) to a person who was required or expected to pass on all or any of its amount or value to the donor, whether directly or indirectly (for example, through 1 or more intermediaries, trustees, or nominees); and
(b) would have been a donation if it had been given directly to the candidate, party, or third party; and
(c) was given in the knowledge or expectation (whether by reference to a trust, agreement, or understanding) that it would be wholly or partly applied to make up, or to be included in, or to fund, a donation”
Hey, that’s what’s expected of any honest citoyen, shurely….
January 21st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
…to me it’s pretty clear they aren’t labour party activists…
Nope, they just get free server space off them, courtesy of the taxpayer, and use it to denigrate the National Party and anyone else who disagrees with Clark’s motley crew.
So, maybe not labour party activists…more like left-wing mercenaries.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
oh and a few examples about the threats of physical violence so common in the right wing blog sphere …
First this little beute from whaleoil …
http://whaleoil.co.nz/?q=node/5433#comment-10181
Clearly a thinly veiled threat …. as is this one from barnsely bill
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2007/11/no_prosecutions_under_the_terrorism_suppression_act.html
So we have at least three people on the right of the blogsphere who have tried to use physical intimidation against other bloggers. Now where are the equivalent left-wing examples? If they exist I haven’t seen them.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Oh harden up you big cream puff.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Can we ask if calling people pedophiles (I am sure Whale has cache examples of the pages as they will disappear within minutes now) is directly from the ninth floor? Had a chat to a main stream Journo (big daily) who is hot on the trail of this . By implication it pulls in the boys from Public Address according to said journo. Oh let the fun begin.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, I have never called whaleoil a paedophile (although I have observed that his photoshopping actions against a 15 year-old boy were deeply weird) , and I do not receive (and do not wish to) communications from the ninth floor. So your entire conspiracy theory is so much bullshit.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
And still the thread is about the fact that Tane and the boys are liars and that the Labour Party funds nasty blog comments. Mind you we see a direct correlation. In parliament :”Scum, rich pricks and cancerous lepers” here “nazi, pedophile etc” Yep Labour and the EPMU has really pulled out all stops.
So back to the topic – Tane is a liar. Labour pays for blog spin doctors (jesus they must be low on funds though if we look at their standards.) Pun intended
January 21st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
drawing a pretty long bow there Gnome, to suggest that either of those constitute a personal threat of violence!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
“Nope, they just get free server space off them, courtesy of the taxpayer”
Or free-bandwidth from a guy who happens to be employed by the Labour Party. Seriously, once you guys have your minds set on a conspiracy theory you just can’t let it go hey?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I will ask it here as well, you might like to try answering Roger because your chums at the axis of stupid wont.
Can you not see the hypocrisy in a group demanding registration of political commentators as a direct result of the EB activities at the last election, whilst hiding their own identities and being funded and supported by the labour government and supporting unions?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
use physical intimidation against ….
This is one where Labour goons are doers not talkers. Loud hailer Roger?
Defendinga ladies honour, Roger? Hodgson ‘I thought she was going to use it as a weapon…? Roger. Benson-Pope etc etc
Not exactly up to Fintan Patrick Walsh’s standard, or Muldoons neat little hooks, but persevere my boy and I’m sure Bob Jones can pass on the odd tip.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:38 pm
what, you mean like nicky hager can’t let go of conspiracy theories? doesn’t hide the fact labour pays for the standard…
January 21st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Russel, go back read it again and then comment.
Your normal postings suggest for more intellegence than the above post suggests. I was quoting a journo from one of the 3 big dailies who suggested that
1) The standard is by Labour
2) That like the furore over English’s son’s postings, the same rules will apply, except that these are adults calling named citizens pedophiles – without proof and while operating from Labour property.
3) Your name was mentioned as a supporter as was your blog of the blog, run by labour and the epmu. Never once did it say that you get your orders from the ninth floor – however if you want to tell us something, go ahead. And never was it stated that you called Whale a pedophile – but then you again try to slide in a little stab with “although I have observed that his photoshopping actions against a 15 year-old boy were deeply weird)” Really 101 stuff the last bit.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
GK – we’re talking about the blogsphere at the mo. Do try to keep up luv…
January 21st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
And excuse my writing English is not my first language.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Sorry Roger, got confused there with all the snivelling about intimidation and threats. I shouldn’t have branched out into reality.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Roger,
You may have missed Robinsod bragging for the last two months that he was stalking me, his assertions that he was getting universal support from left-wing bloggers in his campaign, and his statement just a couple of days ago that I was on his “shit-list”.
It is a matter of perception as to whether threats to stalk somebody constitutes a physical intimidation. Robinsod felt sufficiently threatened by having his name published to have his name removed from the Electoral Roll, if we’re to believe what he says.
You claim to have been physically threatened by somebody offering to send you home in a wheelie bin if you turned up at his house making the kind of offensive comments you made to somebody else. I wouldn’t personally see that as a threat. If somebody turned up on my farm in the middle of the night acting menacingly, I would take reasonable actions to defend myself and my property, as well.
Recently I received an email from a prominent left-wing blogger offering to go out for a drink with me offline. I didn’t respond to that email. I didn’t, however, see it as a threat.
Intimidation is a matter of personal perception. I could possibly construe various comments made about me as intimidating. I have chosen not to.
I haven’t seen any right-wing blogger say to a left-wing blogger: “I know your name, and I know where you live. I intend to come around to your house and assault you.”
Simply naming somebody isn’t a threat of physical violence, and it is hysterical to claim that it is. I don’t, however, approve of outing people on the internet, and have said so repeatedly. From what I have seen from the likes of Robinsod, the Left are by no means any better behaved than the Right on the internet.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I find it funny who Tane and lynne have both stated that no one connected to The Standard is paid for any work in relation to it. Are we expected to just take their word for it? I mean come on, this is the site that seems allergic to disclosure – hypocritical considering they lambast DPF for any ties he has to National. How are we to know that these “individuals” apart from lynn (at least he has given his name I guess) are not high up within the Labour party hierachy?
Oh and Standard chaps, what you are doing is very close to what the Exclusive Brethren did. Shame.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Nome, you can’t in all reasonableness just throw up your hands and say, ” we are the victims here”. The left wingers have consistantly baited people here on Kiwiblog in various forms and to varying degrees. You are well aware of this and have participated in it yourself. Thus when someone posts something you interpret as threatening, it’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf – no one cares!
Granted you and Tane are, imho, more moderate than perhaps others and can reasonably carry a line of argument however your consistant personal attacks on DPF, for example, let you down as ad hominum arguments only obscure meaningful debate.
The Standard is a worthwhile blog. I enjoy reading it even if I don’t agree with a lot of the posts. However after the months-long debate regarding transparency, Hollow Men, EFB etc, your arguments are rendered pretty meaningless when information comes out that the Labour Party is hosting the site and those on it purport to be free of influence or bias.
You gotta see the paradox in there.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Russel, go back read it again and then comment.
Your normal postings suggest for more intellegence than the above post suggests. I was quoting a journo from one of the 3 big dailies who suggested that
1) The standard is by Labour
2) That like the furore over English’s son’s postings, the same rules will apply, except that these are adults calling named citizens pedophiles – without proof and while operating from Labour property.
3) Your name was mentioned as a supporter as was your blog of the blog, run by labour and the epmu. Never once did it say that you get your orders from the ninth floor – however if you want to tell us something, go ahead. And never was it stated that you called Whale a pedophile – but then you again try to slide in a little stab with “although I have observed that his photoshopping actions against a 15 year-old boy were deeply weird)” Really 101 stuff the last bit.
Have you seen,/i> the picture that whaleoil made with James Sleep’s face photoshopped into it? It was a staggeringly stupid, callous and, yes, weird thing to do. Cameron’s in his usual mode: bizarre acting out then playing the victim when he gets called on it. If he doesn’t want people saying unflattering things about him, he shouldn’t behave the way he does.
I’m somewhat relieved that you’re changing your story — it seems I’m not “implicated” in your plot any more, just “Your name was mentioned as a supporter as was your blog of the blog, run by labour and the epmu”, whatever that actually means. Perhaps you should think a little more before writing these things.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
“Recently I received an email from a prominent left-wing blogger offering to go out for a drink with me offline.”
In that email did he/she say that you had “pissed them off” and that you should “fuck off”?
As to Barnsely’s wheelie bin comment:
A) A bit needless wasn’t it? i.e. I wasn’t in DPFs home (and to people who call this his “virtual home”, does he have 20, 000 people per day visit his home?). His comment about evicting me in a wheelie bin in the event that I visit his home (not likely to happen any time soon) was just an excuse to say “If I had the chance I’d like to fuck you up budy” – i.e. to intimidate.
“insod felt sufficiently threatened by having his name published to have his name removed from the Electoral Roll, if we’re to believe what he says.”
Still no examples of threats involving physical intimidation I see IP. Still, a nice wee essay.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I find it funny who Tane and lynne have both stated that no one connected to The Standard is paid for any work in relation to it. Are we expected to just take their word for it?
Well, yes. Didn’t someone upthread say that the standard here was to believe what people say on-line. IN fact, here’s the quote:
I guess my point is, while you expect a little hanky panky in [Kiwiblog], generally I like to think you can take someone at their word, their comments represent either the truth or a genuinely held opinion.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
You’re a sook Roger, and your fake outrage is sooooo gay.
If you had the balls to say even half of the shit you spout around here to the faces of the people concerned, you would probably indeed get beaten up.
It’s just reality man, if you’re a smug smartassed twerp who can’t keep a lid on it, you get beat up sometimes.
Personally I pay little or no attention to D4J.
Anyway, back to those Labour Party hacks at the standard…..
January 21st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Deborah- notice the qualifier in that quote – *generally*. I don’t think we can believe much that Tane says anymore.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I don’t think we can believe much that Tane says anymore.
In that case, you have already made a judgment call, and you aren’t really interested in any evidence that doesn’t accord with your pre-set world view.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:31 pm
roger nome said “Or free-bandwidth from a guy who happens to be employed by the Labour Party. Seriously, once you guys have your minds set on a conspiracy theory you just can’t let it go hey?”
“Happens to be employed by the Labour Party” – convenient that, eh roger nome – just like Dear Leader “happened” to be driven through Canterbury at 170kph (without noticing), or that Nicky Hager “happened” to come into possession of e-mails, or that Hugh Logan “happened” to think that it might please Benson-Pope if he sacked Madeleine Setchell, or that……..I could go on, but you probably get my drift!
January 21st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
In that case, you have already made a judgment call, and you aren’t really interested in any evidence that doesn’t accord with your pre-set world view.
Maybe he just expects an equal level of disclosure at The Standard as at Kiwiblog – you know the same level of disclosure Tane harps on about constantly whenever DPF is on the news.
Call us crazy, but some of us like to know the background of the person calling themselves independant bloggers.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“You’re a sook Roger, and your fake outrage is sooooo gay.”
So now helmet proves that he’s a homophobic bigot … what a surprise.
“If you had the balls to say even half of the shit you spout around here to the faces of the people concerned, you would probably indeed get beaten up.”
And he admits that he wants to beat me up…. The more I get to know you the more I think you’re just the sweetest guy.
“if you’re a smug smartassed twerp who can’t keep a lid on it, you get beat up sometimes.”
People are generally a little more free with their language on the net than they would be in “real’ life. i.e. I’ve heard from several people that have met him that redbaiter is as meek as a lamb in person, and as you know, his internet persona is nothing of the sort.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
“Call us crazy, but some of us like to know the background of the person calling themselves independant bloggers.”
You know, that isn’t so common in the NZ political blogshpere. Certainly, for someone to make that kind of disclosure is the exception rather than the rule.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
IP the Standard does not provide a disclosure statement because they are ASHAMED of who they are and the politics they espouse.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
As someone who can’t access all the NZ media as some of it isn’t on line, could someone pause the internecine strafing a mo’ and be kind enough to tell me:
a) has the MSM in fact picked this up today and, if so, whom?
b) have they actually undertaken any research of their own on the topic as opposed to merely regurgitating the work of bloggers and/or ringing a few tame contacts for some he said / she said tosh?
c) On the off-chance they in fact have (and believe me, there’s not much breath-holding going on here) what’s the reports saying?
Couldn’t find it on Stuff (but the fact that Lindsay Lohan has spent time in a morgue receives prominence) or the Herald’s site.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
The left, and the standard, remind me of girls playing cards or Arabs fighting wars….They gloat and laugh when they win and cry and snivel when they lose.
This one is a fairly transparent loser.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Roger: And he admits that he wants to beat me up…. The more I get to know you the more I think you’re just the sweetest guy.
No, he said nothing of the sort. What he did say is that if you behave with the same level of disrespect in person as you do on a blog then it is likely somebody will introduce their fist to your teeth.
I personally would not, but I can understand that the level of verbal abuse and innuendo you throw at people could elicit a violent reaction. After all, you get some kind of perverse pleasure out of comparing people to paedophiles, rapists and dogs. And you enjoy riling them up to get a reaction – your behavior is a testimony to that.
Roger: You know, that isn’t so common in the NZ political blogshpere. Certainly, for someone to make that kind of disclosure is the exception rather than the rule.
True. However, when the people not making such a disclosure are the ones clamouring for disclosure from other people then it is a tad hypocritical.
If I were to say that all anonymous donations should be restricted except for ones to the Labour party, you would rightly call me on that. Well. I’d hope you would. It is the same principle with Tane, the Standard and what they have done here.
Now we are still faced with a situation where an allegedly independant blog has received some form of support from a major political party in a obfuscated, non transparent manner. If this is the year of political accountability, one would expect that such a tie to the New Zealand Labour Party would warrant disclosure in the interest of fair and honest elections, wouldn’t it?
Because the Standard is no different to the Exclusive Brethren. They might not call for a “Vote for Labour”, but they are certainly putting a fairly effective “Do not vote for National” message out there. And their campaign is in part supported by the Labour Party through the use of their resources. Tane has already admitted that this was given to them based on communication with the Labour Party.
Isn’t it?
January 21st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I expect this will surface in a couple of days – first Sir Ed il be laid to rest, Rex.
It would make a superb article, expeciall if a reporter were to use some of the choices posts they could find from the VDS, and link them back to ‘HO.
I have already posited that the ‘Rich prick’ remark by Cullen http://monkeyswithtypewriter.blogspot.com/2008/01/key-rich-prick.html
was not a throw away remark, but an indication to the attack-dogs precisely what is deemed acceptable.
It would be interesting to see what other statements from the upper end of the Labour Party have found their echoes in the VDS.-
January 21st, 2008 at 2:18 pm
“if you behave with the same level of disrespect in person as you do on a blog then it is likely somebody will introduce their fist to your teeth.”
Like most humans, if people behave in a civil way to me, I’ll usually extend them the same curtisy to them. On the other hand if they act like a jerk I might not be so nice. I guess I’m just not perfect.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
*cough*
January 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Nome, I personally don’t give a shit about anyone wanting to give you a kicking. The topic of this thread is about a seemingly pro Labour, anti opposition blog site receiving support from the party they would appear to be beholden to. An honest explanation is warranted. We have heard some crap from Tane, anyone else want to have a try at defending the indefensible?
January 21st, 2008 at 2:45 pm
What a numpty, I made the wheelie bin commentary Roger and it holds true again today.
Take a look at yourself, if you behaved this way in a room full of normal humans somebody would snap.
It amazes me the level of vileness and sheer bloody minded rudeness that DPF tolerates on here.
The more feeble the poster in real life, the more stroppy the posting.
You people have still not answered the big question;
Can you not see the hypocrisy in a group demanding registration of political commentators as a direct result of the EB activities at the last election, whilst hiding their own identities and being funded and supported by the labour government and supporting unions?
January 21st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Bill – I can! I also notice that The Standard has not started a new thread since this embarrassing saga became public property almost 24 hours ago. Methinks it would be bad form for them to launch another attack on National and Key under their current circumstances. I also venture to suggest that The Standard might languish under the weight of a medium-to-large credibility crisis for some time, and there will be no shortage of obliging blokes and blokesses who will gladly remind said correspondents of this crisis should they get uppity again!
January 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm
The Standard has 81 labels recorded against National and 61 against Key. Those two topics are the most written about. Daylight is third.
You do the math.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Like most humans, if people behave in a civil way to me, I’ll usually extend them the same curtisy to them. On the other hand if they act like a jerk I might not be so nice. I guess I’m just not perfect.
Now thats rich!
January 21st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
So now helmet proves that he’s a homophobic bigot … what a surprise.
Um, ahem, Numb…get out of your garret once in a while. ‘Gay’ now also means limp, weak, laughable, and not cool. It’s no longer an exclusive adjective to describe boy/boy or girl/girl action. Helmet was just saying your fake outrage is limp, weak, laughable, and not cool.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
HEH, Larry Williams is on to it on newstalk ZB
January 21st, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Poor Larry, is that his top story for the day?
“Small left-wing blog gets mate to help host them”
I know it’s slow news day, but really.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Well, well, well, all hell breaks loose, at least at Farrar blog. Now lets see if the MSM notices, eh?
January 21st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Phillip John/Roger Nome:
And
Oh dear, how did this become a thread about you? Anyway, seeing as it apparently has, these have to be the understatements of the year from you – and we’re still only in January. Do you deny D4J’s repeated allegations (I’m paraphrasing here) that you’ve posted abusive and/or malicious material on his blog? Because as far as I can see, D4J gets a lot of stick (in the same way that one might poke a stick at a dog), so no surprise he’s occasionally sufficiently provoked into biting.
And on the actual subject of this thread:
You seem to pose an all-or-nothing approach: disclosure or no disclosure. But, as you would recognise, there are degrees of disclosure (ranging from (1) zilch a la The Standard, to (2) general disclosure a la Newzblog to (3) detailed disclosure a la Kiwiblog).
More fundamentally, though, your views on the appropriate level of disclosure aren’t relevant. The issue here is a variation on glass houses and stones: those who presume to lecture others about lofty netiquette should practice what they preach.
I’ve asked Tane several times now about this mysterious email he’s referred to. Why? Because it cuts through Lynn’s thicket of technical jargon to the real issue: what precise arrangement does Labour have with The Standard? We’re told that it’s only a temporary hosting arrangement. Well, if it’s as innocent as that, then what’s the problem with disclosing the email?
January 21st, 2008 at 5:40 pm
“no surprise he’s occasionally sufficiently provoked into biting.”
Peak Oil, I never even respond to our crazy chum, yet I get more abuse from him that anyone else.
How do you explain that?
January 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Sonic:
Just one brief comment: I’ll concede D4J is, at times, fairly indiscriminate. He’s had a love-hate relationship with me for reasons I never understood. The intended relevance of my point was Phillip John/Roger Nome has, on this very thread, decided to put his own conduct in issue, and I was simply saying he’s wound up D4J like Hickory Dickory Dock (the proverbial clock) – and other Kiwibloggers for that matter. On reflection, that’s probably where I should let the matter rest.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
“‘Gay’ now also means limp, weak, laughable, and not cool.”
So gay people have those associated characteristics for you? Thanks for confirming that you’re also a bigoted homophobe.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:44 pm
“those who presume to lecture others about lofty netiquette should practice what they preach.”
Any examples POC? Then we might have something to discuss.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Geeez you’re a dick Nome, makes me feel like putting you in MY wheelie bin.
Ya mates got snapped fair and square.
Sod and Nih have made far worse threats than anything you’ve managed to drag up here. (go on, ask me to link to it, but you’d better ask Mike first)
There are well over 300 posts on the Standard. Exactly one(1) asks people to vote for the Greens.
The Standard – on the evidence as it stands, are supported directly by Labour.
No amount of bullshit from you or Sonic is going to change any of the above.
‘gay’ is the new ‘lame’
You, Roger, are seriously ‘gay’.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Wow, isn’t it telling how there’s no post disputing the findings over at The Standard? I guess there really isn’t much they can say. Caught red handed.
The only question is whether they’ll keep posting there (with no credibility), or try to reinvent themselves in some other blog. Time will tell I guess, but I don’t think many will forget the blatant insult and lack of respect they’ve shown to both their own readers and the blogosphere as a whole.
Shame.
(I guess the other explanation for the lack of post is the fact that it’s Welly Anniversary. Of course that wouldn’t affect things if they were posting in a non-commercial basis rather than, say, AS A JOB).
January 21st, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Deborah said “In that case, you have already made a judgment call, and you aren’t really interested in any evidence that doesn’t accord with your pre-set world view.”
Deb, I guess you’re right, except for the bit about the evidence. I’m interested in it, but I don’t consider that Tane’s word is worth much as evidence any more, that’s all. Your nonsense about the pre-set world view thing is ridiculous. I’m not talking about an ideology here, merely the fact that one dude who I thought was straight up turned out to be a dishonest hypocrite.
Don’t start trying to pretend that this is about ideological bias love, or it makes you look a little, well, ideologically biased.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Philbest said “Well, well, well, all hell breaks loose, at least at Farrar blog. Now lets see if the MSM notices, eh?”
Oh the media will have noticed alright.
The dickheads at the standard crave media attention. They’ve succeeded in getting a little too, with the John Key video and a few other small mentions here and there. They were getting attention as an independent grassroots left leaning opinion blog, a moderately successful one at that.
The media will pay a hell of a lot less notice to a Labour Party funded blog than an independent blog with political bias.
That’s my guess as to why they tried to keep this quiet. I think it will backfire quite nicely, but then the pinkos are too stupid to even lie properly, so no surprises there.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I see that Larry Williams raised this issue today. http://newstalkzb.co.nz/thisweek/hourrecs/Mon,%20Jan%2021%2016.00%20trn-newstalk-zb-akl.asf have a look at 14:48 in. Looks like the media are already onto it.
It may well be that Tane’s absence on-line today is because he’s been fielding phone calls from Mike Williams and Andrew Little to explain his decision to lie on his blog about the political affiliations of his authors.
Telling half-truths is not a smart idea, Tane.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Phillip John/Roger Nome:
I’ll offer two examples, but nothing particularly novel I’m afraid.
(1) The Standardistas are, to some extent, hoist by their own petard. They’ve unwittingly (and, as Russell Brown today notes on Public Address, unwisely) put their own disclosure practices in issue. They’ve repeatedly highlighted DPF’s affiliations with National. They’ve also actively fostered a culture of DPF-bashing – for example, just yesterday, James Kearney was somewhat incircumspect over at The Standard and still hasn’t retracted his comments. Other left-leaning blogs (like Kiwiblogblog) have followed suit.
The indisputable facts (as they seem to me) are:
- DPF’s posted a detailed disclosure page (I’d challenge anyone to point me to a more detailed one).
- (As I recall) DPF updated it last year when he did some contract work for National. He even blogged about it at the time, so it was well-publicised.
- DPF’s personal views often align with National’s, which is to be expected really. But he’s endorsed the policy position of all parties at different times and across a wide range of issues.
I don’t know DPF personally. He’s clearly thick-skinned (probably a pre-requisite given his blogging profile) and seems quite capable of fighting his own battles. But I do think he’s endured grossly defamatory innuendo about his professional work commitments and blogging independence. Those peddling such innuendo (GhostwhoWalks being a particularly good example – he/she’s managed to defame Craig Ranapia as well) really should reflect on their conduct. Personally, if it was my blog, I’m not sure I’d be quite so tolerant.
(2) Then there’s the business of “outing” people. Robinsod claims Whaleoil outed him. Insolent Prick complains that Robinsod initiated a campaign of outing him; and I note it’s only fairly recently that The Standardistas have brought Robinsod into line. It’s a zero-sum game and there can be no winners.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:12 pm
sonic
It’s obvious really – it’s a bunch of people expressing their political opinions in an anonymous way while supporting legislation that requires people to publish their full name and residential address to express political opinions.
Only Labour party supporters could have such a Do as I say and not as I do approach.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Burt, more so. A bunch of people whinging about DPF’s association with a political party not being sufficiently visible, and themselves refusing to disclose any political affiliations (other than bland “left wing views”). A bunch of people whinging about DPF doing contract work for National and taking orders from HQ, and at the same time refusing to disclose any employment relations with Labour, parliament or Labour’s associated unions.
You’re right, only Labour party supporters…
January 21st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
IP – I must say that it’s great to have Larry Williams back. He is one of the few journalists prepared to call a spade a spade…..or a lying, thieving hypocrital labour MP a lying, thieving hypocrital Labour MP.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:29 pm
If you wish to contact the Electoral Commission and make your feelings known about this issue:
http://newzealand.govt.nz/record?recordid=79
http://monkeyswithtypewriter.blogspot.com/
January 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
By the by, David if one wished to make a complaint, is there a precis or guiding document one might use?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
“supporting legislation that requires people to publish their full name and
Which you have always had to do under NZ electoral law.
Honestly, you slag of the Standard when you are so ignorent of even the basics?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Slightly off topic, but bloggers, please refrain from denigrating too severely, the likes of Roger Nome, Tane & Co.
It is important that they continue to blog on this site.
For, if they cease to blog on this site, readers will not be reminded of just how petulant, hypocritical, dishonest, repugnant and despicable the supporters, all of whom can be described as reptilian, of this Clark regime are.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Robinsod’s complaints about being outed are bullshit. Before anyone knew who the hell he was, he posted his email address on here- mickyporton at hotmail dot com. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what his name might be.
Stoooopid.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:59 pm
And thanks for posting that again Helmet, just in case anyone missed it last time.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I blame Tumeke for this whole debacle.
http://barnsleybill.blogspot.com/2008/01/evil-conspiracy-revealed.html
January 21st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Sonic old pal, don’t be so precious. For a while since then, he was commenting under that name on several blogs that I read. I don’t think he’d mind my post, we actually go way back.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
sonic
RE: Publishing name and full residential address to express political opinions, you said:
So what you are saying is that the standard has been breaking the law, clearly knowingly, ever since they first started their blog with support from the Labour party.
So it’s worse than I thought, Labour party people would have knows that they deliberately established a blog that breaks the law, from day 1!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:26 pm
sonic
Before you respond with “others also post political opinions anonymously” (using the 4 year olds child’s defense of “they did it too”) that has nothing to do with the deliberate breach of the law, just like the fact that Labour were not the only party to deliberately misuse tax payers money in 2005 should not have been an excuse. You will find a bit of insight into this kind of defense under “Ad hominem tu quoque” here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
January 21st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
nothing’s happened. it’s become a non-issue.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Have to agree with Tauhei Notts it is surely better to have the lefties inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in (with aplogies to I think LBJ)
January 21st, 2008 at 9:50 pm
“They’ve repeatedly highlighted DPF’s affiliations with National.”
Yes, extensive and sustained professional affiliations – much more meaningful than what the standard guys are being accused of – i.e. having their blog hosted by a guy who also hosts a labour party blog? No wonder they didn’t mention it. It’s a non-issue.
“Then there’s the business of “outing” people. Robinsod claims Whaleoil outed him. Insolent Prick complains that Robinsod initiated a campaign of outing him;”
So there was a drama between sod, whale and prick? And the standard has asked sod to pull his head in while DPF has done nothing to sanction the pornographic harassment of a 15 year old boy by whaleoil – I guy who DPF admits sharing his personal laptop with from time to time? Nice argument POC. You sure you’re a lawyer/solicitor/whatever it is?
[DPF: Roger you don't know what you are talking about it. I suggest you shut your mouth about what I did or did not do, because you are embarrassingly wrong. And 20 demerits for smearing me]
January 21st, 2008 at 9:56 pm
WOGER WOGER…stop lending your login to robinsod and tane. Look at the trouble it got the late lamented james sleep in…
January 21st, 2008 at 10:22 pm
eger –
“…. DPF has done nothing to sanction the pornographic harassment of a 15 year old boy by whaleoil – I guy who DPF admits sharing his personal laptop with from time to time? …….. ”
versus
“Like most humans, if people behave in a civil way to me, I’ll usually extend them the same curtisy to them. On the other hand if they act like a jerk I might not be so nice. I guess I’m just not perfect.”
One question – Why do you feel the need to act in this way?
January 21st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Crux. Something has happened.
The credibility of those at the standard, and by association those at KBB and that other sleepy site, has climbed into a bathysphere and sunk to depths that render their opinions and postings absolutely worthless.
G
January 21st, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Because he never met his father
January 21st, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Barnsley – I’ve never met mine – so that is no reason!
January 21st, 2008 at 10:53 pm
“much more meaningful than what the standard guys are being accused of”
ah, but The Standard was so Holier Than Thou. Trouble with that is that you do in fact have to be holier. If not then you deserve all you get.
It will be interesting to find out what union support The Standard is getting. Being a member of two unions I’d prefer my membership fees not to be supporting second rate blogs.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:59 pm
NeilM, you should ask them. Would be interesting to know what those unions know about it.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Sheesh Roger, you’re really racking up the demerits.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
“ever since they first started their blog with support from the Labour party.”
Thats an amazing leap of conjecture there Burt. Facts and yourself still as strangers I see.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 am
Phillip John/Roger Nome:
Wow – 20 demerit points well-earned. Thanks for reminding me what a pompous ass you are.
Let’s recap. You asked me a question at 6:44 pm – so “we might have something to discuss“. I took you and your word and provided a considered reply at 8:11 pm. Your 9:50 pm comment was nothing like a discussion, and in fact was a disgusting smeer against DPF – which proves my point (“they’ve also actively fostered a culture of DPF-bashing“). It was also an unwarranted attack on my legal credentials.
You really are a nasty piece of work. Lee C has served you a generous helping of humble pie. I suggest you inhale it down your windpipe before trying to engage me in discussion again.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 am
Imagine the hue and cry if it was discovered that the National Party had covered the printing costs for the pamphlets distributed by the EB.
Of course this did not happen. The EB carried out its campaign with the knowledge of, but independant of, the National party. National at no time supplied any resources and conducted itself within the law at the time.
However, the actions of the Labour party in allowing the standard to be hosted on servers owned by the Labour party, in it’s simplest terms, would appear to me to be a prima facie breach of the EFA, passed into law by Labour.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:36 am
post number 453! gotta be a record, no?
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:53 am
No vto, my old nemesis,
I think you find I hold the record, with post number 454.
Hahahahahahah!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Bwah-ha-hah!
455!
Mine!!Mine!!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
456 and charging ahead!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 am
457
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 am
458!! That’s the finish line. I win I win!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:11 am
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
“supporting legislation that requires people to publish their full name and ”
Which you have always had to do under NZ electoral law.
Honestly, you slag of the Standard when you are so ignorent of even the basics?
Sonic, you dishonest little prick! That is not the full sentence you quoted now is it?
Heres what burt originally said
supporting legislation that requires people to publish their full name and residential address to express political opinions.
Which was not in the original law.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:18 am
Bevan, if you publish a leaflet during an election it has, and always has to have had, a contact name and address.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
# Grant Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Crux. Something has happened.
The credibility of those at the standard, and by association those at KBB and that other sleepy site, has climbed into a bathysphere and sunk to depths that render their opinions and postings absolutely worthless.
G
Actually I already knew that even without this fiasco happening…
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:03 pm
To: Level 5
Featherston House
Cnr Featherston & Waring Taylor Sts
Wellington
From: Lee Clark
(please contact me by email for my home address)
I am concerned that I recently read, in the following source:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/01/the_standard_hosted_by_the_labour_party.html
http://www.thestandard.org.nz is hosted on a server at 202.74.226.119
A WHOIS on that IP address gives us:
inetnum: 202.74.226.112 – 202.74.226.127
netname: LABOURPARTY1-2DAY-NZ
descr: New Zealand Labour Party
country: NZ
Under the Electoral Finance Act, 2007 (EFA), Can you advise me please whether The Standard Blog constitutes a:
commercial blog;
a Labour Party election expense;
a breach of the EFA because it fails to disclose who runs it, or provide an address?
Am I correct in assuming that if it is a non-commercial blog, it is exempt from any disclosure under the EFA, but if there is a proven link between it and the Labour party (ie it was paid for, or authorised by The NZLP) then it should be declared as an election expense? If so, under what conditions, if any would it presently be in contravention of the EFA?
If it is in contravention of the EFA at present, would you please advise me what conditions it must meet in order to comply?
If I wished to make a complaint about the blog under the Electoral Finance Act, can you advise me what aspects of the Act that The Standard, were it to be proven to be a Labour Party communication, I should be considering?
There is another aspect I wish to ask you about, if i may. If The Standard blog is hosted or run by members of a particular union, or the Labour Party, and this was done without the knowledge of their employers, would the EFA require that some form of disclosure from the employer be produced to clarify that they were unaware of such activities, should a complaint be made?
Regards,
Lee Clark
http://monkeyswithtypewriter.blogspot.com/
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Lee C, have you sent that off to the electoral commissary? Let usknow what the result is please? Ta.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Yes, I agree.
Lee C, please let us know if you’re fobbed off, or actually receive a substantive reply.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Hi lee
I have a dead horse that needs to be flogged and you seem like just the man to do it!
Can you contact me on the usual address?
Ta
S
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:11 am
Sonic: Bevan, if you publish a leaflet during an election it has, and always has to have had, a contact name and address.
Yes, but you are selectively quoting people again to make your dishonest little points you odious weasel. The original post said:
“supporting legislation that requires people to publish their full name and residential address to express political opinions”
There are many means of expressing political opinion Sonic. Not all of them are leaflets. You really are a sad little troll when you have to twist people’s words to try and make your points.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Anyone else notice that the site has disappeared now? Only noticed it after Bill English’s press release on the matter
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
The site was up and running about 4 or 5 minutes ago when I checked. They’ve still not made an official statement about their use of Labour Party resources to carry on with their anti-National campaign.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Isnt this just typical of these left wing Bottom dewellers who hit and scurry under rocks when the fat muppet Heather Simpson tells them too.
Local Goverment Compliance costs have blown out of control.
They now have infiltrated all parts of our society and report to Helengrad as directed.
The sooner we get rid of this Goverment the better New Zealand will be a much better place for it.We are sick of being directed on how we are supposed to live by bunch of Neo Communists who havent done a hard days work in their life.Lets look at there record
1) Health service appalling
2)Violence and Crime appaling
3)Cost of Living appalling
4) Immigration appaling cant get into New Zealand unless you are from an African Nation and you have aids.
6)Education appalling have totally dummed down our education system so much that even Australia wont want us soon.
7) Armed Forces Security what a joke
9) Police Force have totally destroyed the Kiwis faith in our Police force.
We have moved from a first world country to a third world country under the directorship of Helen Clark and Heather Simpson, and have slipped faster down the OECD rankings than a Dole Bludger lining up for an extra benefit.
I wonder how Winston and the Greens now feel after supporting this Bill through the House, and seeing Labour use these less than Honest Tatics t otry and get across there very warped point of view.They must be embarrassed.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0801/S00153.htm
lawl
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I agree that the Standard should have disclosed their hosting, but it’s pretty hypocritical to wail on them like this when David Farrar has such close ties with the National Party himself. Christ, even the National Party’s official press release on the subject links directly to this blog! It doesn’t help that Farrar frequently appears on TV as a supposedly independent commentator, either.
I’m by no means the Standard’s biggest fan, but this really is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
[DPF: You may be new here, but if you go to the top of the page and look for the prominent disclosure statement, you'll see I have probably the most detailed and explicit disclosure regime of any blogger. The issue (for me anyway) is about disclosure. The irony of course is the more I disclose the more the fanatics jump up and down and try and use that against me. And without exception, none of them even disclosing their real name. So yes it is a case of pot and kettle - for them]
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
DPF: Longtime reader, first time poster – and I actually met you at last year’s ASPA conference. I’ve just read your disclosure statement, and appreciate the detail you’ve gone into on the website (I only wish that kind of candid disclosure translated to TV interviews!). I did think this was interesting, though:
“I do not regard National as always right, but it is the party which I believe gives me the greatest opportunity to achieve the New Zealand I want.”
I’d say the folks at The Standard arguably embrace the same approach, especially in light of posts like this one by IrishBill:
“This is a fuckin’ disgrace.
The fact that we’re eight years into a Labour government (which, by the way, was founded by Kiwi workers) and yet the law still allows for this sort of shit to happen is a sad indictment of how far right our political spectrum has swung – sure Labour has undone some of the damage National did with the Employment Contracts Act in ‘91 but we’re now heading into an election that could see the Tories back in power and the first thing they will do is attack Kiwi workers some more – and it’s gonna be easier for them this time because Labour has done so little to secure our work rights.”
And just to demonstrate that I’m not taking it out of context:
“So that’s the main party choice this year – you can vote Labour for low wages and poor working conditions or you can vote National and see it all get even worse. Kinda makes all this talk from both parties about supporting families seem a bit hollow really.
It is worth noting that nearly every piece of legislation protecting New Zealand workers, while supported by Labour, has actually been driven by the Alliance and the Greens. As the Alliance no longer exists I’d suggest voting Green is the best way to truly support Kiwi families – after all one of the most important elements to having a decent life is having a decent job.”
So as I said above, they should definitely have disclosed their hosting and rectified it as soon as possible, but I don’t believe they’re bootlickers for the Labour party by any means. Perhaps some charity is due.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
underscore_b: that is the example that has been pointed to all the way through this saga. And, so far as I am aware, the only example.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I see there was a story on this on One News tonight (Web 23rd). Later on when they were talking about left and right blogs they even showed a computer screen showing Kiwiblog scrolling up it.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Opps, that meant to read, ‘Wed 23rd’…
January 24th, 2008 at 1:51 am
This is the publicly available WHOIS information for thestandard.org.nz from http://www.domaindirectors.co.nz/tools/whois.htm
version: 1.23.0
query_datetime: 2008-01-24T01:48:06+13:00
domain_name: thestandard.org.nz
query_status: 200 Active
domain_dateregistered: 2007-08-03T09:48:03+12:00
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domain_delegaterequested: yes
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registrar_name: 2day.com
registrar_address1: Private Bag 92142
registrar_city: Auckland
registrar_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
registrar_phone: +64 9 977 3595
registrar_fax: +64 9 977 3596
registrar_email: registrar@2day.com
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registrant_contact_address2: Newton
registrant_contact_city: Auckland
registrant_contact_postalcode: 1022
registrant_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
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registrant_contact_email: lprent@primary.geek.nz
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admin_contact_address1: 1N / 6 Burgoyne Street
admin_contact_address2: Newton
admin_contact_city: Auckland
admin_contact_postalcode: 1022
admin_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
admin_contact_phone: +64 9 3604275
admin_contact_email: lprent@primary.geek.nz
%
technical_contact_name: 2Day.com
technical_contact_address1: Private Bag 92142
technical_contact_city: Auckland
technical_contact_postalcode: 1309
technical_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
technical_contact_phone: +64 9 977 3595
technical_contact_fax: +64 9 977 3596
technical_contact_email: dns@2day.com
January 24th, 2008 at 2:00 am
You mean the folks who write for The Standard are Labour party supporters?
I am shocked, I am truly shocked. Someone should do something about it.
Get me another beer will you.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
<blockquote><b>Roger Nome Wrote:</b>Like most humans, if people behave in a civil way to me, I’ll usually extend them the same curtisy to them. On the other hand if they act like a jerk I might not be so nice. I guess I’m just not perfect.</blockquote>
Well, I have remained civil and courteous, and you haven’t always responded in kind….
[DPF: In fact Roger Gnome often acts very offensively towards people, when they have not done the same to him. The suggestion that he is only a jerk in response is quite false]
July 8th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Well, whilst roaming the interwebs on the rambling trail of one Neale Jones, I happened back upon this thread in which he is named so I read the whole thing again and found it all pretty funny in light of Labours slide down the polls.
Good way to waste an hour or so on a tuesday night.