Kiwiblog

Fox News reports on the war against them by the Obama Administration:

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

This has of course sent ratings at Fox upwards.

The White House stopped providing guests to “Fox News Sunday” after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August.

Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was “something I’ve never seen a Sunday show do.”

“She criticized ‘Fox News Sunday’ last week for fact-checking — fact-checking — an administration official,” Wallace said Sunday. “They didn’t say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check.”

“Let’s fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign,” Wallace added. “A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn’s facts were just plain wrong.”

How dare they fact check.

Fox of course does lean to the right. Nut the New York Times (for example) leans heavily to the left, and I don’t recall former Republican Governments refusing to be interviewed by the NYT.

Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House’s decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: “I don’t always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree.”

David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: “I totally agree with Donna Brazile.” Gergen added that White House officials have “gotten themselves into a fight they don’t necessarily want to be in. I don’t think it’s in their best interest.”

I’ve never known politicians who take on the press head on, to win. You can make your case on biased coverage when and if it occurs, but to have the actual Government try and freeze a media organisation out if silly and will not help Obama.

Media columnist David Carr of The New York Times warned that the White House war on Fox “may present a genuine problem for Mr. Obama, who took great pains during the campaign to depict himself as being above the fray of over-heated partisan squabbling.”

“While there is undoubtedly a visceral thrill in finally setting out after your antagonists, the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence,” Carr wrote over the weekend. “So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year.”

Carr sums it up perfectly – even though he works for the NYT

He added: “The administration, by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight.”

And I think they will regret it.

Stuff reports:

Five Auckland schoolboys who made a tearful apology to war veterans for worshipping Nazi symbols will now teach museum visitors about the horrors of the Nazi regime.

The five students caused outrage when they kissed a swastika, bowed before a Nazi banner and gave a Nazi salute during an Auckland Grammar School visit to the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

What a good idea. Don’t expel or suspend them, but make them teach visitors to the museum about the Nazis. A real case of a punishment fitting the crime.

Tony Ryall has announced:

“Cabinet has agreed to a number of proposals from the Ministerial Review Group’s report ‘Meeting the Challenge’ that will greatly improve national and regional cooperation and reduce duplication of back office functions, ” the Minister said.

As a package, the changes will move up to an estimated $700 million in savings over five years to frontline services. That would buy about 16,000 heart bypass operations or build two large city hospitals.  The changes are also expected to reduce the health system bureaucracy by up to 500 administration jobs. These would be managed as much as possible through attrition and voluntary redundancy. …

The major changes include setting up a new National Health Board (NHB) within the Ministry of Health. The NHB will focus on supervising the $9.7 billion of public health funding the 21 DHBs spend on hospitals and primary health care.

The new NHB will manage national planning and funding of all IT, workforce planning and capital investment. It will also take national responsibility for vulnerable health services such as paediatric oncology.

Work will also start on consolidating the 21 DHBs’ back office administrative functions such as payroll and bill payments.

“Officials estimate a one-off cost of between $5 and $10 million to set up the changes and that will be met within the Vote Health budget. Up to an estimated $700 million is expected to be saved in the first five years from coordinating procurement and logistics. All savings will be reinvested back into frontline health services.”

I don’t think anyone can object to the intention of these changes. If they save even a fraction of what the official cite, that will be a good thing freeing up money for frontline services.

The challenge for the Government is to have them go smoothly. INCIS is a prime example of good intentions going astray.

But I’m pleased the Government is prepared to take the risk, in order to make improvements. The status quo is not good enough.

The ODT reports:

To the outrage of many Britons, a white-supremacist fringe party riding a wave of electoral success has been invited to participate in a BBC prime-time TV show on politics.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party government says it is appalled that the far right British National Party will get such high-profile exposure to millions of viewers. The BBC, however, says as a publicly funded broadcaster it must cover all political parties that have a national presence.

The BNP is a loathsome vile racist party. But they also won two seats in the European Parliament. It is not for state owned media to decide not to cover a party, just because of their views.

Personally I believe exposing extreme views, and ridiculing them, is much better than ignoring them.

Having said that media should be careful not give a minor party disproportionate coverage just because they are controversial. For example Winston First should get the same coverage as any other party not in Parliament that is polling 1% to 2%.

Reuters reports:

President Hamid Karzai has agreed to face a second round of voting in Afghanistan’s disputed election after a UN-led fraud inquiry tossed out enough of his votes to trigger a run-off.

It was a corrupt election, but good to see the UN in this case stood up to the local Government, and as a result there will be a second round of voting. Karzai would have lacked legitimacy if he had refused a second round.

The challenge now is for him and/or his supporters not to create fake votes next time. If the second round is as corrupt as the first round, it will reduce the moral legitimacy of the Government, and make it harder for the NATO led effort to continue.

The Dom Post reports:

Labour MP David Parker welcomed the referendum, but said it should include reforming MMP itself as one of the options.

I’m not sure whether one does it as part of a the referenda, or seperately, but agree it would be good to review some aspects of MMP.

What do readers think are some of the changes that could improve MMP. Here are some of the options (note this does not mean I support them)

• Reduce threshold for list seats from 5% to 4% (as recommended by Royal Cmsn), or lower
• Remove threshold all together (means effectively around 0.8% gets you an MP)
• Increase electorate seat threshold for list seats from one electorate to two (or more)
• Remove winning an electorate seat as a way to qualify for list seats
• Waive the 5% threshold for “tangata whenua” parties and abolish the Maori seats (as recommended by Royal Cmsn)
• Increase the number of electorate seats from 70, and reduce the number of list seats form 50
• Set Parliament to have 60 electorate seats and 60 list seats
• Set Parliament to have an equal number of electorate and list seats (so size of Parliament will rise over time is the number of electorates increases due to faster population growth in the North Island)
• Ban dual candidacy so you can stand either in an electorate or on a list (note personally I think this is unworkable)
• term limits for MPs
• have “open” lists for parties so voters can change the order

Other suggestions welcome, plus views on the above.

The Herald reports:

About 70 people, including 20 Opposition MPs, protested outside Parliament yesterday over the cuts to adult and community education funding. …

In May’s Budget, funding for adult community education was cut from $16 million to $3 million, with the Government saying it paid for hobby courses. There has been intense criticism of the cut, with opponents saying courses will be slashed.

Of course if people wish to still learn how to dye their silk scarves, or learn Moroccan cooking, they can still do so. But they will pay for the course, instead of forcing everyone else to fund it for them.

Education Minister Anne Tolley said that with the recession the Government was focusing on foundation skills such as literacy, numeracy and language courses.

Focusing on literacy and numeracy instead of Moroccan cooking. What is the world coming to.

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party, which has prevaricated and criticised the boy-racer legislation, will support both bills and the other four law and order bills as well.

The big test will be what Labour does when the three strikes law is reported back. Of course it will depend on details, but supporting that may be too much for some of their MPs.

There was a fascinating radio interview at 7.40 am on National Radio today. It was from a specialist newspaper that reports on the UN, and complaining about the refusal of Helen Clark to do press conferences, how Clark and Heather Simpson try to handpick journalists for interviews and a general lack of accountability.

You can listen to the interview here.

It sounds like the UN media is less compliant than some of the NZ media has been. Some extracts from the interview with Matthew Lee the founder and editor of the Inner City Press that focuses on the UN:

In the six months she has been in office there have been a number of UNDP issues that have arisen and repeatedly, I would say half a dozen times, myself and other journalist have asked that she comes and do a press conference, an actual Q&A and take questions and it is yet to happen.

He points out she is the third most senior official at the UN, and not a single press conference in six months.

It has become somewhat striking, a total failure to answer questions about the agency as they arise. … Once requests were made for Helen Clark to do a press conference there were a flurry of calls from her two spokespeople at the UNDP to specific media outlets saying do you want a one on one. One of them responded and said Okay here’s the journalist who will do it. But UNDP responded No No we prefer this other journalist who works for you. That’s a degree of micro-management of press coverage that is almost unheard of in the UN.

But very familiar to people back in New Zealand. And many in the media went along with it, or they risked losing access.

If she is the third highest official in the UN, she needs to come and take questions because everyone else does. The Secretary-General does it on a monthly basis, the head of peacekeeping every two weeks.

Almost funny that Helen’s managed to actually lower the standards at the UN!

He also goes on to say how the only briefing anyone in the UNDP has given for some months has been about relief efforts in Samoa and Tonga.

Geoff Robinson: Are you the only journalist, is yours the only organisation raising this as an issue?

Lee: No, No … In July an issue arose about a hiring, a kind of nepotism hiring took place in UNDP. Inner City Press had the exclusive but after that it was covered by the Times of London, Reuters and even newspapers in Italy. All four of these publications wanted answers from UNDP and none of them got them. I sent e-mails to her long time staffer, Heather Simpson, to make sure we got her answer as to why this nepotism scandal was not a problem. There was never any response at all.

Heather’s job is to block media, not facilitate them!

But here is what is really interesting. All the media listen to Morning Report. Yet this quite stunning and significant interview has not been reported anywhere else at all!

Simon Power has announced the process for referenda on the electoral system, and I am very pleased with the final process.

I blogged a few weeks ago that I was very concern that there seemed to be some talk of having people vote only once on retaining MMP, without knowing the alternative. But the Government has announced, well basically, exactly what I advocated (which I am sure is merely because it really is the common sense way to do it).

The process is:

1. Parliament passes a law enabling a first referendum to be held in conjunction with 2011 election
2. The first referendum will have two questions – the first question being do you want to continue with MMP or have an alternative system
3. The second question will be to select your preferred alternative – the options are likely to be STV, FPP, PV and SM
4. If the first question is a vote to retain MMP, the second question is academic and that is the end of it.
5. If the first question votes for change, then a second referendum will be held giving people a binary choice between MMP and the preferred alternative (the highest ranking option from the second question)
6. The second referendum will be held at the 2014 election
7. Enabling legislation for an electoral system based on the alternate electoral system will be passed prior to the 2014 election, and it will automatically come into force if the alternative system wins
8. The 2017 election would be run under the new electoral system, if there is a change

As I said, it is really good to see there is a fair process – basically a mirror of the 1992/93 referenda.

I find it interesting that in my unscientific blog poll, 47% back MMP, 23% STV, and only 20% FPP. Personally I think it is highly unlikely that we would vote to return to FPP.

A run off between STV and MMP could be interesting as they are both proportional electoral systems, but operate very very differently.

Shaun Wallis commented yesterday:

I had a long debate with Phil Goff last night about this particular matter when he came to speak at my Hall of Residence.

Good on Shaun for raising the issue. I urge everyone who meets a Labour MP to do the same. Think of it as tough love – the aim is to get them to abandon their no comment policy. A party which had one of its MPs (and Minister at the time) found guilty of corruption should not be allowed to escape without any comment on whether they agree he was guilty, whether they condemn what he did, and whether they regret defending him.

He feels that he did not know enough about the situation at the time (bollocks in my opinion)

Now this is bollocks. The Ingram Report laid out Field’s conduct in massive detail. If a Labour MP claims they did not know enough at the time, ask themif they read the Ingram Report, and if not why not. If they did read it, then ask them how could they approve of a strategy to defend Field and praise him as a hard working MP, after reading the Ingram Report.

and then he later stated after many questions from me [i.e. there is a massive difference between accepting a decision and approving of a decision, and why hasn't Labour stated that they approve of the High Court decision], and his response (again him not getting to the point) is that at the time, they did not think Taito had done anything hugely wrong.

Well this is interesting. Phil Goff presumably read the Ingram Report, and didn’t think it disclosed Field had done anything wrong.

Now I read that report carefully. I blogged a list of 44 damning facts revealed by Ingram.

And even putting aside the illegal stuff, Phil Goff is saying that at the time he did not think having immigrants work on properties for around $2 an hour was “hugely wrong”. Let’s remember that when Labour call for the minimum wage to go up.

So we now know that Phil Goff didn’t think Taito had done anything wrong despite the Ingram Report. This explains why they won’t apologise for defending him. It does still leave the question as to whether or not Labour now agrees that Field did anything wrong. Not a single Labour MP has said on the record they think Field was corrupt, let alone they are ashamed of what he did

BTW: The students that he spoke to last night in our hall were not overly impressed by him.

Not even 4.6% of them?

Liberation has some extracts from a radio interview with Sue Bradford on the Greens:

Sue Bradford: That tension is always there in our Green Party, as it is in green parties around the world… I think that some of the people on the more blue-green, or conservative side of the Green Party will be feeling probably quite relieved that I won’t be a Green MP anymore.

Yet Green party supporters on this blog attacked me when I suggested Sue’s departure pointed to some splits in the party. They insisted it was just about her not winning the co-leadership.

Julian Robbins: Is the Green Party losing its radical edge?…. Is it coming into a sort of comfortable middle age, a professional phase where it tries to be less risk-taking?

Sue Bradford: I think that’s absolutely true…. We did have a real radical cutting edge [in 1999]… I think that we have, to some extent we have begun to lose a little bit of that differentiation with the other parties in Parliament – in terms of being a little less willing to take risks; a little less willing to be radical and “out there”; and the sense that too many political parties – including perhaps our own – are focused on winning the middle ground voters and not seeing the voters out to the sides – in our case, out to the left, and to the environmental left, as being as important as the voters that are in the middle and to the right.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the leadership.

Julian Robbins: Is the party really ‘fine’? I would have thought that at a time when the Labour Party is at a lower ebb and climate change as an issue as an item is at the top of the agenda, that the Green Party should perhaps be doing much better than it is. Why isn’t it doing much better?
Sue Bradford: …I’ve just given some of the ideas that I have about that. I think that part of the reason for that [lack of political success is] is that we’ve lost the radical edge and we’ve lost some of the points of differentiation with the other parties…

Bradford’s valedictory speech could be interesting.

Labour’s at it again, with Grant Robertson blogging:

Today I spent some time with the residents of one of the Council housing blocks in Wellington.  I really enjoy my catch ups with these groups as they give me a regular update on what matters to people who come and go on very modest incomes. And there was one resounding message.  Coming out of winter the biggest issue is power prices.  These folk are watching every dollar, and they see the moves up and down.  This has been a hard year and looking back over the last few years the increases have been large. They are not necessarily up to date with moving between companies, and the companies are generally not chasing them.  They do wonder why the government is taking such a big profit from the power companies it controls on the public’s behalf.

I’ve dealt before with the hypocrisy of taking $3.1 billion of dividends in a time of massive surpluses, and then complaining about more modest dividends in a time of huge deficits.

But today I want to look at power prices itself. Luckily the CPI has a section on domestic power prices, so one can calculate average increases each year. And here is what it has been:

• 2002 7.2%
• 2003 9.1%
• 2004 8.8%
• 2005. 4.4%
• 2006 7.8%
• 2007 6.2%
• 2008 7.9%
• 2009 2.3% (for three quarters)

So since the election power prices have gone up 2.3% on average and according to Grant this is the biggest issue.

As even Grant acknowledges there have been large increases for many years. Including when Grant was effectively the Deputy Chief of Staff in the PMs Office. Did Grant use that position then to advocate for lower power prices? Did anyone say “Hey Michael, our surplus is almost $10 billion, so why don’t we ask the power companies we own to reduce their profits?”

So let me see if I have Labour’s position summed up well:

• It was okay to take $3.1 billion in dividends from state owned power generators, during a time of huge Crown surpluses, but we are now very sorry about it.
• Now when the Crown is borrowing $250 million a week is the right time to reduce the dividends, so even more money than $250 million a week needs to be borrowed
• A 2.3% increase in power prices since the election is the biggest issue facing most households
• Hope people forget that power prices in the last seven years of Labour went up 64%, an average of around 9.1% a year.

I really hope Labour keep campaigning on power prices. I’m never going to get sick of reminding people of this.

The Justice & Electoral Select Committee has reported back the bill to repeal the partial defence of provocation, with unanimous support. They make one change:

We note that the codification of the partial defence of provocation was a reflection of the existing common law partial defence. For the avoidance of doubt, we recommend inserting new clause 5 to make it clear that the common law partial defence would also be abolished by the bill.

They also address some of the myths:

Proponents of the statutory partial defence of provocation have suggested that abolishing it might unfairly prejudice certain groups of defendants, such as “battered” or mentally ill or impaired defendants, whom society would rather see convicted of manslaughter than murder. The Law Commission in its report The Partial Defence of Provocation,1 reviewed all homicide cases in the Auckland and Wellington areas from 2001 to 2005, and found that in only one of the 15 cases in which the partial defence was relied upon was it successfully proven by a battered defendant.

And they note:

We consider that for the majority of such defendants it would be more appropriate for them to rely on self-defence, which would result in an acquittal rather than a manslaughter conviction.

And for mentally impaired defendants:

We further note that as the partial defence requires a defendant to have the power of self-control of an ordinary person, mentally impaired defendants would generally be precluded from relying upon it. Therefore abolishing the statutory partial defence of provocation would not adversely affect mentally impaired defendants.

Whale Oil disagrees with the law change, and notes the disturbing trend for those using the defence to be long-haired gingas with goatee beards.

Hat Tip: No Right Turn

The Herald reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff says National is still enjoying a honeymoon with the public after a new poll showed it had double the support of his party.

TV3′s poll of 1000 voters last night put the National Government’s support at an exceptionally high 59.9 per cent compared to Labour’s 27.2 per cent.

A honeymoon is defined as:

any new relationship characterized by an initial period of harmony and goodwill

Now the media have run multiple stories since May declaring the honeymoon over. There has been a Ministerial resignation, a tax cut cancelling budget, MP investigations, tensions with confidence and supply partners, the Auckland Super City, Maori Seats, rising unemployment etc etc.

Mr Goff said the poll covered a recess period when it was hard for Labour to get publicity and before recent controversies over rugby broadcasting and ACC.

The recess can be a factor, but hell you are talking 2% or 3% on a 33% gap. The poll included coverage up to last Wednesday which covered pretty much all the worst of the rugby broadcasting fiasco, and a fair bit of the well signalled ACC changes. Sure it didn’t cover the failure to have the numbers in the house, but Labour are deluding themselves if they think one single issue is going to change things much – the public don’t follow House issues anywhere like we do.

“This is a new government, it’s in its first year of government, they still have the appearance of being fresh, of being people-friendly. We know from experience that the gloss wears off,” Mr Goff told Radio New Zealand.

It has been 11 months since the election. If you compare to other first term Governments, you have:

June 85 – Govt behind by 2%
Sep 91 – Govt behind by 20%
Oct 00 – Govt behind by 4%
Oct 09 – Govt ahead by 33%

Anyone see the problem in Phil’s theory?

“It’s a difficult stage of the political cycle for the Labour Party, we don’t get exuberant about high polls we don’t get deeply depressed about low polls.

Here is their fundamental problem? They think it is just a stage. They think all Labour has to do is wait for people to realise their mistake.

Perhaps Phil could explain why after 11 months in the job, he can barely make half the support level of someone who is no longer even in politics, and now lives in the United States. Is that also just a stage of the cycle?

The Herald reports:

Radio New Zealand Morning Report host Sean Plunket was “distressed” at being told to find another job if he didn’t like his employer’s decision he could not write a column for Metro magazine, he told the Employment Relations Authority.

Plunket took RNZ to the authority after he was refused permission to write the column, along with being refused permission to moderate two televised debates, for TVNZ and TVNZ6.

The TVNZ6 debate was one on Internet issues, and probably had a viewership of a few thousands. I was amazed that Radio NZ could somehow think this was a threat to them.

Plunket disagreed with RNZ’s claim that the secondary work was a conflict of interest, saying his employer was not in competition with the other media, and the work would have helped raise his profile, and, in turn, RNZ’s.

Exactly. As a taxpayer who funds Radio NZ, I object to their behaviour to act as if they were commercial radio. They are not. They are funded by the taxpayers to provide a public service, and locking their staff up does not serve the public interest.

At a meeting with RNZ’s chief executive Peter Cavanagh earlier this year, Plunket was told he was part of the broadcaster’s “brand”, as though “anything I said or did anywhere would reflect on Radio New Zealand”.

He said Mr Cavanagh later told him “you might find the offers stop coming if you don’t have the profile of Morning Report” and “if you don’t like it, get another job”.

And this was over a once a month column in Metro. Sure if Plunket wanted to go on NewstalkZB every week, I could understand some reluctance – a but a Metro column?

Plunket said he believed he was being treated differently to other RNZ reporters and presenters, who were given permission to do similar secondary work.

RNZ journalists Chris Laidlaw, Kim Hill and Brent Edwards gave evidence this morning that they had done work for other media while employed by RNZ.

But RNZ said Hill and Laidlaw were entertainment presenters, whereas Plunket was a news presenter, so there were different ethical responsibilities in their roles.

Kim Hill is entertainment? Wouldn’t want to tell her that.

Political editor Edwards had appeared on TVNZ’s Agenda, but said he understood he was representing RNZ in that role and had not been paid.

And this is the bizarre argument from RNZ. They claim it is about ethical issues, but then here they claim it is about whether you get paid. Are they saying Plunket could write the column if he did it for free?

As I blogged yesterday, National is at 60% in the latest poll. The four parties in Government would have 82 seats on that poll.

Now there is no way this will last forever. A party does not stay 15% up on their election night result when they are in Government.

So my question is, why not use the 60% rating while you can. Rev it up, and take it out for a spin. Do some bold stuff, even if takes you to 55% or 52% – because you’ll eventually end up there anyway.

I don’t mean do stuff you said you would not do. Keeping faith with the electorate is very important. But at the moment the opposition is misfiring and somewhat impotent. The public are not listening to them.

The long-term goal is lifting our economic growth. Despite the rhetoric we will never close the income gap with Australia, but we might be able to stop the gap getting any bigger. Hell, I’ll even settle for the gap not growing so fast as before. Some of what we need to do to lift that growth may need boldness. And at 60% in the polls is the time when you can afford to be bold. You may never get the chance again.

The Herald editorial:

An excess charge of $50 or $100 a claim, as recommended by the corporation, could reduce its costs by about $1.6 billion over 10 years, a considerable saving for any service in the economy. The value would lie not only in the money raised from charges but also in the effect on claimants’ behaviour.

Insurance policies typically contain excess charges to discourage needless or frivolous claims. Accident compensation needs to do the same. The scheme may have been conceived as a form of social welfare rather than insurance, according to its venerable “father”, Sir Owen Woodhouse, in the Herald yesterday, but he was speaking of an era of closed, welfare-state economies with high taxation rates and universal benefits.

And I don’t think anyone can deem acceptable a household paying $45 a week in ACC levies alone.

Any excess charges introduced for accident compensation claims will have to provide exemptions for the bearers of community service cards. None must be denied treatment for injury because they cannot afford the excess, as ACC Minister Nick Smith has acknowledged.

That would be a sensible way to balance up the costs and benefits.

But it cannot be denied that the scheme is vulnerable to needless claims for minor injury. Most people have had the experience of visiting their doctor with a niggling ache and the first question asked is whether it might result from a known event. The ACC forms are always at hand and many a patient who is willing and capable of paying for treatment is invited to put in a claim.

It is human nature to make excessive use of any service that comes free. And for that reason it is usually in the interest of the service providers to oppose a charge. Even a token charge – much lower than the sums suggested for ACC – would cause many claimants to reassess their need. It would also force providers to satisfy paying clients that continuing treatment was worthwhile.

A charge would be unpopular and the Key Government has not yet shown a willingness to be unpopular when it needs to be. It did not adopt the corporation’s charging suggestion in the changes announced for the scheme last week. If it is suggested again when an independent panel completes an ACC “stocktake” next year, it should be accepted. The years of plenty have passed.

I agree.

The Herald reports:

A group of Auckland Grammar School students will apologise to staff at the Auckland War Memorial Museum today and explain why they were bowing and saluting before Nazi symbols.

The photos – uploaded to a social networking website – showed them kissing a swastika, bowing before a Nazi banner and making a Nazi salute at an exhibition.

I don’t know what is more stupid – the bowing and saluting to swastikas, or the uploading of photos showing such activities to the Internet.

The former is incredibly dumb and offensive, while the latter is quite simply moronic. What did they think would happen?

Now this is very cool – the House of Lords has a cross-party blog – Lords of the Blog. There are a dozen peers blogging there from all three parties.

Would be great to have such a blog in New Zealand. You could actually have MPs debating issues in front of us, with us able to contribute. I’ll add it to my list of long-term projects. The challenge of course is to get Government MPs (regardless of party) to participate.

Hat Tip: Red Alert

I was amazed that Labour has refused to do the obvious thing, and apologise for their defence of convicted corrupt MP Taito Phillip Field.

A friend suggested to me that this was because they still did not think he broke the law. At first I was dismissive, but as I checked their statements I found out they had never said they agree with the verdicts, and it remains an open question as to whether Labour thinks he did anything wrong, or broke the law.

Now to further fit the theory that Labour thinks Field is innocent, are these blog comments from Brian Edwards. Now Dr Edwards does not speak for Labour, is not an MP, and I am sure they are his honest opinion. But I find them fascinating as I suspect they do reflect a widespread common view in Labour. Some quotes:

I’m reasonably convinced that in a decade or less Philip Field will be seen to have been the victim of a major injustice.

Good God – are we going to have a free Taito campaign, as we had a free Bain campaign.

I spent several hours with Field a year or so back, going over all his documents. At the end, I concluded that the Field family’s crime may have been one of generosity. I suspect that we have not heard the last of this case.

Edwards also said:

“But the gain, it seems to me, was relatively small – he got some tiling and other work done”.

Now a Mark S replied:

That is really over-simplifing his crimes, almost trivialising them. It was a lot more serious than that. ‘Tiler’ Field actively set out to subvert the course of the police’s investigation by doctoring evidence and counselling witnesses to change their stories; in doing so, he was perverting the course of justice. This was not a case of someone getting tiling done on the cheap; it was a case of someone, who, egergiously, abused his ministerial position to offer enticements by way of an illicit quid pro quo, which strikes at the very heart of this country’s governance.

He’s cost the country literally millions $s, with the Ingram Enquiry and the High Court trial. I think he got off lightly.

And Dr Edwards responds:

Yes, if you accept the evidence. I have serious doubts. My view is that self-interested lying by his accusors and some enemies played a significant part in the verdict. We’ll see.

I’m amazed by this stance. There is documented evidence Field perverted the course of justice. Nothing to do with witnesses – his false invoices and receipts he drew up.

But this does make me wonder how many Labour MPs share the views of Dr Edwards. Is this why they won’t apologise for the defence of him by their then Leader and Deputy Leader? They think he did nothing wrong?

No this blog post does not cme from The Standard, but from the Dunedin School Blog. Their ten proofs are:

1. He has been to the south and east as prophesied in Daniel 8:9-12
2. He has spoken arrogant words
3. He has risen to the top quickly
4. He has spoken against God with the anti-smacking law
5. The merchants from the Earth will prosper from the Anti-Christ and he is a former merchant banker
6. He joined the National Party in 1998, and 1998 is 666×3.
7. The Anti-Christ will be different from his predecessors
8. He will be called the Messiah, which means he must have Jewish blood – which he does have.
9. He will be miraculously healed – and didn’t his arm heal quickly
10. His video blog is erecting a living image of him

They conclude that the chance of this all happening randomly is 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, so John Key is definitely the Anti-Christ.

This would also explain why he is beating Goff so badly in the polls.

Roar Prawn is predicting a major fight ahead over the ETS:

There’s a six billion fight over the ETS about to blow up. That’s how much Maori-owned forestry land has been devalued by the ETS. …

Select Committee could get very messy.