Labour concentrating on the big issues
June 18th, 2012 at 7:00 am by David FarrarClare Curran at Red Alert is focusing on the issues that really matter to New Zealanders – how some of John Key’s followers on Twitters may be “ghosts”.
Labour’s theory is that the PM may have been “buying” followers!
Yes I can just see the Cabinet meeting. Let’s not talk about the economy, or government debt, or the Christchurch earthquake. Instead they are no doubt discussing how to increase the number of followers John Key has on Twitter. Presumably 1% of the asset sales proceeds go towards purchasing these ghost followers!
Next I await the expose on Red Alert that John Key is not in fact personally friends with all his Facebook friends!
UPDATE: It gets better. Clare has done a second post on the issue, demanding an answer into the question:
how did John Key acquire nearly 30,000 bogus followers?
I hope Labour pursue this vital issue in the House next week. I urge them to devote all their oral questions to this issue. They should not rest until they get a Royal Commission of Inquiry established into this pressing issue.
June 18th, 2012 at 7:28 am
Oh for goodness’ sake…
Yes Clare because the NZ public so fully bought into the “you can’t trust dodgy John Key” BS in 2008 and again [even more so] in 2011.
FFS what is wrong with these people?
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 7:34 am
I don’t do Twitter, so maybe someone can enlighten me.
I read some of the comments, and people seem to be claiming that folks are influenced by how many followers someone has. That they think, “Wow, Bob Simth has zillions of Twitter followers, so they’re obviously really important and for that reason alone I should stop thinking for myself and follow Bob Smith unquestioningly”.
Does that really happen? Are people that daft?
More to the point, this is yet another example of ‘nasty personal politics’ rather than actual real politics – y’know, like concentrating on the issues of the country.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 7:36 am
I wonder why the Greens are gaining so much momentum/Labour is full of deluded old marxist youth baby boomers/insert sarcastic but true comment about how shit Labour are here.
What a rabble.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 7:37 am
Years ago, many employees had to pay ‘tea money’ – the employer provided the tea lady, urn and (sometimes) cups, but the employees had to pay for the ingredients. The PSA and State Services Commission were locked in prolonged negotiations seeking abolition of tea money and the Commission finally relented. The message here was that the PSA seemed quite happy to waste its time and resources on a trivial issue, and the Commission was quite happy to see the PSA diverted from negotiating things of much higher value.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 7:38 am
Typical twit-centric logic, if you don’t have 10 followers you are a “ghost”, really? Boo to you, then.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 7:52 am
Stuck on stupid there Clare.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:04 am
Clare Curren plots and schemes the whole time. She sees conspiracies everywhere because she thinks people are like her with nothing better to do. A nasty nasty piece of work.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:07 am
Do you disagree with the content of her post or are you just questioning it’s relevance?
[DPF: It's a good post for a tech blogger to make, It's a bad post to do on the official Labour Parliamentary blog from a Labour MP.
On the content, the better comparison would be comparing like with like, which is heads of governments. But also regardless any suggestion that there has been a deliberate strategy to buy followers is daft]
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:11 am
Is the same Labour that has scripted letters to the editor submitted by multiple people? The same Labour that populates the Herald and Stuff comment boards with ‘key message’ comments? What’s that about stones and glass houses…? ‘Control the conversation’ huh Clare?
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:14 am
eszett: I simply question the relevance of Clare’s post.
Do people really base their opinions and actions on the number of Twitter followers someone has?
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:15 am
The reason is simple: if you sign up for an account and you’re from New Zealand, John Key is one of the first suggestions that twitter makes. Many of the others when I signed up my account were completely irrelevant, so it’s not hard at all to see that many of the people there are in fact people who’ve signed up and decided not to use their account much.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:27 am
scrubone: So (for a non-Twit such as myself
), Twitter suggests people you might like to follow when you first sign up, does it? Based on their ‘popularity’ or number of followers? Hmm, I can see why Labour might have an issue with that.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:32 am
No, graham. I don’t think John Key knows or cares how many followers he has.
Vote:I find it amusing though that DPF found it relevant enough to blog against it.
June 18th, 2012 at 8:33 am
graham: yes, exactly.
Popluar things attract a lot of ghosts, as anyone following #eqnz after a big one can attest.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:33 am
I simply question her credibility.
That Labour see her as Cabinet material compounds the inanity and calls into question (again) the competence and credibility of their leadership and caucus as a whole.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:50 am
Pretty sure everyone here missed the joke on this. The piece was an interesting commentary on twitter patterns with respect to politicians, told in a humorous way. Nothing to do with attacking credibility and she certainly stopped short of accusing Key of buying followers. She concluded that most of his followers were “spambots” – which has nothing to do with him.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 8:52 am
Graham
It is simple, this is about smearing John Key’s character.
That is what Claire Curran is doing and she knows what she is doing, Labour is practiced at it.
She knows that if enough stories get in front of people smearing his character then some will stick.
She understands that she isn’t dealing with the issues that face us right now but going after the “Personality/Charismatic Leader” by smearing his image or brand.
It’s a volume thing.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 9:43 am
How’s that Daljit Singh case coming along? Do Sikhs believe in ghosts? Moreso, can they be registered voters?
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 10:43 am
Graham said
I simply question the relevance of Clare Curran. She obviously has too much time on her hands.
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 10:56 am
so JK needs to spend more time kicking spammers off his twitter? what the hell??
Vote:June 18th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
By Currans’s criteria, my Twitter account is a “ghost”. I rarely Tweet, therefore have almost no followers, and use the account to keep track of people who lead more interesting lives than mine.
Luckily I don’t follow John Key, so I’m not part of the conspiracy that Curran has uncovered.
Vote: