Kiwiblog

No, it is not satire, but a couple of useful posts. First he rebuts a cliche:

Tax cuts for rich, paid for by the poor.’

That’s how Marty at The Standard (happy Lynn?) describes the working group recommendations. To me it looks more like tax cuts for the rich and middle class who pay income tax, paid for by the rich and middle class who use loopholes in the property and WFF tax laws to rort the current system. The working group recommends compensating low income earners for GST increases and I don’t think a lot of struggling families and beneficiaries are benefiting from, say, LACQ shelters or depreciation rebates.

Indeed. I think some (not all) on the left just hate the thought of the top income tax rate being reduced. Maybe Danyl’s other post quoting the TWG may convince them:

. . . out of an Inland Revenue sample of 100 of the highest wealth individuals in New Zealand, data indicate that only about half are paying the highest marginal tax rate on their income.

Tax Working Group Report, Page 27

The higher the marginal rate, the larger the incentive to avoid it. When Labour reduced the top tax rate from 66c to 33c in the 1980s, the amount of tax paid actually increased.

If National does reduce the top tax rate to 33c, that will only bring it back to what it was before Cullen increased it.

Danyl at Dim-Post does his own rankings. Superb. Extracts:

Nick Smith: 8/10. Environment Minister has done excellent work crafting an Emissions Trading Scheme that doesn’t handicap decent, struggling Kiwi businesses like The DimPost’s parent company Lanthanide, Nitrogen Tetrafloride & Heavy Metals Disposal.com (Inc  Chongjin, North Korea).

Paula Bennett: 8/10. Feisty westie MP has attracted controversy but is a vital weapon in National’s battle against Labour for the hearts of the strategic white trash demographic. …

Murray McCully: Shook my hand at a public meeting a few weeks ago and now it burns when I pee. 3.5/10.

The McCully one especially just cracks me up everytime I read it.

David Garret: Not his fault supermarkets are allowed to bulk sell discounted alcohol at 8 AM. 5/10.

Harsh but bloody funny.

Danyl blogs:

Labour’s determination never to form a government with the Greens put the party in a terrible situation. If you want to have an effect on environmental issues you really have to have a place in the government and Clark made it pretty clear that the Green Party would never occupy such a position. This wasn’t a problem for Bradford who doesn’t seem to have any interest in environmental issues and was able to advance her social justice causes through private members bills that she could negotiate on a case by case basis, but a policy of permanent opposition wasn’t viable for the party as a whole.

And this is partly why Fitzsimons and Bradford are retiring. They don’t see a change of Government in 2011 as likely and even if Labour wins in 2014, they might spurn the Greens again. This is somewhat less likely now, considering their preferred partner of NZ First has disappeared from Parliament.

The Greens are always more likely to form a government with Labour but they need to be in a position to realistically threaten to form a government with National before Labour will take them seriously in post-election negotiations.

This is what Bradford doesn’t understand. I have said 100 times over that given a choice between a National-led Government and a Labour-led Government, they will go for a Labour-led Government pretty much everytime.

But they need to keep open the possibility of supporting National, so they can get a better deal from Labour. This is not advice designed to help National – it is advice about how the Greens can stop getting screwed over by Labour.

The Dim-Post in fine form:

Monday Evening. My suite at the Breekman.

Cocktails with some of the old Wall St gang at Club 55 earlier. Good to see some familiar faces. Tense moment when someone asked me what I was doing for a job these days. I told them, there was a moments silence and they sprayed their drinks all over the table. I nervously joined in the laughter and when Dicky asked what I was really doing I told them I was COO at Deutsche. Feel slightly disloyal.

New poll back home. Slight dip but still riding high. It’s all a massive fraud, of course – we nose-dived after the budget and we’ve been in single digits for months, but what I got on Garner and the Espiners wouldn’t look very pretty on the front page. They know how to play ball.

Tuesday. Office at the UN.

Meeting with HC. The DPS boys led her into the room and assured me she was fine: ‘She was nervous this morning Sir but she’s eaten and she’s calm now.’ I knew better. She was still but her eyes were all white and she was breathing shallowly, her head low, scanning the room. I held back, greeted her cautiously and then she lunged: I’ve never seen anything move that fast! All I saw were flashing teeth and I felt the hot scent of English Breakfast tea against my throat but the DPS boys were quicker, forcing her back into the corner with their prods while she hissed and spat. Eventually she calmed and we discussed Copenhagen, Fiji and the MMP referendum. Also, she gave me a UNDP snow globe. Score!

Wednesday. Back at the Hotel.

Bad day today. No water at hotel, had to use Aussie faculties, had Rudd standing outside the door talking about a federated Pacific while I was trying to take a shit, then he stood outside the shower talking about something called ’social capitalism’. WFT? Was so distracted I forgot to rinse the conditioner out of my hair and spent all day at the UN with my scalp feeling oily and damp. Couldn’t use the basins in the washrooms to rinse – how would that look if someone saw me? Met Obama and I could see him looking at my hair. ‘He knows!‘ I thought. ‘He understands!‘ If anyone would have a private place to rinse their hair it’s him, but I couldn’t figure out how to ask and he moved on to talk to Erdogan.

Thursday. NBC Green Room.

Show went well. Pity we had to agree to three more years of SAS deployment to Afghanistan to get the slot but thems the breaks. Lindsay Lohan! Heh.

Picked up some nice ties and links at Bergdorf yesterday and this morning Soper liked the look of one of the club ties. He had a coffee and a danish and I hadn’t had breakfast so I offered to make a deal. He crowed: ‘I’ve been around a long time John, you’d have to get up early to get the best of me.’ Long story short I now own his house which I’m mortgaging back to him for sixty points above OCR.

Friday. Starbucks on Harrison Street.

Sent my body double Andy to deliver the speech to the UN (something about a seat on the Security Council in 6 years. BFD) while I went record shopping in Tribeca. Picked up some old Sugar Cubes on vinyl and a totally awesome Arbus print that I was going to give to Bill but decided to keep for myself. Checked my email and it sounds as though the speech went down well. All right. Hooked up with Bronagh and the kids and flew out to Disney World. So long New York – you’ve been good to me.

I’ll say this again. Someone really should hire Danyl.

The Dim-Post has a list of things John Key should not say to the UN General Assembly. My favourites:

• Okey-dokey.
• It is vital that we all work together to combat the terrible threat to our global climax.
• Allah Akbar!
• We open with Lot #1 – Fiordland! What am I bid for this lush temperate rainforest?
• Ban Ki, Imma let you finish but I just want to say that Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the best Secretary General of ALL TIME!.

Heh.

A classic:

The National government is calling for a calm and reasoned debate after opposition MPs have raised fears about a recent Ministry of Health audit into the value of New Zealander’s body organs.

Health Minister Tony Ryall announced the stocktake of body parts last week, explaining that it was useful to know how much the total organ pool of New Zealand was worth. Some experts estimate that New Zealand is sitting on over $340 billion dollars in kidneys alone. …

The Prime Minister has reassured New Zealanders that they should not be concerned about the audit. ‘At this point we have virtually no plans to harvest any organs. We realise that peoples lungs and pancreas are important to them and you should feel confident that when you go to the dentist or the doctor for a checkup you have only a very small chance of being selected for the Ministry’s trial program and waking up in a tub of ice with an empty cavity where one of your kidneys used to be. I want to reassure people on that issue.’

Also to be checked out is the “Waiting for Voter: A tragi-comedy in two Acts” post. I won’t even quote from it as you really want to read the full thing.

Danyl obviously has far too much spare time on his hands, but we’re grateful of that.

Danyl has been leaked the proposed changes:

• Alter font of Section 59 amendment from Courier12 to Times New Roman.
• Establish designated ‘coffee houses’ in urban areas where children can be freely smacked without fear of police intimidation.
• Initiate second non-binding referendum to ask voters if they understood question in previous referendum.
• Key to meet with Sheryl Savill, the woman who initiated the referendum, listen to her talk for up to five minutes and look at no less than twenty of her cat pictures.
• Larry Baldock to negotiate law change with Sue Bradford on pre-condition that Bradford be confined within a pentagram and bound in a straitjacket and hockey mask throughout the talks.
• Key to address Families First meeting, stand at podium with shit-eating grin and demand to know who the fuck else they’re going to vote for.

Excellent satire, as usual.

Satire at its best in the Dim-Post:

Citing the importance of robust opposition to a healthy democracy and the Labour party’s poor performance in holding the government to account, the Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand took the unusual step of directly intervening in the affairs of Parliament, making changes to the house that have shocked some, but drawn praise from many political and legal experts.

Emphasising Labour’s lacklustre record and the importance of an opposition party in scrutinising Ministers actions and speaking truth to power, the Governor General dismissed Mr Goff and the rest of his Labour MPs and on the same day swore in ‘Tiberius’, a four year old domestic Grey Goose who will act as opposition leader and sole opposition MP.

Tiberius is a great name for a goose.

The new MP has already made a strong impression on the government and its coalition partners; when Justice Minister Simon Power rose yesterday to introduce his new Search and Surveillance bill he was met with a tremendous quacking, honking sound, made by former Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons; the sound awoke Tiberius who rose on his hind legs and rustled his six-foot long wings at Mr Power who then withdrew from the Chamber. The bill was defeated and will not proceed to Select Committee.

Heh

Labour MP Grant Robertson blogged:

Out in the electorate this morning, the rising tide of anger about the cuts to Adult and Community Education shows no sign of abating . . . I think Anne Tolley will have to do something as the campaign is not going to let up.  In the meantime here is an extract from one of the letters I received this week that sums up a lot of the feelings out there.

I have been involved in adult learning as a student on and off for nearly ten years and would like to tell you how much these programmes mean to me. Over the years I have learnt how to make a mosaic, I’ve dyed silk scarves, built pots out of clay, extended my knowledge of French and been taught the skills to run a small business. These courses have enabled me to learn new things and meet lots of people but they also offer me so much more. Although these things may just be considered hobbies, to me they give me a greater sense of self-esteem and a feeling of connection to my community.

Danyl points out:

Can’t you just see Bill English standing up in the house and sneering about how Labour’s answer to the recession is to borrow money to pay for silk scarf dying classes? Don’t get me wrong, I think adult education is a great thing, and if we were a really rich country with no economic or financial problems then I think people should have access to all the french and scarf-dying classes they want, but they’re also some of the first things I’d cut when things went south: if these things are truly important to people then they’ll pay for them out of their own pocket. I’m generalising here but Robertson represents one of the wealthiest, best educated electorates in the country and I kind of doubt that a constituent of his taking classes to ‘extend their knowledge of French’ is going to be hard up for cash.

The key point here is that Labour do not seem to have caught on the surpluses are gone. We face a decade of deficits and they are whining about silk scarf dying classes. Their answer to everything is to borrow and spend more.

Labour won the 2005 election on a platform of extending the welfare state to the middle class and I wonder if they still think that’s the road to success; if so they’re wrong. A narrative is forming around the party that their solution to everything is to borrow more money and fritter it away on trivialities, seen in that light making the case for silk-scarf dying night classes is simply crazy.

What it paints to me is how out of touch Labour are with normal New Zealanders. If you regularly got out into provincal cities and towns, you would not be thinking that NZers want their taxes to go on such luxuries when we are in a global recession.

I think part of the problem is they have lost so many electorate seats. They have only 19 general seats left. With only a couple of exceptions they are now a party that only holds electorates in South-West Auckland, Wellington, parts of Christchurch and Dunedin.  When you lose contact with so many NZers, you lose your perspective on what is important.

Danyl cracks up and talks to himself:

Left Wing Danyl: Corporations that sell high-fat and high sugar products are getting rich by selling people slow acting poisons. And they’re deliberately marketing these toxic food substitutes at children! Shouldn’t we at least pass laws to protect minors from these products? After all, we don’t let them buy cigerettes or alcohol.

Libertarian Danyl: Well that’s your answer to everything isn’t it? Just pass another law, take away a little bit more of our freedom, expand the power of the state. Charge people more taxes so you can furthur limit their choices. People should be free to eat whatever kind of food they want. We have enough problems with the nanny state in this country without politicians telling us what we can and can’t eat for dinner.

Economist Danyl: Hang on a minute there – I agree that people should be allowed to choose what foods to eat – but you have to admit that products like soft drinks and potato chips have massive negative externalities. They contribute to chronic illness like diabetes and heart disease and those have a cost to the public health system that other people end up paying for through their taxes.

Libertarian Danyl: Tax is theft!

Left Wing Danyl: Tax is the price you pay for living in a civilised society.

Libertarian Danyl: Civilised? Ha! To quote Ron Paul . . .

Moderate Danyl: Oh shut up, idiot. So Economist Danyl, are you saying there should be an excise on junk food?

Economist Danyl: Why not? That’s what we do with other products that have negative externalities, like tobacco and alcohol.

Left Wing Danyl: The problem there is that obesity is closely correlated with poverty. A tax on junk food would be a highly regressive tax.

Economist Danyl: Then poor people will act like rational maximisers and respond to the changing conditions of the market by switching to cheaper, healthier options.

Sarcastic Danyl: Right, the way they have with tobacco?

A really good post.

Danyl blogs:

The satirical Dim-Post having fun:

Foreign Minister Murray McCully has vowed to fight a decision by the Liquor Licensing Authority to ban his office from selling or serving alcohol for up to five days. The ban follows a pre-dawn raid by police on the Cabinet Minister’s office in which a large number of underage and highly intoxicated persons were taken into custody.

The raid took place following numerous noise complaints from neighbours including Agriculture Minister David Carter and Attorney General Chris Finlayson who reported loud music, screams and alcoholic beverages leaking through the ceiling….

McCully has rejected the accusations, explaining that the teenage girls dispensing alcohol were senior advisers within his department and that they were performing their roles as outlined in their job descriptions.

‘It is the role of key staff within my office to dispense tequila and lime juice to the minister and visiting dignitaries as requested,’ McCully said. ‘Although it is not mandatory that they allow salt to be licked from their stomachs it is expected and will be noted in performance reviews.’

Heh heh heh – read the whole thing. I of course make no comment at all about the good Mr McCully’s hospitality

There has been some interesting commentary on Clark’s valedictory speech – mainly commenting on the total lack of reflection that she ever did anything wrong.

Guyon Espiner blogs:

Her valedictory was like her premiership: cautious and competent; meticulous and managerial.  I’d hoped Helen Clark might show us a flicker of feeling; a sliver of humanity; a scintilla of humility. …

It was similar when she spoke to us on TVNZ’s Q+A show last Sunday. There was no acknowledgement of her mistakes. Could she not have conceded to mishandling the anti-smacking law? To rushing the Electoral Finance Act? To being a little too lenient in her handling of Winston Peters?

I don’t think she considers any of them mistakes. Just as she has never conceded she was wrong to sign paintings that others painted. Her career has been marked by a refusal to say sorry and to blame everyone else.

I think she owed it to Labour to show a little contrition about the election defeat.

Clark sticks to the line that New Zealanders only voted National because they felt they could have the same policies with a new face. With that statement there is the underlying belief that before too long voters will realise the grave mistake they made in throwing her out.

The Dim-Post has a shorter version of the Clark speech:

Dim-Post blogs:

Speculation on the future career of Labour politician Judith Tizard ended today with an announcement from Helen Clark that she would be taking the ousted Auckland Central MP to the United States with her this August, when she travels to New York to take up her new job as head of the United Nations Development Program.

It had been rumoured that Tizard would stand as a Labour Party candidate in Clark’s Mt Albert electorate, return to Parliament as a list MP or even run for mayor of Auckland’s supercity. Those rumours were quashed today with the news of her departure for New York. Clark advised that she has not yet informed Tizard about her upcoming move, as the prospect of such a long journey would only frighten and confuse her. Tizard will be leaving a month before Clark, as US Department of Agriculture regulations state that Tizard – who was Minister of Auckland, as well as Associate Minister for Arts and Transport – must spend at least a month in quarantine before she can enter the US.

Heh

Sources close to Helen Clark warn that Tizard will no longer have the same care-free lifestyle in New York as she did in Auckland or Wellington.

‘Judith was unsupervised a lot of the time,’ said a former staff member in Clark’s department. ‘Although she spent most of the day sleeping on a couch by the window in Helen’s office she would also roam around the beehive, wandering into diplomatic lunches and state dinners where she would delight guests by performing tricks, such as begging for food or rolling over and playing dead.’ …

Clark is understood to have purchased an automatic feeder to prevent Tizard from starving during her absence. At a preset time every morning and evening the device will dispense a serving of Swiss liquer chocolates into a bowl. It also fills her dish with Vueve Cliquot when Tizard presses her nose against a panel on the side of the machine.

Read the whole thing.

A classic Dim-Post:

Rumours, speculation and wild gossip swirl through the gray streets of the nations capital this week, with businessmen, civil servants and fishwives all speculating on the secret identity of the Labour parties noble and courageous new leader; the only man in Wellington brave – or foolish – enough to defy the terrible might of the Key administration.

The National Party has vowed to seek out and destroy the noble yet unknown politician who has captured the hearts of the political left with his quick-witted press releases and bold opposition to suspending superfund payments – but with his identity a mystery the bumbling attempts of the fiendish Nats are doomed to failure.

Deputy Labour leader Annette King has denied knowing the name of the dashing masked hero but has confirmed that under extraordinary circumstances she can contact him, revealing that she alerts him to a crisis either by wearing a red carnation in her corsage when attending balls, placing a vase of the same flowers in her bedroom window at midnight or messaging his facebook page. …

King laughed merrily at suggestions that her old friend and colleague Phil Goff is the shadowy champion of the left. ‘Poor old Phil? Not in a million years. He couldn’t even make it to Andrew’s press conference because he locked himself in his office bathroom. Phil is sweet and trusting and has a good command of trade and defense issues but he could never match the bold flair and derring-do of our mysterious new captain,’ she said sighing and staring out her rain-streaked office window at the stormcast Wellington skies.

But King’s loyalty to her hapless, bumbling friend may yet pose a threat to Labour’s secret hero; sources within National have revealed that the parties senior strategists are setting a trap for the masked Labour leader, forcing King to lure him out of hiding by threatening to attack Goff in the House if King does not co-operate.

‘She knows that Goff is too naive and good natured to defend himself and that the Nat’s will tear him apart, so she’s trapped into sacrificing her leader to save her friend,’ a senior National staffer said, speaking off the record before twirling his mustache and chuckling darkly.

As of press time the evil scheme appears to have been unsuccessful; Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and senior cabinet MP’s Simon Power and Murray McCully thought they had trapped the Labour leader in a Select Committee hearing but when they entered the room they found only Goff, slumbering gently in the corner.

Danyl really should be given a column in a newspaper. And his ending:

The National MP’s dashed their hats to the ground and swore in frustration. Upon awaking Goff insisted to them that he was Labour’s mysterious hero, at which the men laughed uproariously and clapped Goff on the shoulder.

‘But I’m the leader,’ Goff told them. ‘I’m head of the party goddamn it. Why won’t anyone listen to me?’

The real identity of the opposition leader remains a mystery.

They seek him here, they seek him there …

Very good from the Dim-Post:

The New Zealand Herald: Key – the Cold Hard Facts

Freelance journalists Kevin Taylor and Jason Ede ask the difficult questions about the mysterious past and future plans of National leader John Key. The result is a candid unflinching take-no-prisoners account of Key as a husband, leader, dad and the best mate our nation could ever hope for.

The Sunday Star Times: Five Celebrity Sex Scandals the Government Doesn’t Want you to Know About

Anthony Hubbard and Nicky Hager reveal the shocking truth about the New Zealand Intelligence Service and their role in protecting Shortland Street stars from tabloid newspaper journalists.

New Zealand Herald on Sunday: Going down on Lloyd Geering

Caroline Meng-Yee interviews the ninety year old distinguished theologian and member of the New Zealand Zealand Order of Merit about fashion, fab restaurants, clubbing and his favourite sex positions!

The Dominion Post: Are Winston’s Masturbation Fantasies Illegal?

The story that brought the government to its knees. Phil Kitchen’s explosive scoop revealed the Foreign Ministers inner erotic life and asked if it broke electoral law.

A classic from the Dim-Post:

SIG Detective-Inspector Sean Gibson-Whyte is understood to be leading the investigation into Tino-rangatiratanga People’s Global Jihad for Social and Environmental Justice Now! and admits that the loss of Gilchrist as an informer has dealt a blow to the ongoing surveillance operation.

‘We have been reduced to reading Mr Fletcher’s blog, watching his web-cam, listening to his telephone calls with Mr Singh and installing listening devices in their homes and cars,’ Gibson-Whyte admitted ruefully.

Detective Gibson-Whyte is no stranger to set-backs: an experienced officer with a Masters Degree in criminal law, he spent nine years investigating gangs and organised crime in New Zealand and Asia Pacific and headed up a multi-country task-force to investigate the smuggling of amphetamine precursors from South East Asia before being pulled from the case to head up the inquiry into the Tino-rangatiratanga People’s Global Jihad for Social and Environmental Justice Now! task-force.

Other activists informed on by Gilchrist have expressed surprise and relief about the selective nature of his informing.

‘Rob sent the stasi pigs cell-phone pictures he took of my ‘PanArchy’ performance art installation but he hasn’t told them anything about the time I got wasted, broke into my ex-girlfriends flat and trashed the whole house,’ said Project for Total Human Genocide co-founder and environmental activist Jenny McCormak. The anonymous, Hawera based spokesperson for Sendero Luminoso Aotearoa has expressed gratitude that Gilchrist did not reveal details of her activities manufacturing and distributing the class A drug Ecstasy, although his information about the group has prompted the SIG to draft eleven more detectives into the task-force to adequately monitor the upcoming anti-patriarchy rave scheduled for new years eve.

One of the best.

The Dim-Post has a thought:

I guess if New Zealand First had made it back into Parliament they’d just be wrapping up coalition talks about now and either Clark or Key would be telling us what a great Governor General Winston was going to be.

Heh.

The Dim-Post:

Danyl has been busy, I do not know where to start.

We have Maori Party split over Coalition Deal

The Maori Party have been offered entrenchment of the Maori seats and a review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act in exchange for fifty of their young every month for three years. …

It is understood that Sharples is deeply opposed to the proposed scheme while Tariana Turia is a strong advocate for Key’s right to hunt, kill and mount unemployed Maori youths, describing it as enhancing his rangatiratanga and sending a strong message to young Maori that if they study and work hard they will not be cut down in their prime by Key’s poison-tipped crossbow bolts or torn apart by his pack of savage dogs.

A resolution to the impasse was reached late last night, when the Maori party co-leaders met for a cup of tea to confront the problem. After a short, congenial discussion Dr Sharples drained his mug of Earl Grey and then slumped to the floor unconscious.

And Tizard dismisses ‘rogue election result’:

Outgoing Auckland Central electorate MP Judith Tizard has assured staff and family that she will not be stepping down as an MP in spite of her loss to National Party candidate Nicky Kaye in last weekends General Election.

‘I certainly never heard anything about any election,’ Tizard told the Dim-Post this morning. ‘And if there was something like that going on I like to think I’d be one of the first to know.’

Upon being informed of the results Tizard was quick to dismiss their significance.

‘I don’t think this represents the true wishes of the people of New Zealand or the people of Auckland Central,’ Tizard said. ‘This is clearly a rogue election result with no real impact that the media is beating up in order to sell more papers.’ …

Tizard has also confirmed that she will be maintaining her full contingent of staff and offices, rejecting the suggestion that she would now have to make her own dinner reservations and purchase her own plane tickets as ‘the worst kind of hate speech’.

Incoming National MP Nicky Kaye has advised she is negotiating a solution with Paliamentary Services, Tizard’s private secretary and an Armed Offenders unit.

Oh that was priceless.

Poor old Danyl is confused and not sure who to vote for. Danyl is a leftie, but one with a sense of right and wrong. He describes his options:

I refuse to vote for the Labour Party on the grounds that it would be an endorsement of their (baffling) loyalty to Winston Peters, a corrupt dishonest bigot. (Think about this weeks charade with the helicopters and ask yourself what inane gibberish this drunken idiot has been telling our trading partners and allies over the last three years.

And even on the eve of the election Helen Clark is defending Winston and saying he has done nothing wrong and been the victim of a beatup. I don’t know how a single leftie could vote for Labour tomorrow and regard it as a principled act. I 100% understand voting for the Greens if you are on the left, but how can those who have spent years campaigning against money in politics be so “We don’t care” about the fact Helen has all but endorsed Winston’s behaviour.

Based on their performance in the campaign I have no confidence in the National Party to competently run the country; Key’s going to win anyway so if he proves me wrong and does a good job he can have my vote in three years time.

Ouch. But an honest opinion. I think Danyl may be surprised at how things turn out, but we’ll see in three years what he thinks.

I’d vote for the Greens – because I care about environmental issues – but their most effective MP by far is Sue Bradford who appears to have no interest in the environment whatsoever but is highly effective at promoting her far left social justice agenda – one that I largely disagree with. I also have huge problems with their basic approach to government which is to simply outlaw anything and everything they find objectionable. On top of that I suspect they’d fund their terribly worthy social justice policies by taxing me into oblivion.

The Greens seem to specialise in two things – spending as much money as possible and banning things they don’t like. If there is a hydra Government then they will be terribly upset that there is no money left for all their spending promises. Unless they massively increase taxes, they won’t be able to spend.

Hence having failed to get a spending binge, we will get a banning binge instead. Chris Trotter said a Government with such a strong Green presence in it will be the most left wing in the last 70 years. So I suspect the list of things to be banned will be truly ambitious.

I find this pretty frustrating. All I ask for is a baseline of competence and for a party to at least pretend that they are going to govern in good faith. Neither of our major parties comes close. Anyone who runs an election campaign as worthless and disgusting as Labour’s shouldn’t be allowed near pregnant women or children let alone the machinery of power, while National’s MPs have been gleefully telling any idiot who wanders up to them with a hidden microphone that they do have a secret agenda and they’re going to ratfuck the voters of this country as soon as we’re dumb enough to elect them.

I think Danyl is overly harsh here on the National MPs. I actually think almost all the secretly recorded comments are quite unexceptional – exactly what you expect from informal conversations at a social function. I do agree the Labour campaign has been very bad – they may be the only campaign in recent political history to have run 100% negative TV ads.

The Dim-Post hits a new high with its party profile on NZ First. Read the whole thing but here are some extracts:

Founded In: Now there has been a great deal of lies, falsehood and innuendo spread about the founding of New Zealand First. This profile will deal with the plain cold facts and not the sterile, feeble minded nonsense spread about by the media in this country who are a bunch of smart-alec green tea-sipping ghouls, liars and pumpkin faced charlatans and that is the honest truth.

I can almost hear the voice.

Slogan: Now let me be very clear about this. First of all, that was not human brain tissue on the carpet of my electoral office. It was sheep brain tissue. You know that, I know that and the people of New Zealand knows that. We all know that because that’s the truth. Now it’s not my fault that the police forensics scientists can’t tell the difference between human brain tissue and sheep brain tissue but they can’t and that’s nothing to do with me. You’ll have to take that up with them and I encourage you to do so.

Second – and we need to deal with the facts here; not the spin, not the tall tales spread by the jackals and hyena’s in the New Zealand media and their ACT party paymasters in the World Health Organisation. The facts. Now the New Zealand Herald has claimed that when my plane violated Russian air space we were flying low over the waves to avoid radar detection. That is just an out and out lie! I’ve explained why we flew in low at night with our lights out – explained it time and time again – and the Russian East Air Command in Vladivostok has accepted my version of events!

Just wonderful.

The best comedy and satire about the election is online. Danyl has some gems today:

• While speaking to a small group of army medics in Waiouru John Key announced that Dr Lockwood Smith’s plane has been shot down over the sea of Japan
• The Green Party held a photo opportunity at Pauatahanui estuary in Mana electorate at which co-leaders Russel Norman and Jeannette Fitzsimmons pitched Green fiscal policy to a thick film of marine algea.
• New Zealand First leader Winston Peters met with police detectives and the Reserve Bank to discuss his plans to stimulate the New Zealand economy by printing more money; the detectives have confiscated a Macintosh computer and two color printers from New Zealand First offices.
• Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia announced that the removal of Tin from the periodic table of elements would be a bottom line for any coalition deal with a major party.

The sad thing is that Winston’s monetary policy is not very different to the above!

The Dim-Post has an excellent write-up of the Aro Valley meeting. Some extracts:

Radio New Zealand announcer Bryan Crump has taken the evening off work to act as moderator – he warns the crowd that while heckling is encouraged he will not tolerate any ‘Hooton’s’.

Heh he has become a word.

For ACT Heather Roy who demands to know if there are any undecided voters in the audience. One woman puts her hand up. Roy exceeds the two minute time limit and is the first candidate to get drenched – but certainly not the last – while the gleeful crowd chants ‘zero tolerance’. Crump assures her that the water-pistol is ’scented with rose-water’. ‘It bloody is not,’ Roy replies.

Classic.

For RAM (Resident Action Movement) Grant Brooks. It is hard to hear Brooks over the members of the audience shouting ‘Baaaaaaa’. He announces that RAM is a serious player in the upcoming election and the rest of his address is drowned out by laughter.

This is what I like abotu the meeting – they heckle regardless of political leanings.

For the Kiwi Party Rebekah Clement, a young and attractive candidate and the crowd is intrigued when Bryan Crump announces that he has watched her ‘nice thing on YouTube’.
Clement: The Kiwi Party is a new Party . . .
Heckler: It might not fly!
Clement: And I want to be part of it because a lot of young people feel that they can’t make a difference in politics . . .
Heckler: You can’t!

Heh.

The two ‘major party’ candidates were asked about the Treaty of Waitangi. Stephen Franks gave the most considered reply of the night and actually addressed the question. Franks tended to over-complicate his replies and it was often hard to figure out what he was trying to say. His Obama-like emphasis on nuance might make him a good MP but it is not an effective strategy when you have two minutes to explain something to 300 jeering hippies with a water-pistol trained on the back of your head.

A good point!

In another post Danyl also comments on debates:

Neither Clark nor Key made McCain’s mistake – the person who came closest was Clark with her absurd and offensive comment about Key being used to shouting people down at home. Both candidates ran very defensive strategies in which they positioned themselves to look calm, strong and leaderlike; Key effortlessly exceeded the expectations set for him. Clark didn’t hurt herself in the debate but she didn’t help herself much either, and she did damage her image with her foolish (but totally characteristic) attacks on John Key and Mark Sainsbury the next day.

Clark and her supporters seem to genuinely believe in their cartoon depiction of John Key as some sort of malign, demonic super-rich psychopath, just as the US Republican Party imagines Barack Obama as being a deranged radical Islamic terrorist. But when people encounter Obama on TV they see a calm, articulate, slightly pompous and sometimes tedious former law professor; when we see Key we see a genial, occasionaly bewildered and safely anodyne Kiwi boy made good. Their political enemies are trying to sell us something we simply cannot believe in.

A very astute observation, in my opinion.

The Dim-Post announces National’s real tax policies:

1. $50 per week tax cut for every worker in New Zealand – will be accompanied by $50 per week ‘negative salary rebate’ for all workers, adding to a total transfer of wealth of over $5000 per year!
2. ‘KiwiSlaver’, a new employers rights package aimed to stimulate the economy by protecting business owners from nuisance law-suits over trivial charges such as kidnapping and aggrivated assault.
3. Flat tax of 18% to the really hot little red-head who participated in Crosby/Textor market research focus group #5.
4. 5% GST rebate on Playstation 3 consoles; cost to be offset by privitisation of Stewart Island, population of which become legal property of Dow Industrial Chemicals.
5. Free small soda at the movies for all working mothers on middle incomes aged between 25 and 45 living in the Otaki and Hamilton West electorates.
6. Low income earners will be allowed to look behind the couch cushions of John Key’s sofa and keep whatever they find.

Heh I like No 1 and No 3 especially.