Kiwiblog

A commenter who just received enough demerits to get him a suspension, has taken to e-mailing his displeasure to me. His four e-mails in the last hour have said:

1. Littlle fat shit i will return
2. david Farrars blog is a gay site
3. kiwi blog encourages CHINESE TAKEOVERS OF NZ BUSNESS
4. Your latest post was pathetic for a fat whimp like you,is that the best????? opps pure national arse licking, well arse licking

Very strange, my last post wasn’t even on politics, but on an upcoming film I want to see.

The scary thing is that he gets a vote.

Anyway if he keeps e-mailing me I’ll publish his name and e-mail address.  And I think his temporary ban is very close to becoming a life-time ban.

This blog runs on WordPress. It started life originally as a Movable Type blog, but a few years ago we migrated it to WordPress, and I have to say it made a huge difference. Not only was the blog heaps faster (as it did not rebuild the whole site after each post), but the functionality was greatly improved. And even better, one had thousands of WordPress plugins one could utilise to add on more features.

So being a big WordPress fan, I’m really looking forward to attending WordCamp NZ on Sat 19 and Sun 20 February. It is being held at Te Papa.

The guest speakers are a mixture of local and international, including John Ford from Automattic – the company behind WordPress. Local speakers include Julie Starr, Lance Wiggs and Richard McManus. I’m also talking for a bit about the challenges of a blog with over 600,000 comments on it. There’s also sessions commercially focused such as Search Engine Optimisation.

You can register to attend on the wordcamp website. Cost is only $85 for the weekend.

I’m hoping I’ll come out of it with some good ideas about ways I can make Kiwiblog better.

Was interested that the second most popular term for finding Kiwiblog (after Kiwiblog itself) is “Julian Assange”. I was surprised I would be on the first page of Google hits for his name, and even more surprised when I stuck his name in that Kiwiblog came up as the second hit after Wikipedia.

Someone is stalking Rex Widerstrom as his name is in 9th place for search terms and the NZEI death sqauds are hunting Peter McKeefry who is in 11th place.

Very amusing that we have a tie for 21st place with 179 hits each between “donkey sex” and “trevor mallard labour leader’. Is it 358 random searches or one person searching for both terms 179 times?

Iain Dale is the most widely read UK blogger. I read him and Guido almost every day.

He announced last week that he is going to stop blogging. This has made news not just in the blogosphere, but also in the mainstream media.

Looking at some of the reasons why Iain has quit, I can understand his decision. There are times when it does get pretty challenging.

Well, I am afraid this is the blogpost where I tell you that I am giving up blogging. This decision has been coming for some time and was nearly made a month ago, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it then. Well, today I can.

There’s no single reason, but let me try to explain as best I can why I can no longer blog in the way I have been doing over the last five years. First of all, let me say what it’s NOT about. It’s got nothing to do with the Conservatives being in power. There’s this myth that blogging in government is less interesting than in opposition. I’ve never bought that argument. I think I have been quite open in making clear when I think the coalition have got things wrong, but I accept that is not the perception, and probably never will be.

I agree it is not less fun in Government. I thought it would be, but I am finding no shortage of things to blog on – in fact my challenge is the topics I miss out due to lack of time or resource.

I’ve been thinking of going through the year’s posts and counting the number of times I have criticised or disagreed with the Government. It’s several score at least.

The truth is, I no longer enjoy blogging and I think that this has been evident for a few months now to my readers. I hate the backbiting that goes along with it. I hate the character assassination that is permanently present.

I’ve always said I’ll give up if I don’t enjoy it. But unlike Iain I don’t get too bothered by the haters out there. The more someone spews venom at me, the more I think that I must be doing a good job for them to feel so threatened. If someone I respect criticises me, I take that very seriously – but they tend to do so in non-personal terms.

So I can’t see myself ever giving up because of the haters. Quite the opposite – it encourages you even more.

I no longer enjoy the pressure of feeling I have to churn out four or five pieces every day. I used to enjoy sitting in front of the TV at home in the evenings and writing blogposts at the same time. I can’t do that any longer as I am on the radio every weekday evening. And when I am in the office during the day I have two companies to run. Something has to give.

This is where I can totally empathise with Iain. Once upon a time the blog was not an “obligation”, just fun. But I do feel a sense of (mainly self-imposed) obligation to try and do around 8 – 10 posts a day, to cover off major issues and to be topical.

There are days and weeks when I am exhausted from trying to manage the blog, actually earn money from Curia, contribute to InternetNZ’s activities, do various media obligations, and a near non stop range of meetings and speaking arrangements.

Even getting up at 5 am doesn’t leave enough time, and friends have to put up with me trying to catch up on a backlog of e-mails while watching DVDs on a Friday night.

To cope with what will be an even busier in 2011, I will be soliciting some volunteers to help with certain aspects of the blog. I’ll provide details in January. I’m also going to learn the value of the word “no” and start declining speaking requests – not all of them, but some of them.

And if I am honest, I now feel that my blogging is having a negative effect on various aspects of my business and broadcasting life.

I estimate I could probably double my income, if I gave up blogging. Partly due to the extra time I would have to do business development – in six years of business, I’ve never responded to an RFP or solicited a client. It has all been word of mouth. Also the blog makes me too risky a choice for many government sector clients.

I’m working 9am to 10pm five days a week. I enjoy it. I relish it. I thrive on it. I’m running a very successful publishing company which is, I believe, on the brink of great success. I’ve achieved a lifetime’s ambition of having my own daily radio talk show. I am not about to put either of those things at risk. And frankly, I’m not going to put my health at risk either. As I said above, something has to give in this life I am now leading, and I am afraid it is the blog.

The health factor is real also. I left Parliament, partly because of the insane hours. They’re not as bad as when I was at Parliament, but it is a long way from a 40 hour week.

But at the end of the day, my challenge is to get a better balance, not to give up blogging. I’ve actually been debating politics online since 1996, and blogging is just a continuation of that. If I can get the balance right, I hope to blog until I am happily (or grumpily) retired.

I have also decided to give up all party political activities, as they too have hampered aspects of my business and broadcasting career in the past. I am, and will remain, a Conservative supporter, but that’s as far as it goes.

I made that decision after the 2005 election, and it was the best thing I have ever done. I will attend the odd party conference if it is interesting, but have managed to avoid any roles or offices.

The only party role that might interest me in the future would be on the Board of Directors, but I suspect it would be incompatible with my blogging as you can’t really have a Party Director criticising a National-led Government, even mildly.

Finally, I’d like to thank all my readers for sticking with me through good times and bad over the last five years. To the many enemies I have made along the way, I’ll just say in a very Nixon-esque manner, just rejoice in the fact that you won’t have me to kick around any longer. For the moment, anyway. For the most part, I have enjoyed the blogging experience and made a lot of friends through it.

Iain’s departure is a real loss to the UK blogosphere. I always enjoyed his blog, as he was very reasonable and fair. And it was a great way to keep up with UK politics.

Overheard at lunch  a comment along the lines of:

“According to Kiwiblog and Whale Oil, the guy leading the charge is a Labour Party candidate”

It was a group having lunch. I resisted the urge to introduce me, and just kept the quiet satisfaction to myself.

A reader asked me what the reader stats by country are. Google reports for the last month the following visits:

1. NZ 250,720 85.0%
2. Australia 13,366 4.5%
3. US 8,767 3.0%
4. UK 6,461 2.2%
5. Canada 1,749 0.6%
6. Japan 1.326 0.6%
7. Singapore 878 0.3%
8. Hong Kong 707 0.2%
9. Germany 683 0.2%
10. India 645 0.2%

Also at 0.1% or more are France, Netherlands, South Korea, China, Thailand, UAE, Ireland, Indonesia and Switzerland.

At Backbenchers last night there was a discussion on lifting the retirement age from 65 to 67. They asked one table how many years off retirement they are. One girl said 46 years so I guess she was 19. Then they asked the more elderly gentleman how many years from retirement he was, and he responded that as he was 89 I guess I am already retired.

A round of applause for him, as people impressed that at 89 years old you’re coming to the pub, having a beer and watching Backbenchers.

At the end of the night he came up to me when he left and said how much he enjoys the blog, and reads it pretty much every day. Pretty thrilled to get such cool feedback, and meet what may be KB’s oldest reader.

It got me wondering. Who is the oldest and the youngest reader of Kiwiblog? If you are over 89 or under 18 feel free to state your age – either in comments – or if you are shy, by e-mail.

On Monday 20 September I blogged my views on the Wellington City Council elections.

Around 12 days later on 1 October, Eastern Ward Councillr Rob Goulden sent the following complaint to the WCC Returning Officer:

This email is in relation to information I sent to the Electoral Officer as a candidate profile.

My profile was sent for WCC to circulate on its website to the media, as general information as to who was standing, and for publication in the Candidates handbook.

I did not and have not given permission for my information to be published on the Kiwiblog website.

I am also required by the Electoral Act to authorise such publication. I have given no such authorisation to the Mr David Farrar the author and owner of the Kiwiblog website.

I believe his publication under the banner of Local Government Election 2010 on his website is a breach of the act. He tells people how to vote in numerical order, and whom they should vote for.

I do not see this as any different from circulating a leaflet doing the same thing, which was the subject of a recent complaint in Tawa.

I wish information about me to be removed from his website.

Can you please consider this matter as a formal complaint?

The first I knew of this complaint was today.

I should point out at this stage that in my blog post, I did not actually advocate a vote for or against Rob Goulden. I did endorse Simon “Swampy” Marsh and Amanda Nicolle for two of the three spots and said:

The three current Councillors are all quite well known. I’d keep at least one of them on – so people should also support their preferred incumbent.

Ironically several people wanted me to explicitly state that Rob should be ranked in an unwinnable spot. But because of some shared history I declined to do so, and did not state any preferences amongst the three incumbent Councillors. I won’t be as generous in future.

I also provided links to the official candidate supplied statements on the WCC site, allowing readers to make up their own minds on who to support.

Anyway back to the complaint, the Returning Officer responded the same day:

I acknowledge receipt of your complaint and, as required by section 138 of the Local Electoral Act 2001, your complaint will be referred to the Police for their investigation and appropriate action.

Oh what fun. I’ve been under Police investigation without knowing about it. The Police responded quickly:

Police response on Kiwiblog complaint

The Police very sensibly can tell the difference between an advertisement and a hyperlink.

Anyway I found out about all this today when Rob e-mailed me and said:

Please see the attached. I hope you will comply forthwith and remove my information from your website.

Now I am under no legal obligation to remove the link – it is to a public elections site. And I am bemused why Rob didn’t just e-mail me directly in the first place. But just so Rob doesn’t lose any more sleep about this, I have removed the hyperlink.

But perhaps I should replace that hyperlink, with another one. This hyperlink is to the WCC Watch Blog, specifically (by coincidence) to a blog post they did today on Cr Goulden.

UPDATE: A further e-mail from Cr Goulden:

I sent you an email tonight with the Police and Electoral Officers response attached.

I made a complaint to the Electoral Officer because that is the process I am required to follow.

You published my material without permission, which is why you have been asked to remove it.

For the record in 2007, you also published on your website defamatory material about me. You were told  to remove and you subsequently did.

I note already a defamatory remark made in response to your latest post.

I am not going to be as lenient as I was last time and intend to do something about you and your posts.

I will give you until the morning to remove them and no longer.

I have responded:

I am disappointed you have not learnt anything from this.  Polite requests go down better than threats and complaints.

You have not specified which of the comments you feel is defamatory. If you do so, I will consider your request.

I will continue to blog updates.

I’ve now got comparisons from Neilsen for NZers who read Kiwiblog vs all NZers who are online.

• Gender – 52% Male KB vs 42% NZ
• Age – similar profile
• Household Income – 30% $40 – $100k KB vs 36% NZ, 34% $100k – $250k KB vs $28% NZ and 7% over $250k KB vs 4%
• Occupation – similar profile
• Location – Auckland 32% vs 34%, Wellington 28% vs 18%, Canterbury 15% vs 14%, Otago 5% v 4%
• Area – 86% urban KB vs 82% NZ
• Ethnicity – NZ European 80% KB vs 76% NZ, Maori 4%, vs 4% PI 2% vs 2%, Other European 7% vs 10%, Asian 2% vs 4%
• Internet Connection – 1% dial up KB vs 3% NZ
• Average Internet use – 36% up to 10 hours/week KB vs 50% NZ, 34% 10 – 20 vs 31%, 16% 20 – 30 vs 11% and 15% over 30 vs 10%
• Web 2.0 – 62% have used social network site vs 53%, 46% have commented n blog/discussion site vs 32%,
• Online Services – 86% use Internet Banking vs 83%, 34% have used VOIP calling vs 30%, 5% gambling vs 5%, 8% gaming vs 7%, 39% auctions vs 37%, 85% read newspaper vs 76%, 46% download or listen to music vs 37%, 28% listened to radio vs 19%, 60% download/view video vs 48%, 33% download/view TV or movie vs 26%, 41% download software vs 33%, 29% used RSS feed vs 18%, 30% monitored sports event vs 24%, 35% used IM vs 32%, 21% accessed Net via mobile phone vs 17%

Through my advertising network, I am on Nielsen Net Ratings. Apart from the normal stuff on page impressions, visitors, I also get a demographic breakdown of visitors to Kiwiblog. I figured people may be interested in them also.

• Gender – 52% Male, 48% Female (this is readers, not commenters)
• Age – 2% under 18, 21% 18 – 30, 28% 31 – 45, 31% 46 – 60 and 17% over 60
• Household Income – 15% under $40k, 30% $40 – $100K, 34% $100K – $250K and 7% over $250K
• Occupation – 23% professionals/managers, 9% self employed, 7% tertiary students, 3% secondary students, 7% retired
• Employers – 32% work for employers with less than 20 staff, 15% for 20 to 100 and 29% over 100
• Homes – 39% own with a mortgage, 31% own and no mortgage, 25% rent
• Children – 14% have children aged under 5, 13% 5 to 9, 13% 10 – 14, 13% 15 – 17, 63% no children at home
• Shopping – 44% say main household shopper, 39% say split equally, 17% say not primarily them
• Location – Auckland 32%, Wellington 28%, Canterbury 15%, Otago 5%, Waikato 4%, BOP 3%, Manawatu-Wanganui 3%, Northland 2%, Nelson/Marlborough 2%, Hawke’s Bay 1%, Southland 1%, Taranaki 1%, Gisborne 0.3%
• Area – 86% urban, 14% rural
• Ethnicity – NZ European 80%, Maori 4%, PI 2%, Other European 7%, Asian 2%
• Internet Access – 32% work, 63% home
• Internet Connection – 1% dial up, 97% broadband
• Average Internet use – 36% up to 10 hours/week, 34% 10 – 20, 16% 20 – 30 and 15% over 30
• Web 2.0 – 62% have used social network site, 46% have commented n blog/discussion site,
• Online Services – 86% use Internet Banking, 34% have used VOIP calling, 5% gambling, 8% gaming, 39% auctions, 85% read newspaper, 46% download or listen to music, 28% listened to radio, 60% download/view video, 33% download/view TV or movie, 41% download software, 29% used RSS feed, 30% monitored sports event, 35% used IM, 21% accessed Net via mobile phone,

What would be interesting is to see how Kiwblog readers differ from the average online Kiwi.

Good God I made 16 posts yesterday. Fridays are meant to be relaxed!

I’ve been so busy the last couple of months that I’ve not had time to update the demerits table. This is actually a quite slow process as I was recording the date of every infringement etc.

To make it a more manageable job, I’ve set up a demerits spreadsheet, and will just copy and paste this to the demerits page.

The good news for those with a history of demerits, is I have wiped all current demerits, as I have been failing to keep the table up to date.

At of today, everyone is at zero demerits. However those who have previously has suspensions, still have that history – ie if they get suspended again, it will be for more than one week.

The bad news for those who become abusive or disruptive, is that it is going to be easier for people to report such behaviour:

If you see a comment that you think is highly abusive, then feel free to report it by sending an e-mail to kiwiblogabuse@gmail.com. The e-mail should include a link to the specific comment (if you click on the date/time of the comment, this will bring it up in the address bar).

I do not have time to read every thread, let alone every comment. So your help in maintaining standards is appreciated. I also do not have time to respond to every complaint – they will all be considered, and you’ll see below whether or not I decide demerits are warranted. Generally I won’t respond individually.

I am going to be putting a few minutes aside every evening to review any complaints, and decide if any action is required. The dedicated e-mail address will ensure they don’t disappear in the black hole that is my main inbox.

Thanks to Mobify, Inspire Net and No Shortcuts Design, there is now a mobile phone version of Kiwiblog.

The URL is http://m.kiwiblog.co.nz and it is customised for better viewing on mobile phones, and to use up less bandwidth. The sidebars are gone, and the photos are smaller. If you are on the mobile site, you can click through to the full site at the top right.

At this stage we have not set it up for auto-detect, as I am assuming people are happy enough to choose the full or mobile site for themselves. But can do so, if people want it.

Kiwiblog is seven years old today. Over those seven years, there have been approx:

• 17,000 posts
• 600,000 comments
• 3,300 tags
• 5,700 registered commenters

Monitoring visits is more difficult as have swapped systems often. But over just the last two years, Kiwiblog has had:

• 12 million page views
• 5.5 million visits
• 1.9 million visits through Google

Thanks to all the readers who enjoy Kiwiblog – I enjoy writing it.

The Herald had this story last week:

BLOG HEAVEN

Kiwiblog has increased unique users 43 per cent in the past two years _ a much bigger increase than that recorded for Public Address.

Figures released by Nielsen Online research for June 24 show the National Party friendly blog increased from 33,548 in May 2008 to 48,067 for the same date in 2010.

The liberal and Labour friendly community Public Address increased from 16,471 to 18,545, an increase of 13 per cent.

Kiwiblog dominates the mainstream right of centre political market, while Public Address shares the left with several bloggers.

Kiwiblog owner David Farrar said that commercial returns from political blogging were small unless they were international in scope or focused on the US market.

What I found funny is I was totally unaware of this stat until the NZ Herald rang me asking me for comment on it. I leave pretty much all the advertising to Scoop and Ffunnell and just have a browse through the quarterly reports every three months.

I used to follow my stats monthly, but look at Google Analytics rarely now. So I had no idea that traffic had increased by 43% over two years. Especially pleasing is that it hasn’t dropped away with the change of Government, but has in fact grown.

A new commenter left the following comment:

Oh what a surprise! The National and ACT party’s long term plan of having Banks as Mayor of the so called ‘Super City’ kicks into action as soon as Len Brown shows up 11% ahead of failed MP Banks. Oh another surprise, the horrible geeky little man ( being generous there) Farrar is doing Keys and Hides dirty work for them, just like he did on Winston Peters in the election. Well Farrar, time to exercise a few skeletons out of your cupboard, as well as Banks, Key and Hide. Just wait and see what starts popping up on the internet in the next few weeks, maybe a long term trip to Rarotonga would be well timed, or would Thailand be a better choice for you Farrar?

I deleted the comment, but then decided maybe better to let people see it.

The Thailand suggestion is especially charming, as we know what he is really suggesting by this.

Now here is my dilemma. I know the identity of the person who made that comment, through their e-mail address and domain name, with his threats against me. Kiwiblog’s privacy policy says:

I reserve the right to use or publicise any of the above information. However, unless there is good reason, I intend to only publish information in summarised form …

So the bottom line in terms of privacy in browsing or commenting on this site, is that in 99.99% of all cases I will keep your personal information strictly confidential to me. However if you break the law, defame someone, or really piss me off, then you have been warned!

So should I name the person who made this comment? Does this qualify as the 0.01% exception?

Starting from next week, we’re going to have a new premium content system for comments on Kiwiblog.

Readers will be able to access posts my me for free, as per normal. That will not change.

But if you wish to read or make a comment, there will be a small micro-charge, as a contribution towards the running costs of the blog.

The comments will be behind a premium content firewall, and there will be three levels of access:

1. Bronze – Read only – $1/month
2. Silver – Ability to make up to three comments a day – $2/month
3. Gold – Ability to make up to 30 comments a day – $3/month

We’ll be using paypal primarily as the method of payment, as most people already have a paypal account. Credit cards will also be okay, but at this stage we can’t do automatic payment or direct debits.

The money from comments access will primarily be used to fund professional discussion board software that will allow easy moderation, tracking of all comments from an author, most popular comments highlighted and a few extra features you’ll see next week.

Just been told that Monteiths are giving away a free case of (24 stubbies) beer to the best commenters on blogs in the Ffunnell advertising network, that contribute to their Worth Talking Over site.

Their site grabs contributions from the various blogs, and puts them into speech bubbles, as a way of highlighting the debates. The site is very well done – in fact it pulls contents from blogs. from Twitter and even the old Usenet groups.

Anyway what it means is I get to pick a commenter who will get two dozen stubbies as a prize. Sadly I can not pick myself

If Expat can send me by e-mail their name, address, phone and a statement they are aged over 18 (this is a legal requirement), then they will get a pleasant delivery in a few days.

Going to be on an area with little or no Internet coverage until Tuesday, so lite blogging over the weekend. Have scheduled the general debates to appear each day.

A couple of people have commented to me that they are finding the daily general debate threads are being dominated by religious debates, which of course tend to never get resolved.

Their suggestion was that we have two general debate posts a day. One “General Religious Debate” and one “General Debate”, with the latter out of bounds for religious comments and debates.

I don’t spend a lot of time in General Debates myself, so unsure how much of an issue this is, and whether the proposed solution is necessary or preferred. On the face of it, it seems sensible and in fact it mirrors what we did on Usenet many years ago – set up a nz.soc.religion alongside nz.general.

The top UK blog Guido Fawkes just mentioned his stats for the last week, being 340,000 page views. That got me to do a quick compare, and KB had 121,000 page views.  As the UK has 15 times the population, I’m pretty chuffed to be at slightly more than one third the level of a (or the) top UK blog.

That then reminded me that I should check out and publish what the annual stats were so I just ran Google Analytics for the 2009 calendar year. Some stats:

• 2.68 million visits
• 6.00 million page views
• 680,000 visitors
• Average Time on Site 4:22
• Traffic Source is 35% direct URL, 24% links and 41% search engines

Top Inwards Links:

1. No Minister 85,000
2. Scoop 47,000
3. Whale Oil/Gotcha 39,000
4. The Standard 38,000
5. Public Address 33,000
6. Cactus Kate 22,000
7. Keeping Stock 17.000
8. Facebook 13,000
9. Roar Prawn 13,000
10. Twitter 11,000
11. Tumeke 10,000
12. No Right Turn 8,000
13. Dim Post 8.000
14. Stephen Franks 7,000
15. MacDoctor 6,000
16. Frog Blog 6,000
17. Red Alert 6,000
18. Kiwi Politico 4,500
19. Not PC 4,400
20. Lindsay Mitchell 4,300
21. Home Paddock 4,200
22. NZ Conservative 4,000
23. Poneke 3,900
24. Interest.co.nz 3,700
25. Barnsley Bill 3,600
26. Pundit 3,300
27. Ian Wishart 3,000
28. TVHE 2,900
29. Monkeys with Typewriters 2,900

Visits per ISP:

1. Telecom 796,000
2. Telstra-Clear 399,000
3. Vodafone 173,000
4. Callplus 70,000
5. Orcon 104,000
6. Worldxchange 42,000
7. Woosh 35,000
8. Iconz 20,000
9. Maxnet 20,000
10. VUW 15,000
11. MSD 11,000
12. FX 10,000
13. MOJ 18,000
14. APN 8,000
15. TVNZ 5,000
16. Treasury 5,000
17. Air NZ 4,500
18. ANZ 4,500
19. Fonterra 4,000
20. Min Ed 4,000

Top Search Terms:

1. Kiwiblog 127,000
2. Whale Oil 19,000
3. Cactus Kate 10,300
4. David Farrar 9,200
5. NZ entertainer name suppression 4,300
6. Pearl Going 4,000
7. Phil Ure 3,900
8. Clayton Weatherston 3,700
9. Cathy Oxxxxx 3,200
10. David Bain 3,000
11. Cameron Slater 2,800
12. Louise Crome 2,700
13. Karen Soich 2,200
14. Noelle McCarthy 2,200
15. multinationals threaten our economic and political sovereignty 2,200
16. Susan Boyle 2,100
17. Lisa Lewis 1,700
18. Sophie Elliott 1,600
19. Neelam Choudary 1,500
20. Meg Bates 1,400

Top Pages Visited:

1. Blogroll 125,000
2. Must Read Blogs 69,000
3. The poor entertainer 21,000
4. Do you know 20,000
5. About KB 14,000
6. Comedians line up to say no 10,000
7. David Bain case 7,500
8. David Bain coverage 6,800
9. Richard Worth resigns 6,300
10. Clayton Weatherston 5,000

Top search terms that includes sex used to find Kiwiblog:

1. group sex video 681
2. sex shop k road auckland 412
3. animal sex 213
4. casual sex 176
5. bridget saunders sex 157
6. goat sex 149
7. banned sex videos 129
8. more on green sex for votes plan 126
9. comedian charged with committing a sexual offence 112
10. sex 106

This week and next I’m at a remote beach which has very poor Internet connection. I’m basically logging in just twice a day for around half an hour each time – usually once to read the news, and once to do some posts.

Do not expect me to be reading or responding to comments during this time – it is just too hard. If you really have to, you can e-mail me, but to be blunt I’d rather you don’t unless it is urgent, until the 18th.

Almost 800 people voted in the year end poll to select a charity for 2010. The results were:

1. Fred Hollows Foundation 46%
2. CanTeen 18%
3. SPCA 14%
4. Alzheimers New Zealand Incorporated 13%
5. New Zealand Red Cross 9%

Now all five finalists are very worth charities, and over time I hope we can support them all, but for 2010 the Fred Hollows Foundation was the clear favourite with over two and a half times the support of the next charity.

Later in January I’ll detail some of the fund-raising ides for how we can support the Fred Hollows Foundation.

In early November I blogged calling for nominations from readers for the Kiwiblog 2010 charity. There were roughly about 80 nominations which makes me think this is something really positive to fuel some great offline events and fundraising. More about these plans in the New Year, but basically there will be four components:

1. 10% of gross advertising revenues to go to the charity
2. Online link to dedicated donation page, and updates on charity’s work
3. A number of fun offline events as fundraisers
4. Seeking businesses interesting in doing matching donations

I narrowed the nominations down to a five organisation short-list based on the original criteria I stated:

1. Charity must be based in NZ (but can have international focus)
2. Should have broad appeal, and be relatively apolitical
3. Should have national relevance, not local only, and be topical
4. Should actually deliver services of some kind, not just advocacy
5. Should be reportable – as in the ability to keep people interested in the work they do with regular updates

Those that did not make this year’s shortlist are not necessarily out of contention for future years.

It is now time to put this short-list to a public poll.

Please use the poll in the blog sidebar to indicate your choice for the 2010 charity. Voting closes at midnight on New Years Eve.  2010 candidates in alphabetical order are:

• Alzheimers New Zealand Incorporated
• CanTeen
• Fred Hollows Foundation
• New Zealand Red Cross
• SPCA

Please remember that this process is designed to select a charitable beneficiary by majority vote from the community here. It is pointless for the vote to be skewed by what we can only call “campaigning” as the cause needs to be one that feels right for the people who naturally assemble here!

All five charities are great causes, and I expect over time many of them, if not all of them, will get to be Charity of the Year at some stage – if the concept proves worthwhile by having people get behind it.

Happy Voting!

Don’t really need a drum roll, as people could see the results in the sidebar up until closing, but here goes.

The 2009 Kiwiblog MP of the Year is Lockwood Smith. Lockwood was always a hot favourite with rave reviews from the gallery and others for his efforts to make question time more relevant, and opening up MPs expenses to public scrutiny. Lockwood won 49% of the vote.  Police and Corrections Minister was 2nd on 22%.

The 2009 Kiwiblog National MP of the Year is Steven Joyce. An impressive performance for a first term MP. His swift decision making on much needed national roads of significance has made him the motorists fan, as well as his steady decision making on the fibre to the home project. Steven got 39% of the vote, with Judith Collins in 2nd place on 28%.

Kiwiblog readers voted John Key the 2009 Kiwiblog Labour MP of the Year. Some readers will have voted him the best Labour MP tongue in cheek, while others will be sending a message that they want more right and less centre. The PM got 40% of the vote, with new MP David Shearer in 2dn place on 14%. Were readers giving Shearer esteem for his massive win in the by-election, or because they like his defence privatisation essays?

The 2009 Kiwiblog Minor Party MP of the Year is Tariana Turia. The Maori Party co-leader got 39% of the vote, with John Boscawen on 29%. Turia in the mid 1990s was one of the most polarising figures in NZ politics. It shows how successful her efforts have been, that in 2009 she can win a poll amongst the generally conservative readership to be the Minor Party MP of the Year.

The 2009 Kiwiblog Press Gallery Journalist of the Year is John Armstrong. John won 45%, narrowly pipping out Jane Clifton on 39%.  Note this is the public poll of Kiwiblog readers. A separate poll of MPs and Press Secretaries on the press gallery will be published on Thursday or Friday. John is probably the most cited journalist online – not because people always agree with him, but because he provides analysis (not just reporting) almost every day.

Finally we have the 2009 Kiwiblog Public Servant of the Year and it is a tribute to Dame Margaret Bazley who got 48% of the vote, with Don Brash in second place at 38%. Lawyers have never been the most popular species, and the average pundit enjoyed her expose of the legal aid problems.

Note that despite me telling people not to do it, one Xtra user tried voting around 80 times in most categories. These show up in the logs like a flashing light, and those votes were deleted.