As you can see he calls Fran O’Sullivan a traitor, enemy and sell-out who will be shunned and reviled. This is because Fran dared to support the Crafar farm sale. It shows how demented some of the opponents have become. Redlogix of course cowers behind his alias, and would never ever dare to write such stuff under his own name – unlike Fran.

But as you can see, not content with just having Fran labeled a traitor and enemy to be shunned and reviled, a commentor Millsy calls for her to executed, saying “the likes of O’Sullivan, Key, Williamson, and Coleman will find themselves … rewarded for their treachery with a one way trip to the gallows”.

Now Millsy is just a commenter, and this is not the first time he has advocated violence against those whose political views he opposes. I of all people would say you don’t judge a blog on the basis of a comment by a commenter. I mean, after all it is possible they didn’t even see the comment (I read a small proportion of total comments on KB). If they did, surely they would delete it and at least kick him off?

But no, as you can see Red Logix (who is an author, not a commenter) effectively endorses the comment, saying that while it was a marginal call, it is okay because he said “the likes of” and that Millsy is correct in general.

Fran actually had been contributing to the thread (and kudos to Fran for standing up to people who call you a traitor and enemy) and pointed out that Millsy is Brendon Mills (easily found through Google). Now get this – The Standard deleted Fran’s comment, but left up the one effectively calling for her to go to the gallows!

Fran sums it all up nicely, with this tweet from Fran:

The Standard? Internet version of the Ku Klux Klan. Happy to string up people behind web cloak of anonymity.

There is a reason so many of their authors (not all) wear virtual hoods to hide their identities.

Doh, of course they have been. An MPs website  is a legitimate parliamentary expense, so long as it does not solicit money, members or votes.

The issue with Labour is that they had a parliamentary staffer processing credit card transactions.

But even putting that aside, the anonymous staffer has also mixed up two seperate Kates. He has mixed up the former IT staffer and manager Kate Pullar with the former Secretary to Chester Borrows Kate Pullar. It is no surprise than an IT staffer would be the registrant for domain names. Having two Kate Pullars was a bit of a challenge, but to solve it I referred to the first Kate P as “Bob” of course

I was a registrant for dozens of MPs and parliamentary sites when I worked in Parliament. I registered them using my parliamentary e-mail address. Nothing wrong with that.

I sometimes helped the party people out (this was in the 1990s when this Internet thing was quite new to people) by registering some party sites for them – but I did so using my national.org.nz address from home, so it was clearly not in my capacity as a parliamentary staffer.

Ironically after the 1999 election, the PMs Office did not update the registration details for over a year. It was a source of amusement to be that I was the admin contact for both the PM’s Office and the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. I could have gone in any redirected all the Clark Government websites, but didn’t do so of course!

No one does headlines like The Sun. The story starts:

A MAN aged 59 was squatting in a luxury home near the Houses of Parliament last night.

The squatter, named as a Mr Gordon Brown from Scotland, was refusing to budge from the Georgian townhouse in Downing Street, central London – denying entry to its rightful tenant.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

Meanwhile the Telegraph reports Gordon Brown ranted and threatened Nick Clegg during a phone conversation.

While the Guardian reports a Conservative memo on Europe may be a barrier to them doing a deal with the Lib Dems.

For my 2c, I am convinced David Cameron will be the next Prime Minister.

I usually don’t respond to such posts, as the advice which I give to people about responding to Whale Oil, applies equally to The Standard, which is “Remember if you wrestles with pigs in mud, you just get dirty and the pigs enjoy it”.

Having said that, I will break my own advice and respond on this occasion.

he is upset about Eddie pointing out Murray McCully and his mining shares. There wasn’t an value known when the post was written, so Eddie reasonably asked if there was a conflict of interest.

No Eddie did not ask if there was a conflict of interest. He tagged the post corruption, and said McCully had been “caught”.

Eddie could have written a good post on the question. I have no issues that he raised the issue. But Eddie, along with many other Standard authors, have a history of using extreme language against political opponents. They label almost everything corruption (even a post on me). And it is not just that tag – they often attack journalists as being incompetent, corrupt, seeking jobs from National, biased, etc etc. Now I often point out errors in stories also, but try to avoid suggesting ill motives from the journalists involved.

But almost all the authors of The Standard do nothing but slag off and smear people’s motives. You disagree on Maori seats, and you are a racist.

And the reason they do this, is because they are anonymous. Lynn himself tends not to do it often, as he is a known person who can be held accountable for his posts. Rochelle Rees has admirably made herself known, and I think her posts are generally excellent (of course I disagree with them, but she makes her case well). I’m pleased to see Mike Smith join The Standard and that he will blog under his name. I am sure he will not resort to such extreme language as the anonymous authors.

I know many journalists resent the fact the people who do not have the courage to blog under their own name, will smear them and try and damage their professional reputation – while unwilling to expose their own reputation.  They don’t mind fair criticism, but having anonymous posters declare they are lackeys of the Government is tedious.

So getting back to the post in question, I have no problem with the content of the posts, it is the extreme language and rhetoric from anonymous posters.

Now I will admit Whale Oil also uses extreme language against those he disagrees with – which often includes me, and half the Cabinet! But at least Cameron does so effectively under his own name, and he is prepared to take the consequences of what he says.

Anyway back to Lynn:

He seems to think that The Standard has a ‘view’. Now I know that Farrar isn’t particularly technically literate. But surely even a fool would understand that “The Standard” is just some software running on a server. It is the people who write opinions – not a machine. I program the computers for a living and the only thing more stupid in my opinion are some of the trolls that I deal with periodically in this site.

David has read our About he knows that this site runs as a cooperative. Authors write their own opinions and there is no editorial control apart pulling a post after it is put up. I know that he is aware of this because he has written many posts about our site and how it runs in the past. So why is David pretending that the site has an editorial policy? Well the alternative is that he’d have to be upfront about his attacks and direct them at a person. It is easier (and probably safer) to direct it at an abstract concept that can’t defend itself.

I know Lynn gets frustrated that people refer to The Standard collectively, but I don’t think he has considered why people do, so often. First of all Eddie himself declared:

The Standard can now reveal …

So even his own authors talk collectively. But that isn’t even the reason so many refer to the site collectively. The reason is that so many of the authors are anonymous. If a poster is known to be a real person, then their posts ted to be identified with them. But an alias not connected to a real known person doesn’t resonate with people. And to make it even worse, many of the posters have a very similiar style – extreme language and smears against people they disagree with.

If you don’t want people to see you as one entity, then the answer is have your posters reveal themselves. This is in fact Social Media 101 – people relate far better to individuals, as they understand their background, their biases, their interests etc etc. Now if you want to have a policy of anonymity, because all you are about is attacking people you disagree with, then so be it – bt there are consequences – it means the brand of The Standard is far stronger with readers, than those of individual authors. You can’t have it both ways.

I would also mention that the posting style of Eddie has changed dramatically since the election, raising some suspicions that aliases do not relate to unique individuals, but have represented different people at different times. Again, because readers have no way of knowing if an author is a genuine unique individual, one associates things they say more with the site, than them as an individual – because we do not know them as an individual. Again – you can;t have it both ways.

Lynn then gets into the Winston issue. He concludes:

There was no evidence of corruption or even conflicts of interest apart from in your hysterical fantasies.

Now here I just find myself in a different dimension to Lynn. He actually says Winston had no conflicts of interests!!!  He failed to disclose two personal significant donations, and both donors were people whose interests he lobbied Ministerial colleagues on behalf of. And Lynn thinks that is not a conflict, yet McCully was.

I doubt there is a single former Labour Minister who would state on the record that they do not think Winston should have disclosed his donations from racing interests, while he was lobbying them for more money for race prizes.  In fact, I know at least a couple of them are furious that he compromised their collective integrity by not doing so.

But this is not a debate about Winston – it is about always assuming the worst motivations about your opponents. Already today, one author has concluded that as Heatley’s offences were so trivial, that it must mean Key is covering up some bigger scandal.

I’ve several times referred to Phil Goff as essentially a decent bloke, and that if he becomes PM I think he will be a conscientious PM. I regularly swipe at him for stupid things he says, and disagree with many of his policies, but I do not believe he is in any way a bad man, seeking to do bad things. But on The Standard, under the protection of anonymity, that is almost all they do – portray everything as being motivated by vile intentions. It may not be a collective decision, but it is certainly the culture of the site.

David, over the years you have set a very low standard for political blogs in this country.

Oh Lynn, you really can do better than that.

Your wee outburst today appears to simply be because you don’t like a much milder questions of the same sort directed at your friends in your favored party. I’d suggest that you get used to it because asking questions of your friends is part of what this site was setup for.

Questions are good. Go for it. But when you have one to two posts a weeks labelling someone corrupt, then maybe the rhetoric could be less extreme – which it would be if posters had to take responsibility for what they say.

In my opinion, you’re known as being a bit of a hypocrite, frequently a bit of an idiot, and I think that you should also do something about that hysterical streak you have.

I rest my case.

In a post they filed under the “corruption” category, they revealed that Murray McCully has shares in Widespread Portfolios. Except they did not in fact reveal it – McCully did in the MPs Annual Register of Pecuniary Interests. He’s declared every single year since the Register started in 2006.

Then in a piece of detective work worthy of Sherlock Holmes, they went to the homepage of Widespread Portfolios and managed to dig up (I a being sarcastic – it is at the top of their main page) the statement:

Widespread Portfolios Limited (stockmarket code WID) invests primarily in overseas-based mining and mineral exploration companies.

So this so called corrupt behavior from McCully was to declare he had shares in a company that declares it invests in mining companies.

Now not only has McCully behaved entirely appropriately, the value of his shares turns out to be $31.63. McCully has followed the PM’s lead and mooted giving the shares to the young Max Key. Poor Max must be wondering why he is becoming the target of unwanted share parcels. He should suggest to his Dad that he would rather have one of those Ministerial credit cards that Ministers have been disposing of

Phil Goff looks stupid when he says:

Opposition leader Phil Goff said any shares in a mining company working in New Zealand represented a conflict of interest.

“Whenever there was a conflict of interest of any sort in the Cabinet I was part of, a minister was expected to remove him or herself from the room immediately and not participate in those discussions.”

What nonsense. Did half the Labour Cabinet remove themselves when they debated monetary policy, because they were owners of investment properties? Their interest was vastly more than $31.

A conflict of interest is generally about a decision to favour a specific company, not about policies that support a sector of the economy. Do farmers get excluded from decisions about primary production?

Exclusion on a conflict happens only when there is a direct beneficial interest, such as granting a contract to a company you have shares in – and even then, it has to be significant. If your super fund has lots of Telecom shares, that doesn’t mean you can’t ‘t be involved in decision on Telecom – again I suspect most of the Cabinet would have an indirect interest.

The major requirement around conflicts of interests is transparency. And McCully has complied 100%. As it happens, he had not even been present at any discussions on mining, but it is ridicolous of Goff to suggest he can’t be, because of $31 of shares.

But what really annoys me over The Standard’s labelling of this as corruption (the category they assigned to the story) is the immense double standards – and this applies to Phil Goff’s comments also.

Think back 18 months to Winston Peters. Here are the key facts in two cases:

1. Winston knew of a $100,000 donation from Owen Glenn to his lawyer to cover his legal fees.
2. Winston never ever declared this, as he was required to do so.
3. Winston lobbied for Mr Glenn to be given a diplomatic appointment

But the more important case:

1. Racing interests donated money to Winston Peters personally by paying his costs to Bob Clarkson.
2. This personal donation of tens of thousands of dollars was never declared by Peters, and only exposed by the SFO
3. The same racing interests also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to NZ First.
4. Peters was the portfolio minister for racing under Helen Clark, yet never disclosed the personal donations, or the party donations. Arguably no need to disclose the party ones, but he was required to disclose the personal one.
5. Peters advocated for more money for the racing industry, including having the taxpayer pay for bigger prizes for races.
6. Officials strongly advised against doing this, but Cabinet agreed to the extra funding advocated by Peters, unaware that Peters was receiving large donations from racing interests.

Now one can argue Peters was genuinely motivated to help the racing industry, and the donations did not influence him. That is not the issue today.

The issue is that this was the most serious breach of the conflict of interest regime we have seen. A personal donation which directly benefited a Minister (by paying off his damages to Clarkson) was not declared, and that Minister directly lobbied for money to be given in prizes to the racing industry.

So this puts Phil Goff’s holier than thou statement about practises in the last Government in perspective. And remember Phil Goff voted against the Privileges Committee report, as Labour insisted Winston had not broken the rules.

But back to The Standard, what did they have to say about Winston’s conflicts at the time:

On 22 July:

For my part, I don’t see the big deal in all this Peters donation stuff. Transparency in election funding is important (and it’s something that National and ACT have constantly opposed) but there is no evidence of Peters has been purposely secretive.

So no big deal. And even better:

As for the Dompost’s ‘revelations’ today – various members of the Vela family and companies owned by the family gave amounts that may have totalled $150,000 to New Zealand First over a period of five years. So what? The donations are legal and, as long as NZF didn’t receive more $10,000 from any individual person (legal or natural) in one financial year, they didn’t have to be declared under the law of the time.

However the donation to pay Winston’s legal costs to Clarkson was required to be disclosed, but more importantly back then The Standard had no concern about sums 1,000 times greater than $31 going to parties or politicians, and the party leader directly advocating for policies that will benefit those donors.

And again on 23 September:

So, the committee found what everyone knew: Peters story doesn’t add up. But it also shows that this story isn’t really about anything significant. Oh, no, a politician didn’t make the efforts he should have to find out what benefit he may have gained from a legal donation, his form was wrong as a result, and he made up a story to try to cover himself. Shoddy behaviour to be sure but nothing that actually impacts on the substance of government.

So as Winston supported Labour, there was nothing of substance wrong. Never mind he didn’t declare the personal donations to cover his legal costs to Clarkson, and never mind the Labour Cabinet had no idea when Peters was advocating more money for racing prizes, he was receiving these donations from companies that are likely to benefit.

Peter’s conduct was probably the biggest breach of standards since the marginal loans affair. Yet to Phil Goff and The Standard, it was all okay.

Now let us admit that we all are coloured to some degree and see things more rosy for the side you tend to support. That is natural, and expected. We’re not neutral reporters.

But I find those who blog anonymously stretch that to breaking point – there is almost no misconduct they won’t defend for their own side, and they will label as corrupt basically anything that moves from the other side.

The Standard suggest McCully is corrupt for following the rules and declaring his $31 of shares (yes they did not know the amount, but the issue is McCully has acted entirely appropriately) yet they defended Winston time and time again over horrendous breaches of the conflicts of interest regime.

I regard myself as a mate of Phil Heatley. Have even stayed at his house and he is one of the nicest guys you can meet. But when the Dom Post published their story yesterday, I described the use of the ministerial credit card as totally unacceptable with no ifs and no buts.

Those who blog anonymously tend to use extreme language to smear people. They call them corrupt, crooked or racist or bigoted. They do so, because they don’t have to defend their comments in real life.

So here is my challenge to Eddie. Stop the extreme language against people just because their politics are not your own, or have the guts to blog under your real name.

Anyway a new low was reached in their comments section. Now this is not by one of the authors of The Standard, but from one of the Key hating commenters. And here is his theory:

i wish the standard had enough cash to send someone after Key on his hollidays to snoop around in Hawaii. what the hell does he do there anyhow? i hope it’s all savory activities. no strip clubs etc…. if he were going to indulge in anything that offends “mainsteam NZ” he sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it in Wellington.

at the very least an expat NZ asset could be developed to keep tabs on him.

No that is not the ghost of Mike Williams, but Roger Nome.

When challenged on his plans, he responds:

this is politics not kinergarten. the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of lower-income nzers is at stake here – and Key is screwing them. they’re more important than this filthy rich dude’s privacy (of course within the boundaries of the law).

Ironic that he posts under an alias, yet says there is no right to privacy. Oh, sorry no right for filthy rich dudes.

David Farrar is largely to blame for the Nats running Melissa Lee in Mt Albert. According to a friend of a friend David decided the demographics meant she could win and convinced the caucus his crazy idea would fly. Note to DPF: learn to count.

I am not sure what is more hilarious – that Irish Bill blogs on an allegation from a friend of a friend (of a friend of a friend ….) or the assertion that I convinced Caucus.

Sadly Caucus don’t invite me to their meetings. It is possible that I did attend Caucus one day, and they surgically removed the memory of it from my brain. Maybe that is what he heard from a friend of a friend.

One could also quibble and point out Caucus doesn’t select the candidate. But hey lets keep facts away from this.

Anyway now that The Standard have acknowledged my power of control over Caucus (and by implication the entire Government of New Zealand), may I suggest some sensible strategies for those wishing to buy influence:

1. Ask me to review new luxury hotels in Queenstown for you
2. Insist I spend several weeks on a cruise ship in the South Pacific, getting the feel of it
3. Place me on the mandatory invite list for all games at the Stadium (esp the Sevens)
4. Take me out to dinner at Logan Brown
5. Propose funding of Kiwiblog interns to assist me

Now some corporates out there may feel this is not a good return on investment. But remember The Standard’s sources are impeccable – it comes from a friend of a friend!

Marty G at The Standard shows off his expert knowledge of Arctic polar bears, and declares this photo shows how climate change has turned polar bears into cannibals. He says:

This is climate change. This is just the beginning.

I have a terrible feeling that this picture is an omen of things to come.

Oh yes, next there will be cannibal geckos, cannibal crabs and worse.

Or one could talk to someone who actually lives in the area, as the Daily Mail did:

But this theory is disputed by Inuit leaders in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, who claim it is wrong to connect the bears’ behaviour with starvation.

Kivalliqu Inuit Association president Jose Kusugak said: ‘It makes the south – southern people – look so ignorant.

Ignorant indeed. Unless you prefer Marty’s knowledge of polar bears to the local Unuit leader.

‘A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on, it becomes absurd when it’s a normal, normal occurrence.’

What a shame – it could have made a great film – revenage of the cannibal polar bears.

If the issue was known about that far back, it is bad political management to have it unresolved for so long. If I was an MP, and found out that there may be some money to be repaid to a government agency, I would ensure the matter was dealt with in days or weeks, not months. And then do a media release announcing the repayment, and what caused it. That is far superior to having the information come out through the media.

Genius! What the RBNZ should do is this: pick a point on the Philips Curve and manage New Zealand’s economy towards it! If only some genius thought of this before.

Oh, wait. Someone did, and it didn’t work. Apparently, some guy called Friedman accurately predicted its failure …

Stagflation in the 70s proved Friedman correct, but this is where Phil Goff wants us to go back to.

I actually can’t figure out whether Marty wants the interest rates to be low or high. He thinks that if they’re too high, then the currency carry trade will create a “flood of credit”, making mortgage rates too low. His preferred solution—abandoning inflation-targeting—clearly implies that he wants the OCR lower than it is, and that by doing this, somehow mortgage rates will go up.

He’s very confused.

And then Blaise sums up:

So Marty wants the following:

• A lower OCR
• Higher mortgage rates
• Jobs, or in other words, investment in New Zealand
• Reduction in the currency carry trade, a big chunk of such investment

My head hurts.

Need more be said.

Labour acknowledges the jury’s decision today on charges brought against Taito Phillip Field after a long and difficult trial, Labour Chief Whip Darren Hughes said.

“Mr Field was expelled from the Labour Party in 2007. Labour has acted in good faith throughout this process.

“The jury has decided that Mr Field acted illegally.

“The judge is yet to sentence Mr Field. Labour will make no further comment.”

They “acknowledge” the decision. They do not accept the decision. They do not welcome the decision. They do not say if they agree what Field did was corrupt. They do not say if they think it was wrong he obstructed the course of justice. They “acknowledge” the decision.

And yesterday:

Deputy Labour Leader Annette King made the following statement on the sentencing today of Taito Phillip Field.

“This sentence demonstrates that all New Zealanders are equal under the law.

“Taito Phillip Field has been judged by his peers. He must now serve the sentence handed down in the Auckland High Court.”

Labour will not be making any other comment on this matter.

Again not a word on whether or not they agree that Field was corrupt. They merely state he has been judged by his peers. Their language is the classic language of people who disagree with something.

So that is my first question to Phil Goff. Does the Labour Party agree that their former colleague acted corruptly? Is this why they won’t express remorse for defending Field – is it because they think he did not break the law?

The Dom Post reports on how Labour is refusing comment:

Labour has pulled down the shutters over the fall from grace of former MP Taito Phillip Field, after standing by him for more than a year during claims of bribery and corruption. …

Labour stood by Field for more than a year and continued to defend him after former prime minister Helen Clark was forced to order an independent inquiry by Auckland QC Noel Ingram.

Dr Ingram’s report cleared Field of a conflict of interest but the Labour government was heavily criticised after Dr Ingram revealed he had been given no power to compel evidence. …

Dr Ingram said yesterday that it was “clearly the case” that his inquiry had been frustrated by the refusal of witnesses to co-operate. He agreed that the outcome would have been different if that had not been the case.

Now bearing in mind that report from the Dom Post, prepare to damage yourself laughing at this post on The Standard from Eddie:

Fran was mainly positive about the impact political blogging has had in NZ, saying the diversity is useful, as is the competition for the media to some degree.

She did have some criticisms, such as accuracy and fact checking, and most of all political bloggers who blog anonymously. Her big call was for more political bloggers to post under their names so there is some accountability for what they say – as journalists have.

She was full of praise for Red Alert and said it has obviously replaced The Standard as the most influential and useful blog on the left.

Whale Oil got a mention with praise for his willingness to savage members of his own party (she joked that his father must be glad he has a life membership that can’t be revoked) but said she thought the pre-election scuttlebutt on Damien O’Connor was a serious error of judgement.

Lots of questions and discussion ranging from has a blogger been sued yet, to press gallery membership. Fran nicely refers to the gallery as a cartel

Was a very good breakfast and even better drinks afterwards, finally escaping around 10.30 am!

From today those state house tenants in a position to buy the house they live in can do so, says Housing Minister Phil Heatley.

Over the next week, Housing New Zealand will be approaching about 3,800 state tenants who pay market rent and live in a home that is available for purchase, to make them aware of the opportunity.

Letting a family who may have lived in a state house for years and years, maybe even decades, buy the house is such common sense, you have to wonder if anyone could possibly think it is a bad idea. Well Labour do of course/

Marty G at The Standard has said he is not oppossed automatically to state house sales, and proposes four conditions:

Housing NZ must use all revenue from sales to buy new houses – we don’t want the amount of housing available for the most needy decreasing.

I’m surprised he does not realise that is Government policy – that the money from sales will go to purchase new housing.

It must not sell all the houses in wealthy areas only to construct state house only neighbourhoods - the poor and the wealthy should not be physically separated by government policy.

Now having just argued for the importance of not decreasing the amount of state housing available, Marty then argues for a measure that will decrease the number of available houses.

The median house price in Manurewa is $250,000. In Mt Eden is is $600,000. If you sell 10 houses in Manurewa and replace them with houses in Mt Eden you can only afford four houses.

I’d rather have ten families in state houses, than four, for the same investment.

There are more than enough modestly priced areas to have state houses, without creating state house only neighbourhoods.

The houses must only be bought by their current tenants – we don’t want them claimed by wealthy investors, locking out the poor.

That also happens to be Government policy. I note Marty makes a classic mistake by assuming that people living in state houses are poor. They certainly were poor when they first moved in, but the 3,800 paying market rents are no longer poor. You could argue that their houses should be sold to anyone, with them just given first option.

This is the problem of providing housing assistance through having lower rentals for state houses, as opposed to income assistance regardless of who your landlord is.  To provide maximum equity, you really should evict tenants from their state houses once their income rises so they no longer are “poor”, But no one does that because of the fuss it would create. But what this means is that you have people on a waiting list for a state house who are far worse off income wise than the current tenants.

Likewise when the number of people living in a state house reduces (as kids leave home), you should ideally shift them to a smaller house. Not doing so again leaves more needy tenants on the waiting list (and there will always be a waiting list). This is one reason why I think income assistance rather than lower rentals is a better policy approach.

There must be a caveat on the titles to the properties preventing them being rented out by a private landlord - that way they can’t be bought out by property investors as happened in the 1990s.

Now this is just bizarre. If for example an elderly couple need to more into a retirement home, they can’t rent out the house they own. Blaise Drinkwater responds to this point on his blog:

What Marty G wants to do is sell the house to the tenant—because the tenant is Needy and home-ownership is A Good Thing—, but then dictate who this buyer may sell the asset to at a future date. This kneecaps the value of the house: to restrict the pool of potential buyers is to decrease demand artificially. The needy tenant is disadvantaged by this.

There is envy implicit in Marty G’s calculus: property investors must not be allowed to own ex-state houses because they’re rich and that’s bad. This leads him to a policy preference designed to restrict the wealth of the wealthy by diminishing their economic opportunities, but has as a side-effect: it also restricts the wealth of the needy by diminishing their economic opportunity. It turns out you can’t have one without the other.

Repeat after me: if you outlaw a voluntary transaction, you’re hurting all the parties that would benefit from that transaction, and not just the ones you’re trying to hurt.

Blaise sums it up well.

I like David and he’s definitely one of the sharper knives in the drawer around Wellington, but sadly he seems to have lost his mojo. Back when Labour was in power, he did a sterling job of running issues and was the outlet for the voice of opposition. But nowadays he seems to be floundering over his purpose. Cheerleading is okay but it’s not why people started reading Kiwiblog.

Funnily enough, just a couple of days ago, Audrey Young blogged:

Key’s nervousness is aided no doubt by continued critical commentary on the right including from David Farrar’s Kiwiblog most recently on the Boscawen bill

So one political editor says I’m cheerleading and another says my continued critical commentary is making the PM nervous

It should be no surprise to anyone that Kiwiblog is less “edgy” with National in Government. Of course I am going to be happier with more of what the Government does.

But I do reject the label of cheerleader. Hell, I ignore most of the announcements from Government as boring. And I thought I had been pretty vigorous in opposing the Government’s moves to ban handheld cellphone use in cars. I’ve said many times I don’t support at large Council seats for Auckland. I have called for the anti-smacking law to be changed numerous times. I’ve continued to advocate Nancy Wake getting honoured (despite the change of Government) and have also said several times that the immigration allegations around a National MP should have gone to an independent inquiry.

But I hold centre-right beliefs. I enjoy pointing out lunacy and hypocrisy from the left, and while they keep providing me material, I’ll enjoy keeping that up.

This probably appears somewhat defensive. I think Tracy is probably quite right that Kiwiblog is not the same as in the last years of Labour – I agree. But I don’t like or accept the term “cheer leader”. My purpose in blogging is much the same as when I started – to have my say on anything I am interested in.

Anyway back to Tracy:

Whale Oil: I’ll admit it… once I got over my squeamishness, I quite enjoyed his blog. Utterly nihilistic and entertaining

Nihilistic – that’s a good term for it!

The Standard: They have picked up where Kiwiblog left off and do a good job of running issues as the voice of opposition. It’s a Labour blog in the same way Kiwiblog is a National blog, I guess, so it makes sense that they would fit more comfortably within the blogosphere now Labour is in Opposition. But The Standard is not yet required reading in the same way that Kiwiblog was during Labour’s final few years in government.

I said both before and after the election that I thought The Standard would do better in Opposition, and I agree with Tracy that they are. They seemed to more an anti John Key blog, even when he was in Opposition, than anything else, so having Key as PM gives them much more material.

@suebr is STILL a good candidate for NZ’s first political assassination. (watch sue run to the Police because of a death threat, stupid cow)

For those who do not know Twitter, the reference to @suebr means it will get seen by user “suebr” which is Sue Bradford herself.

While I am not sure I would classify the tweet as a literal death threat, even implicit threats of violence should have no part in our discourse.

Dave at Big News names the user as Henk van Helmond, formerly of CYFSWatch, based on some good detective work.

The media door-stopped van Hermond and his response is reported by the Herald:

CYFSwatch is run by Henk van Helmond, who yesterday wrote that though the threats had come from his account “it seems my password was hacked”.

Yeah, Right.

IrishBill at The Standard dives into the gutter as usual and tries to link the actions of van Hermond to the anti-EFA campaign and me personally and sees something sinister in the fact I did not report the original Sunday News story, implying somehow I condone such threat of violence.

As usual he could not be more wrong. I’m not sure if I have revealed this publicly before, but in 2007 there were similar threats made by someone with the CYFSWatch site (and my response is here) – maybe even the same person. Back then, their identities were tightly kept.

Someone from CYFSWatch commented on my site. Due to the threats that had made against Bradford, I passed on their identifying information (IP address) to Sue Bradford’s office and explained the Police could use this to trace them.

Bradford’s office in time passed this into the Police, and they contacted me and I provided the Police with information which allowed them to obtain from the ISP, the identity of the person holding the account which had made the threats.

As I said I don’t think I’ve ever blogged this info before (I think I did mention it once in a comment) but as someone too cowardly to even post under their own name is trying to link me to condoning or encouraging this sort of activity, I need to set the record straight.

UPDATE: Idiot/Savant also jumps into the gutter. Again someone who hides behind anonymity tries to smear someone who does not. You never tend to get these sort of smears from people who blog under their own name. That is because blogging under your own name forces you to think about consequences (well except for Whale!) of what you say on your own reputation.

What is especially shameful isn’t just that the Labour leadership and other MPs defended a corrupt MP. But they defended an MP who was exploiting the most vulnerable members of society and treating them as close to slave labour. He got his mate the Associate Minister to get them into NZ, and they worked unpaid for weeks or months on end making Field richer.

Field was everything the Labour Party claims to be against. And all his sins and abuses were detailed by Ingram. And even then they defended him. Clark even said he could return to the Ministry one day – compare that to Key on Worth.

Labour Ministers said there was no issue about his having slave labour work for free on his properties as hey were contractors, not employees!! And never at that time was there a denouncing of what Field did – because they needed his vote.

So did we get it last night. No. First Eddie from The Standard tried to rewrite history in a fashion that could make for a George Orwell novel. He said:

Good on Clark for sacking him as a minister when the allegations first came out.

She never sacked him. And even after the Ingram report came out, she refused to rule out he could be re-appointed to the Ministry.

Another liar at The Standard claims I invented the quote from the PM “the only thing of which Taito Philip Field is guilty is being helpful“.

What a disgusting lowlife. A sycophant who won’t criticise his own party for their disgraceful defence of Field, he just invents lies. Here is the full story on 13 September 2005 from Newstalk ZB. It is in the NZPA database and is no #1436468. I don’t expect an apology because I wouldn’t accept one from the anonymous coward.

Helen Clark says Taito Philip Field was making representation on someone’s behalf with regard to Thai man in Samoa The Prime Minister says the only thing of which Taito Philip Field is guilty is being helpful.

The Labour MP and State Minister has become involved in the efforts of a Thai man seeking residency. The man is waiting in Samoa for his application to be processed after he was denied refugee status.

Sunan Siriwan has been given a job by Taito Phillip Field to tile a house in Samoa.

Mr Field has written in support of the man to Associate Immigration Minister Damien O’Connor.

Helen Clark says Mr Field was making representation on someone’s behalf as MPs often do. She says if they cannot do that, they might as well shut the electorate office doors.

Then we have the Labour MPs, instead of their apologists. The Herald reports:

The man who replaced him as MP for Mangere, Sua William Sio, said he acknowledged the court’s decision, but would not comment further.

Wow that is a condemnation. Maybe he held back as his own office staff are under investigation over an alleged immigration scam.

Labour leader Phil Goff said: “It’s disappointing that a parliamentarian was found guilty of that conduct.

“The verdict is an indication that whatever you are in society you are equal under the law … the law has followed its course.”

Disappointing? It is a disgrace. And not a word on Labour’s defence of Field as a man of integrity whose only sin was to work too hard. And not a word of sympathy for Field’s victims – the so called “strugglers” Labour claims to champion.

Stuff reports:

Labour chief whip Darren Hughes said the party acknowledged the verdict, but had no further comment.

Labour have had months to prepare for this verdict, and this is all they can say.

Unless someone from Labour’s parliamentary wing  does a sincere apology for their behaviour over Field, the conclusion many people will reach is they are unfit to hold office again, and that their so called concern for the welfare of vulnerable New Zealanders is insincere.

Business New Zealand and other assorted tossers. Stop calling our country ‘New Zealand Inc’. This is our home. This is where we live our lives and raise our families. It’s not some profit-maximising engine for your shareholders.

Personally I think anyone who gets worked up over such trivialities need to relax more, but he or she is entitled to their view that anyone who refers to New Zealand Inc is a tosser.

The commenters then have a field day finding Phil Goff having used the term three times and Helen Clark four times, making them officially tossers according to that Standard author.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

I’ve got just four words for them – Harden the fuck up.

Oh my God – how dare the Greens criticise Labour’s candidate. This can not be allowed.

Try being a National supporter. ACT has sniped at National and National candidates for years. Hell Rodney called John Key as more left wing than John Key Helen Clark on some issues. ACT have called National Labour-lite for months on end. They said vote National and you get Labour’s policies.

Do we cry like little pussies because our coalition partner has a swipe at us, and tries to establish their own brand. No we don’t. We understand smaller parties need to do these things.

ACT tried to win Jim Bolger’s seat off National in 1998. Did we sob how unfair it was? No we just got on with the job. ACT came bloody close also.

Russel Norman is going to try and win Mt Albert. No -he is not going to try and just build profile – he is going to try and win it. The Greens rationale is they need the seat more than Labour does.  So get used to it.

From The Standard.

But in a capitalist system any benefit from productivity increases goes directly into the pockets of business owners. You need a mechanism to translate that into wages. And that mechanism is decent employment protections and a unionised workforce that has the strength to bargain decent wage increases.

I found that statement interesting. In some ways it is not surprising as Tane is employed by a union – of course he would say or think that. But what is revealing is that this seems to be the only way he thinks wages can increase. He over looks:

• Business owners voluntarily give staff pay rises. This is not uncommon in smaller businesses. I have worked in a small business where the owners hated the fact they could not pay the staff more, but once it was more profitable they increased wages.
• Individual staff who perform well get increased wages in recognition of their good performance.
• Staff are paid more to retain them in a competitive market
• Staff get promoted and get paid more for taking on more responsibility
• Staff are shareholders in a business

And so on. Now of course the above do not apply in every case. I am not saying every employer is a good employer who will pay reasonable wages. Unions make a lot of sense for some staff. But that is very different to generalising that a unionised workforce is how you increase wages. I would actually argue that a focus on collective contracts can sometimes hold wages back as employers have to pay bad staff much the same as good staff. The classic example is teaching – I think the best teachers should be on $100,000+ but there is no way that will happen until you have performance pay so that the bad teachers are not paid the same.