I will continue to annoy people at other blogs but will not have my own, for the time being.

I am working on a new blog tentatively entitled “The Bloggers’ Tribunal”.

DPF responds

Eddie gets angry

Lynn gets angry

I will attempt to cover all these posts over the next few days.

First, some questions:

Why was Eddie looking at the Register of Pecuniary Interests?

If he was looking for conflicts of interest would he call this gutter politcs?

Does he accept that him doing this (just like Mike Williams and the cheque) shows that the left is desperate?

Does he think that Shane Jones having shares in Castlerigg Limited (who presumably pay tax) is a conflict of interest? If not, why not?

Does he think that should have withdrawn himself from cabinet discussions on tax?

Does he know see how stupid his allegations are?

I ask Eddie to think seriously.

So David Faraar decided to respond, good on him.

One of the anonymous authors at The Standard tried yesterday to smear Murray McCully over, well doing the right thing.

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 

All good points.

Why did Eddie only discover this now?

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.

All good points. I would use my real name if I was over 18.

to be continued.

On Today’s Open Mike Anne said:

I replied:

I found it really interesting that at one point in the interview she said “I’ve left NZ politics behind me” or similar, but at another point she said “its hard to leave politics when you have been in it for so long” (or similar)

Update: My comment has been deleted. No rationale. If they are going to delete my comments may I request that the leave the sign of my comment there so all can see that I am being supressed.

I was not notified of this and no reason has been given to me.

Update 2
I’ve emailed LPrent:

From: Kiwiteen123

Date: 21 February 2010 12:32

Subject: My position

To: lprent@primary.geek.nz

Lynn, You (or one of your admins) have placed me under moderation without notifying me of the reason. I’m writing this email so we can get our position straight.

1. When was I placed under moderation?

2. Why was I placed in moderation when it was clear I was “moderating” myself with a week long break.

3. What is the point of placing me in moderation?

4. Can you confirm that a comment made by me was deleted this morning? Thanks,

Kiwiteen123

_________________________________________

If this message is not intended for you please delete it and notify me immediately; you are warned that any further use, dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this material by you is prohibited. _________________________________________

No reply yet.

I just discovered this.

I’m not a believer in swearing but, FFS!

What an awful post!

What does Billy Boy have to say?

In his NBR column a few weeks ago (subscriber-only) Matthew Hooton made a passing reference to David Farrar getting rich off National Party polling.

Shortly after that Fran O’Sullivan ran a piece about Farrar’s company impression polling on a couple of National’s front-benchers.

At the time I didn’t see it as a biggie. Everyone knows David is National’s pollster and that he’s the one that does their sensitive polling and has a lot of influence with National’s leadership. He claims he doesn’t but in a PR-driven government like this one the idea that the main pollster has no sway is so absurd as to be insulting.

So like I said, no biggie, but that’s National Party polling. Sure the taxpayer might have to foot the bill through parliamentary services but I’d rather that than have parties even more beholden to private funders than they already are.

But then I was told by a reliable source that it’s not just National Party contracts David’s getting rich on. It turns out his company, Curia, has also been paid around $9300 to poll on the issue of super city governance for internal affairs. That’s work that was not tendered out but handed to David without competition.

OMG! Someone is actually making money with their lives! $9300 is not much. Farrar will not be getting all of that by the time he pays the bills.

To be fair there is no legal requirement to tender work under $10k

So Bill’s post is a waste of time. Shall we read on?

Add to that the fact that David was also likely to be running political polling on the issue for National and was engaged in spinning the Supercity on his high profile blog and certain questions of conflict of interest start to arise.

It was only by random chance that I found out this contract. It’s quite likely that David is doing other sub $10k polling for other ministries. He may well also be using the results of this polling to help hone the National Party’s spin on issues such as the Supercity.

Bill’s comments are very carefully worded here.

“David was also likely to be running political polling…”

“It’s quite likely that David is doing other sub $10k polling for other ministries.”

“He may well also be using the results of this polling to help hone the National Party’s spin on issues such as the Supercity.”

If the blog author is not sure of the facts how can we (the reader) be?

The Comments:

Lukas:

pfft.. 9.3K, who cares, that is not exactly going to make him rich! You kill your own story rather well though here… “there is no legal requirement to tender work under $10k”

Good point… If only he liked my blog .

Gosman:

So is the asertion here that the Minister of Internal affairs directed the Department to employ Curia?

If so then do you have any evidence that this is the case?

If not then was are you saying that the Internal Affairs, (and possibly other Ministries as well), has ditched political neutrality and is now activiely supporting the National party behind the scenes?

No evidence for that.

Big Bruv:

Where was the concern for this type of behaviour when Clark was running the country?

Good question.

Tigger answers:

Farrar doing research work for a Labour led government wouldn’t be a conflict of interest…

Note he said “type of behaviour”!

Chris Diack says:

What a beat up.

The workers electronic paper attacking someone for trying to earn a living.

Here are the known facts:

1. Mr Farrar runs a business (Curia) as a pollster.

2. One client is the National Party. This is notorious.

3. Another client appears to the DIA.

Where is the conflict?

Is the Standard suggesting that any pollster who does work for a political party cannot get government contracts? If that’s the case then that would have previously ruled out UMR, Labour’s pollster which is a good polling company.

Surely the issue is the quality of the work not which other clients a polling company might have?

Why is the Standard attacking the Minister of Internal Affairs – why would he be polling on the new Auckland Council?

Surely Curia would be doing work for the Local Government unit of the DIA and the Minister of Local Government is Rodney Hide.

Again where is the conflict of interest?

All good points.

IrishBill replies:

Aren’t you the guy that tried to steal the labour party’s house? May I politely suggest you’re in no position to lecture on ethics or conflict of interest.

Aren’t you the guy that avoids all the tough questions? May I politely suggest that you actually have a debate and LISTEN to what others are saying?

With tongue firmly in cheek George notes:

When asked in Parliament why he hadn’t paid closer attention to his share portfolio, Key gave the reply: “small technical issue, I’ve been busy running the country”. That statement must come close to misleading Parliament.

He is the PM in name, so from a position as figurehead he could argue that ‘he has been running the country’. From a sutstantive position however, his claim in untenable.

Surely photo opportunities, overseas holidays and doing little in no way counts as ‘running the country’.

Sure, technically Key does not “run the country”.

I’m sure the left don’t make such trivial mistakes!

Here’s a photo of some of it:

Now this is the sort of thing that The Standard does.

After the bill was passed (February 17 2009) the job loss rate had a bit of ‘up and down’ but mainly moved down.

That is amazing.

1. It’s a (close enough to) a bell curve. It gets worse then get’s better. It is just a coincidence that Obama got in just as it got better.

2. It is still bad! Recessions happen. They get worse and better. If this act was so good, why is the US not out of recession?

Typical pinko graph.