January 2006

The Herald really has lost the plot

by Whaleoil January 31, 2006

It’s offi­cial, the her­ald has lost the plot with its insane Pre­mium Con­tent policy.

I am no big fan of it, but they have really pushed the limit of insan­ity by mak­ing the text of Don Brash’s Orewa speech “Pre­mium Content”.

I bet none of the rev­enue for that goes to the National Party or to Don Brash and any­way who would pay for it when you can get it free from this site, or from the National Party web­site or any num­ber of other sources includ­ing Stuff.

Just plain dumb. 

Link to Full Article

Orewa 4 — Full speech text

by Whaleoil January 31, 2006

In lieu of Mr Farrar’s usual ser­vice while he recov­ers from his big night out last night, below is the text of Don Brashes Orewa speech made last night (click read more for expanded post):

Embar­goed until 1800 hours
31 Jan­u­ary 2006

LABOUR’S LEGACY:
A FALTERING ECONOMY

An address to the Orewa Rotary Club
by Don Brash
Leader of the National Party
31 Jan­u­ary 2006

 

Mr. Pres­i­dent, Ladies and Gen­tle­men. It is a great plea­sure to be back at Orewa.

 

I had of course hoped to be here this year as Prime Min­is­ter!  And we came close – but not quite close enough. But I join you this evening as the leader of a much strength­ened and invig­o­rated National Party.

 

The great boost in sup­port National received at the last elec­tion brings with it a respon­si­bil­ity that we take very seri­ously – to show that we have the ideas and the peo­ple capa­ble of address­ing the chal­lenges that lie ahead.

 

And to show that we can do that while safe­guard­ing the core val­ues and the many strengths of our increas­ingly diverse society.

 

Given our fal­ter­ing econ­omy, and a Gov­ern­ment that doesn’t seem to know what to do, it is becom­ing increas­ingly clear that National’s plan of action is what is needed.

 

In my very first speech after becom­ing Leader of the National Party more than two years ago, I high­lighted the five issues which I believed we needed to address urgently if New Zealand was to have the kind of future which all of us want, for our­selves and for our chil­dren and grandchildren.

 

Over the last two years, I have spelled out clearly where a National Gov­ern­ment would take the coun­try in each of these five areas.

 

Tonight I want to briefly restate where the National Party stands on four of the issues, talk more about one of them, and out­line some of the other key issues which I believe we need to focus on before the next election.

 

Link to Full Article

There was such a fuss.…

by Whaleoil January 31, 2006

There was such a fuss over at Far­rars when he linked to my photo of Dad with GWB.…I thought it would be inter­est­ing to note that oth­ers who also “fleet­ingly” shook hands and had a break­fast meet­ing with GWB at the same time as Dad were Steven Harper, Stock­well Day and Tony Clement.

Who are they you ask?

Well only the Prime Min­is­ter Des­ig­nate of Canada, a sit­ting MP and a newly elected MP. Both MP’s are expected to make cabinet. 

Now who was that who wanted the bet…time to collect.

Link to Full Article

Michael Wood isn’t dead as we all thought

by Whaleoil January 31, 2006

Watch the video Banker Ethics from Close up and you will see him meulling into a mega phone.…ok it was last Decem­ber so Michael now has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of show­ing his face less than Osama bin Laden.

Link to Full Article

Back from holiday

by Whaleoil January 30, 2006

I’m back from a lit­tle hol­i­day in the win­ter­less North, well actu­ally it was Whangaumu Bay (Welling­ton Bay) on the Tutukaka Coast.

It was beau­ti­ful place and so relax­ing spend­ing some time at the beach with the family.

We went swim­ming every­day, col­lect­ing cock­les and pips until I scouted out the locals for the tuatua spot.….man these are the best tuat­uas I have had. They were fat juicy and plen­ti­ful and no I am not going to reveal their location.

It is how­ever not easy get­ting to the tuatua beds but the reward is well worth it.

Any­way, while I was away I happeded to get the paper one day and read some truly banal jour­nal­ism in the extreme.

Deb­o­rah Cod­ding­ton crap­ping on with Win­ston Peters.

She has got to be one of the most shal­low and self serv­ing prima dona’s that I have ever had the mis­for­tune to read and her fawn­ing and lick­spit­tle way she han­dled Peters was appalling.

She starts of the arti­cle by telling us she reck­ons the only rea­son she got the inter­view is becuase her hus­band is “Mr Carruthers”.…banal, trite, shit.

She tries to ask the hard ques­tions and then sooks out on the fol­low up.

DC: In your pre-election Rotorua speech you said you “gen­uinely don’t care for the baubles of office” but Fran O’Sullivan in the Her­ald called you a “well-paid polit­i­cal eunuch tak­ing the baubles of office”. What’s your reaction?

WP: I’ve been Min­is­ter of Maori Affairs, Trea­surer and deputy prime min­is­ter who didn’t take any houses, cars and trav­elled econ­omy to try to save this coun­try money. That makes me unique in this country’s pol­i­tics but counts for noth­ing with peo­ple like Fran O’Sullivan. So here I am in my third admin­is­tra­tion, I take a house and appar­ently I’m now a vic­tim of the baubles-of-office syn­drome. But I don’t want to waste my time with her”

What about say­ing, Well mr Peters that may well be what you did then, but the record shows you now have a self drive car.…a Ford Ter­ri­tory no less couldn’t you have cho­sen a less con­spic­u­ous bauble. Nup, she sooks out.

Link to Full Article

State of the Nation — State of the Union

by Whaleoil January 30, 2006

Tomor­row, Tues­day 31 Jan 05 is a very big day in politics!

Here in New Zealand Don Brash will be deliv­er­ing is annual speech to the Orewa Rotary Club. As we all know, this speech has proven in the last few years to be the key agenda set­ter and the one to take note of.

More impor­tantly though, 31 Jan is also the date in which US Pres­i­dent George W. Bush will be deliv­er­ing his annual State of the Union address to a joint ses­sion of Congress.

Dubya’s address can be watched live via CSpan at 9pm East­ern Stan­dard Time. (3pm NZ Time on Wednesday)

Link to Full Article

Waitakere By-election

by Whaleoil January 30, 2006

*tsk tsk* Why do the media always do this??

A by-election being held for a vacancy is very impor­tant. It is in the best inter­est of peo­ple because those in the Hen­der­son ward deserve equal representation.

It is also the prin­ci­pled rea­son why Pat Booth felt resign­ing was the right thing to do becuase he couldn’t ful­fill his duties ade­quately due to health reasons.

Besides, to be per­fectly honest, $50,000 is chicken-feed to a Coun­cil like Wait­akere, and you can’t put a price on democracy. It shouldn’t be taken for granted either.

Link to Full Article

BZP ban needs rethink.">BZP ban needs rethink.

by Whaleoil January 30, 2006

Hav­ing a rel­a­tively lib­eral out­look on most things, I man­aged to come across this press release from the Lib­er­tar­i­anz Party.

The Lib­er­tar­i­anz drug spokesman, Dr Richard Goode makes some good points about the ban­ning of BZP debate. Like Dr Goode, I don’t think the cam­paign that Jacqui Dean is lead­ing to ban party pills is the right approach.

Young peo­ple are always going to want to exper­i­ment and if par­lia­ment out­laws every stim­u­lent known to man, they will only turn to harder, more dan­ger­ous drugs in the end.

Aside from the fact that adults are per­fectly capa­ble of decid­ing what they put in their bod­ies, keep­ing BZP party pills legal give young peo­ple an safer alter­na­tive that still gives them a buzz with­out turn­ing them into crim­i­nals. With­out the safer alter­na­tive, the P prob­lem that we hear about every week would be much worse than it already is.

I sin­cerely hope Jacqui Dean recon­sid­ers the quest shes lead­ing at the moment, and thinks about the wider impli­ca­tions of what she is propos­ing. She should also remem­ber that she is a mem­ber of the party that is opposed to the baloon­ing “nanny state”.

Link to Full Article

Sharples talks sense

by Whaleoil January 30, 2006

Pita Sharples seems to be talk­ing sense (again). It seems his per­for­mance in the lead­ers debate (minus not know what the Cullen-fund was) wasn’t a fluke after all.

Sharples, fresh from a hip oper­a­tion, has pub­li­cally stated that Maori are too depen­dent on welfare.

“In the year ahead I think you are going to see a con­tin­ued attack on poverty by us. We are reminded of it daily when we go to our people’s houses. It’s poverty of knowl­edge as well as poverty of phys­i­cal goods.”

Dr Sharples said there was too much depen­dency on wel­fare in Maoridom — some­thing Labour had not addressed.

This is good stuff, and exactly the type of mes­sage that the Maori com­mu­nity, and the rest of the nation, needs to hear. The irony is, when Don Brash makes very sim­i­lar com­ments he is labelled as racist and a beneficiary-basher.

Sharples also says he is com­mit­ted to end­ing the gang vio­lence in South Auck­land. These are two big tasks, and my only hope is that he con­tin­ues to make noises like this and can offer solu­tions to the prob­lems he is identifying.

Link to Full Article

Walk the walk huh?

by Whaleoil January 30, 2006

This one sure is wor­thy of a laugh. Jeanette Fitzsim­mons has declared that she wants the new Green Party co-leader to “Walk the walk”

Ms Fitzsi­mons said the Green Party expected lead­ers to exem­plify the party’s principals.

“Rid­ing a bicy­cle and grow­ing a gar­den as Rod did or using pub­lic trans­port, using energy and resources respon­si­bly, buy­ing kiwi-made, car­ing for chil­dren and ani­mals, eat­ing healthy food, reusing and recy­cling waste,” she said.

Is that what she meant when she went on a crazed fire burn­ing spree dur­ing a fire ban?? Just hyp­o­crit­i­cal really…

Link to Full Article

Overheard in a Coromandel Peninsula Restaurant

by Whaleoil January 25, 2006

A friend of a friend (FOF) of mine was din­ing at a pop­u­lar eatery at a pop­u­lar beach resort on the Coro­man­del when he noticed a famil­iar face.

He how­ever couldn’t remem­ber exactly who the per­son was, so he got up and went over and intro­duced him­self. The per­son stated she was Michelle Boag and finally the penny dropped for the  FOF who then said Ahhhhh…now I know who you are.…my mate doesn’t like you very much.

Upon enquir­ing who the mate was she then pro­ceeeded to launch into a tirade against him using all sorts of lan­guage gen­er­ally not becom­ing a lady.…but then as some­one pointed out to me “she ain’t much of a lady”

Finally after spew­ing vit­riol for all and sundry to hear she fin­ished up with the retort. “Oh he hates me because I beat his good mate for the presidency”

The FOF then duti­fully pointed out that that wasn’t the case at he actu­ally hated her because she promised so much and deliv­ered so lit­tle, in fact the worst result for the party “ever”.

He then went and sat down and fin­ished his meal, which by all accounts was deli­cious and clearly now had been served with superb entertainment.

Link to Full Article

Where in the world is David Benson-Pope?

by Whaleoil January 24, 2006

Well from the looks of this photo he is in Mel­bourne at the Aus­tralian Open.

Where is Benson-Pope?
 

 

 

Link to Full Article

Anderton Kiss of Death for Companies

by Whaleoil January 24, 2006

More Ander­ton kiss of Death for companies.

Ander­ton waxed lyri­cal about Click Clack and Fisher and Paykel both of whom are now out­sourc­ing pro­duc­tion off­shore to com­bat the high NZ dollar.

“There are a grow­ing num­ber of New Zealand com­pa­nies that are com­bin­ing high invest­ment in research and devel­op­ment with a strong focus on design to cre­ate bril­liant prod­ucts that the world wants.

Fisher and Paykel with both health­care and white­ware prod­ucts are the most well-known exam­ple. For­may Furniture’s suc­cess with the life chair is another. In plas­tics, Palmer­ston North com­pany Click Clack exports inno­v­a­tive food stor­age con­tain­ers to more than 50 countries.”

If I was these guys I would shut up shop now…there is no point car­ry­ing on, once you get men­tioned by Ander­ton in a speech the chances are high your com­pany is doomed.
 

Link to Full Article

Politics of Envy.…Again

by Whaleoil January 24, 2006

The gov­ern­ment is explor­ing “slap­ping higher penal­ties” on sup­posed gas guz­zling vehi­cles in a for­lorn effort to promte fuel efficiency.

Read higher taxes for “slap­ping higher penalties”

Typ­i­cal social­ist response to a non issue.

Bizarrely at the same time oil com­pa­nies are the only ones claim­ing a lower NZ dol­lar for the rea­son for their lat­est price hike.

Every one else in New Zealand is cry­ing out that the dol­lar is too high.

New Zealand because of its strange deci­sion to include fuel prices and inter­est rates in its infla­tion index is always going to be in a Catch-22 sit­u­a­tion. High dol­lar cheaper fuel but exporters tank.…low dol­lar high fuel leads to increases in infla­tion, which leads to increases in interst rates which leads to increased infla­tion which leads to increases in inter­est rates.…..you get the pic­ture, it also leads to increases int he value of the NZ dol­lar which tanks the export lead economy.

And Cullen has no idea.

Link to Full Article

Goff and Clark in La-La Land

by Whaleoil January 24, 2006

The US has announced a list of coun­tries it wishes to pur­sue a free trade agree­ment with, and you guessed it NZ isn’t on the list. 

Phil Goff reck­ons that it isn’t a slap in the face.….

Well he wouldn’t would he, this gov­ern­ment is now the denial government.

We have Goff deny­ing the bleeed­ing obvious.

We have the Prime Min­is­ter deny­ing the impend­ing eco­nomic cri­sis as a “rough patch”

The Gov­ern­ment of Denial.…and that isn’t a river in Africa.

Link to Full Article

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