June 2008

More tax increases from Labour

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

Alco­hol prices set to rise as tax increases — A quiet drink with mates will be more expen­sive from today as excise taxes on alco­hol increase almost 3.5 per cent.
Excise tax, some­times called excise duty, is a type of tax charged on goods pro­duced within New Zealand.
DB… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

As if the gov­ern­ment hasn’t robbed enough from it’s cit­i­zenry they are now set to increase excise duties by another 3.5% today rob­bing fur­ther from Kiwi battlers.

There appears to be no ratio­nale behind this move to increase the tax take other than to sock it to an ungrate­ful pop­u­lace who aren’t being swayed by the great munif­i­cence bestowed upon them from Dear Leader.

This will drop Labour another few points in the polls.

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Almost got me

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

This head­line almost got me

Curran to challenge for leadership

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Plugs is the one out of touch

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

Nats’ sports ideas out of touch: Gov­ern­ment — National’s new sport pol­icy to fun­nel money from Government-run anti-obesity cam­paigns directly into grass-roots sport at schools and clubs has been crit­i­cised by Sport Min­is­ter Clay­ton Cos­grove as “out of touch”.
National leader… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Plug­head reck­ons that national’s idea of giv­ing the money that is spent on adver­tis­ing to fat­ties on the couch (like Plug­head) to sports organ­i­sa­tions for equip­ment is out of touch.

Well you can’t be more out of touch than hav­ing fat­ties like Plug­head Cos­grove and Tubby Mahuta pro­mot­ing “Off the couch” strategies.

DPF also points out the folly of an $11.5 mil­lion web­site!!! Who says there isn’t waste in the pub­lic sector?

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Poll of polls shows Labour on perilous downhill slope

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

Poll of polls shows Labour on per­ilous down­hill slope — The long-term trend in opin­ion polls has been up for National and down for Labour. From an aver­age lead over National of 10 per­cent­age points early in the last elec­tion year, 2005, Labour goes into the final months of this elec­tion… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Colin James writes in the Her­ald today about the over-arching trend in the polls. The news is all bad for Labour.

The Her­ald is going to be run­ning a Poll of Polls and this first one shows a mas­sive 25 point gap.

WOBH has also been leaked Labour’s cam­paign song and video due for release shortly.

 

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Cartoon: Painting over the eyesores

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

Car­toon: Paint­ing over the eye­sores — [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Another les­son for Clark on why you don’t piss off cartoonists.

Painting over eye-sores

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Oh no! I better hide

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

Appar­ently there is a Orca hunt on.

[quote]The great orca hunt is on.

Jean-Michel Cousteau is, like his late father Jacques-Yves Cousteau, an ocean explorer. He is in New Zealand this month to find and film orcas, or killer whales, using the expe­ri­ence and con­tacts of whale researcher Dr Ingrid Visser.

Orcas are the largest species of the oceanic dol­phin fam­ily, and this is the time of year to spot them, said Dr Visser.

“Because it’s cold, they come in closer to shore to hunt rays for food.”

Dr Visser relies on the pub­lic to help spot orcas. “We have an 0800 num­ber, and peo­ple just ring and let us know where they are.“[/quote]

This Orca is in How­ick, look­ing for­ward to see­ing y’all this morn­ing with your cameras.

 

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Clark’s extraordinary attack on the media

by Whaleoil June 30, 2008

While Clark and the Stan­dard try to blow up a scan­dal over who or who doesn’t advise National we now find the real rea­son for them blow­ing up this scandal.

That rea­son was the release of a tape of Helen Clark at a jour­nal­ism con­fer­ence in Welling­ton last year that she has tried des­per­ately to cover up.

Colin Espiner is the first MSM jour­nal­ist to cover it and I have been in dis­cus­sion with the mem­ber of the pub­lic who fought the obfus­ca­tions and delays of Clark and Simp­son to get the tape that orig­i­nally Clark said never existed. WOBH has a com­plete copy of the tape as well and has had to lis­ten to Clark and her extremely stilted and doc­tri­naire seak­ing style.

The full story of this is truly a story of a Prime Min­is­ter des­per­ate to cover-up what she said and hide from the truth of what she said. Despite mul­ti­ple requests under the OIA for this record­ing the Prime Minister’s office intially denied that it even existed. This is espe­cially ironic con­sid­er­ing that the Prime min­is­ter berates Dun­can Gar­ner because he had the temer­ity to sug­gest that when cor­nered a poli­ti­icans first instinct is to lie. Ironic because that is exactly what Clark and her Office did.

Heather Simp­son also went so far as to repeat­edly hang up on the mem­ber of the pub­lic every time he called to see when the tape would be deliv­ered. Finally in com­plete frus­tra­tion this per­sis­tent indi­vid­ual went to the Obuds­man who slammed Clark and her Office an ordered that the record­ing be released.

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If only Mugabe was white

by Whaleoil June 29, 2008

A very good opin­ion piece about the hypocrisy of black Africa in the face of the excesses of Robert Mugabe.

When Ian Smith con­trolled Rhode­sia in the 1970s, African coun­tries ral­lied against it. Even the white racist gov­ern­ment in South Africa demanded change and threat­ened to cut off elec­tric­ity sup­plies if it didn’t hap­pen. SO change came about and lo and behold we now have the tyrant Robert Mugabe wreck­ing the bread bas­ket of Africa.

Thabo Mbeki sits on his hands and makes noth­ing but excuses for Robert Mugabe. Some facts now about Zim­babwe under Mugabe;

* Life expectency has dropped from the 60’s to the 30’s under Mugabe

* With infla­tion run­ning at 10 mil­lion per­cent any­one with $90 is a tril­lion­aire, vir­tu­ally the whole coun­try are mil­lion­aires in ZimBucks

* A loaf of bread costs $1 billion

No one is doing any­thing about the excesses of Mugabe which also far exceed any­thing that ever hap­pened under Ian Smith. Not one black African nation will say a thing about Mugabe, in fact they all club together to stick up for him.

If Mugabe was white then his coun­try would have been lib­er­ated years ago.

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How Gun Control Lost

by Whaleoil June 29, 2008

Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics — Arti­cles — How Gun Con­trol Lost
A very good arti­cle on Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics about how the Gun Con­trol lobby lost at the SCOTUS.

It looked as though ever-stricter gun con­trol was the wave of the future. But the future had dif­fer­ent ideas. What happened?

Three main things:

– Gun con­trol didn’t work. In the 1990s, despite its dra­con­ian ban, Wash­ing­ton became the mur­der cap­i­tal of the United States. Chicago’s homi­cide rate, which had been declin­ing in the years before it banned hand­guns, climbed over the fol­low­ing decade. Gun con­trol didn’t work. Dur­ing the time the fed­eral assault weapons law was in effect, the num­ber of gun mur­ders declined — but so did mur­ders involv­ing knives and other weapons. When the law was allowed to expire in 2004, some­thing inter­est­ing hap­pened to the national mur­der rate: nothing.

– Laws allow­ing con­cealed weapons pro­lif­er­ated — with no ill effects. In 1987, Florida gained national atten­tion — and noto­ri­ety — by pass­ing a law allow­ing cit­i­zens to get per­mits to carry con­cealed hand­guns. Oppo­nents pre­dicted a wave of car­nage by pistol-packing hot­heads, but it didn’t hap­pen. In fact, mur­ders and other vio­lent crimes sub­sided. Per­mit hold­ers proved to be sober and restrained. Peo­ple else­where took heed, and today, accord­ing to the NRA, 40 states have “right-to-carry” laws. As those laws have spread, the homi­cide rate has fallen sharply from the peak reached in 1991.

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Oh yes you are…

by Whaleoil June 29, 2008

Sophie Lewis is a slapperThe kiss and tell slap­per who shagged an Eng­lish Rugby Player and sold her story to the tabloids reck­ons she isn’t a slapper.

Ok…let’s giver her the ben­e­fit of the doubt shall we and exam­ine the intri­ca­cies of the case.

1. She went out on the town to bag an Eng­land Rugby player.

2. She told NOTW that she “put ram­pant rab­bits to shame. He was such an accom­plished lover and we did it in every posi­tion imaginable,”

3. She sold the story to NOTW

You’re right hunny, you’re no slapper…you had sex for money that makes you a whore!

As Stuffed.co.nz says;

[quote]She let the world know that she was cheaper than a two dol­lar pros­ti­tute. Good work. She has man­aged to make her par­ents really proud in the mean­time. Every par­ent would love to read that their beloved daugh­ter spread her legs for a ran­dom rugby guy who in turn f**ked the s**t out of her.[/quote]

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Election Night of the Living Dead

by Whaleoil June 28, 2008

Michael Laws calls the election.

[quote]These are the last days of the government.

We know this like we know that night fol­lows day, that spring fol­lows win­ter and that British tabloids fol­low girls called Angel Bar­bie. We know all these things because they are immutable laws of nature.[/quote]

This is true then he really gets into bot­ting the gov­ern­ment in the guts. As the polls fore­cast the doom the atmos­phere becomes toxic as we see today, the smears come out but;

[quote]Instead gov­ern­ments fight and delude in equal pro­por­tion. They get both nasty and nar­cotic — going for the goolies while refus­ing to admit their mortality.

They resem­ble noth­ing quite so much as zom­bies on P. Stum­bling towards their fate with no short­age of flailing.[/quote]

Yes, that is exactly what they resem­ble none more so than their state-funded client blogs. Laws reck­ons that con­trary to most left­ists opin­ions it was the anti smack­ing med­dling that sealed their fate and I would have to agree with him to some extent…it was the straw that broke the prover­bial camel’s back.

 

He is exactly right and yet the client-bloggers still run the lines that peo­ple who smack their kids are “kiddy bash­ers”. Frankly the longer they keep run­ning those lines the bet­ters. The irony is that for a party that has ruled us by focus group, it seems that the mes­sage in the focus groups seems to have gone com­pletely awry. I sus­pect the Labour flunkies run­ning their focus groups mis­took pub­lic angst against peo­ple like the Kahui’s for a will­ing­ness to ban smack­ing. Clearly they were wrong.

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Don’t bet against the house

by Whaleoil June 28, 2008

The old say­ing in gam­bling is to not bet against the house and a quick check around the Aussie bet­ting estab­lish­ment con­firms that you’ll do your dough if you back Labour.

Cen­tre­bet

National $1.30

Labour $3.00

Sportingbet.com.au

National $1.38

Labour $3.00

Sports Bet

National $1.50

Labour $2.50

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Keith Ng: Polling the depths

by Whaleoil June 28, 2008

Don't PanicKeith Ng: Polling the depths — The clock is tick­ing. Less than five months until the elec­tion and 20 points behind in the polls, Labour is still stick­ing to its strat­egy of wait­ing for National to make a mis­take. Is there enough time for a come­back?
The New… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Keith Ng has a col­umn in todays HoS. It is very interesing espe­cially the quotes pro­vided by David Slack, Nigel Roberts and Jon Johans­son, all of whom can be classed lefty wonks.

There is no com­fort for the Clark­ists in this col­umn with all three using his­tory, iron­i­cally, to show that the Clark­ists days are done. Per­haps the best quote comes from Jon Johans­son not the least because of the use of the word perfidy.

[quote] “One of the real tru­isms about long-term gov­ern­ments is that the things that get you there — what were once per­ceived as your strengths — are ulti­mately the things that bring you down. In Clark’s case, it was restor­ing legit­i­macy to the polit­i­cal order after a gen­er­a­tion of bro­ken promises. The pre­mier sym­bol of that legit­i­macy was the orig­i­nal pledge card. Now look at what the pledge card looks like to peo­ple. It’s the pre­mier sym­bol of Labour’s perfidy.

“That’s why long-term gov­ern­ments inevitably fall,” he says, “because the peo­ple at the top are the last ones to recog­nise that their entire sit­u­a­tional dynamic has changed. Helen Clark and Heather Simp­son are not going to win this elec­tion for the Labour Party by using the things that have worked for them in the past.“[/quote]

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Handicapped Parking

by Whaleoil June 28, 2008

PM’s block­ing of dis­abled carpark ‘unac­cept­able’, says pen­sioner — Ques­tions are being asked after the Prime Minister’s motor­cade blocked off dis­able park­ing bays in cen­tral Christchurch.
That caused an 81-year-old Parkinson’s patient to strug­gle 200 metres down a wet street after attend­ing a… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

The news gets worse.. TVNZ cov­ered it and the Her­ald now as well.

Handicapped parking

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Pork Chop gets it wrong — again!

by Whaleoil June 28, 2008

This post has been removed because of legal action against my host­ing company.

A copy of my orig­i­nal post can be viewed at http://pearlgoingisafake.com/2008/07/pork-chop-gets-it-wrong/

WOBH has noth­ing to do with that site and did not autho­rise any of the con­tent to be published.

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