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.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

This head­line almost got me

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

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?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

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.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Car­toon: Paint­ing over the eye­sores – [NZ Pol­i­tics]

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

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Appar­ently there is a Orca hunt on.

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

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

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.

After lis­ten­ing to the speech one won­ders why she tried to supress it. It is because of her attacks on teh Dom­post, the Her­ald, Dun­can Gar­ner, young jour­nal­ists, car­toon­ists, edi­tors etc ot her bla­tent untruths espe­cially about Vietnam.

She describes the Domin­ion as an “unashamedly Tory Paper” who never really “got used to the elec­tion of the first Labour Government”.

She launches attacks against mul­ti­ple National gov­ern­ments from Sid Hol­land to Mul­doon. She then describes how Mul­doon tossed out Tom Scott and describes the rest of the jour­nal­ists as “sheep” as Tom Scott left.

Then she gets right into the jour­nal­ists them­selves. Accus­ing them of being inept in their his­tory, social stud­ies and worse being in nap­pies when the sem­i­nal events of “her” past were occur­ing. The haughty arro­gance she exudes is most appar­ent in this sec­tion of the record­ing. “Very few jour­nal­ists have any com­pre­hen­sion of the range of rela­tion­ships NZ has, the range of issue NZ is involved in” and she blames the pro­pri­etors of the news agen­cies for not valu­ing these type of skills.

She then goes on to opine that media should be involved very seri­ously in social engi­neer­ing. She even has the temer­ity to sug­gest that the Dan­ish car­toons issues wasn’t about free­dom of speech, rather one of edi­to­r­ial taste.

Dun­can Gar­ner then cops a flog­ging. “Dun­can Gar­ner from TV3 said that politi­cians always lie, well I’m sorry but politi­cians don’t always lie, I was actu­ally quite apalled by this state­ment because if that is the mind­set with which we are report­ing then it is no won­der that politi­cians ranks some where down the scale with sec­ond hand car sales­men”. Got that the fault of politi­ciansa social stand­ing is because the media thinks politi­cians always lie. The fact that she got the quote hor­ri­bly wrong doesn’t mat­ter one bit to Clark.

Clark has real prob­lems with jour­nal­ists and now goes on about jour­nal­ists mak­ing the story about them….“well actu­ally it is not about them, it actu­ally about some­thing else but if the jour­nal­ist thinks that they have been sleighted then the whole story becomes about them…..”

Finally we get to her real bug­bear, irinoci con­sid­er­ing she is staffing and fund­ing her own ver­sion of...”the blog…..the blooog”…..She is very dis­mis­sive of blo-jo’s especiaiiy.

Over­all she shows her com­plete arro­gance and intel­lec­tual dis­dain for the cur­rent crop of jour­nal­ists. This is a very use­ful insight into the mind of Clark.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

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.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

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.

– The Sec­ond Amend­ment got a sec­ond look. In 1983, a San Fran­cisco lawyer named Don Kates pub­lished an arti­cle in the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Law Review argu­ing that, con­trary to pre­vail­ing wis­dom in the judi­ciary and law schools, the Con­sti­tu­tion upholds an indi­vid­ual right to keep and bear arms. Numer­ous legal schol­ars, spurred to exam­ine the record, reached the same sur­pris­ing con­clu­sion. Before long, even some lib­eral law pro­fes­sors were com­ing around.

Time too to look at the issue here in New Zealand as vio­lent crime soars despite some of the tough­est gun con­trol laws in the world. Inno­cent civil­ians are being killed with­out the means to defend themselves.

Tech­no­rati Tags: gun con­trol, sco­tus

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

The 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;

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Michael Laws calls the election.

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;

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.

Yes we have had enough, yes National will be able to gov­ern alone. Labour will be destroyed, hope­fully completely.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

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

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Keith 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.

Indeed, per­fidy is what is undo­ing Clark as all the chick­ens are com­ing home to roost. The younglings at the client blogs can’t under­stand what is hap­pen­ing because they were never around before to watch what hap­pens. They rail against National and John Key for the very things that got Clark elected, they put their head in the sand like incum­bent gov­ern­ments do exactly like the Shipley/Bolger gov­ern­ment did and when they pull their heads out they’ll find that the body has been shot to hell. It’s over, call the elec­tion Clark.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

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.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

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.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]