I just took this photo at the National party con­fer­ence of the Media table…..oh look Barry Col­man would be mortified.

I note that there isn’t any­one here from the NBR to add any “pre­mium” content.

Scott Camp­bell from TV3 is even talk­ing to me…colour me sur­prised. i don’t think i should men­tion Cor­rec­tions to him though.

Good media con­tin­gent here…bet they still only show pho­tos of the grey haired ones though. Let’s see if they can step out­side their box.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Dozens of MPs get 90pc travel dis­count – A total of 28 present MPs qual­ify for a 90 per cent taxpayer-funded dis­count for over­seas travel, includ­ing pri­vate hol­i­days. Act’s Sir Roger Dou­glas and Labour’s Chris Carter bore much of the pub­lic­ity as big-spenders after the… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

I think it is high time that the lit­tle pig­gies who also hap­pen to be ex-MP’s had their wings clipped.

Times are tough and I see no rea­son why ex-MPs should con­tinue to avail them­selves of the largesse of the tax­payer. They need to cuk it up like all the other Kiwis.

It is hard to dis­agree with the basic premise of the Greens that the trough­ing must end. of course they might like to also end the sig­nif­i­cant amount of trough­ing their party has engaed in with accom­mo­da­tion allowances.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Dozens of MPs get 90pc travel dis­count – A total of 28 present MPs qual­ify for a 90 per cent taxpayer-funded dis­count for over­seas travel, includ­ing pri­vate hol­i­days. Act’s Sir Roger Dou­glas and Labour’s Chris Carter bore much of the pub­lic­ity as big-spenders after the… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

I think it is high time that the lit­tle pig­gies who also hap­pen to be ex-MP’s had their wings clipped.

Times are tough and I see no rea­son why ex-MPs should con­tinue to avail them­selves of the largesse of the tax­payer. They need to cuk it up like all the other Kiwis.

It is hard to dis­agree with the basic premise of the Greens that the trough­ing must end. of course they might like to also end the sig­nif­i­cant amount of trough­ing their party has engaed in with accom­mo­da­tion allowances.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

I am in Christchurch for the National Party con­fer­ence. This con­fer­ence is the first after crush­ing Labour at the elec­tion and also the oppor­tu­nity for the party to select new board members.

I am a vot­ing del­e­gate and so thought it might be use­ful to put down my thoughts about the eight can­di­dates for the five board posi­tions avail­able, then to look at the pos­si­bil­i­ties for President.

Alis­tair Bell – Suc­cess­ful North­ern Regional Chair. Deserves to be on the board on that basis alone. He has done the hard yards in the trenches and fought bat­tles against the odds. Could be a good solid loyal Pres­i­dent who won’t cause the party embar­rass­ment. Has sent me a per­sonal email and phoned as well.

Scott Simp­son – Another suc­cess­ful bat­tler, brought up polit­i­cally in mar­ginal elec­torates and fight­ing in Auck­land when National strug­gled there against a strong Labour machine. Has sent me a per­sonal email and dis­cussed my ques­tion raised raised previously.

Kate Hazlett -  Another bat­tler, from the South Island, oscil­lates between posi­tions in a seem­ingly ran­dom ran­dom but is likely to get elected because appar­ently the South island is rank­ing her first. Per­haps a bit too close to Bill Eng­lish to be safe as a board mem­ber. She did email me her detail but it was a gen­eral email to a cast of thousands.

Pat Sey­mour – Per­haps the tough­est, rough­est can­di­date and that is a com­pli­ment not meant to be a crit­i­cism. Pat knows how to fight elec­tions and in tough Labour areas, plus she wins. She calls a spade and spade and deserves her board posi­tion. I have had an exten­sive and wide rang­ing dis­cus­sion with Pat on her can­di­da­ture for the board.

Grant McCal­lum – I’ve heard he is good but as I haven’t even had so much as an email from him I know lit­tle more than here­say. The hard yards that he has done in the past will prob­a­bly get him over the line.

Keith Catch­pole – From the state of his ram­bling and ill-formatted email to me as a del­e­gate he doesn’t war­rant any fur­ther mention.

Wira Gar­diner – Wira is yes­ter­days man who has led a life of gen­eral medi­oc­rity or maori indul­gence. He is no more qual­i­fied for a board posi­tion that he is for the plumb board of Te Papa. Per­haps though there is a les­son in this for peo­ple want­ing board posi­tions handed out by the National party, throw your toys and be a fair weather friend or an enemy and you will be rewarded. He made the fatal error of send­ing me his guff twice and on the sec­ond one includ­ing over 200 other email recip­i­ents addresses.

Bruce Mills – Start­ing any speech you are about to give with an apol­ogy for not being agood pub­lic speaker is prob­a­bly not a win­ning strat­egy. He hasn’t even both­ered to send me an email.

So given that sum­mary at the moment, and I am open to lob­by­ing (Gin and tonic with a slice of Lime) my pref­er­ence for the five would be;

Alis­tair Bell, Pat Sey­mour, Kate Hazlett, Scott Simp­son, Grant McCal­lum. Bruce Mills and Keith Catch­pole aren’t even in the run­ning and Wira Gar­diner should be ranked dead last.

The Pres­i­dency

Inter­est­ing machi­na­tions are afoot here. We have Scott Simp­son and Peter Good­fel­low try­ing des­per­ately to spike each oth­ers cam­paigns over a woman. Roger Bridge is mak­ing a tilt but may have made some strate­gic errors in the last 24 hours. Hav­ing the back­ing of the South Island these days sim­ply isn’t enough. That means that there is a real pos­si­bil­ity of a third player com­ing through the mid­dle and grab­bing the pres­i­dency because all the oth­ers can­cel each other. My pref­er­ence for Pres­i­dent would be Alis­tair Bell. i’ve know Alis­tair for more than 30 years since I was a kid. He is a loyal ser­vant of the party and extremely com­pe­tent, wit­ness the astound­ing result of keep­ing Labour down to only 8 seats in his region and from the har­bour bridge north there isn’t a Labour MP to be seen. He has been regional chair for some­time and has brought in star per­forms like Sam Lotu iiga, Paula Ben­nett and Jonathan Coleman.

I will be live blog­ging and tweet­ing from the con­fer­ence when allowed to under the rules and hope to have the first inter­view with the new pres­i­dent once announced.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Yes­ter­day WOBH revealed that Dar­ren Hughes has been avail­ing him­self of Min­is­te­r­ial Lim­ou­sines, at least in Auck­land but also pos­si­bly in Welling­ton as well.

He used the lim­ou­sines just prior to his, prob­a­bly unecess­sary, trip to the US so he could sit fawn­ingly beside Helen Clark and Paul Henry. One thing I’m still won­der­ing about is whether we as tax-payers funded his lit­tle jaunt to New York to visit “Mum”.

A what a “Mum” she is.

It turns out that lit­tle Dazza Hughes must be the apple of Mother’s eye because it was Helen Clark that booked the lim­ou­sine so the son she never had could travel in style.

Now, Helen Clark is enti­tled (god I hate that word) to use a Min­is­te­r­ial Lim­ou­sine because of her pre­vi­ous ser­vice as a Prime Min­is­ter. That is as it is, other ex-Prime Min­is­ters get this. How­ever it is for their per­sonal use only. Not for bestow­ing rewards on loyal lickspittles.

Helen Clark seems to have a real prob­lem with lim­ou­sines from speed­ing through the coun­try side like an African Dic­ta­tor and now to pass­ing her “enti­tle­ments” onto her loyal lieu­tenants and lickspittles.

Per­haps lit­tle Dazza was up in New York get­ting per­sonal instruc­tions on the plot to roll Phil Goff. After all Helen did a sim­i­lar thing to Mike Moore, adter she helped him do it to Geof­frey Palmer.

Helen Clark should be rep­ri­manded for this, because if she does it once she will do it again and is likely have done it before. The “enti­tle­ment” men­tal­ity must be cut from our soci­ety or the can­cer will spread, and there is no bet­ter place to do that than with a for­mer exiled Prime Minister.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

That’s it, Far­rar has gone to far now. I am con­duct­ing a straw poll amongst mem­bers of the VRWC for the per­ma­nent ban­ish­ment of the afore­men­tioned Pinko and Labour apol­o­gists David P. Far­rar from the VRWC. Evi­dence below, I saw guilty as charged.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Today in the Her­ald the MSM caught up with what the blogs had bro­ken that TV3 Repeater Ali­son Hor­wood, who inter­viewed Weatherston’s par­ents, Roger and Yuleen, which was broad­cast on 60 Min­utes on Mon­day, had breached reg­u­la­tions of Cor­rec­tions in sur­rep­ti­tiously gain­ing access to Clay­ton Weatherston.

Dur­ing the story, Ali­son Hor­wood spoke of vis­it­ing Weath­er­ston in prison. This blog along with Busted Blonde and DPF called her out on that as it would have breached access pro­vi­sions by Corrections.

TV3 denied that they hadn’t fol­lowed pro­ce­dure to Regan Cun­liffe at throng.co.nz.

When asked if she was given per­mis­sion to visit as a Jour­nal­ist, Ms Hor­wood told us that “There is only one stan­dard appli­ca­tion form for approval to visit a pris­oner, and not a sep­a­rate one for jour­nal­ists. I filled the stan­dard form out cor­rectly, hon­estly and in a trans­par­ent man­ner. It does not require you to give your occu­pa­tion.” And “I can assure you that at no time was I dishonest.”

Whale Oil Beef Hooked has asked for a copy of the appli­ca­tion form under the Offi­cial Infor­ma­tion Act and has just been pro­vided with the doc­u­ments along with an expla­na­tion of the law sur­round­ing access of jour­nal­ists to Cor­rec­tions inmates.

As you can see from the doc­u­ments obtain under the OIA the TV3 repeater, Alsion Hor­wood has lied.

She put her­self down as a “(fam­ily) Friend” of Clay­ton Weatherston.

She has clearly gained access to Clay­ton Weath­er­ston under false pre­tences and is now likely to find her­self in all sorts of bother both with Cor­rec­tions and with TV3.

Now what remains to be extracted from TV3 is whether or not Ali­son Hor­wood was ordered to lie to Cor­rec­tions by her boss or not. She could then pos­si­bly claim the Nurem­burg defence for that part. She still did lie to Regan Cun­liffe though and quite pos­si­bly other media.

Cer­tainly under Sec­tion 141(1f) of the Cor­rec­tions Act 2004;

…every per­son com­mits an offence who, except under the author­ity of this Act or of any reg­u­la­tions made under this Act or the express author­ity of the prison man­ager or the chief executive,

(f) makes any visual record­ing (whether by pho­to­graph, film, video­tape, or oth­er­wise) or sound record­ing of a pris­oner if the mak­ing of such a record­ing may prej­u­dice the main­te­nance of the law, the safe cus­tody of the pris­oner, the well-being of any vic­tim of an offence com­mit­ted by that pris­oner, the safety of any per­son, or the secu­rity of any prison:

The penal­ties for such breaches are up to 3 months in prison and/or a $5000 fine. Fur­ther the Cor­rec­tions Reg­u­la­tion 2005 Reg­u­la­tion 108 states clearly;

 With­out first obtain­ing the writ­ten approval of both the chief exec­u­tive and the pris­oner con­cerned, no per­son may—

(a) interview a pris­oner, for the pur­pose of—

(i) obtaining infor­ma­tion and pub­lish­ing or broad­cast­ing it; or

(ii) publishing or broad­cast­ing a tran­script or descrip­tion of the inter­view; or

(b) make a sound record­ing of a pris­oner, or an inter­view with a pris­oner, for the pur­pose of—

(i) >broadcasting it; or

(ii) publishing a tran­script of it; or

© make or take a film, pho­to­graph, video­tape, or other visual record­ing of a pris­oner, for the pur­pose of pub­lish­ing or broad­cast­ing it.

(2) Without first obtain­ing the writ­ten approval of both the chief exec­u­tive and the pris­oner con­cerned, no per­son to whom sub­clause (3) applies may—
(a) interview a pris­oner; or
(b) make a sound record­ing of a pris­oner, or an inter­view with a pris­oner; or
© make or take a film, pho­to­graph, video­tape, or other visual record­ing of a pris­oner.
(3) This sub­clause applies to a per­son who is—

(a) a pub­lisher of books, or a mag­a­zine, news­pa­per, newslet­ter, cir­cu­lar, or other sim­i­lar pub­li­ca­tion; or

(b) a broad­caster or pro­ducer of radio or tele­vi­sion pro­grammes; or

© a dis­sem­i­na­tor of news or opin­ion by elec­tronic means; or

(d) a writer, a jour­nal­ist (whether in elec­tronic or print media), a radio or tele­vi­sion broad­caster, or a pro­ducer of radio or tele­vi­sion pro­grammes; or

(e) an employee, con­trac­tor, or agent of a per­son described in any of para­graphs (a) to (d).

And Reg­u­la­tion 109 states;

The chief exec­u­tive must, in decid­ing whether to give approval under reg­u­la­tion 108, have regard to the need to—

(a) protect the inter­ests of peo­ple other than the pris­oner con­cerned; and

(b) maintain the secu­rity and order of the prison concerned.

(2) The chief exec­u­tive must not give that approval unless sat­is­fied that the pris­oner understands—

(a) >the nature and pur­pose of the film­ing, inter­view­ing, pho­tograph­ing, record­ing, or video­tap­ing con­cerned; and

(b) the pos­si­ble con­se­quences to the pris­oner and other peo­ple of the pub­li­ca­tion or broad­cast­ing of the film, inter­view, pho­to­graph, record­ing, tran­script, or video­tape concerned.

(3) The chief exec­u­tive may give that approval sub­ject to any con­di­tions rea­son­ably nec­es­sary to—

(a) protect the inter­ests of any per­son other than the pris­oner; or

(b)maintain the secu­rity and order of the prison.

Clearly Ali­son Hor­wood and TV3 have breached the law and the Cor­rec­tions Reg­u­la­tions. Now let’s see what TV3 have to say about all this.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

We all know this, but I will leave the destruc­tion of Labour’s faux out­rage over bul­ly­ing to Paul Buchanan and how appro­pri­ate that he slaps Labour with it on their own paid for lap-blog.

I hate to say it, but I think bul­ly­ing crosses the aisle and is endemic not only in NZ pol­i­tics but the soci­ety at large, be it in acad­e­mia, gov­ern­ment, unions or cor­po­ra­tions. Helen Clark openly called for my dis­missal from Auck­land Uni­ver­sity when I raised ques­tions about the Zaoui case. She also vil­i­fied Deb­o­rah Man­ning, who is one of the more coura­geous Kiwis I have met. After it was all over and Zaoui won his appeal, Deb­o­rah moved on to an inter­na­tional job and Helen got her wish with regards to me.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

MPs’ $4.1m travel expenses made pub­lic – Politi­cians spent over $7.69 mil­lion of tax payer’s money on accom­mo­da­tion and travel in six months. The fig­ures were released by the Speaker Lock­wood Smith this morn­ing. MPs claimed a total of $4.166091m in expenses between… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Lock­wood Smith has released MP travel fig­ures and sur­prise, surpise the pro tem leader of Oppo­si­tion has been trough­ing up large.

Mr Goff’s trav­els around New Zealand made him the biggest claimant out­side of Cab­i­net, run­ning up $124,480 in bills.

This was made up of $79,027 in sur­face travel, $35,035 in air­fares, $10,294 in Welling­ton accom­mo­da­tion and $124 in out-of-Wellington accommodation.

I bet a fair whack of that was in order to help Mr Shearer buy the seat of Mt Albert. Nice to see Whack it on teh Bill Phil prac­tices what he preaches….whacking every­thing on the tax­pay­ers bill.

On on another note I see the for­mer MP for Rotorua has finally had her sex change….well accord­ing to the dimwit­ted repeater at the Her­ald she/he has anyway.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Solo mother’s income made pub­lic before – The sin­gle mother who is tak­ing Paula Ben­nett to the Pri­vacy Com­mis­sion for releas­ing her income details has had her income dis­closed pub­licly before – by Labour in 2007 and by her­self on a Trade Me mes­sage board last week. Natasha… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Labour’s spec­tac­u­lar own goal con­tin­ues today as the MSm catches up with the blogosphere.

Claire Trevett explains about the infor­ma­tion already in teh pub­lic domain includ­ing when David Benson-Pope released her per­sonal details.

Add to that the talk­ing swirling around Welling­ton is that Annette King has been talk­ing over the last few weeks to Natasha Fuller who with Charles Chauvel’s assis­tance is now com­plain­ing to the Pri­vacy Commissioner.

Quite inter­est­ing in view of the fact that Jen­nifer john­ston was on TV last night say­ing she has had a con­ver­sa­tion with Paula Ben­nett and is happy with their exchange of views.   

Looks as if one of them is will­ing to join the anti Ben­nett cam­paign and the other isn’t.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

I’ve been asked to assist to help iden­tify this man.

A pho­to­graph of an unknown man sus­pi­ciously mea­sur­ing up a shop door in New­mar­ket has been released to the media with the local busi­ness com­mu­nity keen for him to be identified.  

The man, pos­si­bly push­ing 40, was pic­tured in broad day­light today out­side New­mar­ket menswear store Menon, 200 Broadway.

Owner of Menon, Praveen Menon, claims not to know the unknown man and cer­tainly did not ask the man to do any repairs or main­te­nance on his shop door.

“I did not see this man mea­sur­ing up my door. He prob­a­bly did his busi­ness quickly while I was serv­ing a cus­tomer. One thing’s for sure, he’s not wear­ing a Menon jacket, looks more like some­thing from Saks. We just hope he doesn’t come back and attempt a ram raid,” says Mr Menon.

The head of the New­mar­ket Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion Cameron Brewer is also concerned.

“Its sale time in New­mar­ket and there are a lot of good­ies up for grabs. This is the last thing we need. The image is clearly very dis­turb­ing. Law enforce­ment is right to sus­pect him. To me he looks like a real thug. Luck­ily we have our CCTV cam­eras in New­mar­ket to catch these mon­grels before they strike,” says Mr Brewer.

The New­mar­ket Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion is now appeal­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic to help iden­tify this man.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Well now this story is very interesting.

Just a short while ago on the tipline I was informed of a very inter­est­ing set of cir­cum­stances that need explaining.

On Thurs­day last week, which was the 23 July, a lit­tle orange twat was picked up at Auck­land Air­port by a Min­is­te­r­ial Limousine.

That’s right Dar­ren Hughes, a Labour MP, was being fer­ried about in a min­is­te­r­ial limousine.

Now this is an inter­est­ing set of cir­cum­stances.  Firstly Dar­ren Hughes is a Labour MP. Labour are in oppo­si­tion and not enti­tled to min­is­te­r­ial lim­ou­sines except for Phil Goff.

So this then raises some inter­est­ing questions.

Did Phil Goff book the min­is­te­r­ial lim­ou­sine so that Dar­ren Hughes wouldn’t have to catch a cab or bus with the rest of the plebs?

Did Dar­ren Hughes also use a min­is­te­r­ial lim­ou­sine in Welling­ton to get him to the air­port there?

Now the date is inter­est­ing. That is just before lit­tle Dazza appeared on TVNZ with Paul Henry and Helen Clark in New York. So pre­sum­ably lit­tle Dazza was fly­ing up to Auck­land to then fly onto New York. The ques­tion still remains though as to why he was using a min­is­te­r­ial lim­ou­sine at tax­pay­ers expense when he isn’t enti­tled to?

Now I’d be inter­ested to know when his flight to New York was because then we could assess whether lit­tle Dazza was tak­ing fur­ther lib­er­ties with the tax­payer dol­lars. If the min­is­te­r­ial lim­ou­sine was used to pick him up from Domes­tic and ferry him to a hotel for the night then pre­sum­ably it was also used to fery him to Auck­land Inter­na­tional the next day as well.

Just who is autho­ris­ing these lit­tle jun­kets in the back of a BMW for lit­tle Dazza? Is it Phil Goff or is there some­thing even more inter­est­ing afoot? You see there is no valid or jus­ti­fied rea­son for Dar­ren Hughes to be rid­ing in a min­si­te­r­ial lim­ou­sine by him­self at all. None. That means some­one had to book it for him and that some­one has breached the rules.

More to come on this, I promise.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Rod­ney Hide goes to the LGNZ con­fer­ence, gives a great speech, and then the Clown from Camp­bells Bay, Andrew Williams has the audac­ity to call Hide a bully.  If ever I heard a pot/kettle state­ment that was it.

Let’s take stock shall we?  Ever since the Clown of Camp­bells Bay, Andrew Williams, was elected he has divided the coun­cil; abused staff; abused and threat­ened trustees of a trust; sent late night abu­sive texts and emails to other may­ors, blog­gers and mem­bers of par­lia­ment; called min­is­ters of the gov­ern­ment liars; issued embar­rass­ing press releases thank­ing the rest of the coun­try pay­ing for Auckland’s traf­fic; and he has punched an ambu­lance offi­cer.  He was also elected strongly oppos­ing some­thing that he strongly sup­ported (the When­u­a­pai Air­port) a few years ago.

Williams is an embar­rass­ment, a thug, a nar­cis­sis­tic pop­ulist and a hyp­ocrite. He has no place as a Mayor of New Zealand’s fourth largest city and thanks to Rod­ney he soon won’t be.

Oh and Andy mate, going whing­ing to the cops about me isn’t going to get you any­where. Yes I have snitches every­where and I know your every move. You are being held account­able and will be accounted for come elec­tion time.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Despite the fact that there appears to be an over­whelm­ing abun­dance of out of work jour­nal­ists in the mar­ket at the moment, the ones who are man­ag­ing to stay employed have taken to doing hachet jobs.

Take TVNZ’s Close-Up.

On Mon­day they decided to repeat on a story that they had obvi­ously been fed by Epilepsy New Zealand, and had failed to do the rudi­men­tary research that would have enabled them to tell the truth, rather that falling hook line and sinker for some PR rub­bish they had been fed to sat­isfy some­one in Epilepsy New Zealand’s agenda.

The story goes that the Epilepsy Foun­da­tion was set up as a fundraiser for Epilepsy New Zealand (two sep­a­rate bodies)..well…almost right – The Epilepsy Foun­da­tion was cer­tainly set up to donate money to organ­i­sa­tions that help with Epilepsy, but it has cer­tainly never been tied to Epilepsy New Zealand. And then the Foun­da­tion went and did some fundrais­ing, in fact they employed a mar­ket­ing com­pany to do it all for them, and then they ran some events – so far so good right? EXCEPT, now Epilepsy New Zealand is bitch­ing and whing­ing because they reckon they have been ripped off by Epilepsy Foun­da­tion and should have got­ten more of the money.

It went some­thing along the lines of “Epilepsy New Zealand only got 2% of what was raised” The repeater Robyn Janes blamed the tele­mar­keter – but it was all they were ever going to get, and they knew this. Turns out it is in the con­sti­tu­tion of the Foun­da­tion that all dona­tions they receive go to their cap­i­tal fund, which they then invest – and donate the inter­est only. Yes DONATE the inter­est to the Epilepsy organ­i­sa­tions (which for the last three years has been Epilepsy New Zealand.)

Looks like some­one at Epilepsy New Zealand has got­ten greedy and is using the media to try and get the money now. Swal­lowed hook, line and sinker by Robyn Janes at Close-Up.

I have been informed today that pre­vi­ously men­tioned vile repeater, has been trav­el­ling the coun­try­side, turn­ing up unex­pect­edly at char­i­ties doorsteps berat­ing them and bad­ger­ing them to get her pre-determined story – that not the whole dol­lar you give to char­ity gets there. No shit! It goes to help­ing with busi­ness expenses too. When I buy a sausage for char­ity I know that some of my money goes to pay­ing for the sausage, bread, tomato sauce and onion. Doesn’t every­body? Surely this is just a totally noth­ing story try­ing to make peo­ple who do good things feel bad.

Isn’t this how we actu­ally want not-for-profits to run, to actu­ally have some finan­cial respon­si­bil­ity and cre­ate invest­ments so that they can become self suf­fi­cient to some degree. Surely this is bet­ter than con­stantly putting your hand out because you spend every­thing you get today rather than think­ing about tomor­row as well.

Sort it out Close-Up, get some real sto­ries that actu­ally mean some­thing, and stop being someone’s PR bitch. Mark Sains­bury and the Pro­ducer should make sure his repeaters are telling the whole truth not some spin before he fronts the story.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

With all the faux out­rage spew­ing forth from the Labour/EPMU funded lap-blogs and Labour’s own MPs jump­ing in to the fray over the pros and cons of Paula Ben­nett putting infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic domain we need to recall another case in order to high­t­light the extreme hypociry of the left.

Does any­one remem­ber the name Erin Leigh. Trevor Mal­lard will because he out­ra­geously assaulted her pro­fes­sional rep­u­ta­tion and he did it under Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­lege as well. That is prob­a­bly why Trevor Mal­lard isn’t say­ing any­thing over Labour’s own goal with the ben­e­fi­cia­ries furore.

Yes, that’s right. Labour attacked a woman because it suited their polit­i­cal agenda at the time a Min­is­ter was under intense scrutiny for med­dling in the hir­ing process. They attacked and smeared with­out a shred of evidence.

Con­trast that with Paula Ben­nett, where she actu­ally deliv­ered facts, not under par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege and revealed details that the detrac­tors had failed to reveal them­selves. Facts that were per­ti­nent to the case at hand raather than just dirty smearing.

Labour’s shrill wail­ing should be met with steely stares and ignored for the hypocrisy it is. To my knowl­edge nei­ther nor Labour has apol­o­gised to Erin Leigh for their dis­gust­ing attack on her pro­fes­sional integrity.

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