Movember

#Movember last day for @Whaleoil

by Whaleoil November 30, 2009

Today is the last day of Movem­ber and how appro­pri­ate and awful that I suf­fered one of my dark­est days in a long while. This is the thing with depres­sion, you can be going along nicely then all of a sud­den you have a night with lit­tle sleep for no rea­son and the fol­low­ing day […]

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Movember update

by Whaleoil November 25, 2009

Ok so you all know that I am grow­ing a mous­tache this year for Movem­ber.  I have decided to put down my razor for one month (Novem­ber) and help raise aware­ness and funds for men’s health – specif­i­cally prostate can­cer and depres­sion in men. What many peo­ple don’t appre­ci­ate is that close to 600 men die […]

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Movember — Day 10

by Whaleoil November 10, 2009

As you all know I am grow­ing a mous­tache again for Movem­ber.  I have decided to put down my razor for one month (Novem­ber) and help raise aware­ness and funds for men’s health – specif­i­cally prostate can­cer and depres­sion in men. What many peo­ple don’t appre­ci­ate is that close to 600 men die of prostate cancer […]

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Standard set too low

by Jadis November 5, 2009

The Stan­dard recently asked why Cam Slater’s friends don’t con­trol him or don’t assist him more with his depres­sion.  As one of his friends I can tell you that some of us do sup­port him through his depres­sion.  I accept Cam for who he is, because that is who he is – depres­sion included.  I […]

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Movember — Day 4

by Whaleoil November 4, 2009

I am grow­ing a mous­tache this year for Movem­ber.  I have decided to put down my razor for one month (Novem­ber) and help raise aware­ness and funds for men’s health – specif­i­cally prostate can­cer and depres­sion in men. What many peo­ple don’t appre­ci­ate is that close to 600 men die of prostate can­cer each year in […]

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Movember — Day 2

by Whaleoil November 2, 2009

Movem­ber update. We now have three team mem­bers. Aaron Gilmore MP  and Rus­sel Thom­son have joined the team for Movem­ber. Wel­come guys. To join my Movem­ber team go to http://nz.movember.com/register/5840 and fol­low steps. Once reg­is­tered you’ll be sent all the infor­ma­tion you need to get dona­tions and get grow­ing as part of my Movem­ber team. In case […]

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Lucky to be alive

by Whaleoil July 12, 2009

This is a par­tic­u­larly egre­gious case of Silly First Name Syn­drome. It isn’t any won­der that he was dis­tracted with the large amount of bad karma trav­el­ling with him in the same vehi­cle. I’m not sur­prised at all. It almost sounds like he try­ing to hit the train.

A man accused of the manslaugh­ter of his four-year-old son after allegedly dri­ving around a bar­rier arm and into the path of an 800-tonne goods train told police he was “dis­tracted”, a court as heard.

Alan Stephens, 39, unem­ployed of Run­si­man [sic], south of Auck­land, appeared in Pukekohe Dis­trict Court today charged with reck­less dri­ving caus­ing manslaugh­ter and three charges of reck­less dri­ving caus­ing injury.

Crown pros­e­cu­tor Kevin Glubb said in his open­ing state­ment that Stephens had left home in his Sil­ver Mit­subishi Mirage mid-afternoon on Feb­ru­ary 20 with his three chil­dren – Shan­nyne, 6, Tray, 4 and Holly, 2 – and his niece Nakita, 12.

All except Nakita were wear­ing seat belts.

When Stephens approached the rail­way inter­sec­tion at Paer­ata, near Pukekohe, he did not stop at the bar­rier arms but drove around them, he said.

“That took his vehi­cle directly into the path of the oncom­ing freight train,” Mr Glubb said.

Still the slaugh­ter and the injuries con­tinue and no one except this blog does any­thing about it.

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National torn over Mt Albert candidacy

by Whaleoil April 30, 2009

National torn over Mt Albert can­di­dacy — The National Party is embroiled in a back­room power strug­gle over its Mt Albert can­di­date, with the hierarchy’s favourite, Melissa Lee, try­ing to tip out grass­roots toiler Ravi Musuku. Ms Lee is a list MP and one of National’s… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Spam jour­nal­ism this morn­ing from Patrick Gower. The National Party isn’t torn at all over Mt Albert. Only Ravi Mususku is. He just hasn’t got it yet that this by-election is impor­tant. So impor­tant that National doesn’t want cannon-fodder fed into the attack.

What Ravi fails to under­stand is that he was cannon-fodder. party folk won’t tell him that but I am far too hon­est. When stand­ing in a safe seat against the then incum­bent Prime Min­is­ter you are only going to to get mowed down.

When a by-election comes along after the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter resigns there is a whole new set of dynam­ics. The per­son­al­ity that held the elec­torate together behind Helen Clark has gone, in a flash it turns out and hasn’t even both­ered with any speechs or oth­er­wise to mark the occai­son. She could bolt fast enough.…making a mock­ery of putting Mt Albert first.….more like putting her­self first.

Ravi needs to get with the pro­gramme and fall in behind like the loyal sol­dier he is. If he plays nice the party will play nice. If he plays dumb he will get mowed down. Sim­ple really.

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Tizard time-bomb ticking under Mt Albert

by Whaleoil March 31, 2009

Tizard time-bomb tick­ing under Mt Albert — Labour’s “Tizard dilemma” is not going to resolve itself, with Judith Tizard hang­ing on to the ticket that will get her back to Par­lia­ment. The cause of the prob­lem is the Mt Albert byelec­tion: if list MP Phil Twyford wins the… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Patrick Gower exposes the upgrad­ing of the Tizard Dilemma to a Time Bomb.

Unfor­tu­nately for Labour Tizard hasn’t really helped the sit­u­a­tion with her com­ments to Patrick.Ms Tizard said Labour would be silly to buy into the “Tizard dilemma” and try and keep her out.

“If there is not a place for a 53-year-old woman who has been in elected posi­tions for 26 of her 31 years, I guess I would want to know what the prob­lem was.”

Ms Tizard said she had not yet been approached to stand aside, nor had she gone to the party to ask if there was a problem.

She said she was enjoy­ing life out­side Par­lia­ment and was aston­ished at the “crazi­ness” of spec­u­la­tion about her pos­si­ble return.

“I am gar­den­ing, I am spend­ing time with my friends and fam­ily. I am read­ing, I am writ­ing. I have just gone and bought a lamp­shade. I have a life.”

Rii­i­i­ight, So The Tiz thinks that the demo­graphic for Bar­ren Old Bid­dies with no work expe­ri­ence is under rep­re­sented. She just can’t stop telling lies though, as if she has any friends, no one believes that, even The Stan­dard is openly mock­ing her.

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Backbenchers

by Whaleoil October 8, 2008

I went to Back­benchers tonight.

They had some bald numpty Green from West Coast, a almost Gin­ger Whinger from Labour, Derek the Fox and Nikki Kaye. If you want to go know the other two names then check out Farrar’s blog because he can be both­ered remem­ber­ing the names of pinko’s whereas I can’t. Ok I could but I don’t want to, call me petu­lant and churlish.

David and I picked up Nikki from the air­port and con­ducted our 5 ques­tion blog­mo­bile quiz on the way to Back­benchers, for some strange rea­son Nikki was run­ning late.

Back­benchers was a hoot with good heck­ling all round. Derek the Fox had a cou­ple of good sug­ges­tions when talk turned to crime. i thought they had merit. The first was when he asked if we should just lock up poor people.…now think about this for a minute.…I think he may just be onto some­thing here. His sec­ond sug­ges­tion was to lockup cor­po­rate crims like CEO’s etc from failed lenders.

Now don’t scoff but Foxy is really onto some­thing there, by lock­ing up poor peo­ple and dodgy lenders there can be a trans­fer of knowl­edge, the learniong oppor­tu­ni­ties would lit­er­ally be boundless.

After the show was actu­ally more fun, I got to chat to Audrey Young, Patrick Gower, Sean Plun­kett from the media and to Derel Fox and a cou­ple of other Maori party reps. I reminded Sean to cut down on the pies lest Cac­tus gets a lit­tle sniffy about his expand­ing girth.

I am look­ing for­ward to get­ting down to Gis­borne for the debate between Parekura the Hutt and Derek the Fox. The Maori Party have promised me a jacket after I asked for one. They are pretty cool actually.

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Clare Curran opens big yap, inserts both feet

by Whaleoil February 3, 2008


The Hive: Cur­ran Comes Out Fighting

Queen Bee at the Hive blogs on how Clare Cur­ran has opened her big yap to have a swipe at Fran O’Sullivan and Nick Smith in todays Her­ald. Like all PR con­sul­tants they just don’t seem to know when to STFU. As the Hive notes she has ensured that Fran will take a per­sonal inter­est in her and will prob­a­bly now do an in-depth on her com­mu­nist back­ground in Australia.


Audrey Young: Staunch Labourite won’t fol­low Key’s sug­ges­tion at elec­tion — 04 Feb 2008 — Pol­i­tics: New Zealand Polit­i­cal News, Analy­sis and Com­ment — NZ Herald

Audrey Young also backs up the Hives analy­sis as well as spec­u­lat­ing that Panty Slut-boy will be a good, well behaved boy and not crap all over Labour’s party. As she notes “there’s only so much humil­i­a­tion a gut can take”.

Unfor­tu­nately for Aunty Aud some folk seem to have an end­less capac­ity for humil­i­a­tion and I sus­pect David Benson-Pope to be one of them.

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Editorial: Real issues sidestepped yet again

by Whaleoil December 21, 2007

Edi­to­r­ial: Real issues side­stepped yet again — A line of thought that is famil­iar and dis­turb­ing runs through the State Ser­vices Com­mis­sion report on the Envi­ron­ment Ministry’s employ­ment of Labour Party activist Clare Cur­ran. Once again, seri­ously defi­cient “processes” have been… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Labour will be rue­ing the day they ever annoyed the NZ Herald.

Their edi­to­r­ial today is scathing of their politi­ciza­tion of the Pub­lic Service.

[quote]A line of thought that is famil­iar and dis­turb­ing runs through the State Ser­vices Com­mis­sion report on the Envi­ron­ment Ministry’s employ­ment of Labour Party activist Clare Cur­ran. Once again, seri­ously defi­cient “processes” have been found and, once again, no one has been iden­ti­fied as a cul­prit. Yet again, a State Ser­vices Com­mis­sion inquiry has indulged in nifty foot­work, this time to explain away what, at face value, appears to be sub­stan­tial evi­dence of inter­fer­ence in the pub­lic ser­vice by a Cab­i­net minister’s office.[/quote] 

This gov­ern­ment has now used enough white­wash that a large Mediter­ranean vil­lage could have been repainted twice over.

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Mallard’s blowtorch on whistle-blower

by Whaleoil November 22, 2007

Mallard’s blow­torch on whistle-blower — Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Trevor Mal­lard has attacked the pub­lic rela­tions woman who accused his pre­de­ces­sor David Parker of politi­cis­ing the min­istry, say­ing she was incom­pe­tent.
Erin Leigh, who worked at the min­istry in 2006, has… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

The Gov­ern­ment bully-boy fresh from assault­ing some­one over the integrity of a woman he slept with has shown his tru colours by attack­ing the whistle­blower as incompetent.

In its des­per­ate attempt to save the skin of yet another med­dling Min­is­ter they have decided to smear and attack the mes­sen­ger. Typ­i­cal Labour fash­ion, instead of debat­ing the pro’s and con’s of the issue they resort to per­sonal den­i­gra­tion and ridicule.

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