Saturday 25 July 2015

Doctor's are like CERCO



Did you know that your local Doctor is a small version of SERCO; according to the PM this is the case…therefor the Nursing staff, who assist your local Doctor are the equal to the prison guards at Mt Eden prison, this basically is what the PM states during his rather tense interview with TV 3. Have a look at the interview and decide for yourself if you believe the PM’s spin on SERCO's management of Mt Eden prison. I wonder if SERCO will get the contract to run State Housing or the welfare system…based on their worldwide performance they shouldn’t be allow to run a Chicken farm…first Sky-City now SERCO what’s next?



This cartoon says it all…and the behaviour of both John Key and Bill English at the National Party conference at Sky-City proves the cartoon hits the nail on the head.

The two references below from TV One supports the belief that the Nat’s are in panic mode.


Thursday 16 July 2015

House ownership just a dream without a rich Daddy.





For most New Zealanders home ownership is a dream…because it is becoming less and less attainable in this day and age…even ACT's sole MP David Seymour said “home ownership had become the privilege of the wealthy”.

Seymour said house prices in Auckland, and to a lesser extent other parts of the country, had risen so high, so fast that owning one was increasingly a function of the wealth of a young person's parents. The Act Party is rarely, if ever right about anything these days…but they are correct to say that unless your parents or a rich uncle hand you the cash for a deposit, your chances of home ownership is zilch. 

Home ownership numbers in New Zealand have fallen as low as levels seen in the early 1950s and post-First World War periods. 
Figures released by Statistics New Zealand in its Century of Censuses report showed the percentage of households that owned their own home had dropped to 64.8 per cent by 2013, the lowest rate since 1951 when it was 61.5 per cent.

·        In the United States home ownership was at 63.7 per cent,
·        In Australia, 67 per cent of people owned their own home.
·        In Singapore the home ownership rate was at 90.3.
·        In Sweden in 2013 it was at 69.6 per cent,
·        And in the United Kingdom it was 64.6 per cent.

With our rate of 64.8% so much for our Rock Star economy! As they say Yeah Right.

Data showed this number rose during the 1920s but fell during the Great Depression, hitting an all-time low in 1936 at around 50 per cent, before rising steadily during the 1950s.
It peaked in 1986 and 1991 at 73.5 per cent.

Figures from the 2013 census showed a downward trend in home ownership, with a decline seen across the board from people in their 20s and 70s.
After a strong lift in house prices in the 2000s, prices fell nationally after the global financial crisis hit in 2007.

Rebounding house prices since then, particularly in Auckland, have been making it harder for people to get their own homes. The average asking price on Auckland properties has increased by more than $130,000 in the last year, the June Trade Me Property index showed on Wednesday.

·        Average asking price for property outside of Auckland, increased by just $13,950 to $404,550.
·        The average Auckland house was $834,300.

The proportion of renters has also increased, to 31 per cent of households in 2013 from just over a quarter in 1991.

However, Christchurch property expert Hugh Pavletich said at the time that it used to be quite easy to buy a home and it could be again.
"In 1978 I bought my first house for $24,000 with a mortgage of $20,000 on a single earner income of $8000 a year. The house was three times my income and the mortgage was two and a half ," he said.

Despite a dramatic drop in home ownership from the 1950s, the number of people living in each home has steadily fallen. In 1911, there was an average of 4.7 residents in each home, while in 2013 there was an average of 2.7. 
This figure makes a lot of sense - while our population has quadrupled, the number of dwellings has increased by seven times, from about 238,000 to more than 1.5 million. Almost half of all private dwellings were rented in 1916 (the first time the data was collected), while 31.2 per cent of dwellings were rented in 2013.

Property prices in Auckland have risen at 10 times the rate of anywhere else in the country.
The June Trade Me Property index showed the average asking price on Auckland properties has increased by more than $130,000 in the last year.
The average asking price for property, outside of Auckland, rose by just $13,950 to $404,550.
On top of that, the average Auckland house has an asking price double its equivalent elsewhere in the country and was now $834,300.
Outside of Auckland the price was $412,050.
For the first time in New Zealand's history, home ownership has become the privilege of the wealthy, says ACT leader David Seymour.
Seymour said house prices in Auckland, and to a lesser extent other parts of the country, had risen so high, so fast that owning one was increasingly a function of the wealth of a young person's parents.
"For the first time we have a situation in New Zealand where property ownership is heritable," Seymour said.
He pointed to the way his circle of friends had made it into their own homes.
"I look at most of my friends, lawyers, doctors or engineers. All of them went to Auckland Grammar, or St Cuthberts. All of them have done it with parental help."
With house prices rising up to a reported $1000 a day  "houses in Auckland are earning more than people", he said.

Christchurch and Auckland are attempting to build affordable houses, but it would seem that this task is impossible for private builders.  Although Gerry Brownlee has his own ideas about what an affordable house looks like…but joking aside, the cost of housing both second hand or new is massive…yet the government plans to sell off State House stock, how stupid is that?


With the re-build of Christchurch slowing down because of insurance company failure and the Dairy industry being hit by the continuation of milk returns falling at what is now a rapid rate. This means that two of the fantasy, spin reasons put forward by the government for believing that the Rock-Star economy actually exists. But NZ somehow believes that spending 26 million on a flag change that no one want’s, But the spin has grown obvious and even the fans of Key are starting to doubt that Key actual has any financial skills other than selling off state assets.  




Saturday 4 July 2015

Matthew Hooton...MSM has been.





Matthew Hooton could be called a conspiracy theorist, or he could be called a right-wing PR drone that flies around taking pot-shots at identified targets. His latest efforts are geared toward convincing others that John Key is moving toward the left of centre and that the Labour Party needs to move more towards the right of centre.

Silly Josie Pagani appears to have taken the bait…she was never left anyway. She is a sort of devils apprentice trying to play with the big boys.

But Hooton's targets are further up the food chain in the National Party. Key depends on the underground black Op’s style of dirty political management hence the rapid turnover of his office staff, GCSB bosses and such like. His influence in Police management is also a vital link to his perceive public view of how external affairs should be handled.

While searching for patterns regarding covert or overt behaviour, this item from the Sunday Star Times reveals what right-wingers do when their empire starts to collapse around their ears. Hooton understands only too well that Key is not drifting to the left…Key doesn’t drift anywhere, rather he controls and manipulates his chess pieces to create impressions of feeling relaxed about issues because he already knows the outcomes.

Have a serious read of this award winning bit of journalism and after doing so I believe you will see the destructive neoliberal manipulators for what they actually are: Bullshit artists of the highest order.

Reference: By Adam Dudding [last updated May 29th 2015]

 
  
This article was originally published in the Sunday Star-Times on September 7 2014. It was a winning entry for political feature writing in the Canon Media Awards.

ON AUGUST 13 2014, Nicky Hager lobbed his Dirty Politics grenade into New Zealand's political conversation. Once the smoke had cleared, and everyone had checked themselves (and the book's index) for shrapnel wounds and knives in the back, the nation's politicians, journalists and bloggers started to coalesce into two broad groups.

The bunch to the left was shocked and disgusted and angry. The bunch to the right said things like: "nothing to see here", or "everybody knew all this already" or "Hager's making it up".
And there was one person who you'd have expected to have joined that lot on the right, but who instead stood in the middle of the room, roaring. This was Matthew Hooton – the public relations man, the tribal National voter married to the daughter of the party's former president, the former spin-doctor to National Cabinet minister Lockwood Smith, the political commentator who gets wheeled in by radio shows and magazines and newspapers when they want a vigorous cheerleader for the economic hard-right (look – there's his latest column on this page!).

He's also the guy who spent a weekend curled into a foetal ball after Hager's 2006 book The Hollow Men revealed his cynical boastfulness during his stint as a freelance adviser to National's then-leader Don Brash. Yet while so many on the political right have tried to brush off Hager's revelations about links between the Government and attack blogger Cameron Slater, Hooton has instead spoken in the book's defence.

He has described Key's dismissive response as "the most ill-judged performance of his six years as Prime Minister". He said Collins isn't fit for senior office. He said the Government "deserves to lose" the election. Then in two remarkable radio appearances – on RadioLive last Sunday and National Radio on Monday - Hooton said that he had evidence of his own of something rotten in Key's office.

In 2012, claimed Hooton, when his PR Company was bidding for a contract with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera), the PM's office tried to block the contract. He said a private client had also been warned off him by the PM's office.This tribal National voter had gone right off the reservation. So is Hooton a turncoat? Has he had some sort of ego explosion in placing himself at the heart of the country's biggest story? Has he gone, perhaps, a bit mad?

Not at all, says Hooton. Last week, in the small boardroom of his central Auckland offices, he explained his position.
Yes, he's a National voter, "but I won't speak against my core views in support of the party". Sure, he's economically to the right of the Government, but this isn't strategic warfare designed to push the party right. Yep, Hager is a left- wing activist who uses stolen emails, "but I'm unaware of anyone proving his documentary evidence is false".

Yes, he is airing a personal beef with the PM's office in public. But he says he's done so because they're pertinent. And he's angry.
He's angry that during a press conference on Monday, Key flatly rejected claims about interference in Hooton's Cera contract, then slipped in this little insinuation: "I don't really want to go into what Matthew's going through at the moment."

Hooton believes Key was referring to the fact that two weeks ago Hooton quit drinking. He calls himself an alcoholic; and big boozy lunches have long been part of his life, but as he's got older (he's 42), he's found it was "causing me to behave in ways which were harmful to my business reputation and my family". Apart from anything else, modern IT has made it just too easy to fire off rash emails and texts while under the influence.
A few days after the Hager book came out; he went to his GP, signed up with Community Alcohol and Drugs Services (CADS) and found a psychologist who specialises in these things. He's had a couple of stints off booze in the past, but this is the first time he's quit for good. So far, he loves it.

If Key was trying to marginalise him by suggesting he was "going through" something, his timing is bad, says Hooton. Sober, he's calmer, less combative. He puts it this way:

"One of the mistakes that I think John Key made politically, when he accused me of being a liar and made reference to personal problems about me, is that normally I respond with sledgehammer to an attack.
"In fact, one of my staff sent me a text saying, 'Just because the prime minister is being a c*** is no reason for you to call him a c***.' So I texted the staff member back and said 'in this particular case you don't need to worry'."
The sober, calm Matthew Hooton instead wrote a "carefully worded press statement" in which he said he stood by his statements, was "disappointed" the PM had disparaged him, but still supported the National Party. He then sought advice from lawyers and friends before releasing it. "And that's the end of the matter as far as I'm concerned."
Of course, given what he's just called the prime minister while talking on the record to a journalist, it's not really the end of the matter, but we'll let that pass for now.

A CYNIC might say there's another reason Hooton has been so noisy of late. It might help distract from the fact that Hooton himself is one of the book's targets.
Hooton says the one thing he was ashamed about "when you read it in the cold light of day" was the bit where the blogger Cactus Kate (real name Cathy Odgers) asks for Hager's home address, so she can pass it on to wealthy Chinese clients angered by a study Hager co-authored about tax havens: "Chop-chop for Nicky, " wrote Odgers. Hooton gave her Hager's street name (but not number).

"I don't really expect anyone to believe this, “says Hooton, "but if I had the slightest belief Cathy Odgers was going to get some Hong Kong ninjas over to kill Nicky Hager, I would like to think I would at least have called the police. But I didn't think that."
Even if Hooton is only a minor target in Dirty Politics, though, his associations with the main players still go way back. He first met tobacco lobbyist Carrick Graham when they were both 8 years old and attending Kings Prep School. They've since worked together and as rivals, in PR.

He got to know Kiwiblog's David Farrar in the 1990s when they were both spin-doctors for National ministers. In the mid-2000s, though, the opportunities for politically like- minded people to find each other exploded, with the growing popularity of blogs – online outlets where anyone could rant about whatever they liked.

There were blogs about food and film and pets and sexuality, but for political bloggers, the internet became a quasi-journalistic wild west, where defamation laws could be pushed to the limit, where political insiders could release facts or opinion without being hamstrung by traditional media rules about balance, accuracy and context. There were bloggers on the far left, the far right, and everywhere in-between, and for many blogs the only people reading them were other bloggers.

But in 2008, the last year of Helen Clark's Labour government, a handful of the more popular bloggers on the right found common cause in wanting to see Winston Peters out of the election race. They were also all keen to see Clark's electoral finance bill defeated, and, of course, for National to come to power.

They called themselves the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC), in a mocking nod to Hillary Clinton's use of the phrase during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Occasionally they'd meet in the real world for a drink or a meal, but mainly they talked in emails, on Facebook, in each other's comment section. It was a loose coalition with numerous lesser blogs on the periphery, but the core was well defined, says Hooton.

There was Farrar and Slater, whose Kiwiblog and Whale Oil blogs had the biggest readership. (Slater, son of a former National Party president, was politically well-connected, but he was initially best known for his tendency to break court suppression orders, and his viciously abusive, near-psychotic prose style).

Hooton, meanwhile, was blogging on the now-defunct site NZ Pundit. There was also Odgers, who he describes as a "fantastically crazy Hong Kong lawyer who loves champagne . . . and lives a life of hedonism" who wrote acerbically as "Cactus Kate". Tina Nixon, a Wellington public servant, was "Busted Blonde", and Charles Finny, then head of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce wrote as "Queen Bee" on a blog he called "The Hive".
They sometimes acted in concert, but Hooton sees nothing wrong with that. "We tag-teamed, like political activists do – 'I've heard this; I'm going to to write that; you guys might want to follow it up'.

"It was normal political activism, with the usual extremely foul language, and ironic and sometimes deeply inappropriate comment, in the way people talk when they're in private with friends, or at the pub."

A blogger who was on the periphery of the VRWC says some mainstream journalists happily exploited the unregulated new medium. They would feed information to a blogger because once it had been blogged they could then say it was in the "public domain" and report it themselves.

After the 2008 election, the VWRC slowly disestablished. Winston was out of office. So was Clark. The Electoral Finance Act was repealed. For political ranters, being in power wasn't as much fun as being in opposition.

The Hive shut down. Busted Blonde's posts became more sporadic and less political (and in 2010 Nixon had a falling out with Slater which saw him write numerous bullying posts about her).
On the right, Slater and Farrar's blogs remained dominant, but as Hager's book has revealed so explosively, Slater's behaviour in particular took a dark turn, with allegations of inappropriate links between him and Judith Collins, between him and the PM's office, and of payments apparently made by Carrick Graham to Odgers and Slater to launch attacks through their blogs.

Former Queen Bee Charles Finny says much of Hager's book "was no surprise – everyone knew Whale Oil was mates with Judith Collins", but he was taken aback by the claims around the SIS briefing "and the commercial work Slater was apparently doing for Carrick Graham." In the days of the VRWC, the idea that money would change hands for attacks "didn't enter my head".
Hooton had his suspicions payments were made, "but these were private sector blogs . . . people can do what they like."

Hager's book has undoubtedly disrupted the world of political blogs. The public and the mainstream media seem likely to treat their output with a great deal more caution in future.
It's possible, says Hooton, "that the people of New Zealand may decide they wish to regulate these blogs in same way as papers, or television or radio."

But then again, perhaps not. On Friday, David Farrar told the Sunday Star-Times he knew for a fact "that there were still communications this week between Press Gallery journalists and Whale Oil" about potential political stories.

Whatever the future of the blogs, anbd whatever mistakes they may have made, Hooton says you don't abandon friends. He's been in touch with his old blogging cronies more since the book's launch than ever.

He think Odgers, in particular, can do with a bit of support, given her relative isolation up there in Hong Kong. "One of the joys in my life is that I have a wide range of friends, some of whom are frankly certifiable. I'm not going to distance myself from these people on a social level."

Thursday 2 July 2015

Amanda Bailey Wins her case against NZ Herald



".....we should note that anyone close to the PM is in Danger, just ask the brave young woman Amanda Bailey who had to put up with her hair being pulled by a middle aged multi-millionaire nut case who just happens to be [for now anyway] our much beloved leader"...
Journalist? Rachel Glucina.

The hair pulling episode cover-up by Rachel Glucina has back fired and the NZ Herald has been found guilty of manipulation over the issue of the on-going hair pulling of a young woman in an Auckland café…The hair puller was as is now as we all know was John Key, multi-millionaire and PM and a good friend of Rachel Glucina. In the past the PM has had the full use of his Black Op’s group to attack those who have brought issues to the publics notice ie: Dirty Politics etc. This team [ Jason Ede, Simon Lusk, Mathew Hooton and David Farrar and Cameron Slater] was quickly disbanded when they were publicly revealed by Nicky Hagar’s book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Politics and came under public scrutiny:   

This from the press council:  
Lisa Finlay, Bronwyn Hayward, Leanne Hermosilla, Josh Hetherington, Rob Stowell, Jasmine Taylor, Giovanni Tiso, Daniel Webster and Julia Woodhall have complained that an article published by the New Zealand Herald on April 23, 2015 was in breach of several of the Press Council principles.

All the nine complainants have complained of a breach of Principle 9 (subterfuge) with related breaches of Principles 2 (privacy) and 8 (confidentiality), and most of them have also complained of a breach of Principle 1 (accuracy, fairness and balance). This determination addresses those complaints, although it addresses Principle 1 only in respect of the interaction between the New Zealand Herald and Amanda Bailey and not in respect of the content of the article.

In addition, there are complaints of breaches of principles 4 (comment and fact), 7 (discrimination and diversity), 10 (conflicts of interest) and 11 (photographs and graphics). These complaints are the subject of a separate determination, as are the remaining complaints about a breach of Principle 1.

The Press Council upholds the complaints in general although it finds the complaints about a breach of Principle 8 to be based on a misunderstanding of the effect of that principle and largely based on the evidence that has led the Council to uphold the other complaints.

The Press Council is concerned with promoting media freedom and maintaining the press in accordance with the highest professional standards. In its view, the NZ Herald has fallen sadly short of those standards in this case.

Background
On April 23, 2015 the NZ Herald published, both in print and online, an article about Amanda Bailey and the controversy over her reaction to the Prime Minister, John Key, when he persistently pulled her ponytail at the café where she worked as a waitress.

The article was based on an interview made by conference call the previous day by a NZ Herald columnist, Rachel Glucina, with Ms Bailey and her employers. It included photographs of Ms Bailey and her employers, taken by a NZ Herald photographer shortly after the interview. It followed on from an anonymous posting by Ms Bailey on The Daily Blog, a public blog site operated by Martyn Bradbury.

Ms Glucina was already acquainted with the café owners, Ms Bailey’s employers, and had contacted them earlier the same day to arrange the interview.


• In general, the NZ Herald acted in good faith and in accordance with its obligations under the Press Council principles. There was no intention to appear insensitive to Ms Bailey’s situation. It seems very likely that Ms Bailey’s employers, who were already acquainted with Ms Glucina, knew of her PR skills and were comfortable with the idea that she would help produce a media statement that would help counter any possible damage to the reputation of their business. There seems to have been no clear distinction between the journalistic and the PR aspects of the proposed article.

There was also confusion over the nature of the article Ms Glucina proposed to write. Both Ms Bailey, and her employers, understood that she would prepare a general statement that would be released to all media. Certainly in relaying the content of his conversation with the café owners, Mr Currie acknowledges that they “said they had thought their and the waitress’ words would be issued to all media”.

It seems very likely that Ms Bailey’s employers, who were already acquainted with Ms Glucina, knew of her PR skills and were comfortable with the idea that she would help produce a media statement that would help counter any possible damage to the reputation of their business. There seems to have been no clear distinction between the journalistic and the PR aspects of the proposed article.

There was also confusion over the nature of the article Ms Glucina proposed to write. Both Ms Bailey, and her employers, understood that she would prepare a general statement that would be released to all media. Certainly in relaying the content of his conversation with the café owners, Mr Currie acknowledges that they “said they had thought their and the waitress’ words would be issued to all media”.

Decision:

The Press Council upholds the complaints. It finds there were elements of subterfuge in the NZ Herald’s dealings with Ms Bailey along with a failure to act fairly towards her, but more importantly it notes that it is not exclusively concerned with determining whether there has been a breach of specific principles. It may consider other ethical grounds for complaint, especially in the context of its objective of maintaining the press in accordance with the highest professional standards. In this case, it is of the view that the NZ Herald has generally fallen far short of those standards in its handling of a sensitive issue and its failure to respect the interests of a vulnerable person.

For the sake of completeness, it should be said that the Press Council does not find that there was a sufficient public interest in Ms Bailey’s story to justify the use of subterfuge, or to override any right to privacy.

Press Council members considering the complaint were Sir John Hansen, Liz Brown, Chris Darlow, Jenny Farrell, Sandy Gill, Marie Shroff, Vernon Small, Stephen Stewart and Mark Stevens
John Roughan took no part in the consideration of this complaint.

My Comments:

Well it would appear that the National Party Branch at the NZ Herald has yet again attempted to use its press machine to lessen the impact of the PM’s sad and juvenile behaviour in the eyes of its readers, both print and electronic. But hey what’s new! Earlier they had used the Black Op’s team to blacken their perceived enemies and with friends in the media like the boss of TV3 and Maori TV and dumb-dumbs like Mike Hosking and Paul [what’s-his-name] Henry: But this time, as before they became unstuck because the press council still has on its team some people who can see the light through the darkness of mud and slime created by people like Whale Oil and David Farrar and the Herald gossip the chubby cheeked Rachel Glucina. The question we must ask now is, should we have any faith in anything printed in the once proud NZ Herald? For it would seem, that the editor is a very muddled thinker, and if Rachel Glucina is representative their ever declining journalistic quality. Has the Herald simply become a talk-back radio host these days?

The other point we should note is that anyone close to the PM is in Danger, just ask the brave young woman Amanda Bailey who had to put up with her hair being pulled by a middle aged multi-millionaire nut case who just happens to be [for now anyway] our much beloved leader
More on Subject: 
 
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/07/03/press-council-rule-nz-heralds-standards-of-journalism-a-joke/