Prebble: Wrong, wrong, wrong

Richard Prebble's 'The Letter,' a gossip sheet purporting to give you all the inside stories around the traps, is maintaining instead a proud record of giving you the scoops without letting the truth get in the way of its good stories. The failed guess-work this time is over Prebble's claims about Jim Sutton and his property-buying. Said Prebble:

Former Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton did not decide to resign voluntarily, he was pushed. His crime? Firstly for having the biggest swing against him and secondly for announcing that he had bought a house in Waikanae and was going to stand for the Wellington Labour list next election. Sutton was valuable while he was a rural voice but the party had no need for yet another MP who wants to live just the distance needed to qualify for the Wellington housing allowance.

Trouble is, like many of Prebble's predictions and punditry, it's not true. Sutton has bought property in Wainouiomata, not Waikanae, and for raising horses, not to claim a housing allowance. The Letter has now been amended to make this change. (Compare it to the cached copy here.) But this isn't the first thing Prebble has got wrong in his Letter -- indeed in the same Letter he both misspells and incorrectly predicts Brash's new Chief of Staff. With so many failed predictions, none of his breathless revelations can be relied on. The thing is worthless.

Henry Hazlitt once described the work of John Maynard Keynes as lacking both truth and originality. "What is original... is not true, and what is true is not original." The same might be said about Prebble's rag. The former MP is an embarrassment who can't leave the limelight. Time to take his state pension and bugger off out of it.