Wednesday, 9 July 2008

Their Standard

It's instructive that most of NZ's top ranking political blogs are run by people who are self-employed. Of the top ten political blogs as measured by Tumeke, Kiwiblog, Public Address, Whale Oil, Not PC, The Hive, Poneke and No Minister are all largely run by people like myself who are self-employed. No Right Turn? Who would know.

Which leaves just two certain exceptions: the Greens' Frog Blog, which is run by Green MPs and paid parliamentary staffers (and recently touting their high ranking 'high flyers'), and the group blog The Standard, of which two of the bloggers are Beehive communications employees, a third is the Labour Party Head Office Communications Manager, and a fourth and maybe a fifth are employed by the Engineering, Printing & Manufacturers' Union (EPMU).

The Greens are at least up front with their rort. Not so the Labour Party and Their Standard. David Farrar and Whale Oil have the story.

Remember this is the same Labour Party that purportedly introduced the Electoral Finance Act to protect "transparency" in politics. Yeah, right.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

NRT does not do anything.

he lives off his wife (now) but has happily been a benefit bludger and a permanent student at various points.

in fact he seems to view working with some of distaste. i was a party he happened to be at and he was waxing lyrical about a job he had looked at, but had turned down becuase he decided he did not want to be the kind of person who did 'that' (it was some sort of IT job, so i guess 'that' was contribute to society).

Thankfully most people know what hes like, and refuse to get into discussions with him on politics so he was quiet(ish) at the party, though i was under strict orders to play nice so could not bait him all night.

summary: hes a tosspot waste of space :)

Anonymous said...

Isn't is funny how people who fail to get off their arses and get a productive job always have so much to say about running other people's lives. They have opinions (mostly bullshit) about everything.

LGM

Anonymous said...

The Labour Party doesn't run The Standard - I do.

No I'm not currently self-employed although I usually am. My last job was virtual for a company that I helped set up and I worked from home.

Some bloody builders fixing a leaky building caused by National's slack 90's building policies drove me off to get a 9-5 job.

The writers of blog posts on the site are anonymous for a reason - see our About. They are even largely anonymous from me, and I'm not going to bother confirming or denying for the ones I do know. But Steve isn't anaonymous and he writes a hell of a lot of posts. I'm not anonymous and I write a few - but I moderate out dickheads quite a lot.

Your basic problem is that you believe Whale when he is one of the most pathetically incompetent tossers that I've seen for a while. Technically he is incompetent, but idiots like yourself want to believe the rubbish he tosses around. Says a lot about your ability to judge people really...

Lynn

Peter Cresswell said...

Thanks for responding, Lynn.

Sure, the evidence proffered by Whale Oil and David Farrar is fragmentary, but compelling. You offer nothing but a bald statement, which answers nothing.

Do you agree that you own the Labour.Co.NZ domain?

Can you explain how the same software is used by the named Labour and EPMU staffers and yourselves, if those staffers are not in fact yourselves?

Do you agree that paid political staffers should be writing blog posts, however lame? Do you think this is a good example of 'transparency' you promoted with the EFA?

Can you let us know the amounts paid by the Labour Party and EPMU for maintaining the blog?

And I wonder, since The Standard endorses openness and transparency in electioneering -- and The Standard is nothing if not an electioneering site -- if you could confirm the identities of Neale Jones, (Communications Advisor of the EPMU); Rob Egan, (communications Advisor of the EPMU); Chris Elder, (Communications staffer ninth floor); Andrew Kirton (communications staffer to Winnie Laban); and Anthony Rhodes (a staffer in Judith Tizard’s office)
as the primary contributors.

And confirm that R0b is in fact Rob Salmond, who started the Standard ball rolling while working in Helen Clark's office?

And since you say that 'Steve Peirson' isn't anonymous, could you confirm that 'Steve' is not in fact the pen name of one Clinton Smith, who just 'happened' to be in Wellington's pro-EFA protest organised by Young Labour?

My taking Whale's evidence at face value may well say a lot about me, but if you can answer some of these questions more light may emerge, eh?