Most excruciatingly boring post in blogging history...

...goes to this one from the Homepaddock. Ele Ludmann and her horrid crew have made history with this pointless, aimless, content-free piece of Tory puffery.
Read it and weep. Really though, just don't bother :-)

"Superb work Cam!" - Keeping Stock outed

Tony Stuart, aka "Keeping Stock" has been caught out through mention in Nicky Hager's book, "Dirty Politics" and some of his awful sentiments exposed in this article from the Wanganui Chronicle. The comment featured here was only one of many made by Keeping Stock, provoking repeated responses from me, urging him to think more deeply about his behaviour and his shilling for the likes of the disgraced Slater and other National Party hacks, MPs and leaders. This resulted in my being banned from his blog. Repeatedly. I don't give up easily. I cared for him and believed he was endangering his reputation. And so it transpired. Beneath the article I've posted a comment from the Wanganui Chronicle that I think sums up accurately the situation for Tony Stuart.

Wanganui man outed in Hager's book


The Wanganui businessman behind a political blog has been revealed in Nicky Hager's controversial Dirty Politics book.

The book, which has caused a storm since its release last week, focuses on the exploits of foul-mouthed right-wing blogger Cameron Slater.

And it names Wanganui National Party member Tony Stuart as the man behind the Keeping Stock political blog.

When contacted by the Chronicle yesterday, Mr Stuart confirmed it was true. Keeping Stock is a right-wing blog and Mr Stuart is also frequently on Twitter under the same name.

He was named in the New Zealand Herald's list of tweeters to follow throughout the election.

However since then, Mr Stuart has deactivated his @Inventory2 Twitter account.

Keeping Stock's tagline is "an eclectic mix of some of the finer things in life - politics, sport, music, humour and God", and Mr Stuart has been writing the blog for seven years, as a hobby.


He said he was considering its future in the wake of the Dirty Politics furore. Until Hager's book, the name behind the blog had been anonymous, which Mr Stuart said was for personal reasons.

There was no suggestion of any wrongdoing on Keeping Stock's behalf and Mr Stuart said he didn't engage with politicians to get information for his blog.

Keeping Stock's brief mention in Dirty Politics comes on page 50 after Cameron Slater posted the name and contact details of public servant Simon Pleasants on his Whale Oil blog. Mr Stuart wrote two comments under that post which read "Superb work Cam!" and "I wonder if Mr Pleasants will get a less-than-pleasant invitation to have a wee chat with his boss sometime this morning ... "

The Whale Oil blog accused Mr Pleasants of working on behalf of the Labour Party while a public servant.

Mr Stuart said he would look at the future of the blog in the coming weeks.

"When someone like David Farrar (Kiwiblog) is looking to make some pretty significant changes, that can't be overlooked," he told the Chronicle.

Mr Farrar announced a raft of changes to his blog, following the release of Dirty Politics, including applying to join the Online Media Standards Authority.

Mr Stuart said he would move away from "gotcha politics" to "focus on the achievements of the current National-led Government".

"I think this has probably provided a really good opportunity for all political parties to look at how they disseminate information," he said.

He blogged: "After the election, who knows? We've already hinted that we were considering a sabbatical, given Keeping Stock has just celebrated its seventh birthday."

Speaking about an event he had been to, Mr Stuart wrote: "Both the local MP Chester Borrows and his challenger Hamish McDouall were there, but there were no dirty politics whatsoever; both are decent, gracious men, who want to serve their community. There's a message there, upon which we shall ponder over the next few days."

- WANGANUI CHRONICLE

So our own local blogger thinks an Slater did a great job in 'outing' a public servant who has never been proven of any wrong doing, resulting in him then been subject of hate mail and death threats! Stuart may present himself as a 'nice guy', but to support actions that call for the death of a servant of the state is quite a bizarre position to take! Stuart and his Party condemns violent crime, yet have frozen Police budgets for the third year running and passively endorse the activities of Slater and fellow haters!
The only reason Stuart fronted is because he too was 'outed'!

Homepaddock lunacy

This from Ele Ludemann:


"A farming couple had a request from a student who wanted to look for evidence of a rare insect species on their property.

They were happy to do so until neighbours warned them not to.

They’d allowed a student to do something similar on their farm then had restrictions placed on what they could do as a result of what was found."

It's a sad state of affairs, that you, dear reader will probably recognise immediately, but Ludmann, National Party southern chair and hack, is oblivious to. Endangered insects are discovered, then protected by legislation. Ludmann recommends, obliquely and damagingly,  that if farmers find such insects, they should hide the discovery from authorities, for fear that they will be prevented from converting the habitat the insects occupy into pasture for cows or whatever. Stuff the rare insects, they don't produce sale-able milk or meat, Luudman 'says' through her warning to farmers. Insects! Hurrumph!

It's the little things that give you away. All the talk of farmers being environmentalists is revealed as pish when comments like Ludemann's surface from the effluent that under-lies farms. 

Mojo

Mojo Mathers, Green MP and deaf to boot, traveled to a radio interview to discuss issues faced by a person in her position. She said it was necessary for her to go, as she has to be able to read the lips of the interviewer, something she can't do over the phone. As a result she is being attacked by right wing bloggers for 'wasting tax-payers' money'.
Good grief.


Good grief!!!

Waiting now for Keeping Stock's post attacking Mojo.

Shouldn't be a long wait.

* Andrew Geddis @ Pundit has covered the shameful business here.
He's titled his piece, "Let's all pick on the deaf girl".

Latest letter - nasty tricks from Mr Key's team

Anyone following New Zealand politics will know the National Party is in trouble.

 As the election approaches, its lack of partners is becoming obvious to everyone; Peter Dunne and John Banks have been or are being investigated for serious misbehaviours and it's their two votes that have given National its slim majority in Parliament. 

 With only that odd 'bring back the smack, man didn't walk on the moon' Mr Craig to replace them, National knows that its best chance, its only chance, is to attack the Green Party. 

 Labour, in coalition with the Greens, will win the election comfortably, National knows, unless it can demonize the Green Party, by calling them names every time they ask questions about coal mining, deep-sea oil drilling, genetically-modified foods, climate change; all of those things National wants but New Zealanders are unsure about.

  Calling your ememies 'crazy', 'mad', 'loopy' or 'evil' works quite well, as Mr Key, who does it often, knows. 

 By frightening New Zealanders at every opportunity, the National Party hopes to disguise the fact that its support from other parties is weak. 

 Look out for it, as the year progresses, not only from National MPs, but also from its supporters who comment in the media, even the writers of letters to this newspaper. Attack, demonize, frighten and lable is the strategy. 

 If National can convince you that anyone who questions them is a terrorist, they'll be in with a chance. 

Robert Guyton

Riverton

(Thank you, Southland Times).

A few sheep short in the Homepaddock

Ele's fears realized - Greens under the bed

"The Green Party trades on its association with the environment.

But that’s just a cover for its foundation of radical socialist economic and social policies which are anything but sustainable – economically, environmentally or socially."

Ele Ludemann goes bananas in the Homepaddock. Endless fun from the National Party hackette as she tries again and again to make John Key's over-heated-brain "Devil-Beast" lable stick to the Green Party.

Go Ele! You make fruit-loopy Colin Craig seem rock-solid normal.

Greens are DANGEROUS!

Un-making Hay exposes Right-wing lies.

It's funny, isn't it. Well, it won't be to you, gentle reader, if you're not wedded to the minutiae of politics as some of us are, but this "Hay dumped by Greens", "Green hypocrites" brouhaha that the right-wing bloggers are desperately trying to get traction with across the blogs, typifies the narrowly-focused, fact-free, dishonest way in which the likes of Keeping Stock, Kiwiblog, Homepaddock and the other "I'll sell my grandmother if it keeps Key in power', National Party shills, present their stories to the world.
It is, quite frankly, feeble. Attempting to explain the true situation to any of them on their respective blogs is an exercise in futility and a complete waste of time. Those blogs come complete with commenter-goons, whose self-appointed task it is, to frustrate reasoned debate and demean any commenter who isn't dyed true-blue. My dear friend and dinosaur, Jabba, typifies this breed of Nat with his dull comments and relentless ad hominems but there are worse.  
What's most galling is the willingness of Jabba and his ilk, and the bloggers themselves, to maintain their misleading, dishonest blog titles and claims regardless of information provided by the brave souls from the Left who can be bothered engaging on those blogs. However, David Farrar's Kiwiblog today provided a nice example of how dishonest posting can be exposed by the simple provision of facts.
He, like Ludmann and KS, have whipped themselves into a lather over the removal from the candidate list by the Green executive of David Hay. The Right claim the Greens have destroyed their credibility by doing this, despite their own party's exact-same behaviour in the past. Without going into the details, which reveal that the story told by those blue-bloggers is falsely presented, here's the comment by at Kiwiblog that patiently exposes the technique used by National Party shill-bloggers, and tells the true story. Farrar claims:

So the Greens are now the party where if you declare you want to stand for the leadership, you get banned from candidacy. Sounds like the current co-leaders are very desperate to avoid a vote. I suspect their concern if not that Norman would beat Hay, but that the size of the protest vote for Hay could show how much discontent there is.

Chardonay Guy responds:

David, surely this is basic party discipline at work? Would someone who challenged Key’s leadership be similarly welcome within the National caucus? And look at the civil war that convulsed ACT in the Key administration’s first term over Rodney Hide’s leadership, as well as the New Zealand First schism in 1998. How is this any different?
Sorry, but what is going here seems little different from ACT (2002-2005). In that case, Heather Roy and Rodney Hide were at each others throats and Sir Roger was evidently not a very happy chappy. One cannot have constant internal sniping and disunity within a parliamentary caucus or potential candidacy and expect to be lauded for parliamentary stability. Why criticise the Greens for behaving like a responsible, disciplined political party instead of process-obsessed ineffectual leftist pressure group? Oh.

Dear ol' Toad adds:

So the Greens are now the party where if you declare you want to stand for the leadership, you get banned from candidacy.

The recommendation to refuse Hay’s entry to the candidate pool was made in September. His leadership bid was in response to that, not the other way around as you suggest DPF.

In short, what Hay did in 2011 was attempt to campaign for the electorate vote in Epsom, despite a clearly articulated nationwide party strategy to campaign for only the party vote. This was particularly important in Epsom, where many Greens were holding their noses and voting for National’s Paul Goldsmith in order to try to stop the odious John banks from taking the electorate.


…National’s Board uses it very very rarely, and basically only uses it for people who are “mad” or “bad”.

Which was Roger Payne?

This sort of 'interaction' is typical of this level of political action and can make an ordinary sort of bloke like me feel jaded. However, I'm buoyed by the clarity brought to these skirmishes by the likes of ChardonayGuy and Toad (Armchair Critic and Viv) along with Judge Holden, Edward the Confessor and others, all of whom are regarded as trolls, commies, whatever, on the Tory-blogs, or banned altogether in order to lessen their 'disinfecting' effects on the Right-wing blogs. 

Go the Good Guys!

Ele asks, "Do they know what they're doing?" AC answers, "Yes."

Armchair Critic says:
April 23, 2013 at 2:04 pm

"Yes, I think they do know what they are doing. And while I also think you posed the title of the post as a rhetorical question, and you know they know what they are doing. As it is also inferred from the title of the post that they don’t know what they are doing, I will attempt to express why I believe the inference is wrong.
They are trying to do two things.
One is they are trying to win an election. A simple message like “cheaper electricity” has rhetorical potential to win a lot of votes. It’s also something that responses along the lines of “destroying the electricity market” and “communism by stealth” won’t get much traction against, because an electricity bill is something quite tangible, whereas markets and communism are a lot more abstract.
The other thing they are trying to do is leave money in people’s pockets, or as expressed by others elsewhere, remove the “taxation by stealth” that the dividends from the SOE generators represents. It truly says a lot about the supporters of the assets sales program that they would froth and boil when their opportunity to increase the aforementioned revenue stream and divert it to their own back pockets was so threatened. Nasty venal people."

He's good.

He's very good.

Fisk fisk baby

Ele Luudman @ Homepaddock has posted a sample of Trans Tasman's response to the Pure Advantage 'Green race' report . I find it fascinating to look at what is written and consider the twisting, omissions and strawmen that are thrown up in the space of just a few paragraphs. There's no gain in it at all, but I can't resist having a wee fisk and publishing that here, to save Ele the annoyance (for I annoy her regularly by posting my views on her blog) of being the dissenting voice in the homepaddock.

"Yet another report from a Green lobby group has berated NZ’s environmental performance.

This should perhaps alert the TransTasman to the situation that each of those reports describes, rather than have them go all righteous over this most recent report, I'd have thought. Do they suspect a conspirracy of some sort?

The Pure Advantage group’s “Green Race Report” criticises NZ’s environmental record and argues NZ urgently needs to improve it in order to protect the “clean, green image which benefits the sale of much of what NZ produces and exports.” It follows the recent World WildLife Fund report which was said to be a “wake-up” call to NZ before the Rio+Earth summit on June 20 marking the 20th anniversary of the Rio One summit.

It seems, given the calibre of the Pure Advantage team, consisting as it does  corporate leaders including Sir Stephen Tindall, Rob Morrison and his late brother Lloyd, Jeremy Moon and Geoff Ross, that more rational notice should be taken of what they are saying and less of the knee-jerk, ideological pish the Trans Tasman seems to be delivering here.

Like the earlier report, the latest contains a fair bit of claptrap.

Let's see then, if such claptrap is evident. 

It claims NZ’s per capita carbon emissions are the fifth worst in the OECD, without mentioning most of the emissions come from cows which produce more than a fifth of NZ’s export earnings. 

Hardly 'claptrap'. The claim is true.

It says NZ has a falling share of the energy mix coming from renewable energy, without saying NZ produces 70% of its energy from renewable sources, a much higher level than most other countries

Again, not claptrap, simply a true statement. Perhaps the Transtasm might like to challenge the Pure Advantage team directly and ask for their justifications, but this helium-light exploration is just an embarrassment to them. I suspect they need to try to counter the claims in such a way because they cut close to the bone.

.It also says: “Perhaps worst of all, NZ’s native biodiversity is coming under increasing strain as 77% of NZ’s threatened species look set to decline” – a claim debunked by science authority Bob Brockie, who says the NZ Conservation Dept has worked wonders in protecting our plants and animals."

I'm gobsmacked by this! The state of new Zealand's biodiversity is clearly a dire one, and to say that the claim that it's 'coming under increasing strain' is clearly true, as most likely, is the 77% claim, given  David Winter's response to Ele that casts doubt over Brockie's credibility. The reasoning; that 'the Department of Conservation has worked wonders in protecting our plants and animals', while perhaps true, in no way addresses the charge from Pure Advantage. I despair at the lack of depth to their article and also at Ele's eager adoption of their clumsy spin. There, that's out. I feel better :-)

Ele asks, "Greenwash or hogwash?" and I'm confident in answering that her whole post is hogwash.

National Party philosophy, revealed!

Ele Luudman, friend to all who are Blue, posting on her blog Homepaddock, today confirmed a key piece of National Party policy with this nugget:


"The golden rule still applies – those with the gold make the rules."

It was such a clear expose of Natty belief that I can't really add to what Ele has said, so I'll leave it as it is, trumpeting loud and clear the intentions of Bill, John and the rest of Team Midas.