Cactus just got this phone. It is a Dell Venue Pro…which is a gay title as well, I mean what were they thinking, namin a phone for a gay hooker who works stadiums.
Anyway dear readers, what do you reckon and do we de-friend Cactus for owning a gay phone?
Thank god she decided not to stand for parliament otherwise she would have been a scum list MP, made only worse by driving a gay ute, with a handsfree for the gay phone.
Labour and their supporters are continuing their internecine fighting.
No Right Turn looks at who is to blame for Labour’s poll hole:Â Excuses, excuses
Phil Goff’s excuse for his latest round of poor polling? “People aren’t focused on the issues”. But before Labour hacks engage in another round of “blame the voters”, I think we should ask: whose fault is that?
To point out the obvious, getting people to care about “the issues” so that they are energised and mobilised to vote is a core task of a political party. If people aren’t focused on Labour’s chosen issues, then that tells us that the Labour Party is doing a piss-poor job. Either they’ve chosen their issues badly, or they’re communicating them poorly (and in particular, worse than the government). But either way, it is not the voters who are at fault, but the party. And blaming the voters for the party’s failure just adds to the perception that Labour is arrogant.
As for what they can do about it, I think the answer is pretty clear: Labour needs to own its own shit. Stop making excuses, accept responsibility for failure, and lift their game. And if they don’t, and a bunch of them are out of work come November 27, then they have no-one to blame but themselves.
DimPost likewise is unimpressed: Clown show watch
He notes the leadership battles are now out in the open.
Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news, Shane Jones was on The Nation last weekend implying that David Cunliffe was behind the recent caucus leaks, and today Trevor Mallard has hinted to gallery journalists that Shane Jones was the culprit.
Labour knows they are in trouble, even their creatives are playing not to lose too heavily rather than playing to win. A tipster via the tipline tells me that they overheard a conversation that included Labour’s creative genius that was basically a concession of defeat. The creative was of the opinion that ‘win’ for them was to ‘close the gap’. Rather like Phil Goff’s two fron teeth, this is impossible unless major surgery occurs inside the next 37 days.
Words do not describe this little video from 1937.
If it’s a lie, it’s a lie.  Phil Goff has insisted any talk that he canvassed his front bench about quitting were lies invented by nasty right wing bloggers. He has now moved on from that. Apparently there is an issue over confidentiality.
Only if it’s true is there an issue of ‘confidentiality’.
Phil Goff has faced a fresh barrage of questions over his leadership.
Mr Goff’s vehemently denying he asked his front bench whether he should stand aside for somebody else, given Labour’s continued hammering in the opinion polls.
It’s been suggested one of his front bench is leaking to the media.
“Everybody in caucus knows that there is a rule of confidentiality,” Mr Goff says. “Somebody broke that rule, his name is Chris Carter and he was expelled from caucus immediately.”
Cunllifer’s comments are interesting too:
Labour’s finance spokesman David Cunliffe says that would be surprising and insists Mr Goff will lead Labour into the election.
“Labour is a united caucus, we’ve got a great team, we’ve got great policy and we’ve got an election to win.”
Ok so according to Cunliffe they have a united caucus, a great team and great policy….I note he didn’t mention anything about the leader.
I don’t think if I were Phil I’d be describing my leadership as a dead horse…
Labour leader Phil Goff says anyone who suggests he’s facing a leadership challenge is flogging a dead horse.
iPredict really needs to start running the sweep on how soon after the election the by-election will be..
“If I’m Prime Minister I don’t think I’ll be standing down.”
What if you’re not, Phil?
Earlier in the year I blogged about how National were setting themselves up for a hiding for having so few women in caucus, and how the left will use this to beat them come election time. Currently there are 16 out of 58 women in caucus, and this isnt going to get any better unless they take some pragmatic steps come list ranking.
On the 22nd of June I posted about this, and the logic hasn’t changed at all.
National lose Sandra Goudie from a safe blue seat, replaced by Scott Simpson. Maggie Barry comes in to replace Wayne Mapp to keep the 16 women as long as the other list MPs get a high enough ranking to continue.
On the 23rd of June I posted about stopping the blokefest and profiled the new candidates. I’ll update this to say Claudette Hauiti is brave, honest and I was wrong about her connections to Labour as I wrote here. Claudette may not be the most natural politician but she is strong enough to stand up for her convictions.
National’s underlying misogyny is outlined here. All this means National is at risk of being attacked for being a sexist party after list ranking, and that despite the campaign spin this what the media and the left latch on to.
The National Party board gave itself the right to add another five people to the list, so they could appoint ten list only candidates, with only Steven Joyce returning as list only. This may offer a way to beef up the number of women in caucus but this depends on National having done a lot of hard work over the past few years recruiting candidates. Maybe there will be some surprises, but hard work and National don’t really seem to go together when it comes to recruiting candidates.
I abhor affirmative action, but operate in the real world where political parties get attacked for all sorts of things. Too many white middle class males leave National open to attack. National need to be pragmatic and get more women in caucus.
I’ll blog more on this subject in the coming days.
Apparently the reason Labour is so far behind in the polls isn’t his inept leadership or inept strategy it is because:
“People aren’t’ focused on the issues at the moment and we need to focus on the electorate on those issues once the world cup is behind us and the election campaign is underway.”
You have to wonder why they launched their “step change” CGT policy so early then?
The supreme delusion of Phil Goff is he thinks that people aren’t focussed on the same issues as Labour is and that is bad. Perhaps Labour might like to focus on the issues the voters think are important instead of the ones Labour thinks we should be focussing on.
For those who missed it at the weekend.
On TVNZ Breakfast yesterday Corin Dann talked to John Key about National Standards and said this:
Corin:Â Â Â But Trevor Mallard in parliament last week I think it was, or I’m not sure exactly when it was, said that you know a lot of boards are still writing letters to the Minister, 48 boards sent letters expressing concerns.
Yes, correct Corin you aren’t exactly sure of anything. You are referring to something from a year ago.
Now let’s be kind to Corin and blame the researcher. But does he really not know that Mallard is no longer Labour Education spokesperson? We’ve had Hughes, Shearer and Moroney since then.
Cut to this morning. Corin is up against Goff.
First, Goff admits the old system wasn’t working.
PHIL GOFF:Â Yeah, look, look, parents do want to know how well their children are achieving and I don’t think schools always did that as well as they could have but the model that the Government has put up is one that is essentially political but the educational specialists, the principals, the people who are running the school, think is a waste of time and a waste of their effort and money and that makes this a failure. The Government has utterly failed to persuade the educationalists.
So one in five kids are failing in school – Goff admits the old system wasn’t working. But THIS form of National Standards isn’t the answer. The “educationalists” – who think they run this sector – haven’t approved because it means they will be found out.
CORIN DANN:Â Â Â Â Â So would Labour review it? What would you do?
PHIL GOFF:Â Oh, yeah, look, I think national standards in that form would go. We’ve always had national standards.
So we need standards, but not these standards. And here is where Goff has f#cked up yet again.
There have never been National Standards in our schools. Labour were quite content to keep letting one in five kids fail.
The reason being, Labour relies on the militant teachers’ unions for support. They can’t promise or do anything that would upset them. It’s all about the unions – nothing to do with failing kids.
Labour’s only education policy is to let teachers weave their magic.
