Brian Edwards

It is the Christmas season and traditionally in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia pantomime rules for entertainment.

And so we the Labour leadership challenge. John Pagani is having second thoughts about the challenge:

After being initially joyful about the open contest, I’m having my doubts. It’s true that a genuinely open mutual scrutiny, as democratic elections require, is not really possible because of the potential for lasting damage.

Of course his arch-nemesis Brian Edwards has followed Helen Clark’s orders to ditch the hapless Shearer. Remember that Edwards has enjoyed a long and profitable association with anything associated with Helen Clark, he has simply made a rational fiscal decision.

John Pagani is now talking about closing down the debate because he knows from the feedback he is getting that his candidate, Shearer is taking it in the chook every time he appears in public and in these meeting. Cunners is handing him his arse and he knows it.

Pagani is ever the wise political consultant and he knows when something needs to be be shut down and fast.

Quite apart from the fact that the NZ Herald thinks Helen Clark should be a finalist in New Zealander of the Year award there is this little gem buried in teh article:

From her New York base, Clark is never far from her Kiwi roots. She stays in touch using Skype, Facebook, Twitter, news websites, phones, and email.

“There’s not much I don’t hear about from family and friends,” she says.

Take it as read that she has more than a passing interest in the battle to succeed Phil Goff as Labour Party leader. Contender David Cunliffe has acknowledged that he had a discussion with Clark about the job, but she remains tight-lipped.

Asked if she had a pick, she replied: “Not for public consumption.”

No but the clues are there. Spoken with Cunners, orchestrated Brian Edwards flipflop, involvement of the Kabul office…

via the tipline:

Not often I agree with Scott Yorke:

Lefties will say Goff trounced Key, and those on the right will point to the viewers’ text poll and say it shows John Key won.

But who really won the leaders debate?

Tactically I think it was a draw. Neither leader managed to really nail the other. But in the broader scheme of things I suspect Key will be a happier man than Goff. Labour had to win this debate, and had to do something to damage the credibility and record of John Key.  However, Key held his ground.

What really annoyed me were the self-appointed experts opining part-way through the debate on who was winning and who was saying what. Have we become such imbeciles in this country, and has political discourse in this country been so dumbed down, that we need to be told what to think? I prefer to make my own mind up, rather than be spoon-fed an opinion by an “expert” whose analysis is utterly superficial.

Debates like this are all about personalities. We didn’t really learn much about either party or their policies. What we did learn is that Key still has a nice smile, and that his tie looked very smart. We also learned that Goff likes to point. He probably doesn’t want to point quite as much next time. His righteous anger is understandable, but it probably won’t play well with those who love Key.

If I was Phil Goff and Labour I would listen more to John Pagani (he did a post but has deleted it), than to Brian Edwards. Unfortunately Brian Edwards set Goff up for a fall and based on that performance fall he did. Unfortunately for Goff and Labour I don’t think John Pagani is too enamoured with the Goffice.

If Goff fan boys like John Hartevelt felt Goff won by a nose then the general public will think he got slaughtered:

Goff finished stronger and won by a nose. I bet quite a few ppl switched off before the end though. Neither nailed it. #votenz #onenews

October 31, 2011 7:30 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jhartevelt

John Hartevelt

Brian Edwards has a short comment about Adam Feeley in his brickbats post:

SFO Chief Executive Adam Feely, who appears to think that being sheriff allows him to play fast and loose with the very laws the local  townsfolk brought him in to enforce, to whoop and holler when he thinks he’s got his man, and to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Might it just be time to get another sheriff?

Brian Edwards has had an epiphany, he has had his “road to Damascus”, he has converted and his argument is compelling.

Well, I’ve been having a bit of a rethink about this myself and it’s blindingly obvious to me, as it must be to any other reasonable person, that what the PM is saying just has to be right.

It’s just common sense that if an employer has a choice of employing someone on $12.50 an hour and someone else to do the same job for $15 an hour, he’s going to employ the first bloke. And if he can’t afford $12.50 an hour, he’s not going to employ either of them. That’s simple economics. We could call it ‘John’s Law’:The higher the hourly rate, the higher the number of unemployed.

The corollary of John’s Law – let’s call it ‘Bill’s Law’ – must then logically be: The lower the hourly rate, the lower the number of unemployed.

Now, unlike Ms Misa, I can quote several million ‘experts’ to support Bill’s Law. They’re all in highly productive work, none of them are on the bread line, they rarely complain about their lives or working conditions, their economy is knocking the rest of the world for six and almost every New Zealander benefits financially from their labour. They’re the Chinese of course and we could learn a lot from them.

Here are some of the things we could learn:

• If the minimum wage were set at $2 an hour instead of $12.50 an hour, a manufacturer could  take on six (and a quarter) workers instead of just one.
• In one fell swoop unemployment would be erased.
• With his now significantly  increased output the manufacturer  could greatly decrease the cost of his product, thus hugely increasing both his domestic and, more importantly, his export sales.
• At the same time, the $2 minimum wage would put pressure on all wages, increasing the manufacturer’s  margins and therefore his taxable income.
• By way of example, the clothing and shoe-making industries, both driven out of New Zealand because of high wages and an inability to compete in the international market, would be revived.
• Instead of buying clothes and shoes from China, we would be selling our clothes and shoes to the rest of the world, including China.
• And so it would be with everything, from plastic toys to Kiwi-built personal flying machines.

In summary, if the minimum wage were reduced rather than increased, we would become a mini China. Our $17 billion deficit would be gone by lunchtime.  The Government’s coffers would be full.

While it is certainly true that wages and salaries will fall dramatically under Bill’s Law, several compensatory factors must be borne in mind:

• Everyone in New Zealand who wants a job will have a job;
• Huge government surpluses will make it possible for governments to offer substantial across-the-board, flat-rate tax cuts every three years as a sort of Christmas bonus;.
• Blue jeans, most clothing and flat screen 3-D TVs will be cheap as chips;
• Charities, including public hospitals and schools,  can expect to receive much larger donations from the new super-rich;
• The job-market for gardeners, chauffeurs, nannies, maids, butlers, cooks, kitchen hands, cleaners, chimney sweeps and other ‘downstairs’ staff will  hugely increase;
• New Zealand’s 100% pure, clean/green environment, cheap labour and inexpensive retail goods will make it a tourist paradise and a Mecca for foreign investment;
• The trickle-down theory will become the trickle down law.

Ms Misa will of course reject Bill’s (and John’s)  Law. She will say that it will  create even greater divisions between the haves and have-nots in society. Of Labour’s policy of increasing rather than reducing the minimum wage, she writes:

‘There’s no doubt about the good it will do: it will put more money in the hands of the struggling low-paid, and lighten the load on Working for Families.’

To that, in the immortal words of Milton Friedman, I reply, ‘Yeah right!’

With that I welcome Brian Edwards to the dark side. He has written a concise, perfectly logical justification for the lowering of the minimum wage. I don’t think any treatise from the Round Table has ever so successfully explained the position.

Well done Brian.

Now all loyal readers will know that I think Brian Edwards is a pompous toss-pot. However Brian is a blogger and when bloggers are threatened by bully-boy mainstream media outlets, even thoroughly pink ones like The Sunday Star-Times, then the Bloggers Union members, me included must put aside our prejudices and support our members.

David “I’m friends with Len” Kemys, needs a good hard lesson in what  NFWAB means.

On Brian Edwards part he has obviously been watching this blog for tips on how to deal with flea lawyers. You publish their threats and bring everything into the open, cleansing sunlight.

As Cactus Kate notes on flea lawyers:

As for Edwards, tell them to fuck off. Real lawyers don’t send threats by emails. They serve papers.

If the intent of the Slowly Sinking Tabloid was to hopefully bury the story then I refer them and their idiot editor to my post about the Streisand Effect. Just inc ase they missed it here is the idiot’s guide to what happens when you try to shut bloggers down.

David “I’m friends with Len” Kemys, the Slowly Sinking Tabloid and Izard Weston can make all this go away by simply publishing jonathan Marshall’s recordings or notes. It isn’t hard to do, and it will shut everyone up.

Right now though the advantage is certainly with Amanda Hotchin and Brian Edwards.

Meanwhile the advice Never F*ck With A Blogger holds true, and in solidarity with a fellow union member we now stand strong against the bully-boy tactics of the Sunday Star-Times, together with Brian Edwards.

Good grief our country is pathetic. Michael Laws is now in the firing line for suggesting that the Governor-General, Sir Sir Anand Satyanand is a fatty who found and  never left the buffet table. Hell iI’ve said worse about Pork Chop.

Are Indian’s the new poofs? Seeing outrage in the slightest of jokes even if they aren’t racist, as is the case with Michael Laws.

Radio host Michael Laws has come under fire for calling Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand a “large, fat man” who has “never left” the buffet table.

His bosses at RadioLive have also been slammed – for saying they are comfortable with the remarks.

At least one complaint from a high-profile sporting personality has been laid with the Race Relations Commissioner, Joris de Bres.

De Bres and media commentator Brian Edwards said they were appalled by the crass comments, which lacked good taste and decency.

Where was Joris de Bres after Honest Hone ‘s racist rants? Oh that’s right, Honest Hone’s calling European New Zealanders “white motherfuckers” of “puritanical bullshit” for expecting him to follow the rules in an email exchange was “within his rights“.

The remarks were made by Laws on Monday morning, following the media attention around Paul Henry’s much-reported comments that same day.

Laws laid into Satyanand, saying he was an “unusual-shaped man” who reminded him of the impossibly obese Monty Python character Mr Creosote.

He also likened him to a British actor who played the Agatha Christie creation Hercule Poirot on UK television.

“That reminds me of Anand Satyanand, but Anand Satyanand could never move that quickly. He is a very large, fat man,” he said.

“I don’t know why but just on an Indian it seems slightly incongruous.

“I mean, we don’t all expect Indians to be begging on the streets of New Delhi, but it’s like Anand discovered the buffet table at, like, 20 and he’s never really left it.”

Good grief, I said exactly the same thing about Pork Chop. This country has become overly sensitive, but it is only going to get worse, especially in Auckland with the win of Len Brown.

There is something seriously wrong that jokes are not allowed to be told. It is pretty hard to find any jokes that don’t offend someone in the slightest way.

This week has probably been a real tough week for John Banks after TVNZ and Mark Crysell spent three weeks of muck raking work at the behest of Len Brown’s Labour flunkies. Bernard Orsman’s article isn’t much better and does himself a dis-service shopping tawdry tales Labour has been trying to get in the media for 3 weeks. He should ask himself why he is studiously ignoring both Brown and Williams using council resources and the spamming of council staff on the beg for money. John Banks had to face something that no parent wants to face and he dealt with it admirably.

Non-political people have commented to me how well Banksie handled himself in the face of an obvious hit. They say that you just know that Alex Banks got a boot in the arse, one he deserved. Now political people are weighing in and that is why I say that Len Brown’s campaign is over.

John Banks is a polarising individual, admired by some, hated – not too strong a word – by others. For my part, I have not changed my view of the man I attacked on The Ralston Group, the talk-back host I deplored on Radio Pacific or the Mayor of Auckland in his previous incarnation. But either he has changed or I have. I suspect it’s the former. Certainly the person I have got to know in the past fortnight is a very fine man indeed. Or maybe there are two John Banks, two sides to the one man – the father and the politician perhaps. I’d be happy to have the father continue as Mayor.

That people is an endorsement. Not only is it an endorsement it is an endorsement from Brian Edwards. That was the end paragraph. Now read this from the middle of the post.

Ten days ago I was one of five speakers at an Auckland Mayoral Fathers’ Breakfast at Sky City organised by Parents Inc., the organisation founded by Ian Grant. Each of us had seven minutes to give an inspirational address on fatherhood to the 750 men present. The Mayor of Auckland, formally hosting the event, spoke first.

I’ve heard a lot of speeches in my time and few have been memorable. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the seven minutes in which John Banks held that audience in the palm of his hand, enthralled. He did not, as his advisors have suggested, talk about his own traumatic childhood. He talked about the troubled kids he has met in the course of his job; kids on drugs, kids in trouble with the law, kids in borstals and prisons, lost boys and girls. A common theme, especially among the  boys, he observed, was the absence of a father in their lives. These were boys without role models, boys who didn’t know how to be men. Fathers mattered and fathers had a responsibility to teach their kids the difference between right and wrong.

Delivered entirely without notes, the short address was spellbinding, extremely moving, and entirely met the inspirational criteria laid down by the breakfast’s organisers. When he returned to the table, I said to him, ‘If you could talk like that during your campaign, you would certainly be the first Mayor of the Super City.’

When the illuminati of the left feel so compelled to write posts such as this then you realise very quickly that Len Brown’s campaign is over. When Brian Edwards puts a spike in that hard you KNOW Len Brown’s campaign is over.

Photo from Michele Hewitson interview, Photo / Paul Estcourt

Warning vanity post.

Today Michele Hewitson did one of her famous feature articles on me. Michele Hewitson Interview : Cameron Slater

I’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing about her articles and a great deal of angst, but I don’t think people get what Michele is about. Her articles aren’t meant to be deep meaningful, nitty-gritty issues discovery sessions that people think they should be. They are quirky and she sets out to reveal the people behind the mask, so to speak.

I found the the whole process enjoyable, well as enjoyable as it can be suffering hyper-vigilance in a cafe, and exhaustion from a week with an average of 3 hours sleep a night. Michele picked up my utter exhaustion, she described my eyes which give away my depression, my exhaustion and my state of being.

That said Michele can sniff fear and she also has an uncanny ability to disarm you, which is why people usually cop a flogging in her articles. Even Brian Edwards is afraid of her…I’m not and still am not, plus I have had a policy of not hiding anything. I reckon she did a great job with a poor subject.

Meanwhile online I was Question 3 in the online Stuff Daily Trivia Quiz.

The pinko lap-bloggers of Labour at The Standard are upset too, that is always good. I’m wondering when they will realise that being, in their own minds at least, the online anonymous versions of NZPA and Red Radio is boring, and no-one but their own echo chamber is listening. The point I make is that it is them talking about me and not the other way round.

The same goes for creepy little comedians on Red Radio. Hey dickhead, you are talking about me (is it just me is but isn’t this radio show just utter shite), apparently though I am the blogger who shall not be named, the Voldemort of the blogsphere. Even Lianne Dalziel thinks I’m The Blogger Who Shall Not Be Named, as she got all bent out of shape in a slect committee. Now this is hugely funny, because they both prove my point in that keeping a secret, telling everyone that there is a secret just makes people want to know what that secret is. I’ve never heard of Jeremy Elwood….but I just bet he is a mate of Jamie Linehan….which is why he will be upset about my stance on name suppression….and we know then what that makes him.