Georgina Beyer

↬ Lindsay Mitchell

Lindsay notices the stark contrast between two ex-MPs:

 Rodney:

I thought i’d be unemployed about now. Happily it’s not turned out that way. I have spent the week up to my eyeballs in mud, knocking over a concrete wall. Who’d have guessed?…..When I was a politician I was supposed to pretend sympathy for people without a job. The truth is I never had much. I always figured there’s work to be done for anyone prepared to get stuck in. I now know that’s true. I got a job pushing a wheelbarrow and swinging a hammer. Why can’t the so-called unemployed? We all know why. They’re too picky. The jobs don’t suit. It’s a bit cold. It’s a bit wet. It’s a bit hard.

Georgina:

Former Labour MP Georgina Beyer says she is broke and living off the unemployment benefit in a one-bedroom granny flat…. Ms Beyer admits she has been told to “lower her sights”, but says some jobs are off the agenda. “I do draw the line at being a crew member at McDonald’s. I’m a little bit past that sort of thing.”

Remind me which one belonged to Labour – the party for the workers?

In the DomPost today there is a compelling article that explains why Labour MPs don’t generally quit until they have a nice comfy state funded job to go to. Simply put they are inept, useless and unemployable outside of the state sector.

Georgina Beyer has her annual ‘woe is me‘ whinge:

Former Labour MP Georgina Beyer says she is broke and living off the unemployment benefit in a one-bedroom granny flat.

Ms Beyer, 54, now lives in Johnsonville with no money and no job, having sold her house and everything she owned in an attempt to stay financially afloat.

“I’m just the great unwashed now,” she said, adding that Work and Income seemed geared toward helping young people. It devoted little attention to older age groups, she suggested.

It is a stunning fall by a politician who made history when, in 1995, she became the world’s first openly transsexual mayor after winning the Carterton mayoralty.

She served as mayor till 1999, after which she represented the Labour Party in Parliament, first as MP for Wairarapa and then, from 2005, as a list MP.

She said she had sent “God knows how many job applications”, but has had no luck.

“I’m thinking I’ve got all of this skill and experience … I must be able to fit in somewhere.”

No you don’t darling, you are a waste of space and the market has spoken about your worth. Other Labour MPs will be reading this article hoping and praying that David Shearer’s rejuvenation plans don;t feature them.

Georgina Beyer is again crying a river of tears because s/he is unemployed.

Georgina Beyer says she is ‘left with nothing’ after death of campaign funder

An aborted mayoral bid has cost Georgina Beyer her job and savings, and with no planned work she is heading for the dole queue.

The world’s first transsexual MP and former mayor of Carterton had planned a political comeback after keeping a low profile for three years.

After stopping work in June as a salesperson at Michael Hill Jeweller, she was struggling to pay her rent and bills and could not raise the $10,000 she needed to campaign in the mayoral race for Masterton.

“That’s left me with no income and having expended all my reserves for living expenses, I’m left with nothing,” she told the Wairarapa Times-Age.

“I have a couple of weeks left to pay the rent. I’m really, really struggling.”

Oh HTFU. This is the third job she has quit. It seems life out of the trough isn’t all its cracked up to be.

To quote her former boss. Diddums.

“It’s an awful feeling that the only thing you’re skilled at doing is politics and other than that arena, it’s not really required anywhere else.”

And she was tits at that too.

Guido Fawkes has outed the nasty smear machine in the UK and brought down a top Downing Street advisor and Michael Bassett has an article about the links between UK Labour and NZ Labour and the existance of a similar smear machine here in New Zealand.

Those with memories might recall the parade of dirty tricks used by the beleaguered Labour Party prior to the last election to smear their opponents. First there was the hacking into Don Brash’s computer and the stealing of a selection of emails that found their way to the egregious Nicky Hager. He spun a tissue of fabrications worthy of the Holocaust denier, David Irving. Labour’s leaders had a very good idea about who was the culprit, but they sat back and smiled while calumny was heaped on the opposition leader, and Hager made money from the book he published based on stolen goods. For myself, I have always believed that someone inside the Beehive was responsible for stealing those emails in the first place. The Police’s investigation was scandalously conducted and found nothing.

What is disgusting about the Police investigation into the Brash email theft is the total disregard of Police HQ for the rule of law with regard to OIA requests. Don Brash is still waiting for his file.

Then there was the establishment of a blog called The Standard. The Labour Party ran a weekly newspaper from 1934 to 1959 that published political material. It was subject to the normal journalistic standards of the time. But the new blog version made no pretence at following even the reduced journalistic standards of modern times. Registered to an address in Helen Clark’s electorate, and operating out of the Beehive under ministerial supervision, it gave an airing to innuendo and false stories that ministers hoped might get picked up by the mainstream media. They often did. Indeed, several gullible reporters happily took their leads from the Beehive’s dirty tricks brigade. I saw an email sent by Ruth Dyson that had clearly been prepared by her apparatchiks. It denounced me, and urged her mailing list to protest to a newspaper that was running my columns. I’m told that the apparatchiks watched the news, made it their business to pick up material, true or false, and fed lines to people like Brian Rudman of the Herald. The same dirty tricksters fabricated a story about John Key that had Mike Williams rushing to Melbourne to check records, only to return empty handed, and red-faced, just before the election.

Yes the H-fee smear, led by “Batman” and Clinton Smith at The Standard attempted to smear John Key. When you look back across The Standard and look at the endless posts about shares, share parcels etc and then look at the parliamentary questions for the same time you can clearly see the colusion. The H-Fee smear backfired ultimately on Labour and on The Standard. Also don’t forget the orchestration with TV3 over the secret recordings, yet another link to Labour and the Standard.

Whilst we on the right are largely self employed the leftist lap-bloggers are by and large publicly funded.

The significance of all this is that New Zealand’s Labour dirty tricksters were all on the public payroll. They operated mostly from the Prime Minister’s Office where Helen Clark appeared to operate a kind of training school for younger versions of herself: people with degrees and absolutely no experience of life. Graduates of student politics, they regarded possession of the reins of power as some form of divine right. Mostly in their 20s, they were designated “advisers to the Prime Minister”. Since they had little general knowledge, and consequently nothing to advise with, they were paid good money, and put to work on dirty tricks. Several are now on Labour’s backbenches, where they are still being supported by the taxpayer. The Standard still exists, but it has been hollowed out by the end of the Beehive’s funding. It would be interesting to know whether, in its current withered state, it is being funded from Phil Goff’s office.

The full information of how The Standard operated is yet to emerge but slowly but surely the leaks are flowing, eating awway at the facade of their indepdence.

Dr Michael Bassett is a very well thought out writer, but concise he is not. Sometimes even he can be a wind-bag. This week however he delivered a speech at the Probus Club that I wish I had heard after reading it online.

It outlines, for him, what the key issues are for Election08. It is superb and not at all succinct as he explores change, labourism, the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, waste, economic growth, me-tooism, taxation, employment law, middle class welfare, mushies, welfare, DPB and MMP.

Yes there is a lot to the speech but it is beautiful. I particularly liked this part;

This current government is at its most vulnerable when its social policies are examined. The leading lights in it are feminists trapped on a remote beach intellectually clutching their 1970s agendas. Many of their goals are laudable. Helping people in need; giving equal rights to women etc. But some of the policies used to reach those goals are destructive for the very women who are meant to be being assisted. The present cabinet is mired in agendas that are now outdated everywhere in the world. 25 years ago a friend of mine, a fellow historian, the late Jim Holt, analysed many people on what was Labour’s left at the time. He called them ‘mushies’:

“A typical mushy is of middle class origin who acquired an interest in left wing or liberal causes while studying history or politics or sociology at university. He or she (they are often shes) was drawn to the Labour Party because of its stand on issues like Vietnam or the Springbok tour, or because he wished to use the party to push such issues. Mushies are generally warm to environmentalism, feminism, ban the bomb causes, and any issue that has a high moral content and a slogan that can conveniently be placed on a lapel button. They are also concerned about underdogs and hostile to establishment forces in a general way, though they live rather well themselves and collect fine paintings and wines along with values’. Their mushiness lies in their approach to economic issues’. They are almost invariably protected personally from the sorts of life situations that teach people about economic realities. Usually they work in the public sector and have little fear of either unemployment or of a fall in real income. Although well educated, they know nothing about economics and indeed have studiously avoided studying it.”

Holt had Helen Clark in mind. Back in 1981 when he wrote that he dubbed her the ‘princess of the mushies’. Nothing has changed much, has it. She, like them, has never known a thing about economic realities. Neither have her ministers. If there’s a social problem then they’ll establish an agency to deal with it. The thought that there might be a wrong set of economic incentives at work that is creating the problem that their agencies have to deal to, doesn’t cross their minds.

His last point about MMP is wonderful;

On one point, however, I remain optimistic. If the government does change, and we get the promised referendum on MMP, it is possible that a system that constrains National from saying what it knows to be right could be thrown out. Proportional representation has lowered the quality of parliamentarians wherever it is tried, and it breeds corruption as we have seen with Winston and his big backers, especially within the racing industry, who have used him to extract big sums from us, the taxpayers. A referendum might see MMP thrown to the wolves? The prospect of being able to get rid of MMP could in the end be the greatest cause for celebration on election night.

I have been watching with mounting concern the blatent and naked aggression of Russia towards it’s neighbour and sovreign nation Georgia.

Make no mistake Russia is gong for a regime change, a land grab and trying to nobble NATO at the same time.

Sen. John McCain has written an article for the Wall Street Journal and he echoes all of my thoughts.

For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call. After clashes in the Georgian region of South Ossetia, Russia invaded its neighbor, launching attacks that threaten its very existence. Some Americans may wonder why events in this part of the world are any concern of ours. After all, Georgia is a small, remote and obscure place. But history is often made in remote, obscure places.

Exactly. He then explains why he is suspicious of the Russian motives.

Two years ago, I traveled to South Ossetia. As soon as we arrived at its self-proclaimed capital — now occupied by Russian troops — I saw an enormous billboard that read, “Vladimir Putin, Our President.” This was on sovereign Georgian territory.

Russian claims of humanitarian motives were further belied by a bombing campaign that encompassed the whole of Georgia, destroying military bases, apartment buildings and other infrastructure, and leaving innocent civilians wounded and killed. As the Russian Black Sea Fleet began concentrating off of the Georgian coast and Russian troops advanced on one city after another, there could be no doubt about the nature of their aggression.

Despite a French-brokered cease-fire — which worryingly does not refer to Georgia’s territorial integrity — Russian attacks have continued. There are credible reports of civilian killings and even ethnic cleansing as Russian troops move deeper into Georgian territory.

Essentially Russia is annexing Georgia. Saddam Hussein did this in Kuwait and we went to war. This situation is almost identical. People in this part of the world live hard and Russian aggression makes that living even harder.

Michael Bassett has posted his latest article online and it is a real doozy.

He basically fingers Labour and Scoop as the secret tapers and ticks off Duncan Garner as a patsy to them.

Duncan Garner of TV3 has a sleuth who infiltrated the National Party’s conference with a recording device in hand. With the morals of an elderly uninvited funeral goer he/she helped themselves to the wine and savories while snuggling alongside private conversations at a private function, recording without permission some comments and probably splicing them to “sex up” the story. They were then transmitted to Garner for broadcasting to the nation. This time it’s the message we are invited to get exercised about, not the messenger. TV3 hasn’t revealed their snoopers’ identities. They must protect their sources, they’ll tell you. Do you sniff a rat in all this? Are the journalists who chased the authors of the 2005 pamphlets the same people who are now covering the tracks of the eavesdroppers in 2008? Is the intended beneficiary of this double standard the Labour Party? You’d better believe it. Duncan Garner is acting like he’s on Labour’s payroll.

Ouch! Duncan is going to end up with egg on his face over this as the perpetrator is close to being identified, in fact the name of the secret taper and his photo will soon be all over the news along. Some politicians, and not National ones will be the ones to go down for this.

This may well be New Zealands very own Watergate.

Dyson triggers attack on Bassett – The Press – Get the latest local, national and world news from Christchurch’s daily newspaper

Ruth Dyson is heading up Labours secret attack team. She has been outed by the Christchurch Press for running an email network urging Labour supporters to write to newspapers criticising Michael Bassett for attacking Prime Minister Helen Clark. A chilling prelude to the new world we can expect under the Electoral Finance Bill.

In the email from Dyson to Labour supporters, dated September 26 and headed “Your assistance needed”, that was obtained by The Press as part of an inquiry into the way politicians attempt to influence the media by getting party faithful to run letter-writing campaigns and phone talkback radio. She said;
[quote]“Did you read the outrageous attack on Helen made by Michael Bassett in the Press yesterday? This deserves some responses as letters to the editor. Please take the time to write – I would appreciate you taking the time to do this,”[/quote]

Michael Bassett’s response shows an understanding of the group of women that he used to be a minister with.
[quote]….said the email showed the lengths Labour would go to silence its critics.

“Ruth Dyson has always been famous for keeping a very tight list of what you could call `true believers’,” he said.

“In effect, it’s to protect Helen, to advance the Labour cause and to spot any particular problem that crops up in the media and get people to respond to these.

“The praetorian guard that surrounds Helen each has its function to perform, and clearly Ruth Dyson’s function is to activate the tree selectively, depending on whether it is a local issue or a national issue.” [/quote]

Michael also notes the foolishness of Dyson, in that the golden rule of politics is “don’t write anything down and send it if you don’t want it on the front page of the paper,”. Her job is as a minister not to run interference for Dear Leader.

We seem to have developed a cult of personality here in New Zealand, it is time to put an end to it.

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Michael Bassett doesn't hold back in this mornings article in the Herald.

He comments on the three mayors secret cabal and their plan to create one city by raiding the piggybank and he also comments on Labours grubby antics.

[quote]Last Thursday's gathering of Auckland mayors and Prime Minister Helen Clark was no more than a gathering of political robbers in search of a diversion.

Having been caught with their hands too deep in the ratepayers' pockets, and about to face bills for the Rugby World Cup, the mayors wanted to divert attention by raiding Auckland Regional Council assets.

The Labour Party has been caught red-handed tickling the taxpayers' till for election purposes and wants headlines that don't say "Field" or "$446,000".

Government, too, faces extra bills because of the World Cup. In a fit of pre-election hype, Helen Clark flew around the world to help secure the event, but now seems reluctant to pay to redevelop Eden Park.

Facing a hiatus in the growth of central Government's revenue, mainly because of bad economic decisions, Labour wants someone else to pay for the World Cup.[/quote]

Indeed Michael, indeed.

Michael Bassett joins the growing chorus of commentators who claim that Labour's time is up.

He leaves no doubt as to who is to blame for the woeful state of our roading systems.

[quote]Political inertia and ideological confusion explain why, seven years after Labour promised to introduce toll roads, none is yet functional.[/quote]

And his word of warning over electricity would be best heeded if Labour are to continue to ruin rule over us. 

[quote]If the current unsatisfactory reticulation both into and around Auckland isn't fixed, inhabitants could go ape next election. And our winter has barely started.[/quote]