Yesterday David Farrar picked up something interesting from a comment by Mike Smith on The Standard Lynn Prentice’s hate speech blog:
Mike Smith blogs at The Standard:
I thought back to when we started the Standard. I was in the room too; our aim was to set up a labour movement blog and offer a counter to Kiwiblog’s pro-National line; not to join Farrar in making the prospect of Labour government the principal target for attack.
A fascinating statement, somewhat at odds with the traditional line that The Standard had nothing to do with Labour, and is just a bunch of individuals. Mike was of course the Labour Party General Secretary at the time, so his revelation that he was part of the group which established The Standard is significant. I blogged some time ago that it was an initiative started by Helen Clark’s office, and this confirms it.
Mike Smith was the General Secretary of the Labour party from 2001 until September 2009. He was also the person who told the Electoral Commission and the Auditor-General that they would account for the pledge card spending and then didn’t.
He also has said this:
I’m also not starry-eyed. I sat in Labour’s caucus as a non-voting member for eight years, and from time to time I had my say. As for policy, this year was the year of the manifesto – its here.http://www.labour.org.nz/about-us Next year will be where the detail gets done. Plenty of work for all.
It is perhaps pertinent for some history. I blogged about the Labour party and their close association with The Standard Lynn Prentice’s hate speech blog at the time. Essentially, like now, they were caught bragging and Labour and Lprent went into full obfuscation mode.
But it all started with this little claim from all_your_base:
Happy New Year
Cyber-Santa came a little late to The Standard this year but we’re certainly not complaining – evidently we’ve got a New Year’s present instead.
He and the techno-elves have moved us to a brand spanking new server cluster that should give us plenty of breathing room and make those pesky traffic congestion problems we were having a thing of the past.
Seriously though, it wasn’t really Santa. Just like James Bond apparently we have our very own M and it’s him we have to thank instead.
Mike Williams even had to explain it away on TVNZ.
Ever since then, whenever anyone mentioned this they were instantly banned and abused by lprent, the genius level master coder who thinks in binary.
Now Mike Smith has told us that there was definitely a plan to try and counter Kiwiblog…he was at the highest levels of Labour…and now he is, reportedly working in the leader’s office as well as blogging on The Standard Lynn Prentice’s hate speech blog. The Labour party and The Standard Lynn Prentice’s hate speech blog are still very much living under the same roof, although having some teenager style temper issues.
However there is a schism that has developed as the years have progressed. The baby that they illegitimately begat has turned on the parents. We know that there was still some sort of conduit between Labour and The Standard Lynn Prentice’s hate speech blog because recently data has been shared/taken/used from both Red ALert and The Standard and compared in order to identify the ring leaders of the insurrection. Clare Curran is the one most blamed for this.
Of course they will still use weasel words like it is a blog of the “broad left” and the “labour movement, with a small l” but I think we all know that there is …or at least there was a cosy little arrangement for them to be paid bloggers to counteract David Farrar.
They clearly didn’t count on me coming along and spanking their asses though…this poor little blogger with mental health issues, who is in the words of lprent, technically inept…and yet caning them month on month.
The funny thing is it take god knows how many authors and fulltime staffers to try to counteract David and myself and still they come third.
