Radio New Zealand

The pinkos are whining about being hard up at Radio NZ.

Radio New Zealand’s financial strategy rests on cake stalls and selling a couple of grand pianos, MPs have been told.

The public broadcaster’s chairman, Richard Griffin, told Parliament’s commerce select committee yesterday that it could only survive a government funding freeze for a further two years.

The board was now considering asking listeners to help fund its Concert station. “We’re looking at the real possibility of setting up a trust … in an attempt to actually have people reach into their pockets on the basis of their belief in public broadcasting.”

The board was unsure if a trust could elicit much extra money. “But something has to be done … We can’t live forever on the [current] funding.”

Here’s a thought…Radio NZ has the largest audience, they are essentially moochers because the station carries no ads. How about they start carrying some advertising, in small amounts, say around news bulletins to make up the shortfall.

People might buy sausages of the local scout group but they sure as hell won’t for Red Radio. Every other radio station has to run ads to survive, time for Red Radio  to join the real world.

Ad free National radio is definitely a “nice to have”

Len Brown ran around Auckland touting spending $5 billion for his train-set and now we can see the genius of Rodney Hide’s reforms when Bill English spikes Len’s pipe dreams. Now his Night-mayor has begun, there is no money for his big spending promises.

Speaking on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon programme, he told Kathryn Ryan he could not rule them out but had not seen “any propositions anything like clear enough to be able to cost them.”

Asked if that meant no government money for Len Brown’s promised three rail projects, Bill English replied:

“We are not in a position to be able to rule anything in or out just because the propositions are still pretty airy fairy. I mean there’s a few people in Auckland who want extensive rail throughout the city. Rail, at our experience as owners of KiwiRail, is horrendously expensive, there is a very little return. Unless you have millions of people stacked up in high rise apartments such as they have in Hong Kong or Singapore, then its almost certainly wont be economic. So Auckland has to think through very carefully where to put their dollar. Then after that, I presume they will come and talk to government.”

He said the government spent around 5b on infrastructure around Auckland – $3b on roads about $1.5b on rail.

“So that’s spreading our investment across both private and public transport, though many of those projects were 20 or 30 years in the making, some of them just recent. So the idea was to finish the highway network, to get the current configuration of rail working well. Any further development from there will have to involve willingness on the part of Auckland users and ratepayers to pay for it.”

Len Brown knew all along he wouldn’t be able to spend this money. He trotted around essentially fibbing to the people of Auckland about his plans for a rail network. he can’t even touch rates until 2012 under the set-up laws so he must have known that he couldn’t pay for them anyway.

Bill English hasn’t actually spiked Len’s plans as Len has known all along that there is no money for this, that just makes Len Brown a dirty little liar. But we knew this anyway when he refused to tell the truth over a mere $810 dinner at Volare. Now will he tell the truth over his more than $5 billion of rail promises and fess up to not being able to deliver them ever, in his short tenure as Mayor of Auckland City. Even if he is Mayor for two terms the rates rises he would need to fund his mad rail plans would see the end of him and still no rail. He knows it, we know it, when will Len fess up.

For spilling the beans on Len Brown’s lies, Bill English (and this really bites – gritted teeth here) gets Politician of the Week.

I’ve heard from various sources that Candidate X has been arrested and will be appearing in court shortly. I have also heard that he will be applying for name suppression.

I would hope that the media in court would be opposing this vehemently.

UPDATE: NZ Herald and Stuff both have articles about this.

UPDATE 2: Unsurprisingly Labour Party president Andrew Little has told Radio New Zealand that at least one person arrested has links to the Labour Party.

UPDATE 3: On the same day FIGJAM Power announces that name suppression will become harder to get some dumb arse Judge in the Manakau District Court gives someone who is charged with voter fraud name suppression just 5 days out from polling day. So tomorrow in the paper you aren’t allowed to know who he is, despite the fact he has cast aspersions on others.

If I was a candidate in South Auckland I would state right now in public that it wasn’t me who appeared in court .

UPDATE 4: For the record, I published before an order was in place, I am only changing this post to show what a complete farce the whole thing is.

We aren't allowed to know who he is

Denis Welch continued the lie that I some how started the “Jim Anderton caused the earthquake” story, these pinko whingers in the media like to think they are above any come back when they trot out their musings unanswered on Red Radio. The Whale bites back.

Chief Executive
Radio New Zealand
PO Box 123
Wellington 6140.

Dear Mr Cavanagh,

I wish to make a complaint under Standard 5 and Standard 6

On his show on Friday 21 September 2010 Denis Welch discusses me and name suppression then segues into a discussion about Jim Anderton.

Dirty trick played on Jim Anderton

He says “This time the dirty trick was played on Jim Anderton, and many people in the media swallowed what appeared to be on Youtube a video showing that Anderton made some crack about that it would take an earthquake for Bob Parker to beat me in the Chch mayoral election, he said this appeared to come from an interview just before the actual earthquake, so no one was saying that he was using the earthquake quite callously in that sense, just that there was a rather bitter irony about the fact he had given this interview just before. Well, in fact, it turns out…not so…”

He then goes on to list a group of commentators which he says were “taken in by it” and had now apologised “quite rightly”.

This suggests that the video on Youtube and the editor of the video was the source of the story. He then discusses “selective editing” and “victim of a right wing blogger” in a seperate case leaving the listener in no doubt that this is the same with the Anderton case.

They then talk about fact checking suggesting that the internet is wild west. He finishes the segment with;

“That really was a dirty trick played on Anderton and I’m very pleased to see that the people who were taken in by it did apologise and make it quite clear that they got the wrong end of the stick or indeed the trick”

In fact it is now Denis Welch that is playing “dirty tricks” by suggesting that the video and the editor of the video was the source of the story and that it was somehow a dirty trick that should be apologised for.

Radio New Zealand’s own Media Watch show acknowledges the correct timeline of events and the source of the story as Felix Marwick from the Radio Network. then NZ Herald, then other media including blogs, Twitter and such, all long before the video appeared.

Mediawatch

It is clear that Denis Welch’s show breached Standard 5 and Standard 6 in terms of fairness and in terms of accuracy.

Denis Welch has actually played his own “dirty trick” with this review of the viral video about Jim Anderton.

It would appropriate for Denis Welch to correct his show, or post a correction online apologizing for giving the impression that the Youtube video and the author of the video was the original source, and that it wasn’t a “dirty trick” but in fact an attempt at satire well after the mainstream media and online media ran with the story propagated by Felix Marwick.

Whale Oil may appeal convictions
New Zealand Herald - ‎15 hours ago‎
Blogger Cameron Slater is likely to appeal his conviction and fines and costs of nearly $8000 for breaching suppression orders. Slater was convicted of nine …

Slater guilty of suppression breaches
New Zealand Herald - ‎17 hours ago‎
Whale Oil Blogger Cameron Slater has been found guilty on eight breaches of suppression orders and one of identifying a victim. Slater was found guilty by …

Blogger fined for name suppression breaches
National Business Review - ‎17 hours ago‎
Controversial blogger Cameron Slater has been convicted on eight charges of breaching name suppression orders and one of identifying a victim in a sex case. …

Blogger guilty of breaking suppression
TVNZ - ‎18 hours ago‎
Prominent political blogger Cameron Slater says he will continue to break name suppression laws, despite being found guilty of the offence at Auckland …

Whaleoil blogger fined
Newstalk ZB - ‎2 hours ago‎
There’s hope the penalty handed down to Cameron Slater for breaching name suppression rules will act a deterrent to others. The blogger has been fined $750 …

Bloggers not above the law – academic
Radio New Zealand - ‎2 hours ago‎
A legal academic says a judgement in the case of blogger Cameron Slater shows bloggers are not above the law. Slater, who writes the Whale Oil blog, …

Whale Oil ‘not finished yet’
3News NZ - Simon Shephard – ‎14 hours ago‎
An Auckland judge has delivered a blunt message to bloggers – the internet is no place to hide from the law. The remark by Judge David …

Blogger fined for defying court order to withhold defendants’ names
Monsters and Critics.com - ‎16 hours ago‎
Wellington – A New Zealand blogger was fined Tuesday for identifying sex offenders whose names had been suppressed by judges when they appeared in court. …

Cameron Slater’s Court Appearance
Voxy - ‎Sep 13, 2010‎
Blogger Cameron Slater is back in the Auckland District Court at 10am today to contest a name suppression order. Mr Slater’s legal counsel has argued there …

Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater guilty
Stuff.co.nz - Clio Francis – ‎17 hours ago‎
Controversial blogger Cameron Slater has been convicted of illegally identifying several high profile New Zealanders protected by …

Name suppression – the judges findings and how to do it properly …
By Lance Wiggs
Whale Oil failed in his case (at least so far) and is up for some eight thousand of dollars in fines and fees. To me it was clear that his actions were breaching the law, but it’s the considered opinion (Thanks Kiwiblog) of Judge Harvey …
Lance Wiggs – http://lancewiggs.com/

Whale Oil ‘not finished yet’ | Scoop News
Despite being convicted of breaking several name suppression orders today, Cameron Slater says his crusade is not over.
www.scoop.co.nz/multimedia/tv/national/40971.html

Whaleoil on trial for breaching name suppression orders – Audio …
Marcus Lush talks with the Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago, Andrew Geddis, about blogger Cameron Slater being on trial …
www.radiolive.co.nz/Whaleoil-on-trial-for…/Default.aspx

Whale Oil convicted on nine suppression charges – GrownUps New Zealand
Get News News and information on GrownUps – New Zealand’s Best 50+ Community Site.
www.grownups.co.nz/news_weather/show_news_item?id…

Slater guilty of suppression breaches
New Zealand Herald
Whale Oil Blogger Cameron Slater has been found guilty on eight breaches of suppression orders and one of identifying a victim. Slater was found guilty by …

Conceptually Mr Slater, you’re done like a large oily whale …
By ethicalmartini
Having said that, I’m not at all surprised that Cameron Slater was today found guilty on eight charges of breaching suppression orders. He knows he did it; we know he did it and now Judge David Harvey in the Auckland District Court has …
Ethical Martini – http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/

Whale guilty on 9 out of 10 charges | Kiwiblog
By David Farrar
Judge Harvey has found Cameron Slater guilty on nine of the ten charges relating to name supression. The judgement is here – Police v Slater. I’ll do a fuller post tonight or tomorrow analysing it n depth, and especially any …
Kiwiblog – http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/

K1W1: Name Suppression Activist/Blogger fined MORE than sex offenders
By Jax
As we all know by now, Cameron Slater got fined a total $6750 today for breach ing name sup pression orders on this here web site. Most right-thinking peo ple would agree that the name sup pres sion orders should never have been made in …

K1W1 – http://k1w1jax.blogspot.com/
Cameron Slater, Whale Oil blogger – Post your opinion – Opinion …
Maggie Barry talks to Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater & Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Otago about the judge’s verdict handed …
www.radiolive.co.nz/Cameron-Slater-Whale…/Default.aspx

Cameron Slater’s Court Appearance
Cameron Slater’s Court Appearance Blogger Cameron Slater is back in the Auckland District Court at 10am, Tuesday 14th of September.
oneclick.indiatimes.com/article/0cnc7LT5vm2K5?q=Auckland

cameron slater whaleoil flensed « The Standard
cameron slater whaleoil flensed. This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 4:03 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this …
thestandard.org.nz/caption…/cameron-slater-whaleoil-flensed/

Cameron Slater’s Court Appearance
Mr Slater has campaigned against name suppression for nearly a year, using his blog to highlight the stupidity of the current law.
www.allvoices.com/…/6748961-cameron-slaters-court-appeara…

Don’t forget to Vote Slater for Albany this weekend when your voting papers arrive.

Vote Slater - Albany - Auckland - Keeping the Buggers Honest

Labour leader Phil Goff says ousted MP Chris Carter doesn’t have a mandate to remain as MP for Te Atatu.

Mr Carter was thrown out of the Labour caucus yesterday on a unanimous vote after sending an unsigned letter to media representatives in an attempt to undermine Mr Goff’s leadership.

Spectacular….this is going to be a massive filip for National in the polls. People do not like nasty blood-letting.

As I said yesterday if I was Chris Carter I would resign and force the broke, busted, dis-united Labour Party try and fight me off.

Mr Goff told reporters in Auckland today Mr Carter should reconsider that.

“That decision constitutionally is his, but he was elected as a Labour MP and he no longer has that mandate. He needs to reflect on that,” Mr Goff said.

“I think that he does not have a mandate to be the Member of Parliament for Te Atatu, given the withdrawal of support from the Labour Party.”

This is important here for Goff, at the moment Chris Carter is still a Labour MP. They haven’t thrown him out of the party. Does Phil Goff have the stones to take that step. Until he does then all this talk is simple bluster as the two men stare each other down.

It also looks like Phil Twyford, the hapless Member for the homeless, has been spiked again.

When Labour’s national council meets in a week’s time it is almost certain to suspend Mr Carter’s party membership. A new Te Atatu candidate would then have to be selected for the next election.

Radio New Zealand‘s political staff say it seems likely the party will look outside its caucus for a candidate.

Mr Carter says he’ll stay as on as an independent MP until the next election, but will give his vote to Labour.

This is going to be the toughest part for Labour because the LEC chair is Peter Kaiser. If he stands firm then Labour will have a problem with selections. it is clear though that they intend to strip Chris Carter of his nomination for Te Atatu and to also find a replacement candidate meaning almost certainly he is about to be Taito’d, chucked ignominiously from the Labour party, for speaking the truth.

The most telling for Labour is their utter paranoia of the “Tizard Effect”. Their reticence to talk about a sitting MP taking the nomination shows just how deeply un-popular Judith Tizard is.

For me though I think the most appalling stance taken by Labour is to question Chris Carter’s mental health, and to question it openly. This shows just how caring and sharing the Labour party really is, they are busily trying to spin and knife Chris Carter by now labeling him as mental. Phil Goff doesn’t deserve to be leader if this is to be their strategy to side-line Chris Carter.

Labour is in a real pickle. It is clear from my discussions with some Labour caucus members that Carter is both right and wrong. Let me explain, Chris Carter is right in saying that no-one thinks that Labour can win the next election, with Phil goff or anyone else for that matter, he is wrong though that caucus thinks there is someone else who could do better, there simply isn’t. Not a single name has been proffered to me as a suggested replacement for Phil. The overall feeling seems to be that like him or loathe Phil Goff is the leader only in the absence of anyone else.

One thing about Helen Clark, she ruled caucus with an iron fist, Phil Goff has let this get away on him.

hat tip Kiwi Pundit

Chaos in Seattle as city unprepared to deal with heavy snowfall

Minus 30 in Chicago, people told not to go outside

Frigid Storm Closes California Freeways, Drops Snow in Malibu

It seems the world just will not warm.

Michael Barone at RealClearPolitics looks at the strategy John NcCain has used to blindside the Democrats.

John McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Sarah Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Barack Obama’s OODA loop.

That term was the invention of the great fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd. It’s an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

“The key to victory is operating at a faster tempo than the enemy,” Boyd’s biographer Robert Coram writes. “The key thing to understand about Boyd’s version is not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such a fashion as to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary.”

Indeed, with the Palin selection McCain did precisely that. The Democrats and more importantly the media were rattled.

The McCain campaign shrewdly kept the information that she was on the short list and that she was the choice to a half-dozen people, who didn’t tell even their spouses. The Obama team failed to Observe.

The Obama team were genuinely surprised as were most of their media supporters.

Then they failed to Orient. Palin, as her convention and subsequent appearances have shown, powerfully reinforces two McCain themes: She is a maverick who has taken on the leaders of her own party (as Obama never has in Chicago), and she has a record on energy of favoring drilling and exploiting American resources. Instead of undermining these themes, they dismissed the choice as an attempt to appeal to female Hillary Clinton supporters or to religious conservatives.

A fatal error that most left-wingers fall into and one our own Helen Clark is falling into now. Instead of orienting their attacks on the real person they attack on their own “straw person” view of the opponent.

Then team Obama and its many backers in the media failed to Decide correctly, so when they Acted they got it wrong. Their attacks on Palin tended to ricochet and hit Obama. Is she inexperienced? Well, what has Obama ever run (besides his now floundering campaign)? Being a small-town mayor, as Palin said, is like being a community organizer, “except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Is she neglecting her family? Well, how often has Obama tucked his daughters in lately? For more than a week we’ve seen the No. 1 person on the Democratic ticket argue that he’s better prepared than the No. 2 person on the Republican ticket. That’s not a winning argument even if you win it. As veteran California Democrat Willie Brown says, “The Republicans are now on offense, and Democrats are on defense.”

Perhaps the Obama campaign strategists expected their many friends in the mainstream media to do their work for them. Certainly they tried. But their efforts have misfired, and the grenades they lobbed at Palin have ricocheted back and blown up in their faces. Voters are on to their game.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen finds that 68 percent believe “most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win” and that 51 percent — more than support McCain — believe the press is “trying to hurt” Sarah Palin. The press and the Democratic ticket are paying the price for decades of biased mainstream media coverage.

Thi is exactly the same for Helen Clark and Labour, they have decided that the election campaign is going to be nasty from National and so have preapred their own nasty campaign. They have acted upon it and boy didn’t Clark just look nasty on television last night? The problem is that National and John Key has got inside Labour’s OODA and aren’t playing that way. This will rattle Clark just as it has rattled Obama. Labour will be racting to National and the Democrats will be reacting to the Republicans.