Sunday Star Times

It seems the media are trying to manipulate an election, and they will stoop to extremely low levels including using dodgy polls that have been hijacked by political parties.

The editor at the Sunday Star-Times must have balls the size of basketballs for banking the reputation of his paper on the results fo the dodgy Horizon Poll.

I have pointed out just how easy it is to manipulate the poll. I know of several folk with up to 15 logins who are doing the poll.

David Farrar points out just how out of whack their methodology is.

The spreadsheet above compares the Horizon poll to the weighted average of the five main pollsters. The differences are huge and massive. The SST would know this. Yet they still made this poll their front page, without even disclosing the difference in methodology.

Even worse the SST (at least online) doesn’t disclose the actual percentages for the big parties. I assume this is deliberate because they know if they said National is on 35% only, everyone would laugh.

There are going to be some very embarrassed people come Sunday morning and some professional media reputations will be in tatters, especially when they devote front pages to dodgy polling methodologies.

Or so the Sunday Star-Times says:

In the whole country there are only 24,000 men in the prime marrying slot. These men are straight, single, have no children and earn at least $60,000 a year. They have their pick of at least 50,000 single women, aged 25-39.

…FindSomeone, New Zealand’s leading dating website, asks singles to fill in preferences for potential partners.

Men between 20 and 40 were generally relaxed about these preferences, except when it came to children. The area deemed most important to men was whether future partners had existing children, with 75% of men saying they would prefer a potential partner to have none.

Yep no one likes SOCKs.

Last Saturday this blog published an article:

Saturday Synopsis — Likely New Ministers

Today the Sunday Star Times Neil Reid basically copies the content of this article, and mentions a source but does not attribute his work to this blog.

It identified the MPs likely to make a step up in the next National Government. They are remarkably similar to the MPs mentioned in my article.

Such a direct copy of an article without attribution is wrong but not surprising for a decidedly average newspaper (Slowly Sinking Tabloid) that is struggling to work out how to survive as more and more people get their news online.

So the following letter has been sent to the Sunday Star Times editor, David Kemeys, and a complaint will be laid with the NZ Pres Council if they do not address this to my satisfaction.

By Blog & Email
August 7th 2011

Re: Plagiarism of a Blog Post

Dear Sir,

Please refer to the following online articles:

Whaleoil Beef Hooked    Published Saturday 30th of July
http://whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz/index.php/2011/07/saturday-synopsis-likely-new-ministers/

Sunday Star Times           Published online Sunday 7th of August
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/5402657/National-fosters-new-talent

Neil Reid plagiarises the content of my post without attributing it to me or my blog. Could you please inform me of what you intend to do about this, and what action you intend taking against Reid.

In the event you choose not to address this issue I will complain to the NZ Press Council.

Yours faithfully

Cam Slater

The Slowly Sinking Tabloid is indeed sinking. The statistics show that.

Unfortunately the pinko editor David Kemeys, who likes to run intereference for all his Labour pals including Len Brown is also deluding himself.

In todays newfangled Slowly Sinking Tabloid they published this little self congratulatory piece (below). Except it only barely mentions the real statistics that show that they are a slowly sinking tabloid.

No wonder they are having to resort to making sure bad stories about Labour and Len Brown never appear online and simply making shit up about Mark Hotchin, along with bullying of media commentators and pushing bogus polls in order to try to staunch the leak in the dam of readership figures.

I wonder how long it will be before Fairfax calls David Kemeys in for a meeting with the bosses about his crap newspaper. Probably about the time they start getting the legal letters about their defamation of Amanda Hotchin.

The Prime Minsiter was castigated for saying that people who use food banks make poor choices. The Slowly Sinking Tabloid pinko hugging editor decided that this was a good excuse to hook into the government this week and so they produce as evidence,“Jack” (not his real name). (No link to actual story due to Bloggers Union action)

BACK AT the Downtown Community Ministry, “Jack” (not his real name) outlines his weekly expenses. From the $240 he receives in benefits, he pays $120 in rent, $50 for cigarettes and $20 on beer. Power is automatically deducted at $25 a week. “By the time I have a bit of fun, that’s dole day gone.”

Nearly a third of his ‘income’ is spent on piss and fags. If that isn’t poor choices then what is?

Next thing we will hear form the pinkos is that the government forces him to drink and smoke more than a third of his ‘income’.

I’d say that most people would look at “Jack” (not his real name) and suggest he get a grip. He is choosing to go without food so he can have beer and ciggies, that is demonstrably a poor choice. The Prime Minister is right.

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.

from the tip-line

Having disapatched as a columnist the repeat Qantas Award winner Steve Braunias in recent weeks the axe continues to fall at the Sunday Star Times.

Pinko Finlay McDonald and the ever morose Rosemary McLeod have been given their marching orders, being told this week’s column was their last.

It remains to be seen what brilliant commentators are to replace them but as evidence of where editorial thinking is headed, note that the ever rabid Michael Laws is the only columnist to survive the purge.

Perhaps David Kemys is planning of having Conor Roberts just write pieces under pseudonyms straight from the office of Len Brown.

Bomber et al think that the right is “freaking out” at silly faux polls mainly from the Sunday Star times and Horizon.

I have news for Bomber, we aren’t freaking out, we are laughing, at them,  that him and his pals are clinging to that small glimmer of hope.

But have you wondered just why it is that the Sunday Star-Times keeps coming up with these dodgy polls showing how Labour can win with Winston’s help. The answer seems obvious on Facebook.

The editor of the Sunday Star-Times is David Kemeys.

Of his 53 friends, he has a plethora of Labour MPs and others lefties, and not a single National MP.

One of his only two fan pages is of Phil Goff. His friends include Labour MPs Jacinda Ardern, Ashraf Choudhary, Phil Goff, Sua William Sio, David Cunliffe and Shane Jones plus Labour candidates Conor Roberts and Neelam
Choudhary as well as Len Brown. Conor Roberts is Len Brown’s brilliant spin weasel for those who didn’t know.

Maybe the Sunday Star-Times should just rebrand itself as The Standard 3.0″

The Sunday Star Times has taken to using new pollster Horizon regularly. So far it has been with less than honest results.

Horizon’s main problem is their methodology, something that either the Sunday Star Times is willfully ignoring or deliberately encouraging in order to get results that suit them.

Their methodology is certainly exposed when a new blogger, Whowouddathort, shows just how out of step they are.

The Sunday Star Times does their credibility no amount of good when they descrie the flawed poll as “a major new poll”.

In the US there was this sort of carry on last year where Rasmussen was so far out that it ruined any meta poll of polls. Rasmussen was eventually taken out for a normal trend line, and compared with the normal, destroying their reputation in the meantime.

…polls conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports — which released more than 100 surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, including some commissioned under a subsidiary on behalf of Fox News — badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates.

Other polling firms, like SurveyUSA and Quinnipiac University, produced more reliable results in Senate and gubernatorial races. A firm that conducts surveys by Internet, YouGov, also performed relatively well.

There isn’t a regular poll, even Labour’s own pollster UMR Research,  in the country that has National even remotely close to 40% and certainly not a single pollster except for dodgy Horizon that has Winston Peters corrupt NZ First above 3 %. On that basis alone we can conclude that Horizon has a dodgy methodology and when we add their woefully poor history they can safely be discounted as no better than an online survey company.

Given Horizon’s to produce wildly different polls with no apparent obvious causality one must assume that they are on the fast track to becoming as maligned as Rasmussen is now.

The Sunday Star Times is likewise destroying its remaining, admittedly shallow, reputation as a reliable news source by publishing such rubbish.

I’m over the teachers unions, The Teachers Council and teachers in general. They are against National Standards for no other reason that it is the national party proposing it, they want huge pay increases because they were silent for Labour for nine years, and they through the Teachers Council and the registration board keep allowing dodgy teachers to hide their names and continue teaching.

On the front page of the Sunday Star Time today it is there in all its glory, the protection of criminal teachers by the Teachers Council.

THIS IS the story the Teachers Council did not want told. The search for the information on criminals teaching our children ultimately needed the intervention of the ombudsman. Journalist Catherine Woulfe – now based at Sunday magazine – sought the facts but the council declined, on the ground it was not in the public interest. Official Information Act requests were made asking for a range of information on teachers self-reporting a conviction since January 2008. The council again refused, primarily on the grounds it “would require substantial collation and research”. It also said it wanted $3277.12 to cover costs. The Sunday Star-Times went to the ombudsman, who reduced the charge to $760, which we paid. After a year of persistence, the council has finally provided the information.

And while they were obstructing the Sunday Star Times and trying to protect dodgy teachers they were issuing press releases and letters explaining just exactly how they want teachers to vote in a “survey” of the members.

Now don’t get me wrong here, not all crimes are equal and people can certainly make mistakes in their life that shouldn’t necessarily impact their career, but life is tough and sometimes you just have to cop it on the chin. Not if you are a teacher though. You get a free ride, especially if your crimes are against children.

In the past two years, 58 teachers have dobbed themselves in for being convicted of offences punishable by more than three months jail.

That is the threshhold [sic] which requires them to be investigated by the New Zealand Teachers Council.

Despite the admissions, those who retained or were granted teachers registration included ones convicted of:

* Indecent assault against a teenage girl.

* Assault with a blunt instrument and male assaults female.

* Possession of an objectionable publication but is awaiting sentence.

* Threatening to kill, and assault on a woman.

* Grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard.

And a district court judge has also ordered the teachers council to reconsider a primary teacher it banned after she verbally threatened children in class.

I can handle drink driving offences, and fraud, anyone can make mistakes like that once and get over it and still not affect their ability to teach, but I’m afraid that possession of objectionable material, indecent assault, assault, threatening to kill and GBH do not a teacher make.

I remembered a quote in the NZ Herald by Trevor Mallard about this issue regarding the Teachers Council.

Labour education spokesman Trevor Mallard said the council should be moving towards more openness with the public and parents.

“In the end the presumption should be towards openness, and naming is part of the punishment. If you do something that is that serious that you are suspended or struck off, then that should be a matter that is public.”

Education law expert Patrick Walsh said parents had “a right to know”.

And those comments were about the news that:

Five teachers disciplined for offences ranging from sex with students to watching porn in a classroom have had their identities protected as calls to “name and shame” grow.

The details of the ruling against the teachers were published by the Teachers’ Council this week. Two teachers disciplined for misconduct could be back teaching next year. The cases include:

A married male teacher struck off for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student for 18 months.

A male teacher struck off after being caught cruising a public toilet for sex;

A female teacher struck off after being caught claiming the DPB while working;

A female teacher suspended for a year for showing porn to a colleague in a class of 5-year-olds;

A female teacher warned for slapping and hitting 7-year-old students.

The rulings prompted fresh calls for an end to the secret nature of the Teachers’ Council.

I thought it would be timely to see what Mr Mallard had to say this time around and so I popped off an email and received a reply within about 15 minutes. His reply to my questions (and yes I checked if they could be on the record) leaves no room for doubt where he, a former teacher and Labour’s spokesperson on Education, stands on this issue of criminally convicted teachers remaining anonymously in the classroom.

I think that in some cases there is room for suppression. But I think there is a systemic breakdown between Police, the Teachers Council and Trustees/Principals.

I think there should be a system whereby each is obliged to inform the other and the Council keeps what might be described as an interim or grey list. That would mean problems couldn’t shift from school to school.

I wouldn’t rule out a teacher with a criminal conviction teaching but can’t think of a good reason for hiding it from parents.

One way of course of meeting that goal is to remove the automatic secrecy that applies in almost every case The Teachers Council deals with and remove also name suppression from our courts system in the case of the accused. Then there can be no doubt whatsoever as to who is teaching our children. By keeping secrets, name suppression and the Teachers Council create and perpetrate that there is something which must be hidden, so the presumption by parents, rightly, is that the crime must be bad. However the truth is that they aren’t. To my mind it matters not a bit that a teacher got caught with his hand in the till at the rugby club when he was secretary, or Mrs Art Teacher got pinged once for drink driving. It doesn’t affect their role as a teacher. But sex crimes and assault against children. No mercy, name and shame.

The Teacher's Council - Pedobear Seal of Approval

It is time we removed the keeping of secrets from our courts and from our classrooms. The sooner people accept that one of the consequences of breaking the law is getting named the sooner they will realise that they made a mistake.

Remember next time you hear teachers unions, The Teachers Council, The Principal’s Federation and the Auckland Primary Principals Association banging on against National Standards that they support the hiding of teachers details who are convicted of sex and violence crimes against children and that they want those same teachers to be teaching YOUR children.

I’ll start listening to all of them about national standards when they stop hiding criminals.

The PPTA, NZEI, The Teachers Council, The Principal’s Federation and the Auckland Primary Principals Association have all earned the Pedobear Seal of Approval for devious crim protecting behaviour.