Chris Trotter

Chris Trotter comments on Bill English’s superannuation screw up:

We’ll probably never know whether Monday’s announcement on NZ Superannuation was carefully planned, or simply inept political improvisation. Either way, it is highly likely that Bill English has just cost National the 2017 General Election.

I think it was inept political improvisation but disagree with Chris that it has cost National the election. Labour are so conflicted on this policy and so inept they make even Bill English look competent.

As if high-interest student loans and unaffordable houses were not intergenerational injustice enough for Generation X, a Baby Boomer Prime Minister has just advanced their retirement age from 65 to 67.

For older New Zealanders, English’s announcement has stirred-up bitter memories. Fears that John Key’s pledge to leave NZ Super alone had put to bed for nine years have been reawakened.

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Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

Leftie commentator Chris Trotter reckons Jacinda Ardern becoming Labour deputy leader will deliver Auckland to the party.

Here’s what you have to believe to think he’s right:

1. There are lots of people who have already heard of Jacinda who …
2.  … really like and admire Jacinda but who …
3.  … until this week didn’t plan to vote Labour but
4.  … as a result of her becoming Labour deputy leader will now vote Labour, and …
5.  … there are lots of these type of people.

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Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

The serious politician?

Peter Cresswell at Not PC analyses the left-wing’s and Media party’s insistence that Jacinda Ardern can save Labour:

Since Chris Trotter’s motives are generally among the most transparent of the commentariat, I’ve scoured his latest Ardern hagiography to discover reasons why the young woman who’s achieved nothing in her short existence so far but a mouthful of teeth and a handful of magazine covers should be bumped up on the basis only of a lacklustre by-election. What have I been missing. What signal achievements have I overlooked that make her the obvious Next Big Thing. Because according to Chris (and for many of his colleagues), Labour’s Future Has A Single Name – and that name is Ardern.

But why Chris, why? These are his reasons, such as they are;   Read more »

Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

The serious politician?

Not many people know this, but in 2008 David Farrar and I had a long lunch with Jacinda Ardern in Morrinsville.

It was pleasant enough but I was left with the distinct impression that Jacinda Ardern was living a dream and a plan created by other people…for her.

She also left me with the impression that she was nothing but a collection of bumper sticker slogans and she had about as much depth as a car park puddle in Alice Springs.

Now the Media party are pushing hard for her to be the deputy leader of the Labour party and replace septuagenarian Annette King.

Chris Trotter has fallen for it also. He thinks that Labour’s future rest upon Jacinda Ardern’s reluctant shoulders.

“Jacinda” was the only name on Labour’s by-election billboards. Andrew Little will have noted that. When the electorate starts identifying politicians by their given name – “Rob”, “Winston”, “Helen” – it signals a significant up-tick in political familiarity. It’s easy to vote for a candidate who requires no second name. “Jacinda” has acquired a winning ring.

If Little doesn’t respond to Jacinda Ardern’s emphatic by-election victory in Mt Albert by promoting her to deputy-leader, then he’s a fool. Success merits promotion. Any failure on Little’s part to acknowledge Arden’s pulling-power in Auckland will only fuel suspicions that he lacks the fortitude to shake-up the delicate factional balance of Labour’s caucus.

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Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

Chris Trotter writes:

So completely does Trump dominate the global news cycle that, even here, at the bottom of the world, political experts have begun speculating as to whether New Zealanders might be in line for an Antipodean version of “The Donald”.

Others object that the Americans have, as usual, come late to the party. New Zealanders, they insist, have had their very own populist political leader for nigh-on a quarter-century. His name? Winston Peters.

But identifying Peters as the New Zealand Trump merely pushes the question back one space. Instead of asking: Does NZ have its own Donald Trump? The question now becomes: Can Peters replicate Trump’s extraordinary success?

The short answer is: No. Trumpism could only be established in New Zealand by a politician drawn from the ranks of one of the major parties. Such a person would then have to take his or her party by storm: over-ruling and over-powering its existing power structures with the assistance of fanatical supporters drawn from both within and without the party.

Read more »

Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

Chris Trotter explains the damage Labour have caused themselves in the past week:

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY WEEK it’s been! Two years of exemplary discipline within Labour’s ranks have been unceremoniously ditched in favour of rank insubordination and revolt. Poto Williams’ intervention and its aftermath have left Andrew Little’s carefully cultivated image of unity and loyalty in tatters. No amount of “robust and honest conversation” can hide the fact that a depressingly large number of Labour Party members would like nothing more than to punch their supposed “comrades” in the face.

Williams’ decision to publicly challenge Little’s recruitment of Willie Jackson represents the breaching of a dam behind which huge amounts of anxiety and anger has been building up since November 2014.

Read more »

Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

It looks like having a good dose of the same sort of stuff I suffer every day from the left-wing has caused a bit of an epiphany with Chris Trotter.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION has long been regarded as the cornerstone of liberty. Indeed, without the ability to speak our minds freely the whole notion of liberty begins to unravel. Freedom of expression is vital in at least one other respect – it helps us to arrive at and recognise the truth. This is important because, as many philosophers and religious leaders have observed, it is the truth that sets us free.

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Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

Open warfare has broken out within the ranks of Labour with a sitting electorate MP, Poto Williams, attacking list candidate Willie Jackson and now the unofficial mouthpiece of activists, The Standard, also weighing in trying to discredit him.

Chris Trotter writes at The Daily Bog about the outbreak of internecine warfare, just when Labour are trying to suggest they are a government in waiting.

POTO WILLIAMS’ very public criticism of Willie Jackson’s return to Labour has done huge damage to her party’s re-election chances. At a stroke, her ill-disciplined and (presumably) unsanctioned outburst has undermined the positive perceptions created by the joint Labour/Green state-of-the-nation event of 29 January. All of those “good vibrations” (to quote TV3’s Patrick Gower) have been drowned out by the high-pitched screeching of identity politics. Too wrapped up in their quest for a gender-balanced caucus to recognise the strategic importance of Andrew Little’s eleventh-hour recruitment of Jackson, Williams and her supporters have cost Labour tens-of-thousands of urban Maori (and Pakeha!) votes.

Little’s own quest: to reconstitute Labour’s “broad church”; is clearly considered secondary to the Labour Women’s Council’s determination to achieve a gender-balanced caucus in 2017 – as mandated by the Party’s recently revised constitution.

The recent recruitment of Greg O’Connor to contest the critically important Ohariu electorate has ruffled more than a few progressive feathers. (The Left deems the former policeman to be a rock-ribbed social conservative.) With the surprise return of Jackson to Labour (on the promise of a favourable position on the Party List) these already fragile feathers have started flying in all directions.

Read more »

Cameron Slater

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.

Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.

To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.

http://whaleoil.co.nz

Sheree Trotter

Guest Post: Sheree Trotter is Te Arawa. She is the co-founder of Shadows of Shoah and a Ph.D candidate at the University of Auckland. This article was first published 19/01/17 on Shalom Kiwi

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SB

If you agree with me that’s nice, but what I really want to achieve is to make you question the status quo, look between the lines and do your own research. Do not be a passive observer in this game we call life.

You can follow me on Gab.ai 

To read my previous articles click on my name in blue.

Despite some people claiming that our coverage of UN Resolution 2334 was a beltway issue of little importance to New Zealand the New Zealand mainstream media eventually decided to cover it. Over the past three weeks, the New Zealand Herald published in total 46 articles, letters and opinion pieces on UN Resolution 2334. It was good that they covered it so well but was their coverage balanced? According to an article on honestreporting.com, it wasn’t. Twenty-three items were for the resolution, fourteen were against and nine were neutral.

Mainstream New Zealand media published some opinion pieces which drew attention to the imbalance and faults of UNSC Resolution 2334 and gave some historical context for the Arab Palestinian/Israel conflict. The unusual alliance with the undemocratic nations of Malaysia, Senegal, and Venezuela to sponsor Resolution 2334 led to serious questions within New Zealand and abroad.

A diplomatic crisis with Israel ensued…

…Some commentators have crossed the line from legitimate criticism of Israel into anti-Semitism or straight-out lies. Below are a selection of the worst offenders, in chronological order. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the ignorant and hateful writing we have seen.

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SB

If you agree with me that’s nice, but what I really want to achieve is to make you question the status quo, look between the lines and do your own research. Do not be a passive observer in this game we call life.

You can follow me on Gab.ai 

To read my previous articles click on my name in blue.