frogblog

It’s amusing to see Helen Clark crooning under our Green Party balcony after a weekend of Green successes, including an improved poll result and a well received campaign launch. Russel’s response in the Herald was tidy:
“Labour taught us the value of independence and we’ve learnt our lesson. [Helen Clark] gave us a good lesson in […]

National’s law and order announcements are about as Wild West as they come. As Colin Espiner says:
National has this morning bowed to those beating the law and order drum, releasing a parole policy so punitive it makes the United States look like a bastion of liberalism by comparison…
The implications of National’s new policy are considerable. […]

“Don’t vote for the lesser of two evils vote, vote for what is good.”

I read a book once about a two dimensional world – as though the entire world were drawn out as lines on a flat piece of paper (from memory the book might have been this one).  The characters had to climb under or over each other to get past rather, than being able to walk […]

One of the many pieces of false logic in Clark’s assumption that we only need Helen Clark and John Key at the televised leaders debates is the assumption that all undecided voters are simply choosing between a Labour-led government and a National-led government.
In fact there are also large numbers of voters who are deciding between […]

Political scientist Jon Johansson is calling Helen Clark and John Key’s debate arrangement arrogant.  Interestingly, we had a debate about the televised debates last election too, with Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton taking Canwest Media to court to win their right to appear on the leaders debate.  At the time the conflicting issues were essentially […]

Triennially the question goes on to all the MMP parties: So who’s it going to be, who will you go with?
This time, with the exception of the Maori Party, we pretty much know the answer, or will know the answer before the election for all of them.   But what we don’t know is who […]

Ok, so as speeches go the atmosphere is not quite Barack Obama in front of faux Greek pillars, but it’s a pretty clear annunciation of why Russel voted to censure Winston Peters.

Well I’m pleased and grateful to admit that I was wrong and the Privileges Committee did find against Winston Peters.  I only saw a portion of the evidence and being a frog rather than lawyer obviously did not weight it properly.
It was disappointing to see that the committee voted along party lines.  It would be […]

There’s a misconception in some corners of political coverage that this election is ‘winner takes all. For instance yesterday Deborah Coddington writes:

If Key keeps on smiling through personal attacks - and reassuring New Zealanders that, under his watch, this country won’t go belly up - National might win the election.
Which, in these crazy MMP […]