All posts tagged The Standard

Labour staff appointments

Andrew Little has made two appointments to vacant positions in the Labour leader’s office.

Chief of Staff – Neale Jones

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Jones has been upgraded from his current job of Political Director in Little’s office.

Te Reo Putake has some detail at The Standard:

Excellent appointment for Chief of Staff. I’ve known Neale for years and he is a top bloke and good value for the job. I know he also worked with Andrew Little at the EPMU, modernising that union’s comms, and, clearly, they both work together well. I predict good things for Labour.

TRP has been predicting good things for Labour for years. He might be right about it one day.

Modernising the Labour Party may be a lot bigger challenge than modernising union’s comms.

Labour stalwart Greg Presland:

Neale is really good. Safe pair of hands and dedicated to the cause.

So Jones strengthens the EPMU influence in Labour. Some, especially those with union connections, will like that. Others may be less enthusiastic.

Labour leper Phil Quin tweeted:

The appointment of Neale Jones, a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist, is testament to Andrew Little’s utter impregnability as Labour leader.

Also from Twitter Stephanie Rodgers (who works in union comms):

Nice one, comrade

Little became Labour’s leader due to the crucial Union vote (affiliate unions have 20% of that vote).

Chief Press Secretary – Mike Jaspers

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From NZH Labour confirms senior positions including chief press secretary

Mike Jaspers will be chief press secretary, filling a position that has been vacant since Sarah Stuart left in May after little more than a year in the role.

Jaspers works in communications for New Zealand Rugby including when New Zealand hosted the Rugby World Cup in 2011.

He has experience in Parliament – previously working as a press secretary for Sir Michael Cullen in 2006/07, and before that in Parliament’s press gallery for TVNZ.

It’s understood Little previously tried to hire Jaspers after he became Labour leader.

From a different sort of union, the Rugby Union.

Jaspers has been given the most attention by journalists and media who seem to rate him highly. The Standard reaction was more wary. Bill:

Fair to say “Neale Jones good, Mike Jaspers…jury out”?

Jaspers was very effective with the Rugby Union. This may pose a bigger challenge. He has to fill a void and somehow transform how Little and  Labour are presented.

One thing both Jones and Jaspers will need to try and overcome is the negativity that has oozed from Labour from the top down. On his return from a visit to Canada Little indicated that he was keen to follow Justin Trudeau’s positive methods.

Party comms can’t control what is said in social media but they can try to influence it. It desperately needs a positive makeover.

A comment on The Standard’s New lineup for Labour Leader’s office thread is a symptom of an entrenched problem of Labour’s image of vicious intolerance.

He is a semi-literate, trolling muppet, like Pockish Rogue and Maninamuddle. Their new tactic is to derail by being friendly and matey. Why else are they constantly cackling away on nearly every thread on this site?

A new form of Peter George.

Don’t respond to their apparent friendliness. Study the ways of One Anonymous Bloke. He identifies these sleazebags early in the piece and gives them hell. We all need to. Tell them to fuck off.

Friendly bad, fuck off good, so ‘In Vino’ and others seem to think.

Little recently very publicly branded ex-Labour members Quin and Wellington mayoral candidate as right wing traiters and and effectively told them to “fuck off”.

Enticing people like them, like me, and like thousands of other ex-Labour voters, to consider ticking Labour again will be a big challenge for Jones and Jaspers.

While some at the Standard are enthusiastic about these new appointments, hoping they finally have a ‘game changer’, shit continues to be thrown around their nest and elsewhere in social media.

Jones needs to reform the attitude of the party from within and from the top down.

Jaspers needs to present to the public a far more positive Labour, and to somehow paper over the crackpots.

6 Comments
by Pete George on September 22, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogs, General, Media, Politics, Social Media
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Posted by Pete George on September 22, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/09/22/labour-staff-appointments/

Blog moderation and hypocrisy

There’s been a bit of a spat on Twitter about lack of moderation at Kiwiblog, with a number of people joining criticism of David Farrar’s hands off approach to moderation.

It’s well known that Kiwiblog comments can at times get very abusive. I’ve commented there a lot in the past and often confronted the worse of the abuse, and have been abused and lied about there quite a lot, sometimes in reactions to confronting them. Several times I reported abuse to DPF, and on one occasion  I had him remove defamatory comments, which he did as soon as I contacted him.

I have also been subjected to a lot of abuse and mob attacks at The Standard, and have been banned from there several times for confronting some of that.

So I was a bit bemused when Stephanie Rodgers joined in put me up alongside Farrar in the Twitter spat.

SRTwitterModeration.jpg

There’s a bunch of irony and hypocrisy in that.

King Kong is a regular abusive figure on NZ blogs. Yet you never see them on mine, because – radical – I moderate them.

Yes she does ‘moderate’. But one person’s moderation can be another person’s message control or even censorship.

Bloggers like DPF and Pete George want to pretend it’s hard to moderate out abuse, and it simply isn’t.

Rodgers has made that up about me. It can be easy to moderate out abuse.

What is difficult is getting the balance right between enabling and allowing free speech and free discussion but minimising abuse and personal attacks.

It can be particularly difficult to keep their own views and disagreements separate from moderation.

Likening my moderation to DPF’s  shows quite a degree of ignorance.

DPF’s moderation is very hands off. He relies on people reporting abuse to him, and rarely engages in comments threads. With the number of comments at Kiwiblog it would be a huge job to vet each one.

I am actively involved in moderation here as much as time allows. I actively discourage abuse and act on it whenever I see fit. It isn’t required often, apart from the occasional burst from individuals, because the regulars here understand my aims and support and help achieving a reasonable balance between robust comment and debate but avoiding personal attacks.

It’s imperfect, and it is hard, nigh on impossible, to please all of the commenters all of the time. But it moderation is a continual effort for improving the commenting environment.

You just have to give a damn about not publishing pointles personal attacks – instead of actively encouraging them.

This looks like blind hypocrisy from Rodgers. As has been noted here in the weekend there was a typical mob attack on me at The Standard in the weekend, starting here.

That not only involved abuse, it was an obvious attempt to discredit, shut down, shout down and get me banned by someone some of the numpties there – a number of familiar names.

And Rodgers joined in. That’s a form of active encouragement.

For people like Rodgers moderation seems to be a tool to shut down comment they disagree with and shut out people they don’t like, but to allow attacks when it suits their prejudices and agendas.

it helps not to nurture a commenter base made entirely of deplorables.

But then who would comment on DPF’s obvious flamebait?

Rodgers seems to be blind to the culture of the commentariat she is a part of at The Standard, where flamebait and deplorable abuse are allowed by moderators like her.

46 Comments
by Pete George on September 21, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogs, General
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Posted by Pete George on September 21, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/09/21/blog-moderation-and-hypocrisy/

Māori versus the environmental lobby

More on the lack of consultation with Māori, who have existing rights granted under a Treaty of Waitangi settlement, over the proposed Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, and the reality that environmental groups are willing to put their own ambitions ahead of Māori rights.

And opposition parties.

Stephanie Rodgers has posted on the environmental lobby at Boots Theory and reposted at The Standard, where there are some interesting comments – The Kermadecs and racist environmentalism.

We’re not even arguing about meaningful consultation around establishing the Kermadec sanctuary, we’re talking about ZERO consultation by white politicians who assumed they knew best. National are literally in coalition with the Māori Party but didn’t even pick up the phone to give them a heads-up…

It was handled poorly by the Government initially, and worse since with Environment Minister Nick Smith making more of a mess of it, to the extent that the legislation has been put on hold until it is sorted out.

But Rodgers in particular blasts environmental groups.

This week has been a revelation in the racist imperialism of mainstream (white) environmental organisations.

Problem 2 is the (very Pākehā) environment lobby’s outrage that anyone might stand in the way of an ocean sanctuary. “Think of the planet!” they cry, which is appallingly arrogant coming from the ethnic group which has done the vast majority of screwing up the planet to start with.

We have to take a hard look at how environmental organisations and Pākehā liberalism exploit indigenous culture. When it suits us, we happily draw on the notion of indigenous people being ~more in touch with the land~ and having a ~spiritual connection to nature~ and painting with all the goddamned colours of the wind. When it helps our agenda, we happily retweet the hashtags opposing oil pipelines and trumpet the importance of honouring the Treaty.

But scratch the surface and all the smug superiority is there. We know better; our thinking is more advanced because we care about ~the whole planet~.

It’s very easy to care about the whole planet when you’re on the team who took it by force.

That’s scathing of the “very Pākehā environment lobby”.  Rodgers doesn’t name names, but there has been angst expressed over ex Green leader and now Greenpeace leader Russel Norman’s performance on The Nation in the weekend, where he appeared to see the Sanctuary as sacrosanct and effectively, to hell with Māori ownership of rights.

A press release on Friday:

Environmental Groups support Government on the Kermadec/Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary

Representatives of leading environmental groups have reaffirmed their strong support for the proposed Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary.

The groups include Greenpeace, WWF, Forest & Bird, the Environmental Defence Society and Ecologic.

Greenpeace Executive Director Dr Russel Norman said that he backed the Government’s determination to create the Sanctuary in spite of strong resistance from the fishing industry.

“The Kermadec proposal will be the largest ever marine protected area in our jurisdiction. It will have immense ecological benefits, allowing marine life in 15% of our Exclusive Economic Zone to prosper without any form of commercial exploitation,” said Dr Norman.

Which means all fishing rights should be removed.

WWF-New Zealand’s Senior Campaigner, Alex Smith, said that fishing industry lobbyists had consistently opposed the creation of no-take marine reserves so the current opposition was not unexpected.

“New Zealand has obligations under international law to protect the marine environment that surrounds us. The Government is entirely within its rights to create marine protected areas like the Kermadec/Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary,” said Mr Smith.

“The Sanctuary is backed by solid science and by 89% of New Zealanders. We urge the fishing industry to break away from its traditional opposition to full marine protection and get behind this initiative.”

That uses the term ‘fishing industry’ and omits the fact that Māori fishing rights are involved.

The Executive Director of Ecologic, long-time environmentalist Guy Salmon, said:

“This is the biggest conservation gain for our oceans in my lifetime and is of international importance,” he said.

“I don’t believe the Sanctuary involves a breach of property rights, and that claim will now be tested in Court.”

That’s a line up of “a very Pākehā environment lobby”.

But it’s not just environmental groups involved. The sanctuary has cross party support, with both Greens and Labour supporting National on it.

From an interview on Waatea News with Te Ohu Kaimoana chair Jamie Tuuta:

“…I think it is important for the Green Party to reflect on their view on the treaty and indigenous rights because it is fair to say if they support the bill in its current form, they are supporting the unilateral extinguishment of Maori rights and interests,” he says.

Normally the Greens put some value on Māori rights and would hate to be seen as “very Pākehā”.

In comments Rodgers again slammed the Government (with some justification)…

There’s nothing “novel” in the government’s approach on this. They announced a major decision affecting a Treaty settlement with zero consultation with the affected parties. Par for the course for European colonisers in New Zealander, really. No one can be surprised that now Māori have a (somewhat) larger voice in the public discourse, they’re raising hell about it.

It is clear racism when Māori are expected to accept “full and final” Treaty settlements, the Government of the day unilaterally changes those settlements, and then all the white folk run around pontificating about “commercial interests” and “gifts to the planet” and “extinction of the moa”.

…but doesn’t mention the Greens. Nor her own Labour Party. Alwyn brought them into the discussion:

  1. Labour take a Maori leaning approach, oppose the sanctuary, and cause a split in the MOU between them and the Green Party. The Green Party can hardly oppose the sanctuary can they?
  2. Labour supports the sanctuary, which was in the policy for the last election, and whip their own Maori MPs into line, thereby showing that Labour don’t really provide any reason for Maori to vote for them.
  3. Alternatively the Labour Party supports the sanctuary and the Maori members of the Labour Party Caucus cross the floor and vote against it.

Then you get the question of why the Maori members are remaining in the Labour Party at all. What do you think the Labour Party are going to do?

It was pointed out that the “Labour position is they support the sanctuary but oppose the process”.  And “that sounds very like their TPP stance and we know how that’s worked for them”. A bob each way politics, opposing the Government but supporting what they want to achieve.

Most people support the Kermadec sanctuary, including the Māori Party (and Māori generally as far as I’m aware).

It’s not just National who should be having a serious look at how they want to progress the sanctuary. Environmental groups and the Greens and Labour may like to have a rethink as well.

54 Comments
by Pete George on September 19, 2016  •  Permalink
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Posted by Pete George on September 19, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/09/19/maori-versus-the-environmental-lobby/

Spinning a poll

The latest Roy Morgan poll is out – summary here.

Te Reo Putake shows how to spin a poll at The Standard in Roy Morgan August; Nat’s Down 7%

The National Party have a dropped a massive 7%, though to be fair that probably just reflects the folks at RM tweaking their methodology so they don’t get laughed at again.

If the folks at Roy Morgan read TRP’s ‘analysis’ of their poll they would be the ones laughing.

Just about everyone, including folks at The Standard, expected National wouldn’t stay at last months unusually high 53%.

Labour’s support stays at 25.5% (unchanged), Greens 14.5% (up 3%) and NZ First 9.5% (up 2.5%).

TRP ignores Labour being unchanged at 25.5% – that’s an awful result for his party.

If Andrew Little can stitch up a coalition deal with Winston, they’ll have a comfortable majority in the next parliament.

If Labour can stitch up a deal with both NZ First and Greens – which with these results would put them about even (24%) with Labour. Labour would barely have a majority in a coalition and would only have about quarter of the seats in Parliament.

This poll continues the overall trend of the three opposition parties being in touching distance of a win (if they cooperate) and National not having enough oomph to get over the line without help from their pet poodles.

Would Peters enable a Labour led Government when Labour are only on 25%, compared to National in the mid forties?

They’ll be desperate now to make sure that the Maori Party and Peter Dunne make it back.

I read that as ‘Labour will be desperate to make sure that the Maori Party and Peter Dunne don’t make it back in’.

However, with the Labour/Green understanding in place, it’s likely that Labour will win all the maori seats, and Ohariu, leaving National 4-6 seats shy of a win.

The Labour/Green Memorandum of Understanding was aimed at trying to get Labour+Greens big enough to form a government with few or no other seats required. That means Labour need to be much closer to 35% than 25%, something TRP seems to be ignoring.

Andrew Little was very disparaging of the Maori Party on Waatea 5th estate last night – see Waatea 5th Estate – Labour v NZ First. With the Maori King dumping support for them Labour may have a fight on their hands keeping their Maori seats, let alone taking Flavell’s off him.

A dose of reality in comments from billmurray:

te reo uptake, You need to get a grip, Labour down to 25.5% is a disaster and as a supporter you need to start telling the truth about the 25.5%, what it really means is only 26 people out of 100 eligible voters think that Labour should be occupying the government benches, 74 people say they should not.
Or of course it could be a rogue poll!!!!!!!. I could say LOL at this point but this is a serious matter and we must be truthful with ourselves or we face ridicule at the election.

Something is seriously wrong that we are not attracting voters or getting traction over the housing problem, or am I the only one who believes that to be the case?.

Something is seriously wrong with Labour, and pretending it isn’t is not just spin, it’s denial.

TRP responded:

Labour’s vote at 25.5% is unchanged in this poll, billmurray. The significant mover is National.

Unchanged at rock bottom – Labour dropped below polls to a record low 25.1 % last election – can’t be glossed over.

I noted in the post that, really, this poll just re-aligns Roy Morgan with reality.

His emphasis was a ‘massive drop’ for National while ignoring that Labour had already dropped and were stuck at the bottom of their range.

It’s all about the coalition and while Peters is no fan of the Greens, I don’t think that’s an insurmountable obstacle.

Nothing is insurmountable with Winston, especially if NZ First gets 15% (that looks feasible) to Labour’s 20-25% (also feasible).

My gut feeling is that Peters wants to be the guy that brings Key down. Sweet revenge for costing him 3 years in the wilderness in 2008.

Wishful thinking, which is about all TRP can do on these numbers. Does Winston want to prop Andrew Little up?

But, whatever happens, on these numbers, control of forming the next Government is out of Key’s hands.

Much could happen to the numbers over the next year.

But on these numbers Key would be likely to have a major say in the forming of the next Government, possibly without needing Winston still.

If control was out of Key’s hands on 46% how much control would Little have on 25.5%? Even if he could cobble together a coalition his control of Government would be precarious.

Te Reo Putake’s ignoring of poll reality may or may not be intentional, but it’s symptomatic of how out of touch Labour has become.

14 Comments
by Pete George on August 30, 2016  •  Permalink
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Posted by Pete George on August 30, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/08/30/spinning-a-poll/

Labour versus Leggett ctd.

Current Porirua mayor Nick Leggett resigned from the Labour Party earlier this year so he could stand for the Wellington mayoralty against Labour’s anointed candidate Justin Lester.

Leggett’s candidacy seems to be really bugging Labour. Recently Andrew Little attacked him and banned a Labour MP from attending an event Leggett went to. See Little trying to forbid MPs associating.

And the Labour campaign against Leggett seems to be continuing online.

Mike Smith seems to only post at The Standard when there is important business to attend to.

On Tuesday Smith posted Leggett in Parkin’s pocket?

Former Councillor Chris Parkin interviewed in Wellington’s DomPost shared his ambitions – investing in property in central Wellington, and getting Porirua mayor Nick Leggett elected in Wellington, of all places. Word has it that large billboards for Leggett around the town have been funded by Parkin. The last thing Wellington needs is a mayor who’s in a property investor’s pocket.

And yesterday Smith attacked again: Leggett in Gollins’ pocket too!!!

It gets worse – another property developer is rattling the tin for Porirua carpetbagger Nick Leggett for Wellington’s mayoralty. 

It seems Andrew Little might have been right to warn Stuart Nash MP off association with Leggett’s campaign.

Yes, this is worse – for Labour. It’s a sign that they are worried about Lester’s chances and worried that Leggett is taking votes off their candidate.

‘CC’ asks (currently unanswered): “This is getting pretty close to dirty politics isn’t it?”

Labour certainly seem to be filthy about Leggett.

And Smith is twisting what actually happened – the event Nash was warned off was in Auckland and had no connection to the campaign in Wellington.

I wonder if this has something to do with it:

Claire Robinson ‏@Spinprofessor
Little bird told me polling showing Wgtn mayoral rice tight tween Justin, Nick and Jo, but Jo getting more 2nd votes than others

It seems that politics hath no fury like a Labour Party challenged by one of their own.

 

 

by Pete George on August 12, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogs, General, local body, Politics
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Posted by Pete George on August 12, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/08/12/labour-versus-leggett/

Regeneration for Labour?

It’s been fairly well known that the Labour Party has needed some major regeneration since 2008 and post-Helen Clark. It’s also been fairly obvious that this hasn’t worked very well, with a decreasing vote for Labour in each election this century to an embarrassing low in 2014.

The Standard has offered candidates a forum “for the upcoming Labour Party internal elections the chance to guest post about why they’re running”.

Yesterday they had a Guest post: Eva Hartshorn-Sanders for Senior Vice President

This was “fully moderated to prevent excessive trolling” which is fair enough for a post like that.

The post is quite long and quite negative, especially in the opening paragraphs. And quite politically waffly.

Comments are interesting with some fair questions. with Patrick Leland asked: “One thing you didn’t mention is what you would actually do if elected. Can you please elaborate?”

Eva responded:

The Senior Vice President position sits on NZ Council and is part of the governance team. From working with NZ Council over the past four years, there is a lot of policy, legal and strategic decisions that they will be making going forward – and I would be able to bring my skills to help as part of this core work.

Important decisions going forward relate to the selection of candidates and the list selection work as part of the Moderating Committee – I understand this process from helping to run the Ikaroa-Rawhiti bi-election selection process and working on the drafting with Roger Palairet for the recent constitutional amendments.

Some of this has been answered above – networking is important for campaigning, fundraising, and membership growth. I also think the SVP has an important role for staying in touch with members and working with caucus. The links and connections are important.

Also quite waffly – I still have no idea about specifically what she would try to do, but I also have no idea what a senior vice president is expected to do.

Probably prompted by this in her post…

I have worked in law, policy, campaigning and organising.  This includes nine years working in Government in NZ, two years as a senior legal and political adviser for the (Labour) Leader of the Opposition in the UK House of Lords, private practice and now at the PPTA as a public and employment lawyer.  As part of my job, I travel the country speaking to union members about the issues that are important to them, in their schools and communities.  I have strong links with women throughout the country through my pro bono work for the National Council of Women and the New Horizons for Women Trust.  I have governance experience as a Board member of New Horizons, focussed on governance, policy, sponsors and donors, audit and risk, and for the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme, where I helped to ensure that members were able to access their whole pension for the purposes of their first home loan.

…Adam asked a pertinent question: “You seem to be a careerist political type, do you think you have enough experience outside of politics to bring to the role?”

A careerist political type? That’s interesting. Lots of experience. I had my first job at the age of 11 delivering pamphlets – that has to be useful for this role, right? I have worked in all sorts of jobs through my life – if that’s the sort of thing you were asking about? Burger King “maintenance man” in 2000, cafe assistant, retail work, working at a creche, multiple babysitting jobs, Judo coach at Camp America (CCUSA), government, politics, union. And I do NGO work for fun – not really that political – unless you want it to be.

lprent also raised questions about two critical issues for Labour: “So I’m surprised that I don’t see a mention in your post of the two really big issues that I see for both the president and vice-presidential roles. Strategies for raising money and increasing membership.”

Building membership is an important part of our future. I think we need to continue to modernise the Party and its structures, to make sure that we all have a place within in it to be active and to have a voice.

That may help retain some members but I don’t see how it addresses attracting new members. Labour has a reputation for not being particularly welcoming of different voices.

Re the fundraising aspect – I would be one in a team that will be implementing the fundraising strategy from Fraser House, taking expert advice from professional staff. But I have some experience in this area running events for PPTA, NCW and the New Horizons for Women Trust, including working with sponsors and donors portfolio.

The fundraising strategy from Fraser House appears to have been working poorly for some time. For years Labour’s fundraising has been way behind National’s, and the Greens now raise more funds than Labour.

Labour has major problems with a lack of members and money. Perhaps they aren’t part of the senior vice presidents job description but Eva appears to be more of a willing worker within the party as it is than potential for regeneration.

While Eva looks young and may be new generation she sounds ‘same old’, and that hasn’t been working well for Labour. I don’t see much drive for party regeneration.

by Pete George on August 4, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogs, Politics
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Posted by Pete George on August 4, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/08/04/regeneration-for-labour/

The biggest left wing blog?

A few days ago The Daily Blog posted a fund raising drive – July Contributions drive – last days

Brothers and Sisters, if you think The Daily Blog is an important voice in the NZ media landscape, then we need your contribution.

The Daily Blog is the largest left wing blog in NZ and you know how dire the mainstream media has become so these few platforms left to fight back at the Government and corporate power are more essential than ever before.

Asking for pocket money from brothers and sisters aside, the largest left wing blog in New Zealand?

Yesterday The Standard made a slightly different claim in Offer to NZLP candidates:

As the most widely read left blog in New Zealand, the Standard is a regular stop for most Labour Party members who spend time online.

Whether the largest or most widely read blog doesn’t really matter, a lot of political discussion happens on other types of forums anyway, especially Facebook.But the two posts highlight the different niches that the blogs are trying to cater for.

The Daily Blog:

Putting together a 5 night a week 7pm current affairs show and co-ordinating 40 of the best left wing progressive voices each month don’t come cheap.

A lot of Bradbury’s and The Daily Blog’s focus is now on Waatea Fifth Estate streamed talk show. It is quite a commitment and a big task rounding up participants for that every week day. It can sometimes be interesting but I doubt whether it makes impact beyond a fairly small audience.

Meanwhile The Standard and Labour have both moved in new directions – more openly campaigning for local body elections.

We think that offers candidates for Labour Party positions a great platform to get their ideas out to members and to debate them. Which is why, with nominations for various significant party positions closing soon, we’re offering candidates the opportunity to provide guest posts ahead of the conference in Auckland this year.

Democracy works best when people know who they’re voting for and the Standard is about democracy. So if you’re planning to stand for a Labour role and you want to speak to thousands of Labour members, contact us via thestandard@gmail.com

We’ll make sure that your post is at the top of the site for at least half a day and will moderate comments.

In the past The Standard has been adamant it represents the ‘labour left’ and not the ‘Labour Party’. Despite this they have dabbled in party politics at times, but is the most hard out Labour campaign approach I have seen there. This looks to be a significant change for both the party and the blog.

Will The Standard offer similar campaign support for Green candidates, especially now that Labour and Greens are promoting themselves as a joint election deal? Or are Greens not labour left enough for them?

There’s an opportunity for attracting more Green blog discussion now that Frog Blog has shut down comments.

by Pete George on July 30, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogs, General, Politics
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Posted by Pete George on July 30, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/07/30/the-biggest-left-wing-blog/

More on the Morgan poll

Apparently continued silence by Martyn Bradbury on the latest Roy Morgan poll which came out a week after he posted BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: UMR SECRET POLL – National 41% Labour/Greens 45%

Since the Memorandum of Understanding, the First Past the Post mainstream media have had to start reporting the results as MMP ones. This perception change now allows Opposition voters to see they can win.

National is in trouble…

Once these private internal polls start becoming reflected in the TVNZ and TV3 Polls, National will start to implode with a power struggle.

The Roy Morgan poll has National on 53%, Labour on 25.5% and Greens on 11.5%. No word on what Bombers perception of this is.

One perception at The Daily Blog though, from Cleangreen. On the UMR ‘secret poll’:

Yes joy rings out finally National are on their way out hooray.

But in a comment yesterday on the Open Mic thread Cleengreen said:

Latest Roy Morgan and any other political poster companies we think we should trust! – well don’t – read below.

The Politicians are all under orders from the Bilderberg Group and are simply minion’s that carry out orders for the global elite and that is why you see a clear hard nosed similarity over every issue now, and the media is the same parrot for these cabals also as the pollsters are to!!!!

Does anyone understand how flimsy and vulnerable and easily rigged results of Pollster’s polling data can occur where the companies cannot verify their results or edit them to see if they are changed?

Poll result good, pollster good. Poll result bad, pollsters bad.

There was a lot of talk about the 10% bounce back for National (but interestingly no one seemed to bat an eyelid at Labour dropping 2.5 to 25.5%).

Chris Keall has posted Roy Morgan manager defends *that* poll at NBR:

The chattering class was quick to scoff when at the new Roy Morgan poll which showed a 10% jump for National (864 eligible voters were surveyed by phone).

There was eye-rolling from the left and the right, and I can see why: there were no political bombshells during the survey period (June 17 to early July) to warrant such a shift.

In a press release, executive chairman Gary Morgan pegged the Nats’ bounce on John Key’s announcement of a $1 billion housing infrastructure fund.

I’m not so sure.

Keall “asked Mr Morgan if he was confident of the poll result” and the RM poll manager responded:

We are very confident these results reflect a shift in voting intention in New Zealand towards the incumbent.

That is very likely to be correct. The questions are by how much, and why.

Andrew Little has had nearly two years to cut through and even before this poll, had really made little headway.

The New Zealand economy is booming at present with Kiwis returning to the country after years of outflows across the Tasman.

Also, specifically with this poll we conducted some additional research during this period which indicates that Housing Affordability/ House prices/ Shortage of Houses/ Homeless etc. has increased significantly as an issue in New Zealand this year.

The announcement of the $1 billion housing infrastructure fund is perfectly timed to take advantage of this sentiment. There are a large number of Kiwis out there who believe they will see the benefit of this $1 billion infrastructure fund personally.

It could be that housing has been a significant factor – perhaps a lack of confidence in Labour’s policies, or a desire by many voters to retain the capital value increases.

There was also a discussion at Dim-Post: Roy Morgan wild guessing game

No doubt Labour will start leaking that their secret polls show them getting a major bump after their conference. If you added all the bumps they’ve claimed from their private polls they’d be on about 500% by now.

Danyl has been quite cynical about Labour lately.

My guess about the swing – if there was a swing – is that the news recently has been dominated by horror, fear and uncertainty. Terror attacks, racial violence in the US, Brexit, and so voters are looking for political stability and supporting National. If they are.

Swordfish, a regular poll commenter at The Standard, joins the discussion. Another pseudonym I’m not familiar with, Pollster,  joined in.

It has nothing like the spikes the Roy Morgan does, and when it does it’ll be an occasional 2-3% shift, not a 5-10% (or in this case 16%) swing as the Roy Morgan has. What the UMR has shown since the election has been a pretty static political environment. The Roy Morgan suggests that from month hundreds of thousands of people are swinging wildly from Labour and the Greens to National and back again. It’s why no one in the business takes them seriously.

As the UMR polls aren’t published their claims can’t be verified, although Swordfish says:

Last 4 UMRs had Labour on 28-33%. Over the same period, the Public Polls put the Party in the range of 26-31%. Not an enormous divergence.

That’s a 5% range from UMR, the same as for ‘public polls’.

The last four RM polls for Labour were 25.5, 28, 29,5, 26 which happens to be a smaller range of 4%.

Pollster also said:

As for Labour staffers briefing internal polls, that’s not something I’m aware of, but I wouldn’t assume that’s why the UMR poll occasional finds its way into the public arena.

Frequently it’s Hooton who claims to have had a leak of Labour’s secret internal polling, when actually he just gets the UMR Omni from one of his clients as I do. I can also confirm he often makes up the figures, because he is a shameless liar.

Hooton bit back:

I think I have mentioned specific quantitative numbers from UMR polling data twice in the media. UMR polling is what “Labour’s secret internal polling” is – or, has been historically. It is also sold to corporates as you indicate.

Unless you think UMR does one quantitative study each month for its corporate clients and then another one for Labour. Perhaps it does. I don’t see that point in that though. Whenever I have mentioned polling of any kind the numbers have been correct.

Pull your head in with your lying accusations, whoever you are, anonymous guy on the internet.

Anonymous people on the Internet who appear to have a vested interest, and who promote polls only when their cherries are ripe, but never publicly publish any poll details, and make lying accusations about people with different political leanings, barely deserve to be taken with a grain of salt.

by Pete George on July 24, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in General, Politics, Poll
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Pete George on July 24, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/07/24/more-on-the-morgan-poll/

Poll reactions

I think just about everyone will have been surprised by the latest poll -it was a  Roy Morgan shock.

Saying you do or don’t believe in this or that poll is a mugs game. They’re numbers not deities. But. National up 10 to 53% in July RM poll.

Look it’s probably a rogue poll. should relax. And stick with to election.

While the Roy Morgan poll may be exaggerated, its is perhaps timely to recall the numerous stories saying Labour has made real traction.

So under is polling 5% lower than under – makes you wonder

1

10% shift in any one poll in any direction always a bit O RLY.

latest Roy Morgan is fairly wow.

David Farrar (National’s pollster) at Kiwiblog: Latest poll

After a month of headlines of the Government in crisis and how Labour has them on the ropes and this is a turning point, the poll shows a massive 10% vote shift for National.

A few pundits may be regretting their columns.

Now as I commented on Twitter I don’t think there has been a 10% increase in support for National in one month, which would be 250,000 more New Zealanders suddenly deciding they will vote National. Roy Morgan is known as a yo-yo poll as it does tend to have fairly regular large increases and decreases. So it is probably the case that either their June poll was too low for National or the July poll too high – or both.

But regardless of how large the movement has been, it is beyond doubt that in a month of relentless negativity in the media, National has gone up in the Roy Morgan poll.

Labour at 25.5% is 5.5% lower than they were three years ago in the same poll. And if you compare it to how National were doing in Labour’s third term, well National in July 2007 was at 49%!

Nothing on the poll at The Daily Blog yet but a week ago Martyn Bradbury posted BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: UMR SECRET POLL – National 41% Labour/Greens 45%

Since the Memorandum of Understanding, the First Past the Post mainstream media have had to start reporting the results as MMP ones. This perception change now allows Opposition voters to see they can win.

Combine this with a Housing crisis that is nearing meltdown, a Government caught up in its own  sophistry and a flat footed media who now have to keep up with a 5th estate news media that is countering their narratives far more effectively than they can spin them.

National is in trouble, and watch how Judith Collins will move to eliminate Paula Bennett first and Key second as the reality of National’s policies finally catch up with John Key’s vacant aspiration.

Once these private internal polls start becoming reflected in the TVNZ and TV3 Polls, National will start to implode with a power struggle.

Whale Oil hasn’t posted on it yet but tend to be slow with posts on new developments that aren’t their own ‘breaking news’.

It’s not surprising that there is no post about the latest poll at The Standard yet, but there has been some comments in Daily Review.

Weka:

It’s not about whether the poll is good for a party or parties, it’s about the degree of shift and whether that is meaningful. How big was the one last month?

People who understand polling say to look at the poll of polls for trends rather than relying on any single poll. That’s why I’d like to see the next one, or other company polls.

Paul:

Seems to make no sense at all.

Anne:

Yes it does. When did you last see any of the Opposition party leaders on the 6pm TV news? Weeks ago, and then only for about 10 seconds each time. I actually recall seeing Andrew Little’s response to one question being cut off after 4 or 5 words so it was impossible to know what the answer really was.

And how often do you see John Key on the TV? Every bloody night. Since I can’t bear the sight of his supercilious dial, it means I can’t watch the news any more.

So, when the sheeples only see John Key and rarely see or hear about anyone else then its not surprising they mindlessly answer National.

So she thinks it’s the media’s fault.

mickysavage:

It is a real rogue. Go outside and talk to ordinary people and work out if they think the Government is doing a good job.

Colonial Viper:

Effect of the Labour/Greens MOU now being felt. Also National’s proactive *cough* steps in the housing market.

instrider:

I couldn’t have scripted this better – Labour leaks and overhypes mysterious internal polling. Standardistas climb on board with the fervour of the righteous welcoming the second coming, ignoring all that has gone before. And then like perpetual Millerites they wake up to a new rouge/rogue dawn another 10 points behind. It’s a better show than plagiarism at the republican convention.

adam:

Every month I’ve been saying this.

FORGET THE DAMN POLLS!!!

Outside of an election, they are nothing more than a sad tool of lazy journalists too slack to do any real journalism.

Do I need to mention the scummy PR people trying to set the agenda for there client.

But Roy Morgan isn’t run by journalists, they are a professional polling company.

And on Open Mike, schwen:

OMG! What a disaster! How could this have happened so quickly when the UMR poll showed the Green/Labour MOU was working so well?

swordfish:

Yes, very droll.

Heading on back to reality for a moment …

… UMR Poll has an impressive track record for accuracy …

http://thestandard.org.nz/daily-review-21072016/#comment-1206926

UMR do internal party polls for Labour and the poll details are never published. And it’s only favourable results that tend to be ‘leaked’.

Last week on The Standard: The times they are a changing

Dedicated to the latest UMR poll that Bomber reports has Labour on 33%, the Greens on 12% and National on 41% …

The polls they are a changing and it’s over a year until the election.

by Pete George on July 22, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in General, Politics, Poll
Tagged , ,

Posted by Pete George on July 22, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/07/22/poll-reactions-2/

UMR polls

More has been posted (at The Standard) on the UMR poll that Martyn Bradbury went crazy over – see “BREAKING EXCLUSIVE SECRET POLL” – by Swordfish, who is a fairly reliable source and who analyses polls far more sensibly than Bomber.

Note however that we still don’t have any actual details published of UMR polls, we are only given a few raw numbers.

Swordfish:

The UMRs tend, on average, to be slightly better for Labour and the Greens and slightly worse for National compared to the main Public Polls.

I’d take issue with Bomber’s assertion that: “The latest UMR internal Polling has shown a massive drop in support for Key.” (by “Key”, of course, Bomber means National).

It was typical Bomber bull and bluster.

In reality, the Nats slumped earlier this year (in the UMRs, in National’s Internal (Curia) Poll and, to some extent, in the Roy Morgans) – particularly in the wake of the Flag Referendumand the Panama Papers controversy – and since then it’s simply experienced a slow decline:

UMR
April 2016
Nat 43%
Lab 30%

June 2016
Nat 42%
Lab 28%
Green 16%
NZF 10%

July 2016
Nat 41%
Lab 33%
Green 12%
NZF 10%

So the latest UMR poll shows a the barest of declines for National (that could be a fraction of a percent and well within the presumed margin of errror) and a more significant shift of support from Greens to Labour Greens down 5, Labour up 4).

We’re in a similar situation to mid-2015 when a couple of the Roy Morgans and 3 UMRsplaced combined Lab+Green support a little ahead of the Nats.
(although – unlike the last few UMRs – the recent RMs still record a mild Nat lead over Lab+Green).

Then a swing back to National and the Right in the later months of 2015 / early 2016 – and now a swing back towards the Left (and, of course, NZF).

So these poll swings and round abouts are not unusual. Neither is Bomber’s frantic ranting.

Going by these numbers National should be getting a bit concerned but they shouldn’t need opposition polls to tell them that, it’s been obvious they have been having problems.

The next Roy Morgan poll which may be out next week will give us a better idea of how much weight can be put on the UMR poll results.

by Pete George on July 16, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Politics, Poll
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Pete George on July 16, 2016

https://yournz.org/2016/07/16/umr-polls/

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