It didn’t really matter that Helen Clark used her limo to speed to catch a flight so that she could be seen at a Rugby match. She was the PM and getting to and from appointments at speed is a legitimate right for the leader of NZ, but in the minds of the popular man and woman on the street, it showed a venal disregard for the rules we all abide by so that she could self promote herself.
John Key’s extraordinary appointment of his school-hood chum to be the new Director of our spy network could well be his ‘speeding in the Prime Ministerial Limo’ moment.
Note the vast difference in the seriousness of the two events. NZers were itching for any old excuse to finally turn on Clark, Key has effectively had to go crazy with power for him to be held to the same standards of public disapproval.
If Helen Clark had pulled half the crap Key has in 4 years, the NZ Herald would be calling for charges of Treason, but that is the double standards the left will always have to compete with.
What will finally wake the sleepy hobbits up to Key’s latests ego trip are the voices that are now criticising him.
In an extraordinary interview on Campbell Live last night, THE voice of the establishment, Sir Bruce Ferguson, openly criticized Key’s appointment of his school friend to head our top spy agency.
How this will relate to the average kiwi bloke and blokess is the defense Key is now trying to run. Hilariously Key is claiming that he didn’t remember calling his mate up to ask him to apply. That’s farcical, but where it hits home in the manner of the speeding is Key’s next claim. He has said that he hadn’t spoken to Ian Fletcher since school days YET he had Ian’s phone number in his phone.
How many people from school that you don’t speak to any longer do you have in your phone right now?
Go check.
How many? In the words of Scribe – not many if any.
Key had Ian’s number in his phone, because he talks to Ian much more regularly than he has previously pretended.
The speeding limo cut through because many NZers get ticketed for speeding so it bit into everyone who drives. Key’s claim that he had the phone number of someone he hadn’t spoken to since school just doesn’t ring true for everyone who owns a cell phone.
The things that finally undo us are the tiny truths to the big lies we weave.
NZers are now sensing another side to their flippant aspiration money trader that they don’t like in a way a thousand years of name calling by the left can never achieve.
Now all NZ needs is a credible political opposition.
Yes, an extraordinary interview with Ferguson last night, and pretty damning of Key.
One point: on the Campbell Live video (at 7.30 mins) when Key is asked how he got Fletcher’s phone number, he shrugged and said “Oh, I know his number.”
http://www.3news.co.nz/Former-GCSB-head-Sir-Bruce-Ferguson-speaks-out/tabid/367/articleID/292879/Default.aspx
If Key had little contact with Fletcher, this is even less likely than having Fletcher’s number on his phone.
If a PM getting to events at such speeds is legitimate, that suggests that her driver wouldn’t have been charged with a crime for driving her in that way, but he was.
Also, what annoyed people about it was not that the PM was speeding, but:
1. she claimed she had no idea she was speeding, and stated she hadn’t asked to speed.
2. didn’t stand by the driver, who got charged for just doing something you describe as legitimate.
IIRC the car was being driven on the Canterbury Plains and she was working in the back seat – it would be easy to be unaware. As someone who has been in a speeding car on the Canterbury Plains (to get to a funeral) it doesn’t seem like going fast as all.
However, I agree that the car should not have been speeding especially through towns.
For what its worth, I’ve noticed , when John Key has recently been obviously lying or, at best, being economical with the truth, a distinct similarity in mannerisms to those of G W Bush – a vacant gaze and goofy nodding silence at the end of the delivery of each sentence.
The Campbell Live interview also caught an extraordinary inflection in Key’s voice, an involuntary throat constriction and leap in vocal pitch when asked a curly question.
I know exactly what you’re talking about RC – you can re-watch the related interviews (I saw them through the TV3 website and “related stories”) where he’s telling bold-faced lies to the media and the house about the appointment: http://www.3news.co.nz/Cronyism-in-spy-job-appointment—Labour/tabid/370/articleID/292763/Default.aspx is a good one, but there is another example for which I don’t have the link (and can’t really go hunting at work).
With the benefit of hindsight, it is very easy body language to read. Now we just need to keep asking the hard questions. It shouldn’t be so hard to catch this clown out again.
We now know he was blatantly lying in that clip, include shrugging in the list.
Again his voice squeaked as the interview concluded and he stalked off, head bowed to avoid eye contact.
“Now all NZ needs is a credible political opposition.”
Ah yes, about that…..
“Now all NZ needs is a credible political opposition.”
Don’t hold your breath it certainly isn’t going to come from the Labour party!
“In an extraordinary interview on Campbell Live last night, THE voice of the establishment, Sir Bruce Ferguson, openly criticized Key’s appointment of his school friend to head our top spy agency.”
Wasn’t that just television gold though? I haven’t been that happy in a long time.
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