Today’s Daily Blog Watch Round-Up of matters that have attracted the attention, assessments, and articulations of this country’s leading bloggers and on-line satirists…
NZ Left Blogosphere
Idiot Savant on No Right Turn reports on a particularly worrying trend in Britain that the police are being corporate mercenaries,
“As agents of the state, the police are supposed to act as neutral enforcers of the law. Unfortunately, in the UK they are now acting as the paid mercenaries of big corporations…”
Phil Twylord on Red Alert looks at Those evil town planners and National’s shortcomings on the whole problem of affordable housing,
Auckland is a property speculator’s paradise. Yet Bill English refuses to consider a Capital Gains Tax that would take the steam out of those speculative pressures, or restrictions on offshore speculators who outbid Kiwi first home buyers.
The Irascible Curmudgeon presents Two Graphics that illustrate the state of the economy and a government that has no policy for growth except tax cuts…
Open Paracute has an interesting piece on Entertainment is brain exercise – though I’m sure ‘Shortland Street’ doesn’t quite qualify.
On Hot Topic, Gareth presents the Saturday snark: a textbook for Vincent – and a brilliant reposte to a climate change denialist who dared offer gobbledegook as real science. The reposte is a joy to read. (Unless you’re a Flat Earther who denies climate change, in which case it will be wasted on you.)
On the issue of science, check out The Skeptical Science’s 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #5. Also check out The Oceans Warmed up Sharply in 2013: We’re Going to Need a Bigger Graph. (Are climate change deniers keeping up?)
Matt L on the Transport Blog looks at Different ways of visualising PT networks.
Check out the Top tweets about Metiria Turei’s clothes and racism on Bryce Edwards’ Liberation. There are some very witty and insightful comments made.
For a bit of off-colour satire, there’s Once a W@nker on Porcupine Farm…
On Frogblog, Gareth asks the ridiculously easy question, Do you feel power prices are too low? Actually, it’s not that ridiculous. Read his piece to find out why. And Eugenie Sage implore readers to Help save our rivers – make a quick submission,
If you want to help save our rivers and lakes, then it’s vital to add your voice to those asking Government to rethink its proposed bottom-lines for freshwater. Submissions close on the Government’s proposed national objectives for freshwater (NOF) on 4 February 2014. Sign on to our easy online submission or send your own submission to watersubmissions@mfe.govt.nz
Something from last year, but perhaps just as relevant as ever, Socialist Aotearoa presents; The dirty rotten filthy scab,
“The Scab has no boundaries; they will grovel, slither through shit and climb over every obstacle in their way to please their masters. The stigma they create for their scab families sticks forever like a contagious disease passed from one to the other, a burden carried by the innocent in their brood.”
On The Political Scientist, Puddleglum looks at the Flagging interest in ‘folly’ of vexillology – more specifically Key’s raising of the issue during election year,
On Whoar, Phillip Ure has some of the thoughts/beliefs of the new president of the act party..jamie whyte... and reflects on boscowan getting the boot from act..
Scott Yorke on Imperator Fish takes the Right Royal Piss when he conducts An analysis of the 3 News Poll,
This really is a gamechanger, because although the results seem anything but extraordinary, and although one poll in isolation doesn’t really mean a damn thing, it’s the first major TV political poll conducted in this country since Christmas. The first in 2014!
(TV3’s announcement of the poll story was a breathless “We are first!” Which, of course, ignored the previous first poll for 2014, carried out by Roy Morgan. That one was done in early January.)
In The clothes calling card campaign, Tangerina Coley looks at the difficulties in buying plus-size clothing and has devised a cunning plan to combat the problem. (I can kinda relate, my partner has similar difficulties.)
Danyl at The Dim Post also offers his Brief thoughts on the TV3 poll, and asks,
“Voters aren’t responding to National’s ‘rock-star economy’ marketing campaign. Or maybe they are? Perhaps some voters feel more comfortable changing governments during a time of economic growth?”
Which, in a roundabout way, is a question also posed by Frank Macskasy on Frankly Speaking, when he looks at TV3 Polling and some crystal-ball gazing. Frank also looked at the method by which Act proclaimed new leader – and found it lacking in basic democracy.
Danyl also looks at Funny stuff – a.k.a Cameron Slater’s track record in abusing people via his shitty little blog and asks the obvious,
“People generally defend him by saying, ‘He’s controversial’, or ‘I don’t agree with everything he says.’ Fair enough. I can’t tell people what they should and shouldn’t read. But I sometimes feel like a character in a horror movie who can’t convince the rest of the villagers that the mysterious stranger is obviously the monster responsible for all those disappearing cattle. I just don’t get how people read this site and simply think ‘Hey! That’s controversial! Let’s put this guy on the radio’ and not, ‘Hey! What a vile hateful animal!’ Or am I crazy here?”
The Standard offers,
“This is a poll that Paddy Gower described as being a “Gamechanger”.”
“There are many things I like about The Greens. One of them is that they don’t treat Question Time in the House as a place for cheap point scoring and irrelevant personalised attacks. Most usually they keep on the issues – very often in a focused and on-going way.
Julie Anne Genter’s well-researched questions about transport policy comes to mind, as having been really good in exposing the weaknesses in the government’s destructive focus on Roads of National Significance, rather than upgrading public transport. This is the opposition doing its job – they are there to probe government policies for weaknesses…”
“As far as I am concerned it is ridiculous to say that Turei is a hypocrite. She is someone playing the political game, abiding by the rules and getting dressed appropriately. Her sin is that she has the temerity to not only tell National that they are wrong but to show them how wrong they are. Having a comfortable lifestyle does not prevent you from saying that the current system which overwhelmingly favours the wealthy and is destructive of our environment is wrong. If anything Turei is, in their eyes, guilty of treason rather than hypocrisy...”
“I don’t know a lot about South Korea, but I was under the impression it had a booming economy, was at the forefront of development of digital technologies, and had a pretty successful screen production industry.
So I was interested in a report I saw recently on Al Jazeera about a phenomena that developed from one student putting up a handwritten poster on his campus asking, “How are you all doing?” The report claimed that there were many social and economic problems in the country: growing income inequality gap, unfair employment legislation, and increasing numbers of people struggling in their daily lives. This sounded like a lot of the same problems as here in NZ…”
“Political journalists do not require any special qualifications. They go to journalism school to learn how to structure an article and avoid being sued. There is no test you must pass to become a Gallery hack proving that you understand policy, economics or statistics.
Gallery hacks don’t know any of this stuff because they don’t need to. Their job is write ‘colour’ pieces about the ‘cut and thrust’ of politics. Long, boring wordy stuff with charts and numbers is both too much for their brains to handle and not what they are looking to write about anyway…”
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Blogpost of the Day
Something on TV3 on Sunday evening, about Key cobbling together a coalition deal was astutely picked up by Robert Guyton. It’s a short, short, post – but no less insightful.
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Thought for the Day
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~ Joe Blogger,
“The Daily Blog Watch” Editor, Imbiber of Fine Sugary Drinks, & Moa-whisperer
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~oo~
