King’s Birthday Honours: Jacinda Ardern receives one of the highest accolades
Nicky Hager awarded ONZM for his investigative journalism
Jacinda deserves this, but it’s an odd Award.
She has been made a Dame for Services to the State, where she really deserves it for Services to New Zealand, which Camilla was oddly given.
The courage of her leadership during a once in a century pandemic and the unholy hate vomited at her in the end by an increasingly unhinged Right Wing Troll Army was a shameful response by angry, ignorant and malicious people.
It is also great to see Nicky Hager being awarded for Investigative Journalism.
Nicky does more journalism is a single book than most mainstream Journalists achieve in a year.
His body of work highlighting how the State hides its abuses of Power and the machinations of the Right has been denounced by the Right who hate him. Knowing his award (and Jacinda’s) will drive the Right Wing Troll Army nuts is the best King Birthday present ever!
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Good luck to both of them.
Well done Nicky, a much deserved award. Congratulations & keep up the good work.
Agree 100%.
Now why couldn’t Bob the first have said that too?
He did.
All ex-PMs are offered the equivalent of a knighthood.
This is politics. Ardern was a politician. That’s it.
I agree with Nicky Hager, less so with Jacinda as I think politicians get enough honorary awards that they should not be getting as more deserving people miss out. Politicians should have to a lot more to get an award not given as of right to anybody who was PM.
saveNZ Yep. If I hadn’t read most, if not all of Nicky Hager’s scholarship, I’d regard him as suspect for getting donged by this dodgy bunch in the Beehive. Huge respect.
Cheer up savenz. Keeping an eye on all of our failures and documenting them has led you to set the bar too high for our political athletes to reach. PM Jacinda did well in interesting times! Nicky Hager ventures on like Douglas Mawson in the Antarctic. It is not an unreasonable comparison. Keeping going and staying alive without going doolally. Nicky is the hero here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Mawson
Mawson was the sole survivor of the three-man Far Eastern Party, which travelled across the Mertz and Ninnis Glaciers named after his two deceased companions. Their deaths forced him to travel alone for over a month to return to the expedition’s main base.
So, You reckon Bill English and David Seymour would have succeeded to anything like the level that Adern did considering what happened on her watch? If so, you really need to cut down on your medication. It’s making you delusional.. The rest of the comment is nothing but whining.. Can you name the prime ministers of NZ that weren’t given awards as a result of their leadership? Because there are a few of them..
I worry about the level of comprehension – I said politicians NOT Jacinda aka all politicians including Key and English as they are also politicians. I don’t think any politicians should be getting all these honours as a matter of course – they get enough already by being the PM.
Bill English’s legacy will be ripping the guts out of our health sector. It was because of him that scores of hospitals were closed down, and co-pays were hiked.
+ 1 millsy.
Millsy He demonised all our young guys as useless lazy druggies, and at a time when the suicide rate for 18-24 year old males was peaking tragically. The drug thing was later debunked. It didn’t enhance their employability, and this suited English just fine, as he wanted a low-wage economy, and he needed cheap immigrant labour to achieve this.
The privatisation of the public health system was one of his pernicious end games and brutal, and government is still struggling to bring it up to the world-leading standard which it once was. I’ve wondered if Luxon’s anti-contraception shenanigans comes from listening to Bill again; reproduction and it’s associated issues are another area where English seems to be meddlesome and misogynistic.
Hager definitely deserves it, especially when Investigative Journalism is frowned upon these days by the Authorities.
Well done Nicky Hager, whose integrity and courage will always be saluted by the clean people.
I agree.
His work on climate change is very interesting and informative.
He shows that there are Hollow Men at NIWA.
It’s the done thing to award a dame or knighthood to the ex PM so no point grizzling.
Even if it leaves the same sick feeling as when Shipley got hers, both PMs did massive damage to Kiwi society, but politicians have to congratulate themselves.
Well done to Mr Hager, I don’t share his political bias but his heroic journalism is much needed.
Keepcalmcarryon Indeed. The thing with Ardern though, is that bad things, horrific things, happening to other people, gave her the recognition from which she, but not they, will profit. Without the tragedies of other people’s lives, she’d be nothing much more than a bossy WEF product, although I gather that she baked a good scones, even if not for the children of the poor.
Sir Chris Hipkins next, then best the reasonable Mr Peters and adieu to secret agendas and censorship of the prols and the press.
So please explain why Key or English got theirs? Particularly Key given his limited time in politics.
Martyn – Nicky Hager cool, Queen Camilla and Jacinda no…
I’m pleased for both of them, especially Nicky Hager,
I don’t think Jacinda should have accepted full stop really, but it is appropriate to honour her COVID performance in some way, perhaps she could have waited for 10 years. Most recipients of the honours system are 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond even.
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2023/06/05/kings-birthday-grumpiness-dame-jacinda-ardern/
In some ways I agree but being young didn’t stop MaCaw accepting his award.
I always thought it ought to be for something useful he might go on to achieve AFTER his rugby career, using the high profile he had attained in rugby.
But Key wanted him to have it and that’s all that mattered.
Key, of course, famous for reinstating knighthoods so that he could have one himself, thereby devaluing them somewhat now.
Biggest joke in our long history of Honours. John Key Sir ponytail puller.
Yes, more mana to be had by following David Lange’s example in this regard.
The egregious lack of a bong from the monarch says more about integrity than the acceptance of one.
I read in The Australian today: A person para-phrasing Winston Churchill on the matter of Jacinda Ardern, A very modest woman……………..Who has much to be modest about.
Churchill’s witticism has been repeated so much that it is now a cliché.
Was Jacinda Ardern’s award for services to house price increases?
Services to fascism and quitting with a gold star for kindness giving.
“Services to the state” is grimly appropriate. The Ardern-Hipkins government has shown a keen interest in building an all-powerful state that controls the media narrative, gaslights the population, and polices our language.
Nah, that was John Key
Services to keeping you fuckers alive.
Surely Hager’s magnum opus will be The Treachery of Key Years .
The Hollow men and women and trans are with us.
Beware.
I am slightly surprised. I thought Ardern would go the Helen Clark route and not accept one. The fact that she didn’t get rid of them like Clark did is something we can now obviously see as a sign that she fully supports them, despite saying she’s a republican. And probably speaks to the wider issue of Ardern’s relative conservatism in a lot of matters. Her brilliant skill was presenting herself as a great progressive but governing as a moderate, status quo type.
No doubt PM Jacinda decided pragmatically to accept the compliment for what she worked so hard achieving. NZs expect everything and praise nothing unless it suits their pocket book. The vast majority of we Grand Judges have hardly done anything noticeable for the good of the whole country, because if more had been done last century we wouldn’t be up shit creek. We don’t even make our own paddles; that’s a rhetorical jibe by the way. Thinking people will know what I’m getting at.
Before giving our learned opinions with negative mien as is our right, think about what responsibility you can shoulder according to your abilities and opportunities. We are only half awake to the future difficulties that are queuing up.
” It is also great to see Nicky Hager being awarded for Investigative Journalism. ”
Well Nicky if you are reading TDB I salute you and I hope this award is taken by you as recognition of your courage and determination to expose some of our recent black history at tremendous cost to you personally and endangering you and your family.
Without your investigations into the military and the National party 2003-2014 we would be immersed in even greater ignorance of the networks of people you exposed who were pushing their agenda for power and control from First with Brash in 2005 then ” Mr Nixon ” himself John Key with help from Jason Ede and others all done under the cover of subterfuge and a media owned and manipulated by the then National party and its leadership.
Nicky you are a patriot and a brave New Zealander who epitomises what the awards are all about despite the move back to the royal honours from our own distinctive New Zealand honours abolished by Key and his National , ACT , Dunne , Maori party government.
Kia kaha Nicky.
It’s very very on brand for Ardern to accept an award from an institution she claims to oppose as a self confessed republican.
Very very on brand.
Huge respect to Helen Clark for abolishing the honours system and then refusing and honour once Key brought it back.
Ardern accepting this archaic award is just disappointing, much like her premiership.
A bit like saying she’s worried about housing costs before her elevation then later saying she wanted steady house price growth of 3-4% a year.
Or like Luxon stating he would immediately reinstate tax write offs for landlords when he owns 7 of his own. Go figure?
Corey, Yes, as an anti-monarchist, and allegedly secret meeter in London with Markle before she decamped, who has stated that she expects New Zealand to become a republic, it is surprising that Ms Ardern would want to accept this colonialist damehood.
Yet at no point was she annointed for massive immigration and physically assaulting anyone.
She abandoned the PM job and we dame her? The one Bill put through was failed. But politics gets rewarded like no other good bastard in the community.
As for Hager, he used stolen information, he broke the law no matter which way you look at it. He even admitted using stolen contents.
I can’t work it out – seems if I fail or use stolen goods I’m awarded.
Read the book. It is a good read.
It confirms that political parties use the best strategists money can buy to try influence voters.
Who would have thought?
You can’t work it out because everything you said is false, either that or you’re thick as fuck.