Island Life by David Slack

Now you are being silly David
Do you think Miss Clarks faux anger about the police handling twins deaths came from the heart
Focus group polling pulls her strings as it does the other major parties
You could just about hear the clacking of the cue cards (nice line by the way) as you could in other manufactured rages that she has had in the past
When she says "I have had a guts full" it always sounds so, un-Miss Clark and back bar of the local boozer
Thats politics now, so get used to it

Actually, I am sure most of the polling you describe is also about advertising the party - I certainly got that feeling when ACT polled me three years ago. I believe that polling escapes having to be declared as an electoral expense (or used to be). Another way of escaping the Auditor General's beady eye.

Raymond - why should anger about the murder of two babies be faux? I just don't get that point. We should be livid about the whole sorry saga. Or are we only allowed to be "really" angry when cops are acquitted?

Does this explain the curious way in which John Key appears to give differing messages to different audiences? Must be very hard unless you are a 2nd hand car salesman.

Don
My point is, that to my eye the anger is not genuine but manufactured in response to a poll that suggest that ordinary NZers are angry
If Miss Clark genuinly thought there was a problem rather than tell the police how to do their job, she as PM should do something about the culture that allowed two little children to be killed

You can be angry when ever you like but in my experience it is not a helpful way to deal with problems

Helen Clark and her caucus could learn a lot. National is exhibiting a kind of in-time responsiveness to public whimsey that is sadly lacking in the Labour Party's responses to public whimsey.

More than a day it took for Labour polling to determine that spin of an effective, informative, conference held for the benefit of the harworking staff of a well run department needed reframing into a wasteful, brouhaha fest at a luxury resort contrived by inept managers.

How can we be expected to vote for politicians whose spin and self-promotion is so slow? If they can't handle their own self-aggrandising, whichever-the-wind-blows PR (which is after all their primary skill set) surely they are not capable of running the country.

How can we be expected to vote for politicians whose spin and self-promotion is so slow? If they can't handle their own self-aggrandising, whichever-the-wind-blows PR (which is after all their primary skill set) surely they are not capable of running the country.

It's all about experience. Helen Clark wouldn't have tarried with defending the quite possibly defensible the way the tyro Ms Street did -- she'd have tossed the nearest available CEO under the bus before morning tea.

I trust the junior minister has learned her lesson.

I've twice gotten a 'push poll' from the Nats since I came back from the US (it was quite unsophisticated and obvious in comparison to some of those I've had foisted on my in the US) - I called Katherine Rich (my local Nat MP - it was sent to me from her office) on it a couple of years ago - she feigned all knowledge claiming to not even know what a push poll was

If Miss Clark genuinly thought there was a problem rather than tell the police how to do their job, she as PM should do something about the culture that allowed two little children to be killed

At a post-cabinet meeting media conference?

I'm not sure the PM fronting up to the cameras has quite that influence on the world.

National is exhibiting a kind of in-time responsiveness to public whimsey that is sadly lacking in the Labour Party's responses to public whimsey.

Nice take.

Labour won't listen is the message from the Nats, but what worries me is that Key listens and speaks quickly enough but clearly doesn't understand. His throwaway line about discounting medical student debt is a classic. He doesn't pretent to understand the loan scheme and National as its architects capitulated last election when they embraced the interest changes so now he can promise to forgive debt and claim somehow to be attuned to the community.

I would love to have the relationship between National and Curia cleared up. Farrar has said he polls for them as well as others - Family First included - but there's also suggestion that Curia actually does operate out of National HQ. Does it?

Nevermind the fact that forgiving debt may do little to solve the 'shortage', nevermind that there's no costings or even a coherent tertiary policy. Nevermind, even, that National have an incredibly poor track record in tertiary education - Grant Robertson makes this point here:

I was there when Lockwood Smith signed his pledge about abolishing tertiary fees. The tactics are the same- tell the public what they want to hear, hide away what you want to do.

So was I.

she as PM should do something about the culture that allowed two little children to be killed

Want to point to a culture where that doesn't happen?

Austria maybe - nice wholesome yodelling people, only a few of whom lock their kids in cellars and make more kids with them.

Japan perhaps?

Key's going to get rolled as soon as he's elected, isn't he? They'll send him off to be head of the WTO or something and we'll get Bill English. Or Don Brash. Or John Banks.