Island Life: Helen who?
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This is a great find. And looking at the photo now ... well Grass just doesn't look like that in New Zealand.
Not with David Farrar waking each night from a tormented sleep to blog fresh insights on the horror that is the Electoral Finance Act.
I think today that this was me.
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Lovely! :-) I hate stock photos. They are effectively canned lies in the wrong context...and this would appear to be one.
As for the EFA, I looked into it last week. I can spend millions on newspaper, radio and TV ads - no limits - explaining my views on any topic I care to explore. Provided I don't refer to any party or candidate or ask for anyone's vote, I don't even have to register as a 3rd-party. I need only identify myself and give my address.
The possibilities are endless. I'm not sure why anyone is complaining. The EFA has effectively REMOVED any spending limits for someone with imagination who can see the possibilities in this. Stock photos could be liberally employed in support of all manner of personal goals and ideals......
Or you can avail yourself of the foreign billionaire loophole in the EFA and buy or create a large media outlet. Imagine being able to deliver a free marketing sample to every home in New Zealand once or several times a week. It would be absolutely chocker with editorial content bashing the parties you don't like and lauding the parties you do like.....and writing it all off as a marketing expense to build circulation. You could editorially endorse your favourite party....and be completely free of any EFA encumbrance or limits.
David Farrar and his mates just haven't thought this through.
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I can spend millions on newspaper, radio and TV ads - no limits - explaining my views on any topic I care to explore. Provided I don't refer to any party or candidate or ask for anyone's vote, I don't even have to register as a 3rd-party. I need only identify myself and give my address.
Actually, if what you're doing doesn't have a spending limit (i.e. because it's not an election advertisement), then you don't have to identify yourself.
The EFA has effectively REMOVED any spending limits for someone with imagination who can see the possibilities in this.
No - there were no spending limits for individuals before, so nothing to remove.
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When I looked for the photo of the girls selling lemonade from that National leaflet I was somewhat bemused to find it was actually local.
(While I'm self-linking: lemonade satire, lemonade parody. Ta.)
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Ooh, political ads, great fun. Truth is for pedants, perception rules OK.
Let's pay tribute to the ultimate "false spoke true"
"We could not use the real unemployed. They might have objected to appearing in Tory publicity. We wanted people who would not object - which is why we used the Young Tories."
Real people are a minefield (remember the war of Jennifer's Ear in the UK?). Stick to cartoons (but check out the animators' CV, just in case).
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This is a great find. And looking at the photo now ... well Grass just doesn't look like that in New Zealand.
frankly... this is not a great find and is a bizarre storm in teacup.
which is worse:
1. downloading american photo for pamphlet, which 99.9% of electorate won't even notice origin of
2. spending $k on getting a photoshoot done when you could have bought one from the net for $20, and saved the taxpayer a lot of money.typical election year sillyness.
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But, but ... Che, it's on the Herald website! Updated! Lead story! And soon the people shall speak, in "Your Views"! And there will be party press releases, and commentators will commentate, and it shall be Perception.
Policy? Laws? Things that actually affect people's lives? Bo-ring ...
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What Che said. If they weren't under a spending gun, they might have afforded a paid shoot with Labour-supporting models and puppy.
Besides, I just read this in the NZ Herald. It's great how the National Party not only produces a propaganda leaflet on a daily basis, but convinces Aucklanders to pay $1.20 (or whatever) for it.
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Good one Che Libby. Remember the Dancing Cossaks that National had specially imported from Russia in the 70's ?
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"...The Labour party is once again putting its hand in your pocket to pay for an ad..."
David Slack seems to have decided to endorse the National Party for 2008?
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Nope.
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which is worse:
1. downloading american photo for pamphlet, which 99.9% of electorate won't even notice origin of
2. spending $k on getting a photoshoot done when you could have bought one from the net for $20, and saved the taxpayer a lot of money.
Seriously. What is the preferred photo-obtaining mechanism? Maybe:
3. Take a photo of a family that receives a benefit. Don't pay them: they owe us. Stand behind the photographer with a cattle prod to 'encourage' them to smile. Give them a kilo of cheese if they behave themselves.
3'. Ditto the photographer, actually.
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Umm - I remember the Dancing Cossacks - they were cheaply done cartoonage meant to imply that Labour's new super plan would lead to communism - National's alternative was arguable more socialist - but Labour didn't have dancing cossacks (nor overseas sugar daddies to pay for them) and more importantly Big Norm had left the stage
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Gudday Amy!
Hey, give me a kilo of cheese, *I'd* smile.
The result might not help promote the party, though. -
which is worse:
1. downloading american photo for pamphlet, which 99.9% of electorate won't even notice origin of
2. spending $k on getting a photoshoot done when you could have bought one from the net for $20, and saved the taxpayer a lot of money.
I suspect we'll find that a PR company was paid $k to produce these pamphlets and that far from saving the taxpayer money we've been extensively fleeced.
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I remember the Dancing Cossacks - they were cheaply done cartoonage meant to imply that Labour's new super plan would lead to communism
I believe the animation was outsourced to Hanna-Barbera.
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I suspect we'll find that a PR company was paid $k to produce these pamphlets and that far from saving the taxpayer money we've been extensively fleeced.
then why isn't that the headline? seems more likely that the herald is trying to beat-up "the party" by demonstrating how unpatriotic they are.
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The actual rights or wrongs of such promo material aside, the simple fact of the matter is that it's another balls-up that's left egg splattered all over Labour's face.
It would've been pretty simple to avoid. They only had to instruct the people that designed the ad to make sure they used an NZ family, simple as that. It wouldn't matter where they were from: Hamiltron, Greymouth, Hastings, even bloody Mataura, who cares, as long as they actually lived here.
This is as much of a balls-up as John Key's dvd music copyright mistake and would have been just as easy to avoid. Instead, Labour's brought the trouble upon themselves and if National gives them grief over it - which they undoubtably will - it's their own fault.
Any prolicy promotion Labour would have been hoping to receive from this will now be disregarded in favour of the actual photo balls-up and having to spend time back-pedalling on that, instead of the actual issues in the promo.
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Just as well that family aren't Australian.
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I remember the Dancing Cossacks - they were cheaply done cartoonage meant to imply that Labour's new super plan would lead to communism
I believe the animation was outsourced to Hanna-Barbera.
It was. While the Cossacks advert was a landmark advert, people forget that it was only ever screened twice during the campaign and the actual images of Cossacks lasts for four seconds in a 60-second-long cartoon.
Also, it's again little-known that Labour responded with an advert of a child holding a piglet (!) with a background song about dictators, the obvious implication being that Muldoon would be a dictator, of course. -
Youngsters amongst us should remember that it was different rather black and white age, with only one TV channel and most people didn't have TV remotes (so no easy muting the ads) - that meant that even if something was only shown twice most of the country saw it
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which is worse:
1. downloading american photo for pamphlet, which 99.9% of electorate won't even notice origin of
2. spending $k on getting a photoshoot done when you could have bought one from the net for $20, and saved the taxpayer a lot of money.How about a zero tolerance policy towards tax-payer funded junk mail? And with all due disrespect, Che, when Helen Clark spends as much time as she does extolling the "creative economy" as an instrument of "national identity-building" you'd think her fricking party would throw a little work to a local photographer.
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Youngsters amongst us should remember that it was different rather black and white age
Colour. But I suppose a lot of people would still have had black and white sets.
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How about a zero tolerance policy towards tax-payer funded junk mail?
That's fine in theory.... but just like John Key's "bureaucrats" vs Labour's "essential infrastructure"... one person's "junk mail" is another's "useful and informative leaflet"
I mean, are you seriously suggesting we shouldnt have all been getting those nice little orange envelopes from the electoral office to make sure we were enrolled?
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Grant, your comparison with Key's DVD will be valid if the leaflet has to be recalled and the photo removed. Or if they used the photo without permission. Otherwise, there's no comparison at all.
Labour don't have to back-pedal. They just need to smile sweetly and say "How about the words?". Nobody I know reads these leaflets, but maybe they will now. It would be more useful to know if the claims stack up, but that requires more effort than playing with pictures.
If Labour choose to follow the agenda set by the Herald, more fool them. They can't win a race to the bottom.
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