If National wins ...

[Daytr]

I see Winston Peters has secured another major coup for Northland.
Northland College is to get a $14M upgrade.
Pity it took a years of neglect under National before anything was done.
The police described the school as a perfect practice area for training in a ghetto environment!
Good on ya Winnie.

[craic]

How? The same way he secured the Ranfurly Shield from HB at the weekend?

[Daytr]

Well Craic, if you elected an NZF MP, they just might! ;-)
HB is my ITM cup along with Northland, so its good to see their success.
But to answer your question, he helped draw attention to the issue as any good MP should.

[westerly]

""I would have thought the likes of Mike Hosking, Paul Henry and even John Campbell would be thought of more as entertainers than journalists. ""

The sad part of this statement is that there are alot of people in NZ that think journalists ... especially in prime time news hour.... are very informed
political truth Sayers. The fact is, in our modern world of information dissemination, the masses of sheeples in NZ and for that matter the world, get
there biased / unbiased / informed / uninformed / true / untrue / factual / imaginary "news" from where they spend their one hour a day getting informed.
And this is where the media has gone from a news service in years gone by to..... political "interlopers" today.
And sadly most people dont know what is hitting them.
This is an issue for left and right wing voters and all those in between or outside of the center.

When media personalities cause left / right wing disharmony you know there is a problem.
In the old days it was called government propaganda....
In this age its called news......
Who controls the media?

Have to agree with all you have written.
Hoskings, Henry, Duncan Garner, Mike Yardley and others with multiple media positions all have far too much influence on public opinion. If they want to be radio hosts or tv presenters or newspaper columnists fair enough but to combine all three is giving them far too much room to push their own opinions. All would be elected as Mps if they stood simply on the basis of being famous for being well known.
As for the newspapers, no wonder they are struggling to survive given their lack of content relying more and more on facebook, columnists, and the net for content. Where have all the real journalists gone?

westerly

[Daytr]

I saw these quotes from JFK recently and they are quite apt in regards what is going on with the TPPA.
"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
and
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. "

Smart man that JFK and one of the great orators of the 20th century.
A pity someone with similar initials doesn't follow his lead...

[elZorro]

Daytr, did you see this cartoon?

Of course McCully is still in the news, with John Key still backing the actions taken by a minister who has been involved in these types of deals before. He's got all the answers, has Murray.

The latest Colmar Brunton poll from early July shows a reducing support for National, and more people pessimistic about the economy going forward, than optimistic. This was a sharp change, which the govt felt they needed to do something about. Hence the feel-good press opportunities. This will go on, until morale improves.

http://www.colmarbrunton.co.nz/index...r-brunton-poll

At least the GDT auction showed a bit of a bounce overnight. But as we've seen, there are now some major international forces working to take the cream off any future boom in dairy prices. The cat is out of the bag.

[Daytr]

National making headlines again this morning for all the wrong reasons.
Sheepgate will finally be investigated by the Auditor General. It will be interesting if Key starts backing away from McCully.
Key has shown again & again poor judgment. McCully represents NZ on the world stage as Minister of Foreign Affairs and representing NZ on the Security Council. Was he Key's man because he knew he was malleable & moral compass is erratic to say the least?
This is a guy who was sacked as Minister of Tourism years ago for similar dodgy behavior. He has form.
So Key is either naïve, which I doubt or he wanted someone who would do his bidding no mater how dubious & perhaps illegal the action maybe.

And now we may have more asset sales, this time from Landcorp. Who is going to be the main buyers of these stupid dairy conversions?
Overseas buyers that's who.
So lets get this straight. These farms have been converted to dairy and money was borrowed to do this and now of course they are a drain on government coffers. State houses coming up soon, power companies before. So why is Government debt still rising?
A new government is going to inherit a record debt level and when I say record, probably triple or quadruple the amount of debt and significantly less assets.
If they were a company the banks would be shutting them down and share holders would be turfing out the board.
National claim to be the best financial managers.
All they have proved is they can borrow 10s of billions and sell stuff that actually generates income.
If this was Labour they would be ranting every day about spiraling debt and selling the kitchen sink.
Oh sorry that is clearly what National are doing.
Get em out in 2017.

[Daytr]

Is it just me or has the quality of the NZ Herald on line deteriorated dramatically in the last 6 months or so.
It seems more like the Sun in London than supposedly NZs premier daily.
This sponsored content crap gets my goat as well.
Stuff seems like a better option to me for general news. Any other reasonable options?
I see they have been struggling financially, so I suppose I should put my viewing support there to help them get advertising revenue.

Have to agree with all you have written.
Hoskings, Henry, Duncan Garner, Mike Yardley and others with multiple media positions all have far too much influence on public opinion. If they want to be radio hosts or tv presenters or newspaper columnists fair enough but to combine all three is giving them far too much room to push their own opinions. All would be elected as Mps if they stood simply on the basis of being famous for being well known.
As for the newspapers, no wonder they are struggling to survive given their lack of content relying more and more on facebook, columnists, and the net for content. Where have all the real journalists gone?

westerly

[craic]

Oh Dear! How sad! dairy price goes up 19% , just when the left thought they were home and hosed. Now what I would expect as a voter is a list of the assets, particularly land that Labour and its cohabitants will buy back when they are elected and how soon they will do it. And how they will stuff up the trade relationship with Saudi Arabia, as they did last time. Maybe if we got some more reality from them about their plans for the future they might just get a few of their lost voters back - some, but probably not enough to affect the status quo.

[Daytr]

Craic, National extended the ban on live sheep exports & rightly so.
So are you saying National are wrong & they should have resumed live exports?
After all that is what they promised to do, but then they broke that promise as they realized that most NZers are against this cruel activity.

Great to see the dairy price up dramatically, although 19% up off a low base is around 80c or about the equivalent of a 10% of what the price was at its lofty highs. Still good news though. In saying that Fonterra held product off market, which was a god thing to try although can't be done on a long term basis. I find it bizarre they hadn't restricted supply to the market a bit earlier.

As an ex commodity trader, most commodities get to oversold levels at some point & have short covering rallies. This was a prime example. What also typically happens is after the healthy clear out, the trend resumes. We may though have finally found a technical floor in the global price, well at least for a while.