National Party Paralysed by non-productive but media-friendly anti water exports pressure groups  From MSCNewsWire's European Correspondent August 7 2017 -  Fresh water is New Zealand’s most promising new primary export yet the more extravagant become the prospects for development, the more intense the pressure to vapourise the business from powerfully placed ideological pressure groups. In recent months attempts to staunch the packaged water business has U-turned away from a generalised argument against the plastic (i.e petroleum-derived) containers to a much broader-gauge argument to the effect that pumping out drinking water is undermining the very geological base on which the nation…

Has Booby-trapped Centrists  New Zealand First leader Winston Peters MP has booby-trapped the pending general election for the centrist parties. He now presents himself as the voice of common sense without the clutter of chic, neo fashionable issues that continue to cloud and generally fuzzy-up the offerings of the National government, and to an only slightly lesser degree, the Labour Party opposition as well. Examples of his precision focus:- Farmers. He has undermined this founding and traditional support base of the National Party by appealing directly to them and doing so without the environmental qualifications that increasingly haunt the National…

After a long tour of duty the National government again demonstrates erratic and quirky behaviour Trans Tasman commentator Spiro Zavos observed that toward the end of one of their long periods of time in power that successive National governments become erratic, sometimes eccentrically so. They would, proclaimed the maven, succumb to a type of long distance fatigue and start to weave across their own political road. Here are a trio of notable and quite recent examples….. Example 1. The John Key Knighthood. Purpose of the ennoblement: To demonstrate that the National Party appreciated upon his retirement the shrewd and personable…

Commonwealth Mediaevalist sees recurring Antipodean pattern now supercharged by media-driven Compensation expectations   In the era of pervasive popular communications, asserts Commonwealth mediaevalist Gordon Strong, “it has been seen that the media and the public combine symbiotically in influencing outcomes in a court of law. “Accusations are far more likely to remain in the public consciousness than subsequent retractions.” Justice must be done, and seen to be done, noted Gordon Strong in evaluating the current hysteria outbreak in Australia “The problem now arises when pressure is brought to bear on the judiciary from other, non-judicial, sectors,” he emphasised. He stressed…

Microsoft Scam Artists Have Revealed the Cause of this inevitable bias  The accelerating reduction of the domestic land line in favour of the exclusive use of mobiles will tend to favour in polling for this year’s general election the political parties that traditionally appeal to the older generation, the demographic which literally holds onto its landlines. This will favour the National Party and also Winston Peters’ New Zealand First Party. It will work against the parties that rely on the younger protest or ideological following such as the Greens or the new Gareth Morgan-led Opportunities Party. This whole phenomenon has…

Health threat changes its form   The National Government sensibly is de-fanging the dog issue by having its Internal Affairs Department sponsor advertisements seeking to encourage owners of attack dogs, or as the advertisement describes them “menacing by breed,” dogs castrated. Local government authorities meanwhile are being encouraged to advertise to “proud owners” of all animals their obligation to get their dogs registered. Why the gentle persuasion, instead of tough pressure on the owners of the animals? There is strong evidence to demonstrate that dog owners are single-issue voters on the lines of love me, love my dog. The dog…

We predicted - hedge funds pull back on Fairfax What about the hedge funds and such like said to be lurking in the middle distance?The two newspaper groups began to go heavily into play in the 80s bubble and will have been stripped by now of hard asset value i.e. real estate. So they are unlikely to be a target for speculators. Original article from the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk published  Sunday 7 May 2017 . . . NZ Commerce Commission Fairfax & NZME Merger Saga Decrypted---Presents Case Study on Peril in Strategic Planning of an Early Assumption That Masks Evolving…

Foreign Minister Knew that It is the Putting Right That Counts  New Zealand’s foreign minister Gerry Brownlee’s deft handling of the small country’s Middle East posture was timed and executed to perfection. The former school wood working instructor demonstrated in his new post the understated flair in this realpolitik that has been a characteristic of his long Parliamentary career. From the outset he understood that in a favoured New Zealand mercantile jingle that it is the “putting right that counts.” His backtracking on the New Zealand security council participation in the censoring of Israel demanded that he de-fuse the issue,…

National & Labour Know They Must Ditch Fuddy Duddy Images. But How?   New Zealand’s two major political parties have been revealed in the same day to each have bungled their separate strategies to turn a youthful face to the electorate. The first was when a very young National Party Member of Parliament did what party officials who sought to block his original selection said he would do which was fall out with the same electoral officials, an incident spiced up by the now seemingly mandatory secret taping sub plot. The second incident involving the Labour Party followed hard on…

Sinister frenzy flourishes due to the failure of ruling classes, ecclesiastics, politicians, educators to purge it ---- Establishment now powerless and swept along helplessly with the vengeful and resentful mob Gordon Strong is Britain’s leading commentator on Arthurian legend and mythology. He routinely lectures on the subject in the United States and Australasia and was recently the subject of a National Geographic Discovery series. Mr Strong, who lives near Glastonbury, is also an authority on the way in which the atavistic characteristics popularly supposed to exist only in ancient myth and superstition exist today and occur all around us now but…

Has taken Napoleon’s Advice: Do not Interrupt your enemies while they are making a mistake New Zealand First Party leader WInston Peters MP has re-drawn the map of the pending general election so that all roads lead to his own central issue which is immigration Like the maestro his adherents believe him to be WInston Peters MP has choreographed the pending general election around this single issue. No matter which route his competitors in campaigning actually wish to take, he has wired the general election so that they must converge on and arrive at immigration All the other issues converge…