Police State?! Don't be silly.

I'm glad to see the police do not limit the scope of people who they keep under observation when it comes to public lives and property that are at risk from acts of violence.
Just because a group claims to be following a righteous cause does not give them a free pass to do whatever illegal acts they feel like.
I am however surprised to read he got paid $600/week by the police! Does seem like a lot, then again I do have no idea as to what the going rate is for an informer. :s
Just reading through this biased report: http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/76507/index.php , and you can clearly see these are not innocent angels the police are monitoring. But people who at the very least have been previously arrested and vandalise property. You just need to look overseas to see examples of where groups like these have been involved in murder and multi million dollar property damage.

As for people at The Standard who would try to spin this to make it appear the National Government is turning us in to a police state, that is just ludicrous as firstly this is far from "police state" behaviour and secondly all of this would have been happening for years under Labour's watch.

Well Done ACT, Two & Half Times As Many MPs!

Polling day is over, the votes are in and counted (excepting special votes) . I'm pleased to say John Key is now our new Prime Minster. ACT is much stronger with 3 more MPs, also at this time in writing (nearly 4am on Sunday morning) ACT is the only party to have updated their website today to state their results & thank their supporters.

With two only two exceptions however: the ultra micro party "The Family Party" also thanked their supporters & expressed their disappointment over their result. And another ultra micro party "Alliance Party of New Zealand" has an almost blank web page where it merely states "Maintenance Mode. Alliance Party of New Zealand will be offline for the duration of polling day for the 2008 General Election. We apologise for any inconvenience". Firstly, I'd seriously hope their website is not down for maintenance. As if so that would have to be one of the most badly timed scheduled maintenance ever. Instead I suspect they just used the Maintenance Mode plugin as an easy way to take their website offline for the duration of polling day because they are afraid of The Electoral Finance Act. Just shows how shockingly bad the EFA is that it caused a party to take down their website, of course blame also falls on Alliance that they should interpret the EFA this badly as none of the other parties did this (you would have thought that at least they could have seen all the other parties kept their site up, didn't they check?!).

During my checking of all of the party websites I was unable to find one for "New Zealand Pacific Party" (TV3 confirms this). I'm shocked, in this day and age a party should have a website. They fully deserve the low polling they got (not to mention the far more serious matter of the criminal charges their party leader is currently facing).

Watched the BBC coverage of the NZ election, was very minimal as you would expect yet even so they managed to muck it up. Calling National's potential coalition partner "Aye Sea Tee". Oh dear...

Polling Day: Drink Up!

Only minutes away until the polls close and election coverage starts, if you are like me and you plan to be inside on a Saturday night glued to the TV watching the votes be counted then you might as well think up a cool little drinking game to go with it. My first idea was to split up the drinking, I could drink for all right wing electorates that are called while my flatmate backs the left. But the party people at the Bill and Ben Party have already came up with a great set of rules:

Electorates To Keep Your Eyes On

Here is my list of electorates to keep your eyes on, as you may never what surprises they could spring up.

First of all the obvious ones:

Tauranga. Winston Peters has held this one for a long time, but last election he lost it yet got back in as list MP due to NZ First breaking 5%. Thankfully this time around NZ First is unlikely to pass 5% & Simon Bridges is doing fine job campaging for National so it looks clear he will win Tauranga rather than Winston.

Epsom. Rodney Hide must win this won for ACT to survive, & arguable he must win to ensure National can form a government. He is up against National's Richard Worth, there is saying going around: "Worth is not worth it". Bit harsh, but very true that he is not worth voting for as it is of such importance Rodney wins Epsom. Luckily there is little danger of that, so no party votes for ACT will be wasted.

Wigram & Ohariu. Basically the same deal for both of these places. But different people, Jim Anderton & Peter Dunne respectively. Odds are they will win their electorate and will only support Labour or National respectively (as Peter Dunne has already came out & said he will go with National, and we always know Jim Anderton will only be supporting Labour). With both parties it is unlikely they will pick up more than one extra MP from the list, if that.

ALL the Maori seats, for obvious reasons as this is the only way the Maori Party is going to increase their number of MPs. Additionally this could have a major impact on Parliament as they may be Kingmaker/Queenmaker and they are likely to cause an overhang again (which will make it tough for National as it will increase the number of seats required for them to make a majority).

Now I've covered the obvious electorates that most people know about, here is where the real surprises might come from (but due to the nature of the fact it would be such a surprise, these results are also quite unlikely. But who knows?):

Mangere. Former Labour MP Taito Phillip Field is standing here for his new "Pacific Party". While I doubt he will win it, he does have the huge advantage of being the current sitting MP for it and having the entire backing of a "party" in helping him towards regaining. I'd be saddened if a person facing his criminal charges gets elected, but I won't completely rule out the possibility he will win. Guess we will all find out tomorrow.

Rimutaka. This is the one I worry about the most. Last election Winston Peters lost Tauranga yet still got in due to NZ First breaking 5%. This time around their party vote won't get that high as it is now entirely limited to the mentally infirm or unstable (how else can you explain it? Or more likely they are just hopeless uninformed and have been mislead by the media and NZ First). Yet if Ron Mark wins Rimutaka then Winston Peters gets back in again. NZ First / Winston Peters recognises this last gasp chance for them, he has even at one point left campaigning in Tauranga to help out Ron Mark in Rimutaka. If Winston Peters doesn't get Tauranga AND NZ First doesn't reach 5% yet Winston Peters still gets in to Parliament because of this I will be very very saddened. I've said if Winston Peters is in Parliament again by whatever means it happens, then I will spend the entire day afterwards wearing black as I'll be in mourning for NZ.

Hundreds of NZers are Technological Morons

Anybody who has any experience with tech support will not be surprised by the title of this post, but even so it is still saddening to see more evidence of this. From the NZ Herald:

Winston Peters has been sending direct mail and setting up webpages in the names of random Kiwis, to the horror of some of those targeted who believe their privacy has been invaded.

The really sad fact is that this is not a quote from one of the morons complaining about this, but is the lead paragraph for the story (which incidentally is on the front page of nzherald.co.nz). Shame on you NZ Herald, your journalists should know better.

If anybody seriously believes this that NZ First set up an individual website just for YOU, then please explain this url: http://HelenClark.MrKey.co.nz

Even though I very strongly hope (and believe) that Winston Peters will not get back in to Parliament, I do admire NZ First for their handy use of a little bit of technology that none of the other parties have done. However it is sad to see too many NZers are too stupid to appreciate it.

Beware the Green Party's Hidden Adgenda!

From the secrete taping of Jeanette Fitzsimons: "I'm Pro-Life"



Oh the Irony, it kills me! (& kills the little unborn babies too....)

Democracy, we don't know how good we have it here in NZ

I'm watching ABC news and they are interviewing people about what they call America's "dirty little secret" that many of America's voting systems are not designed to cope with up to 80% turn out. Hence is why we are seeing people waiting for hours at polling places? Typically voter turnout is only approximately half in America while in NZ we naturally expect around about 90% to vote (Australia has a comparable percentage, the highest in the world). Still, not a reason to rest on our laurels. Get out there and vote on saturday! (regardless of who are you going to be voting for, is important for democracy for you to get your voice heard)