Bastards Abound

A Fobbing of Flap-mouthed Foot-lickers.

The old bastard left his ties and his suit
A brown box, mothballs and bowling shoes
And his opinion so you'd never have to choose
Pretty soon, you'll be an old bastard too
You get smaller as the world gets big
The more you know you know you don't know shit
"The whiz man" will never fit you like "the whiz kid" did

Songwriter: Ben Folds

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To begin, a definition:

Fobbing, Flap-mouthed Foot-licker: A deceptive, excessively talkative sycophant.

“Don’t fall for the sweet talk of that fobbing, flap-mouthed foot-licker. He’s only out for himself.”

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A bastard of a week. By which I mean there were a lot of bastards about.

Awful men that I considered writing about this morning but left me lingering in bed, unable to face another tale of woe this week. Heck, these buggers are still on holiday; I might need to pace things a bit; it’s going to be a hell of a year in politics at this rate.

Uncle Tama: Stacking the Tribunal

People like Tama Potaka, who has been busy removing experts from the Waitangi Tribunal, an organisation whose function is to “make recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to legislation, policies, actions or omissions of the Crown”, and stacking it with people who will be far less questioning.

This is reminiscent of how Trump loaded the US Supreme Court with people who thought like the voters he wanted to appeal to or who would simply do as they were told.

Image: BeFunky.

Late yesterday afternoon, Tama appointed people like:

Grant Hadfield: Three Waters opponent.

In the photo below, Grant is putting up anti-Three Waters billboards for the National Party with National MP Ian McKelvie in 2022.

Does this seem like the sort of person who should be on the Waitangi Tribunal to you, given that the anti-Three Waters movement was partially driven by opposition to Māori representation?

National MP Ian McKelvie (L) and Grant Hadfield. Photo: https://www.facebook.com/grantghadfield/photos

After the last government moved to progress Three Waters, Mr Hadfield posted to Facebook furiously:

“This lying deceitful duplicitous government have demonised democracy.

Theft of our assets, nothing more!

They never had any intention of listening to feedback and alternatives and concerns of communities.

Good luck to many Labour constituent MP’s in 2023, they will need it.”

It was a very strange choice for the Tribunal. Or how about…

Philip Crumb: ZB Plus founding editor.

Some of you might remember seeing ZB Plus, NZME’s attempt to offer a paywalled site to further monetise Newstalk’s hateful misinformation and, I’m guessing, keep the worst of the worst out of the public eye.

Crumb also writes a conservative Substack under the name Cranmer’s Substack, which contains much anti-Three Waters content.

Views I would’ve thought might make someone an unlikely addition to the tribunal, but by the look of things opposing Three Waters, which was to provide Māori with a seat at the table, seems to be the key attribute that Minister Potaka is looking for.

Which has not been entirely well received.

I can think of several individuals who would be good additions to the Tribunal. Mind you, I didn’t think anything was wrong with those who served on it previously.

Individuals like Richard Prebble, appointed late last year, and anti-Three Waters campaigners, a policy that many opposed as it was a bit too much like co-governance, which means respecting the treaty, should not be anywhere near the Waitangi Tribunal.

They are clearly there to ensure that the organisation keeps quiet and doesn’t cause any problems as ATLAS work continues unabated.

Leo Molloy: Rude, mean-spirited, spiteful tosser.

Image: BeFunky.

Tell us what you really think, Nick.

Truth is, I could have happily written another whole piece about the Golriz Ghahraman case now that the vile Leo Molloy has been implicated.

Not to mention that the total value of the items involved was less than $150, which any recent visit to the supermarket will tell you is not a lot of food.

The NZ Herald said in an article last night, “The revelation of a new alleged shoplifting incident came from Auckland restaurateur Leo Molloy in a social media video and led to a fresh wave of online abuse against the former MP.”

I had wondered who the media was using as their roving reporter to gather such vital intel. It turns out they’re running stories based on Leo Molloy's hate posts—great stuff, guys. What next, wall-to-wall coverage of the views of those wacky neoliberals over at the NZ Institute for Global ATLASing?

Roger Partridge: Neoliberal lobbyist

It turns out that when the media does not source its articles from Leo Molloy’s abusive videos, it turns to people like Roger Partridge to inform Kiwis on important matters.

If you’re unfamiliar with Roger, he has been the chair of the NZ Initiative, an ultra-free market lobby group, since April 2012. This is the same crowd as “economist” Bryce Wilkinson, whom I wrote about on Wednesday regarding his support for the Regulatory Standards Bill.

Yesterday, it was Roger's turn to have his opinion piece, 'How Did We End Up So Asset-Rich but Service-Poor?', published in the NZ Herald.

I was less than amused and posted, saying:

“WTF, NZ Herald? It's just wall-to-wall pieces from the NZ Initiative. Today, the chair, Roger Partridge, seems to be wondering why we don't have the infrastructure we need.

Here's a clue, Roger - it's cos you pricks don't want to pay your bloody taxes.

But really, the article is lobbying to sell off public assets - ATLAS styles. Or should that be NZME styles?”

Surely, there are other platforms more suitable for the sort of material that Roger is pushing, like these ones:

Hmm, that’s probably enough ranting from me for one day, and I didn’t even get to happenings in America with all the Tech Billionaires falling over themselves to suck up to Trump so they can get even richer.

Or local Musk wannabe Nick Mowbray with his plastics empire moving into the Spark building on Victoria Street. Ideally located for Mowbray to supply more right-thinking brainfarts to the media, being just down the hill from NZME and not much further from the TVNZ building. How convenient.

To end, a song about being a Bastard from Ben Folds, one of my favourite songwriters. Have a lovely day, folks; batten down the hatches up north and enjoy some of the sunny stuff down south.

Tomorrow, it will definitely be something less serious for paying subscribers, with some questions. If you have any topics you’d like to discuss with the group, perhaps chuck them in the comments or message me, and I’ll include them in the list.