Jesus. The Labour Party made me start a damn blog.

Loads of people who I respect, and who are smarter than me, are arguing like mad on twitter today about the Labour Party and what ails it. ‘Blog Commenters’, apparently. At least for today.

These are smarter people than me and I really do respect them; but nope.

The comments on The Standard and at The Daily Blog do suck in many respects. But they are not the problem with the Labour Party. They would also suck if the party was doing well, but they would probably suck in different ways. They’d be railing against National for 90% of the time instead of about 60%.

The Party is in a sorry state. Everyone knows this. So of course the comments at the Standard are going to reflect that. The idea that if those damn guys would just shut the hell…

While I completely understand the need for women, and men for that matter to be aware of the dangers of sexual violence the fact is, people should be able to go out on a date, or out with friends for a drink, or whatever it is that they want to do, and they should be able to do so without the fear of harassment or assault of either a sexual or violent nature. That’s it, pretty bloody simple.

The message seems to be, from the NZ Media and NZ Police, that people should be wary of things like Tinder and careful when going out on a first date. While caution is valid, people should not have to fear being raped when they go out and the overriding message from the Police should be “Don’t rape, assault or harass, or we will come at you, bro, and we will mess you…

Commentator and former National Party President Michelle Boag this afternoon tried to call the housing issue an Auckland problem. I can categorically state with 100% surety that this is a load of utter crap.

Yes, house prices are rising faster in Auckland than pretty much anywhere else, and yes some parts of the nation are experiencing stagnant or falling prices, this has always and probably will always be the case. This, however does not mean that Joe and Jane Bloggs can afford to buy their own home in Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch or Dunedin. Incomes in all of these centres is lower and the house price to income ratio is, while not quite as extreme as in Auckland, still pretty out of kilter.

Bill English blames councils for this issue, and he blames the Resource Management Act. He blamed Labour when they were in power too, but despite having had 6…

Bill English is quite right to say that the stock of houses owned by Housing New Zealand Corporation is not sufficient to meet the needs of low income kiwi families. But is he right to sell off the HNZ portfolio without telling Kiwis what he intends to do with the proceeds?

The issue, as identified by a recent review, is the location and condition of around 22,000 state houses, with an estimated value of around $5billion.

There is a clearly defined issue with the Governments stock of housing, in that much of it exists in areas where there is little or no demand, or the stock is dilapidated, dangerous or generally unfit for human habitation as a result of years, or even decades of inadequate maintenance.

If the Government commits to reinvesting the proceeds of a State House sell-off back into the social housing asset base that I will be…

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There was something about this letter that didn’t quite ring true…

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It seemed “too cute” by far. Too clever. And it seemed familiar, as if I’d read the story elsewhere – or something similar to it.

Sure enough…

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Which prompted this response from me to the Dominion Post’s editor…

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from: Frank Macskasy <fmacskasy@gmail.com>
to: Dominion Post <letters@dompost.co.nz>
date: Thu, Oct 2, 2014
subject: Letter to the Editor

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The editor

Dominion Post

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Re Dave Christie’s letter, telling the story about his “friend’s little girl wanting to grow up to the the Prime Minister so she could house and feed all the homeless people; and then Christie replies they should all mow his lawns for $25 and do other work around his house”.(1 Oct)

Perhaps Mr Christie could have added that the story was actually lifted, almost word-for-word, from Republican House Representative…

Intelligent people occasionally make stupid mistakes. Exhibit A: Karen Price setting up an anonymous Twitter account in order to lambast her husband’s foes. There’s something very unMachiavellian about choosing an “anonymous” Twitter handle that allowed people who knew you to guess your identity…

It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but let’s look at it in context. Convention dictates that as a “political wife”, Karen Price doesn’t get to vent in public about her husband being put through the wringer, especially not when most of those putting him through the wringer are in fact his own colleagues. Twitter provided an ability to vent anonymously, at a time of enormous stress and pressure.

So she got found out. And she’s apologised:

“After a period of intense media attention and scrutiny of our family, I set up and used an anonymous Twitter account over the weekend and made a number of comments that…