Posts Tagged ‘Cactus Kate’
Young ACTOIDS are revolting.
(‘Civil war’ or simple Generation Gap?) (1) Is ACT entering a Winter of Discontent? (2) Does anyone care? (Zero percent, remember.) Joan of Arc oops, Cactus Kate seems to think so … apparently exasperated that John Banks isn’t adhering to the ‘principles’ of the ACT Party. (Well, we sort of agree about that, then. But […]
ACT: ‘Zero backing. Zilch, nil, nothing at all.’
John Armstrong attended the ACT Party conference over the weekend, with “80 or so party members present” … introducing his wrap up piece in the NZ Herald this morning like this: Act kicked off its annual conference on Saturday having just been kicked in the teeth. Delegates woke up to the news that the previous […]
Of bloggers, dogs and fleas. The Ports of Auckland’s ‘ethical and legal breaches’
Now that the Ports of Auckland has admitted it, I haven’t got much to add to my earlier ‘Lie down with dogs get up with fleas’ comment in ‘Garner: “@whaleoil lies again.” Surprise me‘ about the Ports company leaking their personnel records to a sympathetic (at best case) blogger. Today’s Yesterday’s NZ Herald editorial: Port’s […]
Three faces of Eve … er, John Banks
One-point-one percent blogger Cactus Kate has written a well-worth reading column for the National Business Review website with the engaging title Who is John Banks? (I’m not kidding.) I agree with this part (below) and have said something similar for years: Three sides to Banks I believe there are at least three sides to John […]
Tribalism
One of the perennial themes of this blog is an exploration of the ‘reasons’ for prejudice and conflict between different groups. See my 2009 post Q: Where does conflict come from? which records Tajfel’s social psychology experiments … Henri Tajfel is perhaps best known for his minimal groups experiments. In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily […]
Is there anything you’d like to share with the group, Cathy?
Was/wasn’t ACT list candidate Cathy Odgers (Cactus Kate) recounts the wearying psychological impact of poor opinion poll results on ‘tribal’ political party volunteers … from her own direct experience as a student volunteer in the early days of the minor right wing party (currently running something like 1.7% in the polls). Fine, emotionally honest writing […]
Cactus Kate: ACT Hollow Man or Black Widow?
ThePaepae.com ISN’T a political blog. There are plenty of those, and this year being election year in NZ, we will all be swimming (drowning?) in political commentary soon enough. (God help us.) Nevertheless, I want to share some thoughts and attempt to put a punctuation mark at the end of Cathy Odgers’ (Cactus Kate‘s) supposed […]
Trevor Mallard demolishes Cameron Slater*
Congratulations to Labour MP Trevor Mallard for good-naturedly wiping the smirk off Cameron Slater’s face. Well, temporarily. The result of the much-hyped (on Cameron’s part) 60 km bike race held this afternoon around Bucklands Beach was: Mallard won easily … by more than 20 minutes. I dropped over to Musick Point this afternoon and met Cam’s […]
Right wing vixen Louise Mensch front-footing it
We’ve discussed before my preferred policy of tackling criticism head-on, and also, as a policy, publishing all threats I receive. Yesterday British MP Louise Mensch, a protagonist in the ‘hackgate’ scandal admitted she exaggerated Piers Morgan’s ‘admissions/boasting’ of phone hacking in his Daily Mirror days, and publicly apologised. (Although in typical politician fashion, still tries […]
In praise of Cameron Slater (yeah, I’m surprised too)
If you’d suggested to me a year ago that I would be writing an article in praise of ‘WhaleOil’ blogger Cameron Slater I would have laughed at you. Hard. Yet, here I am doing just that. Let me explain. We’ve discussed these issues before: responding to criticism or negative feedback about one’s actions or statements, […]
On a collision course
I briefly mentioned in passing the small c ‘controversy’ generated by blogger Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury loudly expressing his opinion about whether or not blogger Cactus Kate (Cathy Odgers) was suitable ACT MP candidate material. ‘Hell no’ Bradbury says (or words to that effect) because he says she’s a ‘far right hate merchant’ who has previously […]
It’s only ‘propaganda’ if you’re talking about the other side, right, Carrick?
A few days ago in the context of the public discourse around plain packaging legislation for tobacco products, No wonder tobacco co.s are SQUEALING … I briefly mentioned a PR flack who appears to be an advocate (paid or unpaid? Not clear) for Tobacco manufacturers. This spin doctor* Carrick Graham follows me on Twitter and […]
