Scoop Election 08: edited by Gordon Campbell

Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category

Gordon Campbell on stonewalling about the GCSB, and MMP

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

This week has seen two examples of turkeys refusing to vote for an early Christmas – while busily denying the evident self interest involved. First, the GCSB is refusing to identify the 88 people it has illegally spied upon – as revealed in the Kitteridge report - and is donning ...

Gordon Campbell on university essays for hire, and Allie Brosh’s take on depression

Monday, May 13th, 2013

Unfortunately, the buying and selling of ghost-written university essays has been part of academic culture for decades. In the mid 1980s for instance, to cite just one of many examples… the late, revered novelist David Foster Wallace used to earn a living by writing term papers for hire. “It was ...

Gordon Campbell on the debt of gratitude that National owes to Aaron Gilmore

Friday, May 10th, 2013

Comes the time, comes the man. Aaron Gilmore has become the poster child for everything that is loathsome about politicians and the political process. However, it might be time for a sense of proportion to creep into the Gilmore saga. It would be nice to think Gilmore had established a ...

Gordon Campbell on the Mighty River Power debacle

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

Abuse directed at anyone opposed to what you’re wanting to do. Repeated mis-representations of what you said, and did. Not to mention the flat denials that there is a problem, when the evidence happens to contradict your version of events. No, I’m not talking about Aaron Gilmore….but about Bill English, ...

Gordon Campbell on the GCSB’s enhanced role

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

Remember when the creeping power of Big Government was being manifested only in …the energy efficiency regulations for household appliances? Back in 2008, that seemed scary enough for the likes of David Farrar to sound the alarm in these aghast terms: “First they came for our light bulbs, and then they ...

Gordon Campbell on yesterday’s Anzac Day celebrations

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Yesterday’s Anzac Day saw the usual strong turnout at dawn ceremonies, to mark an occasion that is already displacing Waitangi Day – if we can believe the newspaper polls – as the de facto day on which we celebrate our national identity. If that is the case now, how much ...

Gordon Campbell on lurching towards the centre on power prices

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Anyone looking for legacy traces of the late Margaret Thatcher in New Zealand politics will have found them in the government’s scare tactics – “a lurch to the left” – being used to denigrate the Labour/Green plan to crack down on energy price profiteering. What about the government’s own prior ...

Gordon Campbell on the Labour/Greens plan to cut power bills

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

As sure as night follows day, you could bet some financial analyst would see the death of the free market in the plans unveiled last week by Labour and the Greens to put an end to price gouging within our electricity system. Take a bow, Craig Stent of Harbour Asset ...

Gordon Campbell on the same-sex marriage vote, and the current Dotcom law case

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

Since politics is so often about the perpetuation of privilege, we should all celebrate the times when Parliament gets something right. The passage of Louisa Wall’s same sex marriage Bill last night was one such occasion. It is a victory in practical terms for those now able to marry, and ...

Gordon Campbell on the GCSB’s practice of spying on New Zealanders

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

It is hard to decide what is the most alarming aspect of Prime Minister John Key’s plans to expand the role of Big Brother. Or, as Key describes it, his "proposals to significantly strengthen the oversight regime across the intelligence community." Is it the fact that the GCSB has apparently ...