Wow, what a week.

Gun owners were thrown under the bus by NZ First in a craven act of betrayal. 

What will be the electoral consequences of that?

And is the situation recoverable?

Then the government’s Chinese plague recovery efforts had the wheels fall off the trolley in many different ways. 

Lapses at the border, inept management of quarantines, reports proving the government lied about PPE stocks and reversals of previous policies over testing, masks and recovery.

Now the Army is in charge of the borders.

It all sounds like the government is no longer in control of the narrative and on the back foot.

Is it possible that we will see a deal in Auckland Central as a way to shore up Green support and destroy Nikki Kaye’s moral right to claim a leadership role.

Never say never in politics.

Finally, I’ll delve into what increased support from members will or could make available as we strive for our goal of ten thousand members.

I’m Cam Slater and this is Insight: Politics

NZ First betrayed gun owners this week

Many gun owners, like me, were hoping that NZ First would soften the blow of Labours gun-grabbing and anti-gun laws.

Many key people assisted NZ First in writing SOPs and explaining why some of the proposed laws wouldn’t work.

Literally hours and hours of work went in to bring key NZ First MPs up to speed on how the bill could have been improved.

Sadly, that hard work was ignored. The inept laziness of Ron Mark and lackadaisical internal party management meant that the suggestions were ignored. 

Ron Mark was literally asleep at the wheel while Stuart Nash drove the gun-grabbing legislation through to conclusion.

NZ First died in a ditch for about 300 farmers and Federated Farmers, which are the National Party in gumboots, and threw the 250,000 voting gun owners under the bus.

Voters like me were treating the gun laws as a litmus test for NZ First. 

If they delivered for us then they would have earned our votes.

But they didn’t. They treated gun owners like a cheap date and stood them up.

We will remember that come election day, and will likely vote for the Act party.

It is certainly strange behaviour for a party who courted the gun vote at the last election to just ignore a potential 250,000 votes.

Especially as we have just found out that the massacre could have been avoided if only Police had followed our perfectly adequate gun laws as intended.

That Police cock up saw 51 people die. They have blood on their hands.

But worse, they laid the blame at the feet of 250,000 licensed gun owners, and made us pay the price for their folly.

And now NZ First has just rubbed salt into those wounds.

The sad thing is that I don’t believe Ron Mark and Clayton Mitchell even realise just how disappointed gun owners are with NZ First, or the potential lost votes that they just handed over to the Act party.

Come election night they may just realise just how inept that decision was, and we will see a Labour/Green coalition because NZ  First was just a few votes short of being in the box seat again.

Those votes will have gone to Act, and even though they will be in no position to do anything, they do deserve the increased support as a result.

Shooters should feel betrayed. We will remember that at the ballot box.

Let’s see if shooters are now prepared to see a real political force develop to start causing MPs to lose their seats through negative campaigning.

I for one am prepared to assist in that regard. 

Shooters need to stand up for themselves because the majority of political parties won’t do it for them, and that includes National.

Nightmare of a week for the Princess and the Red Team

This past week has been a nightmare for the government, where their incompetence has been in full public display.

Yet again the Minister of Health David Clark has been shown up for not being on top of his portfolio.

We also found out that The Prime Minister has lied to us again.

This time it was over the apparent appointment of a brylcreem boy Air Force bloke to oversee the border and quarantine controls after numerous cock-ups had been exposed in the media.

So, what was the lie?

Well, the flyboy had actually been in charge for over four weeks and so was the person actually responsible for the cock-ups.

We were told that our borders ARE really super-tight, and even more so now that the “Commodore” has just been hired to control them. 

That’s precisely what the “Ash and Cinders” show tried to make us believe the other day.

Do these people actually believe nobody would bother to check just how long the “Commodore” has been in charge?

Only to find out HE was in charge at the time of the “Covid Karens” incident; and also the escape of the mongrel-mob kids.

Not that anyone will actually be held to account.

The Prime Minister likes to make grand statements and she did so again with the case of the two women who miraculously got lost trying to find their way thru two left turns onto the Southern Motorway before stopping for a hug and a cuddle before taking a plague-infected tiki tour of the North Island to Wellington, leaving a trail of over 320 contacts for the hapless Ashley Bloomfield to trace:

She uses other words too. “No excuses” “Unforgiveable”, “Unacceptable”…hmmm, those words have meanings. 

If it is unforgivable and unacceptable and there are no excuses then who is getting sacked then?

I predict it will be Mr Nobody.

The people who are actually suffering are not the fools who cocked up, but families who are already under lock and key, who can’t get to see their loved ones to attend funerals. She was very quick to ban any bereavement leave as a result of the cock ups.

But nobody has been sacked.

All this means is that that we will never hear the word “accountable” uttered from the Prime Minister’s lying mouth.

Of course the government has been riding high in the polls and all cock a hoop about beating the virus.

They were cocky and grandiloquent with their claims.

Now the Chinese plague has sat them back on their arses and handed them a beating.

These fools thought they could do what no other country had done. They thought that we alone would be spared.

They locked us down and did so illegally. They wrecked the economy with their grandiose illegal state control of us all.

And then dropped the ball in handling quarantine because of their arrogance.

You may remember that early on in all this I called bullshit on their testing regime, and their recovered definition.

Now those chickens are coming home to roost.

But now the government has a massive problem on their hands…wilful disobedience from the population who now believe that they’ve sacrificed their jobs, businesses, finances, all for nothing.

The government won’t be able to lock us all down again. We simple won’t tolerate it.

We are sick of the Ashley and Cindy show on daily television, and we are sick of being lied to.

The simple fact is that the government tricked us, lied to us, and now people are starting to realise that it has all been for nothing.

The Dompost headlines said it all.

They couldn’t organise a root in a brothel.

  • Social distancing protocols are being ignored.
  • People mingling with others at different points in their isolation, as children run riot in the hallways.
  • Nurses stationed in hotels are leaving work in floods of tears after copping abuse.
  • Some are even refusing Covid-19 tests.
  • A homeless man who fooled officials so he could swan around a swanky hotel for two weeks on the lam, paid for by taxpayers.

A Malcolm Tucker quote seems in order:

The government had 12 weeks to get quarantine protocols right, but when your top health bloke lies about PPE, and testing and masks and we use the laxest definition for recovered in the world then it was only a matter of time before Ashley Bloomfield burned his fingers.

Strangely Bloomfield now insists that people can’t leave a quarantine facility without a negative test, something he argued against in April as being necessary. 

Is this new requirement a tacit admission that he got it wrong all those months ago?

Not that you will hear him admit he was wrong.

But he has not only burned his fingers.

He’s also been chucked under the proverbial bus by a Prime Minister more intent on maintaining good offshore headlines for herself than anything else.

With all that bad news then it was lucky that the Prime Minister’s child had her second birthday yesterday to provide a gushy weapon of mass distraction.

People are up in arms over lack of controls on the border, and for migrants separated families but it’s all lovey dovey with the first family.

For someone who supposedly desires privacy for her child she sure uses the kid politically, especially when she needs a distraction from a couple of weeks of bad news.

And they need that weapon of mass distraction because the public are not happy.

A Newshub survey tells us that 78% of us don’t have any confidence in our border controls.

We have the easiest border in the world to maintain. We are surrounded by a moat.

All the government has to do  is make everyone arrive  at Auckland Airport, and then sequester arrivals and put them through mandatory testing.

Something people have been expecting to have been done for months.

It’s not rocket science, but now we have Megan Woods coming in to clean up more than the morning tea sausage rolls.

She’s has to clean up Phil Twyford’s Kiwibuild cock up, and now she is cleaning up David Clark’s border health issues.

And where has National been in the middle of all this?

Buggered if I know?

Wasting time opening safes and hiring new staff.

Do they know there is an election in less than 90 days?

Why isn’t National screaming that our only risk is people coming over the border, that the government needs to harden up and tell people if you can’t afford the quarantine, don’t get on the plane.

Once again we get to pay for other peoples choices, when they are the ones bringing the risks.

Or maybe, just maybe we didn’t actually eliminate the Chinese plague in the first place and now we are starting to see the start of the second, and worst wave.

Or is it possible that another one of Ashley Bloomfields claims, that almost cases have been travel related is about to get blown to bits.

I reckon that the testing regime has been lax.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that tests haven’t been done correctly.

Plus they rationed and are still rationing tests.

They only test you if you are symptomatic. And most who get it have no symptoms

So, I  reckon we are now seeing the results of people being out and about and the silent carriers are now infecting others.

But the government won’t be able to shut us down again. The economy won’t take it, and neither will the voters.

They know it’s roaring back, why else would Police be advising their staff of a second wave and continue to practice strenuous health measures.

I don’t think we have seen the last of the bad news headlines, and there are no more birthdays to help paper over the cracks.

Perhaps a wedding will do it…or a second pregnancy?

Could we see a possible Green/Labour deal in Auckland Central?

If Labour and the Greens wanted to shore up the possibility of a Labour/Green coalition after the election then the pieces are falling nicely into place in Auckland Central with the Greens announcing Chloe Swarbrick as their candidate in that electorate.

The Greens are currently polling at or under the 5% threshold. 

If Labour maintains their huge lead and continues to eat Green support then the Greens may just need an electorate lifeline.

Labour too will need a bit of an insurance policy just in case they can’t get over 50% themselves. Until last week that was a distinct possibility, but after a nightmare of incompetence the shine has come off them. 

An insurance policy in the form of The Greens winning an electorate is just the ticket.

Auckland Central is their best bet. 

National holds that by a slim majority, that with faltering form puts Nikki Kaye at real risk of losing the seat.

Putting up a bubbly and smiling Chloe Swarbrick against a scowling, sad face Nikki Kaye is only good for the Greens.

As one commenter noted it’s a case of Drizzle vs. Rain.

They just have to convince Labour to go along with an Epsom style deal and Nikki Kaye’s seat is gone, along with her moral claim to the deputy leadership of National.

A decapitation strategy would be appealing, although Kaye will of course be number two on National’s list.

A loss would destroy her leadership credibility.

In the last two elections Kaye’s strategy was to never debate Jacinda Ardern. That isn’t going to work this time around.

And in any local debates Chloe Swarbrick should destroy Nikki Kaye.

I don’t like her politics, but savvy, smart and capable will win over scowly, mediocrity any day.

We live in interesting times.

Update on subscriptions and site development

Just a quick update for you on our goal to get 10,000 members like The Spinoff enjoys.

As a reminder The Spinoff has 10,000 members, paying around $10 per month. That gives them a membership revenue stream of $100,000 per month or $1.2M per annum.

We’ve added 100 new members in short order, after talking about the goal. We still have a long way to go, but we are pleasantly surprised at progress.

That increase in members means we have now two quality cartoonists on board for 4 quality cartoons a week.

We are recruiting more Insight: Politics writers as well, from across the political spectrum.

Our MyBFD platform is also growing and by the end of this month, we should have the facility to host private Zoom sessions with MyBFD. They will be available just in time for exclusive election briefings for Silver members and above. Gold and Platinum members will have their own limited numbered sessions as well.

We are also about to start exclusive polling from Curia as well. This is what increased memberships allow us to do. Our goal is to poll each and every month. That will be more regular than all other media outlets combined.

As we increase more memberships towards the 10,000 goal we will be able to add more quality content. 

A revenue stream like that enjoyed by The Spinoff would enable us to launch two streaming apps. One for streaming video content with a talk show format to TVs and other video streaming services, and a phone app to allow streaming of “radio” talkback.

These things are all possible if conservative media and The BFD, in particular, are well supported by members.

We can’t let the left-wing beat us.

To that end, we will also be launching an affiliate marketing programme, where we will share the revenue we get from new members, referred by an affiliate with them for the lifetime of the membership of the referee. 

Details will be coming soon on this, but suffice to say we are in discussions with large member organisations about this.

If you have access or control over a large email database or community then it may be beneficial to your organisation to become an affiliate and share our revenue for every member you sign up. 

Email [email protected] if you are interested.

There are many exciting developments to come and it is through members like you we are able to do this. 

We need conservative voices, we need more members. 

Together we can build a conservative media machine to challenge the slanted narrative our mainstream press drip into the ears of voters.

Summary

It looks like we are seeing the start of a second wave of the Chinese plague.

The Police bosses certainly seem to think so, issuing memos to  that effect.

But will the government have the same tools available to fight the plague?

And is it actually possible to fight a virus like this.

There is still no vaccine for HIV after more than 30 years. That virus kills 700,000 per annum.

No vaccine exists for SARS, which is a cousin of the Chinese plague.

Nor does one exist for Ebola or Hanta or any number of virus.

Hell we can’t even cure the common cold.

So what makes the government think we can beat this virus.

What is clear is that despite having a pandemic plan, and despite false claims of going hard and early, and despite supposedly having the world’s strictest border restrictions.

Clearly that was a lie too.

We have the plague roaring back into life.

Except now we have wrecked economy, hundreds of thousands unemployed, a government debt mountain, and no wherewithal or room to move.

If the second wave rolls in now we really have little choice but to weather the storm without the severe restrictions we’ve just had.

Maybe we should  actually shut the borders, and keep old people sequestered, but leave the rest of us to get on with things.

I’m no longer sure the government knows what to do.

Forget the team of Five million, and “Be Kind” signs. Tough times are ahead.

And that is why we need a team of ten thousand as members of The BFD.

Now is the time to challenge the useless mainstream media. 

Now is the time to power up conservative voices.

We have comprehensive plans that just need support.

To all our current members, thank you.

To all those who are yet to commit…just do it.

I’m Cam Slater and this was Insight:Politics.

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...