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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics Podcast transcript by Cam Slater that was first published 26th October 2020.
Insight: Politics Podcast with Cam Slater – Episode 28
Welcome to my 28th podcast.
In this episode I will challenge Tova O’Brien with some facts that seem to have escaped her slanted view of the world.
She will, no doubt, dismiss it as fake news. The information doesn’t come from their usual sources like CNN or the Guardian or the mouth of Jacinda Ardern.
Journalists do us all a disservice when they let their egos get in the way of facts.
Then I will forensically examine where National went wrong and who to point the bone at for the loss.
I’m Cam Slater and this is Insight: Politics.
The Lies and Mistruths of a Newshub Reporter
Tova O’Brien, one of the more shrill media shills for the Ardern government is currently drunk on self promotion after her interview with Jami-lee Ross.
It was an interview where she showed personal animus towards the interviewee and utter bias in distorting and then shutting down key information about the Chinese plague, simply because it didn’t suit her narrative.
Here is the relevant bit of the interview, where she asks a question then shuts down the answer:
You have to wonder why she even asked the question in the first place.
Then after a storm of publicity, she then wrote a wanky self-justifying article in that left-wing rag called The Guardian, leaving us in no doubt about her underlying political ideology.
No self-respecting conservative would ever deign to read The Guardian, much less write for it.
She starts the article with some bold, and as it turns out factually incorrect claims.
Like the families of 1.14 million people worldwide, our family has lost people we love to Covid-19. They are people who would not have died were it not for this deadly, hyper-contagious virus. We are in a global pandemic that is at least 15 times more fatal than seasonal influenza.
There is no context to such an emotive and baseless claim.
Is she seriously stating that the 25 people who have died in New Zealand, even though 11 weren’t even tested for the Wu Pox, wouldn’t have died but for the virus?
That’s a stretch. We now have the sad and ironic situation where more people have died on our roads this year than from the plague, but the difference is we haven’t had the Prime Minister and Ashley Bloomfield announcing every road death like they have from the Chinese plague.
But her boldest claim is that the Wu Flu is 15 times more fatal that seasonal flu.
Well is it?
The short answer is no, it is not.
We have basically used the sledgehammer of lockdowns to break the shelled peanut that is COVID-19.
We’ve wrecked our economy for the seasonal flu.
Even the WHO says as much. They now say that lockdowns aren’t the way to go.
And it is WHO that now says that COVID-19 is about as deadly as the seasonal flu.
Dr Sebastion Rushworth points this out in a recent column:
“In August, I wrote an article where I proposed that the mortality for covid is only 0.12%, roughly the same as influenza. That number was based on a back-of-the-envelope calculation. I figured that, since the death rate had dropped continuously for months and was at very low levels, Sweden must have reached a point where it had herd immunity. And I figured that at least 50% of the population must have been infected for herd immunity to have been reached. 50% of Sweden’s population is five million people. 6,000 / 5,000,000 = 0.12%”
He adds;
“At the beginning of October, one of the World Health Organisation’s executive directors, Mike Ryan, said that the WHO estimated that 750 million people had so far been infected with covid. At that point, one million people had died of the disease. That gives a death rate for covid of 0.13% . So the WHO said that the death rate is 0.13%.”
The WHO has completed a study by John Iaoannidis. Dr Rushwoth examines this and says:
“This analysis was based on seroprevalance data, i.e. data on how many people were shown to have antibodies to covid in their bloodstream at different times in different countries, which was correlated with the number of deaths in those countries. Through this analysis, professor Ioannidis reached the conclusion that covid has an overall mortality rate of around 0.23% (in other words, one in 434 infected people die of the disease). For people under the age of seventy, the mortality rate was estimated at 0.05% (in other words, one in 2,000 infected people under the age of 70 die of the disease).”
None of that suggests even remotely that the Chinese flu is 15 times more deadly than seasonal flu.
Again Dr Rushworth comments:
“But even if the antibody based number is the correct number, then covid still is not a very deadly disease. For comparison, the 1918 flu pandemic is thought to have had an infection fatality rate of 2.5%, i.e. one in forty infected people died. So the 1918 flu was 11 times more deadly than covid if you go by professor Ioannidis antibody based numbers, and 19 times more deadly than covid if you go by the fatality rate provided 12 days earlier by the WHO’s Mike Ryan.
And this is missing one big point about covid. The average person who dies from covid is over 80 years old and has multiple underlying health conditions. In other words, their life expectancy is very short. The average person who died in the 1918 pandemic was in their late 20’s. So each death in the 1918 pandemic actually meant around 50 years more of life lost per person than each death in the covid pandemic. Multiply that by the fact that it had a 19 times higher death rate, and the 1918 flu was in fact 950 times more deadly than covid, in terms its capacity to shorten people’s lives.”
Which is exactly what I recently said.
And the numbers are now not going to change. Viruses don’t suddenly become more virulent, they are what they are and there is now plenty of real evidence out there that COVID-19 isn’t the mass killer it was purported to be. More cases and and deaths aren’t going to change the statistics.
We now know categorically that COVID-19 is a bad flu. That’s it.
Which is precisely what Jami-lee Ross was trying to say when Tova O’Brien shut him down. Her self-congratulatory Guardian column is also a big lie.
As you’ve seen the Wu Pox isn’t 15 times more deadly than seasonal flu. And again we can look at Sweden, with little or no controls over the population:
September 2020 was the least deadly month in Swedish history, in terms of number of deaths per 100,000 population. Ever. And I don’t mean the least deadly September, I mean the least deadly month. Ever. To me, this is pretty clear evidence of two things. First, that covid is not a very deadly disease. And second, that Sweden has herd immunity.
Dr Rushworth continues:
When I posted this information on my twitter feed, the response from proponents of further lockdown was that the reason September was such an un-deadly month, was because everyone has already died earlier in the pandemic. To me, that seems like a pretty self-defeating argument. Why?
Because 6,000 people have died of covid in Sweden, a country with a population of 10,000,000 people. 6,000 people is 0.06% of the population. If it is enough for that tiny a fraction of a population to die of a pandemic for the pandemic to peter out so completely that a country can have its least deadly month ever, then the pandemic was never that deadly to begin with.
Which brings me back to Tova OBrien’s grandiose and false claims.
She states near the end of her column:
I was just doing my job that morning and the interview did not happen in a vacuum. Journalists all over the world have been calling out lies relating to Covid-19, especially when they’re adopted by powerful figures attempting to legitimise falsehoods.
Well, what happens, Tova, when powerful media figures lie and are caught out?
Who holds you to account?
Little wonder that Newshub is now rated as one of the most biased news organisations in New Zealand, and The BFD one of the least biased.
Perhaps we need to rewrite that paragraph.
“Honest scientists and citizens all over the world have been calling out lies related to COVID-19, especially when they’re adopted by biased Mainstream Media journalists attempting to legitimise dodgy lying Prime Ministers”.
There, fixed, you’re welcome Tova dear.
The Seeds of National’s Election disaster
National’s loss started under John Key.
Now, I can hear a sharp intake of breathe there from listeners, but it’s true.
John Key developed the National Party into a cult of personality. Everything was a “John Key led this…” and a John Key led that…”
So, when the cult leader dies so too does the cult. No cult has ever survived the death of its leader. With the notable exceptions of Christianity and Islam.
But where are the Moonies now?
Bill English tried to play the game the same way as John Key but looked silly doing so, and then when the numbers came in they weren’t nearly enough.
And so the second key factor in National’s recent loss came to bear.
Bill English lost the election and the subsequent negotiations and thus gave up the power of incumbency.
No government since 1975 has been dumped after just 1 term.
Muldoon lasted three terms, The Lange/Douglas/Palmer/Moore government lasted two terms, The Bolger/Shipley government lasted three terms, the Clark Government lasted three terms and John Key’s government lasted three terms.
The chances that Ardern would be rolled after just one term were remote.
Therefore negotiating poorly, like Bill English, gave up incumbency and effectively made National’s job harder in 2020.
Had National agreed to substantially more than the pathetic amount offered to NZ First for the PGF then history may have been different. It would have been Bill English and his ministry in power when Covid hit.
Labour would’ve been struggling for relevance with no media coverage. Furthermore it would have been unlikely that Jacinda Ardern would still have been leading Labour.
Bill English has much to answer for. His catastrophic loss in 2002 meant Don Brash just missed out in 2005. And condemned National to three terms in opposition.
He’s probably done it again by failing to negotiate a better deal after his loss in 2017.
When you add in the petulance and arrogance from supporters you see a real turn off for voters.
Silly labels like “Part time PM”, “selected not elected”, and blaming Winston Peters for losing are just some examples.
Same for Todd McClay’s troll farm and activists like Hamish Price, Michelle Boag’s homunculus. Their “turn Ardern” nonsense might have provided much mirth for the hard core base but it was a turn off for the general public.
Such hubris and arrogance always infects third term governments, who would’ve thought that it would infect a first term opposition?
Then, fatally, the caucus chose Simon Bridges and the toxic Paula Bennett to lead the party.
Bridges promptly embarked on a tour of the nation so people could get to know him.
Well they did, and they didn’t like what they saw.
He was in fact, a little pretender. He looked like a greasy little slimeball with inauthentic behaviour. He was rehearsed and even then it was poorly rehearsed.
He was backed by one of the most nasty and horrible MPs in National ever, Paula Bennett. She was constantly undermining Bridges, and seeking to blame others for it.
I well remember telling Simon Bridges of what Bennett was doing in a meeting held with Jami-lee Ross where a third party put on the table that they could just demote Ross. Bennett goaded Bridges into rejecting that course of action.
If they had of taken that deal then the immense damage caused by Jami-lee Ross, who literally had nothing else to lose, might well have been avoided.
But you can’t put the poo back in the donkey, and the donkey eventually went lame.
But it was too late. Caucus had ignored their own internal polls that showed Bridges was hated even more than Jeremy Corbyn.
His net positives were in fact never positive, they were and always will be deeply negative.
An intellectual giant, he isn’t. He and the caucus clung on too long to the Bridges and Bennett clown show.
National’s poll numbers stayed up despite Simon Bridges not because of Simon Bridges.
And then the false hope of the wet wing popped any remaining bubble National enjoyed.
The Matthew Hooton and Michelle Boag inspired coup of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye, along with outsiders and fellow wets like Tim Hurdle and Megan Campbell was much hyped. Dishonestly as it turned out.
Todd Muller wasn’t the saviour. He wasn’t even a false prophet.
He was in fact a man promoted well beyond his abilities, with a business background of just being there. He was no go-getting entrepreneur. In fact he was the proverbial journeyman just waiting for a good hiding from reality.
He showed his lack of spine by winning an argument over a red hat by running away.
Running away is now his signature move. And I’m not one to minimise mental health issues myself. I never ran from a challenge. He did.
The drowning of the wet wing was a a drowning in a puddle of their own making.
John Key and Bill English developed not only a cult, but also a cult-like attitude to the pawns in the movement. A poor internal culture developed. The first sight of this was the appalling way Bill English rinsed Todd Barclay. It showed a willingness for using hostile media to get their own team.
First John Key and then Bill English, cultivated and trained the nasty into Jami-lee Ross. Paula Bennett already had a sufficient level of evil to prosper under them.
But the willingness to gather dirt on their own team and feed it to the media continued and even accelerated under Bridges and Bennett.
It is a myopic strategy as every story actually debilitates the party. But Bridges, Bennett, and Mark Mitchell never saw that. Jami-lee Ross was always sent in to tell the hapless MP that they were done.
Then it was done to him, by Mark Mitchell.
Mitchell became Paula Bennett’s enforcer, dutifully following her every move, doing her dirty work.
When the coup was on against Bridges, Paula Bennett was shamelessly promoting her own agenda. She was calling MPs and telling them not to worry, her and Mitch had their backs.
No one was more shocked than Bennett when she was rinsed, so she petulantly quit, and torched all the election plans.
This left Muller and Kaye and their brains trust with no plan for after they’d knifed Bridges and Bennett. This of course contributed to their own capitulation.
At least Nikki Kaye had the honesty to quit entirely.
Poor candidate vetting, coupled with poor caucus management also contributed to the public perception that National was unfit to govern. The young guns all failed spectacularly and went in disgrace, Jami-lee Ross, Hamish Walker and Andrew Falloon.
The toxic influence of Michelle Boag was finally excised from the party after the particularly disgrace actions of her and Hamish Walker were exposed.
Sadly 20 years of her influence took its toll.
Ironically it was also because of Michelle Boag that created the moribund and unaccountable board. Constitutional changes after her poisonous presidency meant that the president was no longer elected by members, instead they were appointed by the board.
This has resulted in almost no turn over of the board since the disaster of 2002.
Peter Goodfellow long overstayed his welcome he should have gone after the last loss, and he should definitely go now.
The fact that he never conducted a review after 2017 is as much a part of the problem as his lacklustre presidency has proved to be.
The party should now be considering term limits for board members and regional positions. Term limits foster action, the status quo should never be an option.
Unfortunately the stats quo is what National has become comfortable with.
That includes senior MPs overstaying their welcome in the forlorn belief that they’d be returned after just one election cycle to the comfy offices, staff and chauffeur driven cars.
It was the same attitude in 2002, it didn’t work then, and it didn’t work now.
They were ignoring history… we have had no one term governments for 45 years.
Again similar to 2002 the National party mistakenly thought they could win with policy, policy and more policy. As we know Labour never had any policy, they just had slogans.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this strategy, after all the brains trust of Matthew Hooton, Megan Campbell and Tim Hurdle were all there in 2002 when Bill English failed then with excessive policy.
Add to that the failure to secure top election campaigners such as Steven Joyce and Topham | Guerin.
Simon Bridges allowed Topham|Guerin to be secured as a mouthpiece for the government.
That’s on Bridges and Muller.
When you compound that with the willing destruction of campaign strategies by Bridges and Bennett’s team then you have a recipe for disaster.
Then the final nail in the coffin, ill discipline by pretenders and activists. Denise Lee, Mark Mitchell, but before them Chris Bishop leaking like sieves. Leaks to hostile media against their own team is never a long term strategy for success.
Treachery is never conducive to teamwork. And when inept and failed campaigners like Hamish Price become the story then a large and significant loss is always on the cards.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise then when the numbers came in.
The wet and woke were trounced, the conservatives held the line.
Being just like Labour but slightly less shit was never a winning strategy. I’ve said that for months. It seems no one was listening.
Perhaps they will now.
Media Bias
I wrote earlier in the week about media bias.
It bears repeating it.
A new website has been set up to measure media bias in New Zealand. The creator has described the site in communication with Kiwiblog. Both Kiwiblog and The BFD are mentioned and rated, as are left-wing blogs and all mainstream media.
Predictably Newshub is the most biased (towards the left) of all the mainstream media. The BFD is ranked seventh and is one of only two media outlets with a right-wing bias. The other is Kiwiblog, all others are left-wing, and unashamedly so.
The BFD is actually ranked higher than Newsroom, Newshub, and 1News. Another interesting calculation is Coverage. The BFD has four times the coverage of Kiwiblog, and is only marginally behind Newsroom and a small way behind The Spinoff.
This highlights the forlorn hope and strategy of the National party in ignoring and blacklisting The BFD, and me in particular. Their biggest asset in terms of coverage was silenced by successive leaders. Instead you saw MPs like Chris Bishop engaging with and financially supporting The Spinoff and Newsroom. The Spinoff has a left-wing bias of -6.47 and Newsroom‘s is even worse at -7.09. Whoever thought it was a good way to attract votes by having Chris Bishop write a campaign diary for Newsroom or having Judith Collins sit for an interview with The Spinoff is clearly a special kind of stupid. National has now had two election cycles, 2014-2017, 2017-2020, where they have ignored, shunned and cancelled their biggest voice. They’ve also lost both of those election cycles. That doesn’t appear to be a particularly wise course of action.
The National Party were cowed by Nicky Hager and the left-wing media and since then they’ve lost twice. You don’t think the left-wing and media have stopped doing what they do in the background to shift the narrative do you?
Looking at “political leaning”, The NZ Herald is 3.84 left, The BFD 4.21 right. All others are higher either way. That makes The BFD the second least biased outlet. It is the only way you can assess that because it seems contradictory that the Politik is 5.45 biased left, but only 2.90 biased overall.
What this site proves without a shadow of doubt is that our mainstream media are slanted left in an unrecoverable way. It also shows that not only are National and Act fighting the left-wing political parties, they are also fighting the Media Party.
It was made worse by the weaponisation of the left-wing biased media, by Paula Bennett, Bill English and Simon Bridges against their own MPs. Again, not a particularly wise course of action.
It would therefore seem sensible to power up the friends of the right, and stop engaging with the left-wing media. There was a time when National Party figures wouldn’t appear on Radio NZ. That should now apply to Newshub. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to find out that Tova O’Brien has scored a new job as an SPS for some Labour minister.
Readers can do that by becoming a member of The BFD. More members mean that we can deploy more resources in the fight against media bias. It means better content and greater reach. We are already ranked seventh according to this handy measure. It should be a goal to extend our reach even further.
The left-wing media are bought and paid for. They are a lock for Labour. They were bought by the $50 million of state-funding with a promise of a further $75 million to prop them up.
We don’t believe in state-funded troughs; we prefer to be accountable to our members.
If you aren’t yet a member then please consider becoming one, and if you are a member then forward a link to this article to your friends or share it on Facebook and encourage them to join too, so that we may re-balance the media narrative.
Conservative voices are being drowned out. Let us be your megaphone against the cacophony of biased and left-wing media.
I’m Cam Slater and this was Insight: Politics.
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