If a National MP wants to avoid abuse maybe it’s better to live far away from greenies

The occasional tossers – probably lefties and greenies – makes derogatory and always-unjustified comments about Alf on this blog.

Now and again tart remarks are made about him in the Parliamentary debating chamber (and much more obviously lefties and greenies are his verbal assailants).

But that’s to be expected. We are politicking in the chamber on those occasions and only now and again do differences spill over into a bit of physical argy-bargy.

But Alf has not experienced the threats and abuse that apparently have troubled other MPs out in the community

No doubt that’s because of his avuncular charm.

Perhaps if other MPs were similarly charming they would avoid some of the difficulties they and their families experience.

Taxpayers Union blows the whistle on a nice little caper whereby MPs can circumvent NZ’s labour laws

It looks like the Taxpayers’ Union – an outfit with aims generally supported by the Member for Eketahuna North – might have rumbled to a bit of carry-on he will confess to having exploited.

It’s a wheeze that resulted in MPs chewing through more than $65,000 per month on payouts to avoid messy employment grievances.

Jordan Williams, the union’s Executive Director, exposed the costs of the practice in a media release today, obviously after doing a bit of snooping by brandishing the Official Information Act.

Equality arguments in the Mojo matter are worthy of a hearing – from all sides

Did Alf hear correctly?

An important point here is that some people have difficulties in the hearing department, and Alf senses he might have to include himself as one of these as he gets older.

What he heard while munching on his toast – he thinks – was an ardent lobbyist blatting on Morning Report about extra funding being needed for a deaf MP to be accorded equitable treatment. Or equal treatment. Of something like that.

He is fascinated by the logic.

We are all equal – right?

But some people need more money for extra help than others require to do the same job. Public money, let it be noted.

This is a variant of that thing in Animal Farm about all animals being equal but some are more equal than others.

If they can’t keep their supporters’ names under wraps, what makes them fit to run the country?

"Before computerisation our files were kept safe and secure here at party headquarters."

The tossers at the Labour Party – having failed to properly preserve the privacy of their supporters and donors – have come up with a superb example of perverse crisis management.

They are bleating to the privacy commissioner about lists of supporters and donors falling into the hands of The Whale.

Does a whale have hands?

Dunno, but…

Details of 18,000 people were on the databases downloaded by blogger Cameron Slater, severely embarrassing Labour, which had to email donors and people who had contacted it through its website to apologise for the breach.

Slater has revealed on his blog how he obtained the databases, which appear to have been publicly available and easy to download without needing to hack into the site.

Get that?

No hacking, he says.

He just tapped into Labour’s databases.

And there it was. Lots of names and other interesting stuff.

Perks and piss-ups – the trick is to find an acceptable way of making the public pay

Another bucket of bollocks is published in the Dom-Post today, this time on the matter of MPs’ miserable spending allowances.

Vernon Small, one of the rag’s parliamentary press gallery hacks, makes it seem like he has been talking with a whistle-blower:

MPs are secretly negotiating to award themselves more generous perks.

If they were secret – you can be sure – a bugger like Small would not get to hear of them.

But there is no whistle-blower. Rather –

The behind-closed-doors talks were revealed by Auditor-General Lyn Provost in a report that found former housing and fisheries minister Phil Heatley unlawfully spent $1402 of taxpayers’ money.