50 SHADES OF PAY AND CONFIRM

I  have been watching the Labour leadership battle with a great deal of interest. It is clear Shane Jones is emerging as the peoples prince. He has always been a classy orator in both Maori and English. He appears lazy but that's because he is inherently a very smart man  - intellectually fecund in fact. He was born to rule.

So his time has come - so to speak.

  2 rumours have been circulating the beltway - the first relates to Jones state of health. He  fought off bowel cancer- but the word is that it is back - easy to believe as it seems he is fighting for the top job on the left as  if he has nothing to  lose.

The second relates to his infamous indiscretion - his onanistic play in a lonely hotel room egged on by the frantic coupling of some  pneumatic porn starlets.  His remote decision to pay and confirm resulted in political emasculation for a while but at the time the kumara vine was heavy with the rumour that it was not Shane who had wracked up the porn bills  but a member of his whanau.

He came dangerously close to showing undue favouritism in the Bill Liu scandal. And if there is anything that points to a serious personality flaw then this is it but in this scandal he proved to be as slippery as a coozer covered in KY.

Shanes crime was never about the porn. It was about expecting the taxpayer to foot the bill even if he paid back the charges eventually.

Yet it seems to be the fact he watched porn that dogs him . The irony is that the heavily pornographic novel 50  shades of grey is a world wide best seller. Millions of sticky fingers turned the pages as readers became  engrossed by its scintillating romp in the musky world of slap and tickle. The fine line between pleasure and pain was bolded  in everyday ink.   Now it is to be made into a movie - thus mainstreaming the masterbatory murk.

So Shanes guilty pleasure, if indeed that is what it was, will soon be available at Video Easy for all the aunties to watch.

Labour is such a broad church  encompassing vast differences in the religion of  lefty politics that this race  could well see all three candidates get close to  30 percent of the vote each . And as the factions bow to such very different political idols  - it is unthinkable that either Robertson or Cunliffe will bow out at the 11th hour if it  looks like Jones is gaining too much support. Dogged by Dogma they are.

Jones is the dark war hardened  stallion and knows it. He makes the other two look like braying mules. Hooton says as much today in NBR.

Jones , the peoples prince may yet get his money shot.

HEY LABOUR, BILL LIU GOTCHA.

Well well , it seems some of our old snouts have been leaking to Whaleoil over at Gotcha. He has the Blog of the week here with some interesting information on Bill Liu.

We have covered this story often over the last year. We always reckoned it had serious legs and whales blog adds some more pieces to the puzzle.

We think there is a serious possibility that this story will outrank Philip Fields on the scandal scale.

CUNLIFFE HEAPS THE TUTAE ON JONES

We are with No Minister on this one. The NZ Herald has done a follow up piece on the Bill Liu Scandal Shane Jones passport scandal

We particularly like this bit from Cunliffe - it shows no loyalty to Jones. So, as we have predicted Jones is not going to look good once this investigation is over and its one of the reasons that he was not higher up the food chain when Goff chose his shadow front bench.

Mr Cunliffe would not discuss the case when approached by the Herald before the election but later, under the Official Information Act, the Department of Labour released to the Herald the following passage from Mr Cunliffe's decision: "I have decided that the most appropriate route for this case at this time is for it to continue to be assessed by BSG [Border Security Group - includes fraud and compliance units] as a potential prosecution file. I do not discount the possibility of reconsidering it in the future."

A source close to Mr Cunliffe told the Herald that the minister had erred on the side of natural justice for Mr Liu but was "somewhat surprised" when Mr Jones (delegating for the Internal Affairs minister of the time, Rick Barker), granted Mr Liu citizenship without first discussing it with Mr Cunliffe.

We first read Wisharts piece in Investigate Magazine we I an Wishart kindly let us have a preview and we could see then the story had legs. And we predicted it would be the story that still had to play out this year

And the Herald should have linked to Wisharts story. Fairs fair chaps.

THE BEST AND WORST OF 2008

BEST POLITICAL PLAY - John Key for his decision to say "f" off to Winston .
WORST POLITICAL PLAY - Winston for lying about helicopters
BEST NEWS STORY - Phil Kitchins' helicopter expose.
BEST ROGERING - Rodney Hide for not letting up on Winston in the house.
BEST STORY STILL TO HAVE AN IMPACT - Investigate piece on immigration. passports , Shane Jones and Bill Liu
BEST JOURNALIST - Kitchin by a country mile but we also liked Ben Thomas's work.
BEST NEW MP - Amy Adams solid, lives in the south, knows rural affairs and knows shit from clay.
BEST POLITICAL BLOG - Still Kiwiblog, David Farrar is a maestro at explaining complex stuff to simply blondes like us
FUNNIEST BLOG - Whaleoil - smart, sassy, un pc, and actually a really good bastard.
BEST RURAL BLOG - Home paddock lovely writer.
BEST MINISTER - Tim Groser - he will do good things for our country
BEST POLITICAL APPOINTMENT - John Key for elevating Paula Bennett.
BEST MASH UP - The Hitler ones Whale oil did.
MOST INCISIVE BLOG - Hooton of course
BEST FEMALE BLOGGER - Its Cactus Cate - tits down.
WORST POLITICAL JOURNALIST - Brent Edwards on RNZ
BEST POLITICAL INTERVIEW - Sean Plunkett and his interview of Winston
SADDEST BLOG DEPARTURE - Wellington Hive - it rocked.
MOST VENAL BLOG - The Standard - sad little panty sniffers.
MOST MASTERLY BUT UNDER APPRECIATED POLITICAL PLAY - Velas donations to Winston and Helen ten days out from the election. Thank you big guy.
BIGGEST POLITICAL WANKER - Mike Williams
SADDEST DAY - The death of Mike Claudatos. He was a good bastard, and he loathed the scampi crooks and Winston.
BIGGEST EYE OPENER - discovering the hoki spy scandal
BEST POLITICAL DAY - The election
BEST BUNCH OF MATES - all those in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
BEST DAY - The day the son and heir got his commercial helicopter pilots licence.
BEST PERSON - Eumenides - thank you for being brave.
BEST DINING EXPERIENCE - My uncles wiltshire hogget cooked by my mum.
BEST HOLIDAY - Canada
BEST PLACE ON HOLIDAY - Lunenberg
BEST PLACE IN NZ - its a toss up between a littel muttonbird island outside Pegasus on Stewart Island and my hammock on the banks of the river at our place in the Wairarapa