UnfreeDom – PC paper denies Wellingtonian voters access to ACT policy

For Wellingtonians who never saw the banned ACT ad, this is what all the fuss was about:

The cowardly Dominion Post forced ACT to pay full price
for the space they’d booked, yet refused to accept the ad.

The more tolerant NZ Herald was happy to run
the ad as is, in the interests of free speech.

Cowardly ACT vetoed my original version, 
which someone (not me) leaked to the Herald.

I hope the DomPost pays a price for their cowardly decision to refuse the ‘radicals’ ad and deny ACT its freedom of speech.

In a week of the most vicious criticism I’ve known, not one of my critics — least of all the Dom — has been able to point to a single untrue statement in the ad.

I’ve just counted: the ad contains 30 statements of fact– all provably true.

Yet despite keeping these 30 facts from its readers, the Dom was happy to run a Rosemary McLeod column castigating and mocking the writer of those 30 truths, and his client.

And here’s the ultimate cheek: the paper also demanded full payment for the space the party had booked in good faith, thus leaving the party with little choice but to fill that space with a hastily arranged compromise ad.

If I’d known about the Dom’s decision, my substitute ad would have looked like this:

And what was the paper’s beef with the ad that the Herald was happy to run? That it promoted racial disharmony.

In other words, my crime was to tell certain truths with a force designed to make sure they were heard, when my critics and their media lackeys would rather they were not.

The relentless attacks on me have confirmed my view that the socialist-feminist-tribalist Wellington elite has so corrupted New Zealand that we’ve become a nation of liars.

State-sponsored lies about Maori issues and others are now so normal that any statement of the truth is taken as a cultural affront.

The smiling, well-bred, easy-going liars who run our country must not be allowed to hide behind the skirts of euphemism and gobbledygook. Let them speak the whole truth, unvarnished by the slippery language of political correctness. 

Tell it straight and tell it true. Plainly. Simply. Boldly. Clearly. That way lies understanding.

Surely we owe our people that.

Scientific poll backs fern flag

A Herald-Digipoll of 600 today echoes last Friday’s less scientific Close Up poll of 12,000 New Zealanders who want to see us adopt a new flag with a silver fern.

Oddly, the greatest mood for change comes from 40-70 year olds and those outside Auckland, with Aucklanders and 18-29 year olds favouring the Union Jack.

That’s the exact opposite of what I would have expected – a campaign for change driven by middle-aged provincials.

(Seems we baby-boomers are an island of radicalism in a sea of conservatism.)

It would now be good to see another poll, independent of the newspaper that’s leading the campaign for change.

It will be too easy for conservatives to view this Herald poll as akin to a Greenpeace poll on global warming.

But this is a great day for those wanting change, as it means the issue will start to move on to the government’s radar.

All the moreso as it reinforces the prime minister’s own instincts about the silver fern being the right symbol.