A week or so ago David Farrar caught out Molesworth and Featherston for making a pretty fundamental mistake about a possible election date, the sort of mistake you would not have expected from the people we understood to be the authors. (Molesworth and Featherston is in the Trans Tasman mould - it purports to have inside info on what is going on in Wellington. At least one of the people who used to write for it was a leading press gallery journalist with a major daily - someone who would certainly know that the last possible date for the election is 15 November. There is a free version and a subscriber version).
This week there is a very negative article on the China FTA, false information about MFAT and Fonterra in the context of Fonterra's operation in China, a negative article on the US entry into the P4 process, an article suggesting that Glenngate is a storm in the teacup and that the media should get over it, and an article suggesting that the problems at NZAID are not management problems (therefore management should not be held responsible) and a paragraph suggesting that NZAID should be separated completely from MFAT (which everyone sensible in town knows would be a recipe for total disaster).
So what the hell is going on? Has M&F been sold? Has it some new contributors? Is Don Clarke or one of these other people involved? Has it been taken over by either anti-globalist anarchists or Trotskyites?
If there is a smoking gun, it was some of the detail around the China FTA which has not appeared anywhere else. There have been a few briefings given - Fonterra and CTU have been briefed and other briefings of stakeholders are due in the week ahead. So it seems to us that either CTU or someone in the MFAT/NZAID system is involved. The detail is being kept pretty close within MFAT so if the info is correct it must be from somewhere pretty high up - again it points in a certain direction.
If M&F is still being written by the original team could we suggest that they check their sources or at the very least, not believe everything they are being told by their informants.
