Mr 2%, Winston Peters (or whoever it is pretending to be Winston), says so on his blog. It seems that this hige throng of commentators and bloggers are being led by one Matthew Hooton. We quote from www.winstonpeters.com
National’s other trick is to get its vast network of right-wing commentators and bloggers to pedal its brand of political smut on the airwaves and around the internet, hoping to attract the attention of naive journalists. National’s main man for this underhanded practice is someone called Matthew Hooton. Most of you probably haven’t heard of him. But he pops up on Radio New Zealand, on TV, in newspapers, on the internet, etc as a “right-wing commentator”. He’d like you to think he’s independent. He is anything but. He used to work for the National Party and as far as we can tell still does, via his own consulting firm. The number of Official Information Act requests his firm has needlessly bothered our offices with over the past few years suggests to us that the National Party is his main client.
It would be pointless to speculate how much the National Party pays Hooton to peddle his dirty wares, but peddle them he does. His comments are usually extreme and disgusting. I’m told he turned up at some of the Privileges Committee hearings, sitting with his fellow right-wing bloggers audibly saying things like “you’ll get 10 years prison for that” to our staff members sitting nearby. Having grown tired of labelling NZ First “charlatans” and “crooks”, Hotoon’s latest phrase of choice is to call us “Nazis”. That is offensive on so many levels to so many people, it defies belief that someone would be stupid enough to actually say it. But that’s Hooton for you.
Is Hooton being paid by National? If not Hotton should sue.
