Mallard goes mad

The pressure of being 26% in the polls, facing a (generous) iPredict forecast of a 30% share of the party vote and just a 5.4% probability of forming a government, being disgraced by the Supreme Court in AG v Leigh, and constantly having to fight off David Cunliffe's ever-more obvious leadership challenges in order to keep the seat warm for his union and Wellington mate Andrew Little, seems to have again tipped Trevor Mallard over the edge.

In a bizarre post on the Labour Party's official blog, Red Alert, Mr Mallard has alleged a conspiracy involving Bill English, David Farrar, me, the PSA, Bryce Edwards and graduate students at the University of Otago's polsci department.

Apparently, those of us in the conspiracy are paying Dr Edwards to say nasty things about the Labour and Green parties (as if Dr Edwards requires money to say nasty things about those two organisations, especially as both keep marching to the centre).

In fact, what Exceltium, Curia and the PSA do is pay some pocket money to graduate students ($100 a week to the one I'm paying which is roughly what I pay my kids' babysitter for a single night) to compile all the newsclippings, audio and video tapes and blog posts relevant to this year's general election.  The idea is that this resource  will all be in one place, on the Internet and at the Otago University Library, to make it easier for future polsci students and projects like the New Zealand Election Study to write their books and academic papers on what happened and why (I can assure them that, alas, I will not be reading them).

In my case, my motive was mainly philanthropic (as much as $400 a month can be called that!) and I also get to put my company's logo on the PDF version of the daily update for name recognition among the several hundred comms managers, bureaucrats, journalists, academics, students etc that I think it goes to.

This is the same reason I sponsor this site (plus I am of course a politics junkie so it is kind of fun).

Trevor has shown himself to be a real dick, which I will tell him when I have lunch with him after the election as a result of a bet I have (and which I think I will win).  That's if the men in white suits haven't taken him away by then.  In the meantime, I'm buying big on this stock.  And perhaps this one is worth shorting.