A call for Jeanette Fitzsimons to change the name of her party to "Redgreens" has been made by a member of a rival group. It had come from Terry Dunleavy, chairman of the northern division of Bluegreens, a task force set up to advise the National Party on environmental and heritage issues.

"The Greens seem more intent on propping up the Labour/Alliance axis, than recognising the real achievements of National green Ministers Simon Upton and Nick Smith. Right in Coromandel, the electorate in which Ms Fitzimons is seeking Labour support by withdrawing its candidate, she conveniently overlooks the fact that it was the Labour Party which pulled the plug on the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Bill. When support for that bill was sought in the dying days of the last Parliament, there wasn't a peep out of Ms Fitzsimons or her Green Party. Her attempt to scramble into bed with Labour can only lead to one conclusion: that she supported Labour's pulling of the plug.

"The red focus of the so-called Greens is further highlighted by its choice of list candidates, professional protester Sue Bradford, and social revolutionary Nandor Tanczos. This gives rise to two worries: first the people like Bradford and Tanczos will bring MMP and Parliament into even greater disrepute than some of the failed experiments of the most recent term; second a suspicion that voters in Coromandel may not realise that they are the people who will be responsible for bringing in Bradford and Tanczos if too many of them vote for Fitzsimons, "said Mr Dunleavy. "Clearly, the timetabled review of MMP must address, as well as cross-party defections, the need to put an end to a single constituency win becoming a passport to Parliament for other list members of the successful MP's party. That process seems to me to defeat the goal of true proportionality. "The Coromandel situation is a prime example, and electors there need to take into account that a vote for the Green candidate runs the risk not only of a Labour/Alliance/Green coalition, but the entry into Parliament of wreckers like Bradford and Tanczos," said Mr Dunleavy.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>