60 tweeps to follow this election

Bryce Edwards had his go at a list of the top 100 tweeters to follow this election, but with only 24 women making the cut he faced terrible accusations of “a perceived lack” of gender balance. The silver lining is that his follow-up post was chock-full of the women who complained! Pesky, pesky women, as ColeyTangerina put it.

I thought I’d try my hand at a list – with a lot of women, an entirely obvious leftwing bias, and a big disclaimer right up front that these are just people who I think have interesting things to say about the election and NZ politics. Please suggest your own faves in the comments!

In the interests of deflecting criticism, tweeps are listed alphabetically by username. Click on their name to see their Twitter feed and give them a follow!

Mainstream media

Get the inside scoop on the night’s top stories/the front page/the stuff that gets bumped because an All Black has a career-threatening injury.

Politicians

The good, the weird and the always-interesting-even-if-I-disagree-with-them.

https://twitter.com/asenatitaylor/status/501607601721704448

(Editor’s note: I am, like, 95% sure this isn’t the parody Asenati account. But who can tell?)

Nerds and h4xx0rs

Knowledge is power, innit?

Thinking folk

My people. And me. It’s my list, dammit.

https://twitter.com/DorothySarker/status/502335746062024704

https://twitter.com/tripthestation/status/503136017067429888

https://twitter.com/verbscape/status/503325468439748608

https://twitter.com/VishOnAMish/status/503293412045385728

https://twitter.com/writehandedgirl/status/501658041498869760

LOLz

It’s a laugh, isn’t it?

What?

That noise you make at the back of your throat.

Oh yeah, that’s a laugh.

https://twitter.com/johnkeysemotion/status/501939506346332161

Token rightwing pundit for “balance”

Hear the National Party’s key messages whole hours before they show up on The Panel!

https://twitter.com/MatthewHootonNZ/status/499984634302574593

The Nation’s leaders’ debate

This morning in New Zealand politics can best be summed up with one fantastic image.

Image swiped and cropped from @petergraczer
TALK TO THE HAND, COLIN.

I dragged myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9am to tune in to the first leaders’ debate of the election season – and it’s mostly Colin Craig’s fault. Had he not taken legal action to force the producers to give him a speaking slot I might honestly have missed that it was even on!

For that, and for trying to talk over Metiria Turei, resulting in the photo above, you have my grudging thanks, Colin.

In the true spirit of 21st century pseudo-journalism, here are my thoughts (and some others’) as they were tweeted in real time.

(Sale to overseas buyers, obviously.)

(It’s a great line, but also a deliberately-engineered political meme.)

(Full credit to @petergraczer for the fantastic pic of Metiria’s take-no-crap attitude.)