I was trying to explain it to some people at work yesterday and resorted to this quite helpful description.
Cheers, Cunctator – but I wasn’t near the internet at the time. 
You’re a good sort, Aussie. 
Election results being posted as the night wears on here.
So did I.
Sorry to hear that the switch hasn’t been working out so well for you guys. I figured it couldn’t possibly turn out worse than FPP, but that probably betrays my own lack of imagination. Anyway, thanks everyone for your comments, however sobering.
Having Winston Peters and Jeanette Fitzsimons on the same side of the House isn’t a blend of ideologies, it’s a ramshackle chimera the creation of which is akin to an 18th Century entrepreneur who would stitch the head and torso of a monkey to the tail of a fish and sell it to the gullible as a mermaid. I’ll leave you to decide which end is who.
Applause, Scissorjack. You’ve hit the nail on the proverbial.
There was never any chance of it working out well - not with all those *politicians *involved.
Looks like Winston Peters has used up the ninth of his political lives, going by the figures so far for Tauranga. National has him by the throat.
I’m not sorry about this – but it will seem strange not having him on the landscape, at least not for three years.
Yeah, I get that. It was like a magician, the way he used misdirection. He never said “NO”, he just held up a card that could have been “ON” accidentally upside down. But his paranoia about the press was getting a bit tiresome.
Very interesting results. I see that several long-serving MPs (other than Winston) seem to have got the shove: Judith Tizard, Harry Duynhoven, Damien O’Connor.
Have there been any concession/victory speeches yet?
Will National be able to form government with the support of ACT?
Some of my friends back home will be quite happy to see the back of Winston Peters!
Apparently Helen has made the call and conceded. Done privately.
ETA: The Nats will need support to have the majority, either Act or the Maori party, but either one will provide them with an unassailable lead.
I don’t know anyone who won’t be happy to see the back of that bastard: a genuinely talented man whose ego wouldn’t let him work with anyone else to achieve anything constructive, and who then sold his soul to the devil in order to keep himself in power. I honestly believe that he secretly despised those who were stupid enough to fall for his bargain basement demagoguery. Hard to believe that he’s the longest serving member of the House: he originally came in as a protege of Muldoon.
What’s the story behind the Bill and Ben Party? Horticultural agitators? Or just a piss take?
If I heard her right, Jenny Shipley was saying earlier that Winston would have been Prime Minister by now, if he’d bided his time in National instead of staring NZ First.
Phew, dodged that bullet.
pisstake? oh, yes.
Piss take. There used to be a lot more cheerful loonies running around at election tme, but it seems to be a dying tradition. I used to know a couple of people who were in the McGillicuddy Serious Party: you or I might think that it would be a good excuse for a couple of beers and a few laughs, but the party became divided and then imploded. These people became so doctrinal about the correct way of taking the piss to the extent that they were riven by schisms.
Riven by schisms. God, a few beers on election night and I start talking like a pundit.
Any bets on how soon the knives come out for Helen? God knows she’s high-handedly pissed enough people in her time for there to be some pretty serious blade-whetting going on right now in Labour. My pick is for Goff to roll her within a fortnight.
She’s just stepped down.
Band name!