Moderation on

We've got an exceptionally busy week ahead, and there will be extended times when we are not near our computer. We'll still be blogging as much as we are able, but we won't necessarily be availble to respond to comments throughout the day.

In addition, it's going to be a robust week. Labour has already gone into attack mode, and John Key has made his position over Winston Peters clear. That's bought some interesting commenters out of the woodwork, and we don't see that improving any until we are forced by law to turn comments off at midnight Friday for Election Day.

Because of that, all comments will go into moderation for the rest of this week. It's not personal; it will apply across the board. We'll review comments as we are able, and we're sure that the overwhelming majority will be published; it's always been our view that comments say more about the person making them than they do about the subject of the comment, or indeed about us.

And a final thought; anonymous comments are a pain, especially when we get several commenters by the name of Anonymous commenting on a particular thread. Please consider either getting a Blogger ID (it only takes a moment to register, and you can't be traced by us), or at the very least, leaving some kind of name, whether real or made-up at the end of your comment to identify you. We don't want to have to further restrict the ability to comment freely, so we ask you politely to give this some consideration.