Muriel Newman, Spam Mistress

Muriel Newman of NZ pseudo-Libertarian party ACT spammed me.
Her NZ Centre for Political Research (formerly the NZ Centre for Political Debate, an interesting shift of title) – which may just be her alone – was banging the drum recently for the return to our old electoral system, specifically calling for a referendum on the proportional MMP system currently in place. She was exhorting people to answer a poll question about whethe the referendum was needed, and after coming across this in one or two places I clicked through to indicate my opposition. (This post isn’t about why I oppose, it’s about what happened next.)
Not long after a chirpy email turned up in my inbox from Muriel, thanking me for participating and telling me that “the vast majority of respondents are very keen to see a referendum on MMP held”. Also, “I have added your name to the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, so please let me know if you don’t want to receive it.”
Great. So I was now on a spam list. I went down to the newsletter, reproduced at the bottom of the respondent email, and clicked the ‘unsubscribe’ link. An unsubscribe note was sent, and that was the end of it – what a nuisance, and how foolish of Newman to subscribe automatically people who entirely disagreed with her. If nothing else, a significant breach of net etiquette and a bad look for a politician.
Then, a week later, another email arrived. I was still on the list. Excellent. So a political operative who I really have no time for has subscribed me to her emailing list without asking permission and seems unable to process my request to unsubscribe. That’s not just a breach of etiquette – it’s amateurish and stupid, to boot.
I sent the unsubscribe request again. Go away this time Muriel, will you?

6 thoughts on “Muriel Newman, Spam Mistress”

  1. I had this happen to me once with Wayne Mapp, back when he was spokesman for political grandstanding (i.e. “Eradication of Political Correctness”). I tried unsubscribing 3 or 4 times, before sending an email to his office asking why I was still getting them. Turns out their mail list management isn’t software-based — it’s somebody updating a spreadsheet or something manual like that, and the woman whose job it was to look after it had just started and “hadn’t got around to it”.
    I also emailed a couple of estate agents about a property recently and ended up on their mailing list.
    There’s an interesting article (well, perhaps of professional interest) about the impending anti-spam legislation (which covers electronic messaging of all flavours) coming in September here: http://www.marketing.org.nz/cms/Important_Notice/3627

  2. Exactly the same happened to me.
    There is intellectual right and there is dumb right. She, or at least whatever group she is part of, definitely falls into the latter.
    And I just love the way she uses her incredibly biased polls as scientific evidence to support her position.
    Embarrassing.

  3. Is this even legal, under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007?
    I don’t think so.

  6. It’s not just Muriel who is a problem. A couple of years ago I sent her an email to her parliamentary address; a few weeks later I got spam from her husband promoting his latest investment scam.

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