Is Siggi Henry New Zealand’s most dangerous city councillor?

She’s an anti-vaccination, anti-fluoride campaigner who believes measles is a hoax and polio can be cured with vitamin C. Meet Siggi Henry, one of the most powerful people in our fourth largest city. Angela Cuming reports. First published 13 July 2017. When Hamilton councillor Siggi Henry wore a tinfoil hat to meet associate health minister … Read more

Kia ora Dr Lance: On surviving the Age of Ignorance

In the first of a new monthly column by Dr Lance O’Sullivan, the former New Zealander of the Year addresses the anti-establishment mood, and the potential of technology in the internet age to both challenge and enhance science and medicine. There is nothing new about rebelling against elites, but there is a deepening mood of … Read more

Stick this in your pipe, Roger Horrocks, and smoke it: your ‘anti-intellectual’ essay sucks

In which Paul Litterick reads our Monday extract, the one by Roger Horrocks about how New Zealanders are anti-intellectual, and says: “Bollocks.” Like many readers of The Spinoff, I was moved by Roger Horrocks’s essay on the plight of the intellectual in New Zealand. Of course, as I am sure you will recognise, it is … Read more