Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: The extraordinary story of Love Brar, the fraudster who became a pop star “The clip is one of the most opulent scenes ever filmed in New Zealand. In it Brar and Akhtar perform in a vast garage, filled with vintage Rolls Royces, loaned … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: Leo Molloy: the angriest man in the Viaduct “I wanted to know how he could be so enormously successful, so beloved by so many important people, while so often being such a gaping arsehole. After he sent some strange emails to The Spinoff, … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: At long last, introducing meal kits for kids! Delivery meal kits seem to be everywhere at the moment. Every company insists they have the food that your kids will love. They say you’ll never have to think about what you cook and your … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Amanda Thompson: A love letter to my crockpot Once when I was younger and stupider I thought I didn’t need a crockpot. I thought they were the laughable domain of Tupperware-hoarding suburban housewives. Oh how I laughed at those housewives. A friend actually persuaded me … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: We need to talk about Noa “The stories everywhere were immediately click-worthy. I hate that straight away I was drawn in. Authorities had apparently granted a Dutch teenager her wish to be given assisted suicide. Legal under certain circumstances in the Netherlands, it … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Sam Brooks: The 10 most shocking moments in the blistering new book ‘Whale Oil’ Slater tried to add Blomfield’s 10-year-old daughter on Snapchat Well after the armed attack, and a fair way into the protracted legal battle between the pair, Slater, or someone pretending to … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Patrick Reynolds: The story of a revolution: How public transport transformed Auckland “There’s a quiet revolution underway in Auckland, slowly but relentlessly transforming the city. It began early in the century – a big change of direction taken in small steps – and has been continued … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Don Rowe: Swastikas and semi-automatics: Auckland gun club neighbours speak out “In January this year, the neighbour, who we have agreed not to name, woke to find a large swastika and the words, ‘If your reading this ur in range’ spray-painted on their shed … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Madeleine Chapman: I told New Zealand what chips to eat and New Zealand told me to fuck off “I flew to Wellington on Thursday night and met up with the same colleague who, to my genuine surprise, was still passionate about the Burger Rings issue. … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Don Rowe: Grass Roots: the wāhine of Hikurangi Enterprises “Inside the common room at the Tikitiki school, Melanee Paenga is crying. A director at Hikurangi Enterprises and tutor of the EIT hemp cultivation course, she is one of the few young adults employed in the … Read more
Rose Hanley-Nickols: I survived a mass shooting 23 years ago. Here’s how to help survivors today “Don’t play audio or video from the event. Ever. Last year I was woken up by gunfire from the Parkland shooting. Thanks for that, RNZ National. Don’t fixate on the numbers of dead and injured. It dehumanises the victims … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Alex Casey: Long blacks for lads, hot chocs for ladies: what’s the deal with that? “Gendering food and drink is all the rage these days, from National’s sausage sizzle innuendo to Whittaker’s new gender reveal chocolate bars. Blue for boys, pink for girls. Sausages for boys, clueless political … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. A landlord: I was a landlord, and I hated the person it made me become “Two weeks ago we sold up our mum and dad investment and went back to just being a mum and dad. We sold it because we could, because we … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Danyl Mclauchlan: The subtle art of not giving a fuck about Jordan B Peterson “That’s the thing about Jordan Peterson. His name is Legion for He is many. You can watch hours of his videos on YouTube, listening to his insights on religion and psychology … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Michelle Langstone: I adore NZ cricket. But I won’t watch until the silence on Kuggeleijn is broken “There’s an elephant in the changing rooms and his name is Scott Kuggeleijn. As New Zealand Cricket’s governing body you are well aware of the charge of rape … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Madeleine Chapman: There’s something off about the London Waitangi Day Pub Crawl “Drinking on Waitangi Day is fine – it’s a public holiday after all. And performing a haka overseas is cool. But combining all of those things has created a Frankenstein’s Monster of cultural … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: What does a rapist look like? “I have devoted so much of my life to working to dismantle this culture we live in where we victim blame and apologise for ‘good blokes’ who were just ‘not sure’ whether someone was consenting – and … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Alex Casey: ‘I’m still living it’: a Roast Busters survivor’s story On Monday night, Joseph Parker, one of a group of young men investigated relating to alleged sexual offences, broke his silence, talking to Newshub five years after The Roast Busters scandal exploded. Many of … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Maria Slade: Transport’s dirty little secret: The truckers breaking the law just to survive “Aside from getting out of the truck to load and unload 100kg pallets of bread the driver did not stop from 10.30pm, when George met him at the truck depot, … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. José Barbosa: Red Dead Redemption 2 might be a hit, but Rockstar’s star is waning “Rockstar’s in the business of making games that are EVERYTHING. They’re at once both intense simulation games and quick fire shoot ‘em ups (Grand Theft Auto V), or sprawling Westworld-esque theme parks … Read more
Amid the millions upon millions of views you gave to us – your friends – here are the stories you read most. 10. Leonie Hayden: Grateful horis and model minorities: why don’t we know we’re racist? “Lately a lot of people have objected to the observation that cis-gendered, heterosexual, white, able-bodied men are over represented nearly everywhere that power … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Tina Ngata: Once were gardeners, lovers, poets… and warriors “We are not a warrior race. We are, and always have been, a race of voyagers, scientists, gardeners, lovers, poets, composers, philosophers, artists, orators, mathematicians, dancers, astronomers, builders and healers. We were peacemakers and keepers as much as … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. This week the country was shaken by the news of English backpacker Grace Millane, who was murdered on the eve of her 22nd birthday. We spent a lot of time here at The Spinoff considering how to cover the horrific story. What was useful? … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Madeleine Chapman: My beef-only week living as Jordan Peterson “My first meal of plain mince with a dash of salt tastes surprisingly good. While I eat, I read the first chapter/rule of Peterson’s: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. I read about lobsters and the … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Alex Braae: Who wore it stupider? Comparing Hosking and Hawkesby on cycling “There’s a rumour about Newstalk ZB’s ratings that perhaps explains a lot about their hosts’ opinions. The station first really boomed in the early 90s, coinciding with the mass importation of Japanese cars. … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: Great mates: The prison inmates caring for retired greyhounds “A prisoner in the unit said that working with greyhounds has taught him to trust again. He says working with the greyhounds has taught him communication skills. Another said it has taught him to … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: Inside the secret world of co-sleepers “Oh god there is a dad here. I ask if he’s lost. He tells me that he’s a proud co-sleeper. This is outrageous. Men don’t co-sleep. Men are meant to want their “marital bed” back. Does he … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Alex Casey: The Chemist Warehouse is pure hell and I love it “A woman with blue eyeliner and thick framed glasses was desperately trying to get the best price per gram on vitamin C for someone on the phone, not unlike like a proxy bidder … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Hayden Donnell: If you think Lime scooters are a safety menace, wait till you hear about cars “It’s encouraging to see people getting so worked up and uncompromising about road safety, because they’re right: New Zealand is facing a transport emergency. There are death traps … Read more