Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Nicky Hager: Dirty Politics, 2018: Nicky Hager assesses the Jami-Lee Ross saga “The book Dirty Politics is not about awful people; it is about a negative and destructive style of attack politics that has infected New Zealand from US politics. This is the idea that success in … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Don Rowe: Tasman deathtrap: the brutal toll of Australia’s deportation policy “Shortly after 9pm on September 11, Togatuki sent two calls for help over the prison intercom, telling guards he had harmed himself. No one responded. There was a big NRL game that evening. Sydney … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Dylan Reeve: A night aboard the most loathed aircraft in New Zealand “The sharp sound of the blades cutting into the air as it circles is familiar to many Aucklanders, including Orakei Local Board member Troy Churton, who attracted attention when he complained publicly about the helicopter … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Danyl Mclauchlan: The dumbfounding nastiness of Simon Bridges’ ‘meth crooks’ remarks “Bridges is competing for media-space with Judith Collins, who was first out of the gate attacking the meth compensation announcement, declaring that the tenants were all evicted because of their ‘criminal activity’. Bridges … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Angela Cuming: Who the fluff is Blippi?? “If you don’t have young children there’s every chance you have never heard of Blippi, but the video superstar is a hero to millions of children the world over with his fun videos and catchy songs racking up more than … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Madeleine Chapman: How did a 77-year-old white guy become the go-to media voice on Māori issues? “There are plenty of uninformed takes to be heard on the radio. People call into talkback and air an opinion that isn’t shared by a single listener, but those … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Hayden Donnell: What is happening? Mike Hosking and Mark Richardson both made great points “Stash some canned food under your bed. Fashion your garden implements into makeshift weapons. Sprinkle the blood of a lamb or goat over your home’s threshold. For behold; the seven seals … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Arie Faber: No-so-squeaky clean: Why wellness culture is a scam “Don’t get me wrong, we should stick to the government-recommended amount of added sugar, but this is not the suggestion of online food philosophers. The suggestion, of course, is to replace sugar with cleaner, … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: The real ratings of NZ’s news sites shows some have a big problem “For 20 straight days we didn’t crest 60,000 pageviews – our marker for a good day – even once. It had come from nowhere: between the start of June and … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Catherine Woulfe: C-sections can cause infertility. Mine did “These last two years have been grim, numbing, month after month of nothing, nothing, nothing, bookended by very early miscarriages. Various GPs were optimistic but by last summer, I was not: I referred myself to Fertility … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: I send my kid to the cold equivalent of a prison-yard most days and I’m fine with it “Deobrah Hill Cone’s column yesterday was a devastating indictment of an institution that many of us use every day. The whole thing dripped with concern, … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Toby Morris: The Side Eye: Inequality Tower 2018 Imagine all the wealth in NZ as a ten-storey apartment building. Imagine half of NZ crammed in a tiny corner of the bottom floor. This is the worsening reality in New Zealand, 2018. Steven Adams: Why does … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Amy Parsons-King: Silent lambs: Child sexual abuse and the Jehovah’s Witnesses Best known for their door-to-door evangelising, Jehovah’s Witnesses are on a quest to save the ‘wicked’ from damnation. For victims of sexual abuse within the organisation, however, that quest has seen perpetrators shielded from … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Hayden Donnell: All the times our new Free Speech Coalition really hated free speech “It’s hard to get people to give money to worthy causes. Climate change. Poverty. Fuel taxes. There are so many issues, and we’re all stretched thin. But this week we’ve found out there’s … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Rebekah White: Every New Zealander needs a third place “New Zealand has a great third place – the outdoors. My favourite third place is a DOC hut, any of them – the one space in the country where anyone is up for a yarn. But … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Alex Braae: Fact check: Has there been more striking in 9 months of Labour than 9 years of National?” The stats are bullshit, because if you were to compare the two figures, you’d completely wipe the tally just with aviation security workers. They very, … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Thalia Kehoe Rowden: What can a horrified New Zealander do about children in cages? “Whether you are poring over Twitter and the New York Times website, gaping at every new atrocity this corrupt and cruel administration embarks on, or avoiding the excruciating sights and sounds … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Hemma Vara: Five great sustainable, ethical clothing labels – all made in NZ “WORLD founder and ethical fashion champion Dame Denise L’Estrange-Corbet claimed it’s almost impossible to manufacture clothes in New Zealand, so we set out to find some labels that are not only creating … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. The Spinoff: Huge and true: The Spinoff TV is coming to Three on June 22 “Two years ago, we declared ‘Good news: TV is dead’. It turns out we were perhaps premature in that assessment. In less than three weeks The Spinoff TV will hit all … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Chelle Fitzgerald: Dollar drinks on the dancefloor: the heyday of Dunedin student pubs “‘Going to town’ in Dunedin was fucking awesome back in the day. There was no need to preload, because all the clubs sold ‘house doubles’ (read: cheap bottom-shelf alcohol) for $2, or, … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: With $38m on the table, TVNZ suddenly remembers how to do public broadcasting The state-owned broadcaster has long resisted public service. Yet with $38m on the table, and the government’s relationship with RNZ rocky, moving Q+A to primetime could be be seen as a deftly … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: An open letter to Mike Hosking “Now, any parent who actually parents will know that early childhood education is no walk in the park and the question is absurd. And “painting pictures with a three-year-old” is not only not easy, but also it’s nowhere near all that … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Toby Manhire: What the shit is going on with those Clarke Gayford rumours? “Everyone in media and political circles, Steve Braunias notwithstanding, has been gasbagging like mad over the last month about rumours related to Clarke Gayford, the partner of the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Most … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Danyl Mclauchlan: Breaking news: Clarke Gayford reputation rocked by Herald allegations “This is not to deny that the Herald’s investigation raises some valid issues which Ardern and her government must urgently move to address. Why were we not told that Gayford came second in the … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Alex Casey: ‘Would you like me to also be a different skin colour and male?’ – Anika Moa claps back at tattoo criticism on Seven Sharp “I’ll just cover up a little bit” Moa whispered, frantically pulling her sleeves over her hands and attempting … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: Hey Mojo, if you can’t pay your staff properly maybe you shouldn’t be in business “I’m thoroughly confused by employers who insist that no business model can ever support paying living wages – especially since many, many, many businesses do pay their employees living … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. David Farrier: The clamps fall silent: a eulogy for Bashford Antiques “The reign of Bashford Antiques is over. Part of Auckland’s antique scene for decades, it will perhaps be more fondly remembered as a key player in Auckland’s car clamping scene. Countless New Zealanders fell … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. David Farrier: The mystery of Zach, New Zealand’s all-too-miraculous medical AI An artificial intelligence bot called Zach is creating a stir in the medical community. A doctor in Christchurch is teaching it to write patient notes. An Otago professor has it interpreting ECG results. … Read more
Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website. Linda Clark: How the legal profession has excused and minimised the Russell McVeagh scandal “This shouldn’t need to be said, but young women drinking free alcohol is not the problem here. Yet that view has some powerful supporters. On Wednesday, the former solicitor general Mike … Read more