Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Emily Writes: Surviving Wine Mum Night “6.10pm – You all agree that nobody can get drunk because we all have the kids the next day and nobody can cope with hangovers. 6.20pm – Shots of absinthe for everyone.” Flipping the bird at Secretary of State Rex … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Nadine Millar: It shouldn’t be a debate: Our schools need to stop prioritising Pākehā values by default “In a Māori context, opening a speech with a mihimihi, or a round of acknowledgements, is fairly typical. Depending on the occasion, these introductions can be long or brief. … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Nichole Brown: I’m sorry I white-washed your world: A letter to my Māori daughter “I am so sorry that it took me until we decided to leave this beautiful country to realise just how important our culture is to our future. I never considered that the Māori … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Henry Oliver: ‘What if birds aren’t singing, they’re screaming?’: Inside Aldous Harding‘s head “Harding’s music is deep and weird and mythic. It exists in its own world and follows its own symbolic logic. She might not want to talk about her music because she doesn’t want to … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Jack Tame: ‘Janice’s email stood out for its dazzling ignorance’: Jack Tame on the racist email which made him snap “Of my two broadcasting gigs, some associate Newstalk ZB with pushing conservative agendas. So, some hosts don’t believe in climate change? Perhaps someone suggests on air … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Michele A’Court: Here, let me help. Start by imagining your penis is bleeding “So… imagine that you are you, Tom. All good? And that for a few days every month, you bleed out of your penis. Sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot. And your testicles (which … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Bree Brown: A teenager on what 13 Reasons Why gets dangerously wrong about teen suicide “The main failing of this show is that it continues to perpetuate the idea that suicide is a direct result of a person or an event. For years, experts have emphasised … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Kristin Hall: Remembering Big Fresh, New Zealand’s greatest supermarket of all time “This one time at Big Fresh, I was going up to press the moo cow button and some other little c*** pressed it right before I got there. I lost the fucking plot and … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: The incremental radical: Bill English meets the Spinoff “Despite his having been marked as a future prime minister since at least university, he seemed to have found a happy and natural ceiling. Yet, thanks to that shocking announcement in November, here he is – … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Madeleine Chapman: A harrowing report from the Max Key VIP experience “’You paid to be here? That’s crazy.’ The young man laughed as I hurriedly explained that no, I hadn’t paid $59 for a VIP ticket to Max Key’s DJ gig, my work had. It didn’t … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Sam Brooks and Natasha Hoyland: Mining the comedy gold for you: The Spinoff’s pop-up comedy section is here! “We’re not going to be a bunch of old white guys just writing reviews and spoiling jokes. We care about comedy, and we care about people who care … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Hayden Donnell: Finding Rosemary: In search of the unsung hero who invented Kiwi Onion Dip “Our disregard for the dip’s architect has bugged me for years. Every time I’ve bitten down on a dip-drenched chip, I’ve wondered the culinary savant behind the flavour miracle being performed … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. The Spinoff: We are hiring a comedy editor LMAO!! “The Spinoff needs an editor to run our pop up comedy section during the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. Sound like you? Read on.” James Dann: The Port Hills fire makes it clear: Our Civil Defence is … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Simon Wilson: PM Bill English gave two speeches on Waitangi Day. Both were remarkable. Both were almost entirely ignored “English chose not to go to Waitangi, preferring to attend a breakfast hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. When it came his turn to speak during the powhiri, … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Murdoch Stephens: Trump’s refugee ban is a moral outrage that shames America. When will PM Bill English say so? “France and Germany have already stepped up and denounced Trump’s refugee policies. But where is New Zealand’s Prime Minister Bill English? One can imagine his strategists talking … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: Announcing The Spinoff app “That’s the business motivation though – what’s in it for you? Well, mainly a really incredible experience as a reader. We consider the app – access to all our stories, sortable via author and section – to be the very … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Alex Casey: Shocker: Turns out Jimi Jackson’s a misogynist bully too “The real kicker is that this wasn’t even conducted outside a vineyard, or inside a fictitious locker room where there might have been a vague thought that only a handful of people would ever see … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Annabelle Lee: Silly old sausage: Why the Mad Butcher’s Waiheke comment matters “To argue that someone is incapable of making a racist comment because they have a connection to, or interest in, a particular community is a bit like saying a man is incapable of sexism … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Toby Manhire: Bloody hell, John Key just quit as prime minister. This is not how things happen! “The National Party under Key has been lauded, rightly, for its ability to renew, with underperforming MPs finding themselves nudged out, or shouldered towards retirement. But now the prime … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Luke Tipoki: You say Kai-kura, I say Kaikōura – why your inability to pronounce Māori place names pisses me off “When I hear this mangling of tō tātou reo Māori, I hear years of colonisation, and I hear a country that seems uninterested in the preservation … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. David Farrier: ‘Hello, my name is Ally’ – how children are being exploited by YouTube predators “Josh believes it is highly unlikely Ally & Maddie are two young female YouTubers. He believes the account is run by an adult male. His suspicions are based on the … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Toby Manhire: This stunning map shows that six faults – at least six – ruptured in the big Kaikoura quake “To be clear, that’s six faults that have ruptured? At least. On our initial flight we only flew down the coast and straight … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Mark Jennings: When Paul Henry let rip that obnoxious Herald rant he was already through with TV3 “The signs have been there for some time. Henry, whose reported departure Mediaworks has refused to confirm, has been openly saying he was sick of the … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Scotty Stevenson: 48 hours drinking with rugby’s greatest losers “I walked into the sheds soon after, to sit and drink with losers. I walked down the long concrete corridor under the main stand, past the North Harbour changing room. Inside they were belting … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Ally McCrow-Young: What’s the deal with denial? A NZ Chinese woman on ‘Kiwi-ness’ and casual racism “When I’ve told anecdotes about casual racism – like when people put on a fake broken English accent when speaking to me – I can almost guarantee … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Kristina Hard: In defence of Warriena Wright: an open letter to a slut-shaming newspaper columnist “‘He had made his intentions clear before she set foot in his apartment. She was a willing accomplice‘ She was a willing accomplice in her plan for consensual … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Natalya King: Aaron Smith got screwed – and Stuff could end up getting sued “In the legal sense, an invasion of privacy is the “highly offensive” disclosure of private facts. That is, if Aaron had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the facts … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Tim Murphy: A final Pokarekare Ana and a punch in the air: post-mayoricide, Len Brown goes out on a high “This is not a tabloid story, taking things out of context and boasting a headline like: ‘Sex Scandal Made Me a Better Mayor’ … Read more
Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website. Deborah Mahuta-Coyle: ‘You’ll never undo the hurt.’ A Māori woman’s open letter to Don Brash “You see, Don, when you talk about Māori privilege, you say you’re referring to the Treaty, or to water rights, or to all these “special privileges” that Māori … Read more