To complete our series looking back at 2020 and gazing ahead to 2021, we asked our big political commentary brains to nominate the three issues that will loom large in the year to come. Read more from our political year in review here. Alex Braae Who owns the water infrastructure? And more importantly, will Councils … Read more
Every year in our summer politics review we encourage our esteemed commentators to throw all caution to the wind and make a wild prediction. Most will be gloriously off-beam. But usually at least one is on the money … Read more from our political year in review here. Contrary to expectations, the huge new intake … Read more
North of 50 million posts were served up for your reading pleasure (and, let’s face it, sometimes, reading terror) across the year. As we bid farewell to 2020, here are the 20 that got clicked on the most, countdown style. 20 A better visual breakdown of the 2020 election results Remember the election? Neither. Here’s … Read more
The contents list is nearing completion, and the location options are coming together nicely. Last week we announced our plan to literally encapsulate the year 2020, and literally to bury it: a time capsule. A bit futuristic, a bit nostalgic, and a convenient alternative to reviewing the year by staring helplessly into the endless void. … Read more
An extra question for our esteemed politics watchers this year: what would they add to the Spinoff time capsule, our mechanism to literally encapsulate (and bury) the year 2020. Read more from our political year in review here. Some hand sanitiser – it’ll probably still be good to use when they crack the box open … Read more
Coffee habits. Waiheke ferries. Hair straighteners. The scoops were served up faster than a midsummer beachside dairy when Jacinda Ardern spoke to Gone By Lunchtime’s Toby Manhire to recap the year. The prime minister phoned in to the Spinoff Gone By Lunchtime studio for an end-of-year interview last week that spanned all the essential subjects: … Read more
Last year, there was a lot of swearing deployed to sum up the year. And then came 2020. As it reaches its close, how to describe the world this year in one sentence? Read more from our political year in review here. Is there anything we can do to help? Alex Braae 2020 is … … Read more
Every year since the distant past (2016) the Spinoff has assembled a pantheon of politics watchers to appraise the 12 months past and cast a gaze ahead at those to come. To kick us off in a year of Covid and voting, the champs and the flops of 2020. Alex Braae Champs Mark Ball Easily … Read more
They’re under parliament buildings, in opera houses, even floating through space. And now The Spinoff is about to bury one for 2020. While stashing stuff for future humans to unearth has been a tradition for thousands of years, when did ‘time capsules’ become a thing? At the beginning of high school, it is these days … Read more
This has been a year of amazement and endurance. Let’s bury it together. How do you tell a story like 2020? The lockdown year. The bubble year. The suppurating mouth ulcer year. As with just about every media operation around this infectious planet, we’ve been wondering how to sum up such a terrible and cacophonous … Read more
To complete our series looking back at 2019 and peering into 2020, we asked our political sleuths to nominate the three issues that could make the difference in this year’s election. Alex Braae Many polls indicate that if Labour is to keep leading the government, it will be in charge of a coalition. There could … Read more
2019 is history. Shifting effortlessly into prophesy mode, our gallant politics-watchers plunge headlong into the crystal ball. National and NZ First will shit-talk each other all year and then form a government after the election. Alex Braae Judith Collins will defect from the National Party to lead ACT and take that party to 3% at … Read more
A conversation between editors about what made an impression in New Zealand visual arts in 2019. We unpack the highs and lows, and the exhibitions both naughty and nice. Warning: includes light interference from Elf on a Shelf. After six months of The Spinoff Art, co-editors Megan Dunn and Mark Amery pause for pavlova and … Read more
Join various hosts of The Spinoff podcasts Gone by Lunchtime, On The Rag, The Real Pod, Paper Cuts, The Offspin, and Dietary Requirements as we look back at the car crash that was 2019. In this special end of year podcast hosted by Leonie Hayden, we dissect the country’s response to national disasters, the highs and lows … Read more
In part two of the year in politics 2019 (see Champs and Flops, yesterday), we asked our punditry pantheon: Give us the year in a sentence. Gosh it’s warm today. Alex Braae Pitchfork politics, big improbable lies, bad hair and a 16-year-old climate change warrior whose mere presence sent a certain sub-group into an irrational … Read more
As the sun sets on 2019, The Spinoff bounds into the political ocean for one final dip, in our traditional survey of the year (and nervous peer at the year to come). First up, our experts name and acclaim the champs and flops of 2019. Alex Braae Champs David Seymour In pure horse-race terms, his … Read more
Our experts think outside the proverbial box and serve up one leftfield prediction for the year to come in politics Alex Braae None of Phil Goff, Lianne Dalziel, or Justin Lester will face a challenger who gets within 20% of them in the mayoral elections. Madeleine Chapman Nikki Kaye will become leader of the National … Read more
Our experts cast their minds ahead to the sweeping politiscapes of 2019. What, we asked, are the three issues on which 2019 could hinge? Alex Braae Climate change politics, specifically how they relate to farming. So, uh, where exactly do we stand when it comes to China and the USA? We haven’t seen the last … Read more
The Spinoff Food whānau and friends reveal the best things they put in their gobs this year. CLAIRE ADAMSON Earlier this year, before she had told anyone outside of the family she was pregnant, my sister gamely came along to a wine tasting I was holding and inhaled the aroma of each wine deeply from … Read more
Continuing our review of the year in politics, our firmament of experts offer the definitive summary of 2018 in just one sentence. For more of the political year in review –and 2019 in preview – go here Huh, turns out it can get worse from here. – Alex Braae Too many people, too many opinions … Read more
To kick off our review of the year in politics, we asked our experts to pick the best and worst performing individuals (or parties or institutions or whatever). To come in the next few days: 2018 in a sentence and predictions for 2019. Alex Braae Champs Paul Goldsmith. Constant hits put on the obvious weirdness … Read more
At least one of these 15 soothsayers is bound to be right … We asked them to name their winners and losers in politics 2017, and so they did. We asked them to describe the year in sentence. They did that, too. We asked what might be the issues 2018 hinges on, and again they … Read more
From Paddles the cat to Donald Trump, the Spinoff’s cartoonist tallies up the faces that he most often drew through the year. There’s probably an old saying that goes the quickest way to follow history is to follow cartoons. If there isn’t, there should be: a cartoonist’s job is to condense the day’s events into … Read more
An incredible year, or the second half of it at least, for NZ politics. The Gone By Lunchtime bus parks up for one last time before going in to the garage, and settles all the matters. Jacinda Ardern! Bill English! Metiria Turei! Winston Peters! Those are the names of some people who were in the … Read more
In the first instalment of our annual year-end pundit-fest, we asked for the three chumps and the three flops of 2017. Then we sought a one-sentence summary of the year. Today, the question is this: What are the issues upon which 2018 is likely to hinge? Graham Cameron Climate Change. The clock has run out. We, … Read more
Fifteen politics watchers attempt the impossible. In part two of our politics year in review (part one, the champs and the flops, is here) we ask our pantheon of pundits: how would you describe the world in 2017, in one sentence? Graham Cameron Running screaming from climate change, wealth inequality and a worldwide refugee crisis, … Read more
16 top politics watchers name their winners and losers from a tumultuous political year. Today we launch the Spinoff’s political year in review with a collection of the champs and flops. The question: Who would you rank as the best performing individuals (or parties/institutions/whatever) in NZ politics for 2017? (And why, if you like.) To … Read more
This morning the Spotify-subscribing world woke up to Spotify’s annual ‘your year in review’ package, including a personalised top 100 played songs of the year. Here are music editor Henry Oliver’s top 10 (plus a few more). 1. Aldous Harding – ‘Horizon’ No surprise here. This song cuts deep. For reasons I won’t go into … Read more
Clicks and content, content and clicks: these are the posts that attracted the most eyeballs on friendly fledgling website ‘the Spinoff’ this year. Tomorrow we’ll be publishing the Spinoff stories that were unfathomably spurned by readers, but for today, these are the 20 most clicked-upon articles from 2016, in reverse order. 20 From June, Madeleine … Read more