Curious to see if NZ First's relative strength this election leads to any distancing from the 'freedom' types that tried to take it over last time. The announced candidates thus far are not from that world.

Clothed teens refuse to leave lazy river in 45 minute standoff with cops www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

A former junior Xero employee speaks out following the New Zealander of the Year awards

This policy announcement about improving the media envisages a future where the front-page of The Dominion Post (sic) has a graph titled “Bara analysis of charts reveals esclusled huner the patterns in the charts chart”

The Post has joined the swell of Wellingtonians making the exodus to Canterbury www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Southland now has the highest regional GDP per capita, overtaking Wellington and Auckland. In unrelated news, I'm formally retracting every joke I've made about the mighty city of Invercargill www.stats.govt.nz/news/southla...

Wasn't too worried about this until I learned 1) this doesn't account for the war and 2) the largest contributor to growth was the "rental, hiring, and real estate services" sector, while the biggest drag was construction. www.thepress.co.nz/business/360...

The government has sold around 150 state houses in Christchurch, most of which have been bought by investors. It has caused the first decline in the city’s public housing supply since at least 2017 dlvr.it/TRT7lc

His punishment is expulsion to an even more distant, windswept island www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...

How things change

I must admit I'm surprised at how little the Royal Commission gave to vaccine opponents, some of whom saw this process as the thing that would vindicate them. Can't get much clearer than this.

Only 297 people in the last census said they worked 168 hours a week (24/7). You can't have a successful country with so few hustlers

Former doctor Mark Bailey, a germ theory denialist and common law adherent, has been haranguing local children for riding their motorbikes by his house www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

In some parts of the world, a rich person using their wealth to undermine a media outlet for ideological reasons would be considered a bad thing, but here it is a “masterstroke” archive.ph/kBPiZ

A disgraceful farce. Bowl it, put a Chemist Warehouse on the rubble and give the rental income to the museum dlvr.it/TR9r4p

I wrote about a pressure campaign centred on a fake “water tax”, which was a revealing insight into the lobbying machine www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Looking at Then and Now photos of Ōtautahi Christchurch. Chchchanges.Does my head in, and heart a bit too. Great work by Charlie Mitchell @comingupcharlie.bsky.social ahead of next week’s 15th anniversary of 22 February 2011 earthquake. @thepress.co.nz www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Hoping this isn't correct. His mental state should not be allowed to improve beyond 'concerning' at any time during his sentence www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

This is the most Wellington boomer thing I have ever seen www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

A once abundant native fish is on the verge of extinction. It is seemingly linked to the rapid collapse of the Rakaia river ecosystem www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

"In the silent depths of interstellar space, there are clouds of ionized gas that are doing as much to 'work for you' as any of these people" www.theringer.com/2026/01/21/m...

Be kind to Cantabrians today www.1news.co.nz/2026/01/15/s...

Christchurch is not a city. Christchurch is a stadium that happens to be surrounded by buildings.

Reading between the lines but I sense that people like Williams and Grenon mistakenly thought Batchelor was a stock-standard critic of co-governance without understanding his apocalyptic worldview thespinoff.co.nz/media/19-12-...

Great news, this case was shameful piss-taking and a waste of everyone's time www.1news.co.nz/2025/12/17/j...

The RoNS: “the most complex & expensive infrastructure programme in NZ’s recent history.” A $56B programme… with a $49B shortfall. And all signs point to low-to-no-value for public money. Given the huge public interest, why are the details being kept from the public, asks @connorsharp.bsky.social?

Even funnier now that the Free Speech Union claimed credit for encouraging Grenon to take over the NZ Herald thespinoff.co.nz/media/16-12-...

This was an odd story to report - a big company has shut down most of a retirement community, leaving a few residents behind who are living in an eerily empty village www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Christchurch spent nearly $700m on a stadium to draw previously unattainable global acts like Six60 www.thepress.co.nz/culture/3609...

This AI generated video has been viewed 200k times on Facebook since yesterday and has hundreds of comments from people who think it’s real. We are so cooked.

The rates cap policy seems to exclude most three waters spending which is a massive carve out given it’s a big driver of local government cost inflation.

The impressive ‘TOGO’ graffiti that appeared at the top of a hotel in Christchurch has been painted over after more than a decade. End of an era.

The banks every time the darn OCR is cut

It is understood reforms to be announced today will mean the dissolving of regional councils, and the first steps could be within this current three-year council term.

Some of the information in this book excerpt is either distorted or flat out wrong. According to the survey, 58% of journalists are women, not "two out of every three". The average journalist is 45.8 years old, and they are not "mostly aged in their 20s or 30s" newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/24/j...

Wouldn’t ‘one in, all in’ equally mean they all wear the jersey? Why do the jersey NIMBYS get the benefit of solidarity? www.stuff.co.nz/sport/360893...

This bloke just crashed into my house and keeps chanting ‘miss me yet? miss me yet’? He won’t leave

Couldn’t be more delighted to see this is how giraffes are transported

If you'd told me that a speaker at the Free Speech Union conference would call for banning non-Christian public expressions of faith to an applauding crowd, I would have said yes, obviously that is going to happen newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/10/t...

The campus of one private school in Christchurch is worth a quarter billion dollars - five times more than the city’s largest state school,which has been beset by problems with its buildings www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

It's a tough day for the many of us realising we are older than the mayor of New York.

In the midst of a measles outbreak Voices for Freedom has gleefully interviewed Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor behind the fraudulent study connecting the measles vaccine to autism.

Westpac New Zealand announces $1.2b profit www.thepost.co.nz/business/360...

This is how Grokipedia, the AI-generated Wikipedia without propaganda, describes New Zealand’s political parties.

Real estate agent ‘Big Red’ Shefford is the new deputy mayor of the Selwyn District.

Population growth in the last year was the lowest since 2012 (outside of the Covid years). Mostly due to a sharp drop in net international migration, likely driven by people moving overseas www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

If I could change one thing about political reporting in New Zealand it would be the reflex to treat policy criticism from the political opposition as not only meaningful but the most important thing.

This is how good the vibes are in Christchurch these days. Even the weather is showing respect

A good opportunity for the Greens to complete the central city trifecta www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

It has always been weird that only two RoNS (one of which is tiny) are in the South Island, but it’s even more jarring now that the South Island is basically holding the economy together www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...