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...

My piece examining the growing resistance to solar farms in rural communities, which is slowing down the renewable energy transition.

Jacquie Grant, who is 82 years old and a trans woman, looks likely to be the new mayor of Westland www.westlanddc.govt.nz/media/u0kbft...

Predictable and status quo friendly results across Canterbury except for Selwyn which chose to just absolutely send it

Phil Mauger has handily won re-election as mayor of Christchurch www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

The worst part is he’s not even promoting New Zealand in his doomsday antichrist lectures

Some people get so caught up in online culture war stuff that they seem to forget they are not American. Here is an Aucklander imagining being jailed for speech crimes by an imaginary regime in a country he does not live in.

A Voices for Freedom billboard in Wellington (posted on Reddit)

A couple of members of the Free Speech Union have left to create what looks to be to be a Christian version of the Free Speech Union. Good to have diversity in the marketplace of ideas.

Big scoop by Nicky Hager newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/09/s...

Choosing to proceed with this plan was absolute madness by the councillors. It would have almost doubled water charges in two years and left the council unable to pay for virtually anything new for a decade www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Compare and contrast: A statement from an NZ First spokesman 6 months ago about the actions of a party member and supporter, and a statement today from that same party’s leader.

A stadium full of New Zealanders living in Perth watching a struggling All Blacks side was a grim reflection of the overall vibes

A public service announcement about why you shouldn’t defame a lawyer

This is gaining traction in anti-COVID vax circles but none of them have clocked that it comes from a dataset spanning 2000-2020. The shots are so powerful they transcend time.

I have some views on this in the story, largely along the lines of 🙄 and 🧐

Communities built in opposition to the pandemic response are mobilising for local elections, often under the guise of disgruntled residents’ groups. Just one consequence of low public engagement and an often disinterested media www.thepress.co.nz/a/politics/3...

A loosely coordinated network of candidates with roots in the anti-mandate movement is contesting this year’s local elections.

The deputy Prime Minister this week admonished a regional council for enforcing its rules (which it is legally required to do) on the basis that the RMA will be overhauled at some point www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

CHOTINER: You’re a bird, correct? KIWI: That’s right. CHOTINER: And you cannot fly? KIWI: No, but — CHOTINER: Well hold on. You’re telling me you’re a bird, but you walk and snuffle in the dirt like a hedgehog. KIWI: I have vestigial wings. Evolution isn’t always — CHOTINER: Yeah, of course.

Can’t wait to see the inevitably bizarre grievances that online culture warriors will cook up about the new Reserve Bank governor in the coming years

An interesting (and, in my view, utterly ludicrous) decision by the Media Council on reporting about a cold case www.mediacouncil.org.nz/rulings/paul...