His world view is famously built on centre-right common sense, with little time for losers and dreamers. Which makes his undying love for the Warriors all the more baffling to this fellow supporter. Hello, my name is Pete, and I am a New Zealand Warriors fan. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that – I was recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and one of my special interests is the Australian Rugby League competition (especially the period from 1989-1994, aka The Golden Age). As a kid I would use my pocket money to purchase Big League magazine each week. There were other ..read more

If you want to read a book that makes you feel good about your body, I beg you to look elsewhere Once again Sally Rooney is the subject of discourse after body-positive women’s liberation magazine Vogue published an opinion piece titled “Why Are All The Characters in Sally Rooney Novels So Thin?” This was followed by an article titled “Sally Rooney slammed for ‘glorifying eating disorders’” published by little-known feminist zine The Daily Mail.   Emma Specter, writing for Vogue, delivers a comprehensive overview of thinness in Rooney’s books, before writing “There is, of course, no ..read more

Over a million lives are on the line around the world, and New Zealand is in the spotlight, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. New research has suggested that 1.2 million deaths from lung cancer could be prevented around the world if the purchase of cigarettes and other tobacco products was banned for people born between 2006 and 2010. Published in the Lancet journal yesterday, and summarised by Maddy Croad for The Press here, the study is the first to evaluate the effect that implementing a to ..read more

A Year 11 social studies class at Waitākere College has been following David Seymour’s campaign to cut funding for free school lunches with interest, and launched a campaign of their own in response. This is an excerpt from our food newsletter, The Boil Up. In my past life as a high school teacher, I worked in schools with free lunches and schools without. As a beginning teacher in one of the latter – decile 4, and therefore just above the threshold for the scheme – I quickly learned to plan something low-key when I had my Year 12s after lunch. Why this class specifically? Well, because ..read more

Some are simply terrible. Others are fanciful but fun. A couple are actually quite good – but there can only be one champion, and it might shock you. Ever since the Auckland Harbour Bridge was born in 1959, we’ve been berating it as inadequate and a disappointment. For decades we’ve tried to replace it with a better model. Recently mayor Wayne Brown added another insult to the pile, proposing a weird bridge between Toby Manhire’s house in Point Chevalier and Anna Rawhiti-Connell’s place on the North Shore. He is just the latest in a long line of crossing dreamers. Their plans are as boundless ..read more

Raging against your fossil fuel machines and swapping them for more efficient, better-performing electric options is one of the best ways to have a real impact, writes Mike Casey. It’s pretty rare to be confronted with information that completely upends a strongly held belief, but a few years ago I had an emissions epiphany and it’s no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. Now I’m on a mission to show as many New Zealanders as possible that the best way to cut their emissions is by exchanging fossil fuel machines and cars for electric equivalents and running them off renewable ene ..read more

The Pacific profiles series shines a light on Pacific people in Aotearoa doing interesting and important work in their communities, as nominated by members of the public. Today, Charles Gillet. All photos by Geoffery Matautia. We stumbled across Charles on a night out in Ōtautahi. He was behind the bar making drinks when we got to chatting. The self-proclaimed “Rarotongan rum renegade” shared with me stories about growing up as a Polynesian boy in the deep south, his love for hip-hop music, and representing Aotearoa at international cocktail-making competitions. How long have you been workin ..read more

Diversity, age, cigarette smoking, working from home – Joel MacManus rounds up some fascinating facts from today’s new dump of census data. There are 1.1 million New Zealanders aged over 60  In case you ever wondered why Country Calendar is still on air. But seriously, these people are important and valuable members of New Zealand society. Without them, who would buy Graham Norton’s wine?  One quarter of adults have degrees That’s right. I’m not trying to be obtuse. It’s an acute observation.  The median income of working New Zealanders is $42,500 Which means many of us ar ..read more

I’m trying to get over a temporary slump, and my complaining friends aren’t helping. What should I do?  Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz Dear Hera, I’m in a bit of a slump; I like to call it “the gloom”. Possibly due to winter, the state of the world, family issues – probably all of the above. I know what I need to do to shake it off, the usual things: exercise, eat well, spend time in nature and socialise. It’s the last one I am struggling with, because when I feel like this, I find some of my closest female friends exhausting. A couple in p ..read more

Today’s tranche of new information will provide more detail about ‘who we are as a nation, and the richness of New Zealand’s diversity’, explains Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ‘More detail about who we are as a nation’ It may feel like a lifetime ago that we filled out the 2023 census, but today will see further data from the national population survey released to the public. In a statement shared here by Sunlive, Stats NZ confirmed it will release data on population counts by ethnic groups, dwelli ..read more