Half an hour is a long time in politics

Hat tip to Johnnie Moore for this one, on Twitter earlier today. Half an hour is a long time in politics pic.twitter.com/AAIgPFhdw8 — The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret) July 20, 2022 You may also like A tribute to Boris Johnson I’m still doing election campaign posters, just not what you thought History of the 2010s: a […]

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I’m not the Jack Yan running for mayor of Toronto

  As far as coincidences go, this was unexpected. To readers from Toronto, and anyone else emailing me about this, I’m not the guy running for mayor there. I realize I’m way more likely to come up in searches for my name and for my name with mayor or mayoral candidate, since my namesake doesn’t […]

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They’re brainwashed by the cult of Boris, so the next Tory leader will be an ideologue

Sean O’Grady puts into his opinion piece what so many of us have said. He does it far better than I could. They backed Johnson through the Dominic Cummings scandal, through the resignations of two ethics advisers, through the scandal of a party donor paying for the decoration of his flat, through the mishandling of […]

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My notes from RNZ’s The Panel, Wednesday, June 22

I write notes for my appearances on RNZ’s The Panel, and while I don’t read them verbatim, they are useful for copying and pasting into this blog afterwards. (Anyone who has ever attended a conference where I’ve spoken might find this familiar: I’ll upload the notes but they aren’t a word-for-word reflection of what I […]

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Political coverage is not based around merit

How fascinating. Eight years ago, I had high hopes for this Christopher Luxon, according to this blog. Who knew that as a politician, the guy would really let me down? I Tweeted: Remember how the Dom Post treated me in two elections? This is the opposite. A lot of the media love their rich white […]

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Where democratizing technology got the better of us

From the start, I’ve been a supporter of the democratization of design. Everyone has the right to access it, because fundamentally good design is something that makes the world a better place. A lot of websites are founded on this, such as Shopify, which has enough flexibility to give most of the stores we visit […]

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Targets painted, opposition misses again

Our government’s response to COVID-19 has been better than many nations’, but it is far from perfect, as Ian Powell points out in a well reasoned blog post, and in his article for Business Desk. It’s backed up by a piece by Marc Daalder for Newsroom. To me, Powell’s piece makes a great deal of […]

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The post-Panel podcast

Taking some of the themes today on RNZ’s The Panel with Wallace Chapman (pre-Panel here, part one of the show here, and part two here), I offer a bit more commentary. Today’s topics: the COVID-19 mandate for schools; quitting drinking; Finland planning to let people see others’ salaries; the level of spending above New Zealand […]

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John’s on first

  Bill Owen posted the above, and I replied in this thread on Twitter.   ‘John’s on first, John John’s on second, John’s on third.’   ‘Who’s on first?’   ‘John.’   ‘The guy on first.’   ‘John.’   ‘But that’s the guy on third.’   ‘One base at a time!’   ‘I’m only asking […]

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Facebook continues to give in to fake accounts, much like the UK with COVID-19

At the beginning of July I noticed Facebook had changed its reporting options. Gone is the option labelled ‘Fake account’, replaced by ‘Harmful or spam’. It’s a small change that, I believe, is designed to get Facebook off the hook for failing to remove fake accounts: since you can’t report them, then you can’t say […]

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