Does New Zealand have Public Intellectuals?
One thing that is striking about the tone of contemporary public policy debates in NZ is the absence of intellectuals. Although various academics are trotted out by the media to give sound bites and...
View ArticleDemocratic Service and Repair
In the shadows of chain-store ghost towns Where no-one walks the streets at night A silent nation, hooked on medication Stares into a blue flickering light. – Calexico, Service and Repair This verse...
View ArticlePlagarism and Double Standards.
I was not going to post on the Witi Ihimaera plagarism scandal, having commented under my own name on another blog that covered the matter. But as I compare my summary dismissal for writing a rude...
View ArticleRIP Denis Dutton.
By all accounts a good man, a first rate mind and someone who chose to immigrate and contribute to New Zealand. He also proved that intellectual blogs can be lively, popular and profitable. He will be...
View ArticleWho are the next generation of NZ Left Thinkers?
I almost choked on my chardonnay when I read over the weekend a quote from Chris Trotter stating that Bomber Bradbury represented the future of NZ Left thinking. Martin is a genial enough,...
View ArticleWho are the non-geriatric NZ Right thinkers?
OK, you knew this was coming. In the interest of ideological balance, or better yet, just because I am curious, I would like to ask readers who the under-60 Right thinkers are. Given that the Left...
View ArticleThe Road to Academic Taylorism.
The labour dispute involving the University of Auckland and the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) is the culmination of more than a decade of escalating conflict between the university management and its...
View ArticleThought for the day: Bank Economists as media expert commentators.
This may sound mean but having bank economists talk about global macro-and political economics on major NZ news outlets is like having pedophiles talking about childcare. Having them speak...
View ArticleNot surprising.
In 2007 a certain university lecturer, fed up with the managerial push to admit sub-standard and unqualified foreign students in pursuit of revenue, with the resultant pressure placed on lecturers to...
View ArticleBlogging and consulting.
I am somewhat amused by the attacks on Martyn Bradbury over his consultant relationship with Mana while running a leftwing blog. From what I gather Bomber has been pretty upfront about his association...
View ArticleBowed but not Beaten: A Reply to Chris Trotter’s rejoinder to “Nothing Left.”
The post on the death of the NZ political Left has elicited a fair bit of commentary. That is good, because my purpose in writing it as a polemic was to foster debate about the internal weakness of the...
View ArticleWhy Throw in the Towel?
In the wake of Nicky Hager’s latest revelations, Chris Trotter has penned a cynical defense of dirty politics as being the norm. For Chris, when it comes to politics “(t)he options are not fair means...
View ArticleIdle chatter.
Last year I wrote a series of posts outlining what in my view were the reasons the NZ Left was in major if not terminal decline. The posts began before and concluded after the 2014 election and can be...
View ArticleToo Clever.
The TPPA signing came and went, as did the nation-wide protests against it. I did not think that the government was going to be swayed from publicly commemorating what it considers to be the crown...
View ArticleHalf as Long and Twice as Dull: The ACT Party and David Seymour
After previously examining the big four of NZ politics we now turn our eye to the first of the lesser denizens of the swamp called parliament and look at one species of creature soon to be extinct....
View ArticlePlatitudes and Platypuses : Are you getting the government you deserve?
Apologies in advance to my friend Hardly for tacking off his rebuttal to my post last week but I have spent the last week fascinated with the idea of getting the government I deserve. I would not be...
View ArticleConfronting academic Taylorists.
Although the corporate media has not covered it, choosing instead to focus on the university’s fund-raising efforts, the academic and professional staff at the University of Auckland held a one hour...
View ArticlePeddling drivel.
As an admirer of the eloquent written word and nuanced argument, occasional op-ed writer and someone who grew up reading the editorial pages of major newspapers in several countries, I have long seen...
View ArticlePebbles under the mattress.
The structure of capitalism can be likened to that of a bed. The productive apparatus serves as the bed frame. Although there is plenty of variance to the exact configuration of the frame, its...
View ArticleWhy do they do it? A note on the passing of Robert Barros.
I recently heard that my old friend Robert “Bob” Barros died of cancer in Buenos Aires last month. Bob was part of my graduate student cohort in Political Science at the University of Chicago in the...
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