ICYMI: Every dairy lolly in New Zealand, reviewed and ranked
10 February - 17 February
Bob Jones abandons ‘Māori Gratitude Day’ defamation case against Renae Maihi. Property magnate and polemicist Sir Bob Jones was in court last week for his high profile defamation case against filmmaker and activist Renae Maihi. The trial was supposed to take place until February 21, but at the end of the week, Ātea editor Leonie Hayden reported that the case had been dropped. In a statement, Jones reiterated that he was “not a racist” but accepted that "Maihi’s offence taking was a sincerely held opinion.” In another sincerely held opinion, Leonie noted down her own views on Jones after watching the case unfold first hand. “Not only is Bob Jones a racist,” she wrote, “he is also a bully, a quitter and a coward”.
A crescendo of outcry just crushed the Concert restructure. So what next for RNZ? An extraordinary week at the national broadcaster ended with a complete backdown on plans to downgrade RNZ Concert and make music staff redundant. To gauge the mood of this dramatic U-turn, editor Toby Manhire spoke to staff as well as vehement Concert supporter/former PM Helen Clark to find out whether RNZ’s embarrassment would translate into a budget boost for the broadcaster. CEO Paul Thompson and finance minister Grant Robertson also give their two cents.
Every dairy lolly in New Zealand, reviewed and ranked. If you hated the chip rankings, you're gonna love this: senior writer Madeleine Chapman has ranked 65 dollar bag lollies to find the sweetest, most delicious of them all. I won’t spoil the fun by revealing first place, but I will say it’s good news for tangy sticks, sour snakes, and chocolate fish which all rank in the top third; bad news for eskimos, gobstoppers, and spearmint leaves which sit at the bottom of the lolly ladder.
Just briefly, a quick word from Duncan Greive, managing editor at The Spinoff:
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Winston Peters stages his own Moment of Truth, live on Facebook. To clear up questions around the NZ First Foundation donations scandal, Winston Peters took to Facebook Live to talk directly to his supporters to make sure his statements weren’t “contaminated by interfering comment not associated with the facts”. So what questions did this raw, unfiltered Q&A address? Political commentator Ben Thomas watched the less-than-10-minute event and provided some much-needed context to some of Peters’ answers.
The New Zealand $10 note that you can sell for $88. At the turn of the millennium, a very special and commemorative $10 note was released into the wild full of vivid blues and purples, splashes of yellow, and a bunch of novelty easter eggs to find. Over the years, this rare currency has established quite the following among those eager to get their hands on one. Senior writer Alex Casey joined the hunt to find the rarest $10 note in the land.
An awkward, expensive, perplexing night with Margaret Atwood and Kim Hill. “I found myself wondering exactly why Atwood [was] doing this tour, especially when her spiky answers to Hill made it seem like she’d rather not be being interviewed at all,” wrote Holly Walker, who shelled out big bucks to see The Handmaid’s Tale author talk at her Wellington event. “Surely by now, she has answered any possible combination of questions a million times and is bored out of her brain. Yet it’s not like we forced her: her tour is a standalone thing, not even part of a book festival to which she was invited. She could just be taking us all for a ride.”
A mufti day is enormous fun. But time to give it a new name. Ever wondered why mufti days are called mufti days? As historian Katie Pickles explains, the name has its roots in the colonial past when off-duty British military leaders during the Raj in India started dressing in robes and slippers that they slightly mockingly thought resembled garments worn by Mufti (respected Muslim clerics). From there, the British Army started using the word “mufti” for their days out of uniform with the term eventually spreading to other areas of society. It’s a super interesting slice of history and it begs the question: should we officially abandon the term? Katie says yes, “it’s time to decolonise mufti days… It’s time to call time and shed the menace.”
This week’s newsletter was written by staff writer Jihee Junn.