Newsletter
Let's not talk about sex, baby
The 'gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines' are being axed. Critics believe the guidelines are ideological and parents don't know what's going on. They're kind of ... right.
Anna McMartin
Newsletter
Nerd Sunday: School's out
Our kids don't go to school anymore. We need to talk about the evidence, but with compassion. I'll do my darndest to weave these two things together in this post.
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James, the miracle
In confidence for my paid subscribers, and with the main characters' names changed.
Newsletter
For Fawkes' sake
I’ve had a lot of time to think about fireworks - mostly in bed at night, gritting my teeth, at my previous home in Upper Hutt. Somewhere, across the back fence, lived a household of chronic firework nutters. I never figured out which address was theirs. I often wondered
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Nerd Sunday: Wai oh wai! What's next for our water?
I will never be anything but a small town girl. From my little house, my teenage son makes a ten minute walk to school, slouching there and back on spindly legs below his shorts. When I come home from my job in the city at night, stepping off the carriage
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On the eve
I own a new house. It's part of row of houses in a new subdivision in Upper Hutt. It's little, sure, but it's all that most people dream of: warm, decent, a foundation for dignity and security. The day I moved in, that a
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Four stories of the lost
In strict confidence, for my paid subscribers. I've changed people's names, and their circumstances just a little, so that they're not identifiable - but the essence of every story is very real.
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Thought for the day, 4 October 2023
I’ve been musing. Everyone knows (hopefully) that the right to vote was hard won: wrested from the grabby hands of older white blokes with property. That's stuff we learned at school, yeah? Civil rights, workers rising, protesters dying, yada yada yada. And, of course, Aotearoa was first
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Nerd Monday: Tearing up the rule book?
A word of warning. Regulation is a super complex area with a bunch of experts, and I'm definitely not one of them. But I've been reading and discovering some ideas. Hold on to your hat!
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I'll give you an earful
Newsletter
A blast from the past
When I was at school, I was a mostly unexceptional student. I was resigned to it, and not overly bothered, but every now and then I had an inkling that I was smarter than my marks, as well as a hankering to prove myself. When the fifth form English research
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Remember, remember
The problem with David Seymour is he's actually really smart. Guy Fawkes was still a thing when I was a kid. There were fireworks, of course, and that was fun; but you also made a human effigy to throw onto the fire. It seemed kind of messed up,