About the author: Brian Mackie

The Author Profile: Brian Mackie is a writer who wasted much of his youth as a journalist in the UK and NZ. He has a deep distrust of politicians and what passes for 21st Century journalism.
Website: http://www.gog.org.nz/
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Posts by Brian Mackie:

A jail that leaks like a $6m sieve. Who’s being screwed?

People who are condemned to live in privately owned leaky homes will not be happy with the Government’s rapid response to the newly revealed problem of convicts living in a leaky prison. While law-abiding honest victims languish in rotting houses that ...

Navy PR stunt scuttled! Laughter is uncontained

Join the Navy, for “a life less ordinary”, as that painfully awful TV commercial trumpeted. The slogan had many people pondering its meaning. But if the new naval onslaught now headlined in our newspapers is anything to go by, life ...

Fight the litter spies: Be a tidy, anonymous Kiwi

Following the $100 fine on a Tawa resident (subsequently waived) for clearing sundry scrap items out of a car and into a council rubbish bin, it would appear that the next slogan to adorn our "Yeah, right" roadside hoardings will ...

And how much would you like off today, Sir?

Real Kiwi blokes don’t do proper haircuts. The rate of inflation at the hairdresser since 2003 has dramatically outstripped the rest of the cost of living - and men have responded in a simple, commonsense way. Instead of getting a ...

PC boarding party ahoy, lads. Woman the lifeboats!

The “man in the street” could be banished in Britain, which invented the term as meaning “the average person”. A report by 21st Century androids employed by Chichester District Council in the UK claims that this popular description is based ...

Rumble in the jungle leaves the locals unmoved

Detailed reports are only now trickling in about the 5.9 Richter Scale quake that hit in the late hours of last Monday beneath the village of Maraenui in Napier. Initial news of the disaster was swiftly transmitted by the hamlet’s ...

Ban the SFO and pass the ETS? That’s serious fraud

Any hope that Winston Peters can keep Helen Clark afloat is virtually gone, now that we know the Monaco millionaire benefactor to the Winston First Party warned his friend the Prime Minister that he had donated $100,000 to Peters’ legal ...

The scales of justice are seriously out of balance

A grave allegation has been made against one of New Zealand’s judges, and naturally – even though it’s hearsay – we’re duty bound to repeat it in the hope that some paid journalist somewhere will do a bit of investigation ...

Call this democracy? We’re on a Hiding to nothing

In one of the most shameless (and shameful) displays of blatant partiality yet seen in Parliament, Speaker Margaret Wilson plumbed new depths when she ejected ACT leader Rodney Hide from the House. Her claimed reason for doing so is nothing short ...

MP fires broadside, then lists perilously towards capsize

Napier’s unelected Labour list MP Russell Fairbrother must be about the only allegedly thinking person in this country who doesn’t know that the election campaign has already begun. It’s been running for weeks, if not months. So when he spotted billboards ...