The destruction of the White House is a scene most commonly associated with fictional alien invasions or terrorist plots on the big screen, but today marks two hundred years since an enemy force marched on Washington and set fire to the famous residence. This is the relatively unknown yet remarkable story of how one of the junior officers in the force that torched the White House went on to become the founding father of one of New Zealand’s earliest settlements and ultimately met his fate during a skirmish with one of the most revered and feared of all Māori chiefs – Te Rauparaha.

Arthur Wakefield was only ten years old when he joined the Royal Navy in May 1810. The British had enjoyed naval supremacy since their famous victory at Trafalgar, less than five years earlier, but the fate of Europe was still uncertain with Napoleon’s armies waging war across…

The latest Roy Morgan poll has just been released. The polling window runs from 4 August to 17 August, meaning that been a quarter and a third of the polling was done following the release of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics book. We’ll need to wait for further polling before the real impact of the book and its fallout can be seen.

The results of the Roy Morgan will undoubtedly be somewhat of a disappointment for Labour and the Greens. National is up 2% to 48%, while on the left, Labour drops 2.5% to 27.5%, and the Greens drop 0.5% to 11.5%. That’s a 9% gap between National and a Labour/Greens bloc.

The big mover of the minor parties is NZ First, up 1.5% to 6.5%. That’s the highest they’ve been in the Roy Morgan since September 2013, and it’s the party’s second highest poll result this year from any of…

John Key seems to be missing the point about widespread fed-up-ness about dirty politics. Like really annoyed fed up pissed-offedness about how appallingly some of our politicians and their hangers on carry on.

Key seems to like rugby analogies so here’s one that might help.

Back in the old days rugby was much dirtier, and not just because fields were much muddier. The dark arts of the game were legend.  Most players didn’t stick the boot in but a mongrel minority got away with moronic mayhem.

Then television came along and gradually exposed it. So the authorities clamped down on foul play. It took a while but it worked. 

Today rugby is played harder and more competitively, but without much of the past nastiness and dirtiness.

Back in the old days politics was dirty – it was equivalent to a type of rugby where punching and stomping and back road-mapping and eye…