The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.
It included regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman and discussions about climate change science distrust, National’s election policy to cut foreign aid and the near identical fiscal policies offered by National and Labour.
Bernard’s three things of note this week were:
* Labour’s fiscal track is virtually the same as National’s, which means it can’t fix the underfunding it accuses National of in health, transport etc.
* The Greens & Opportunity face a tough choice. If they join a Labour-led coalition they risk being tied to a do-nothing Government.
* If they want to get rid of the current coalition, they could do a supply and confidence deal and sit on the cross benches in opposition on everything else.
Peter’s three things of this week were:
* Peter recommended a deep analysis on Zionism and what it means in The Atlantic (gift). He does not always agree with the slant taken by the writer but the last line is: ‘The work of Zionism will remain incomplete until Jews and Arabs live in peace in the land that both have the right to call home.’
* Keep an eye on the Russian pneumonic plague death and associated cover-up. Did Russia ever really withdraw its bio-weapons programme. Peter has an anecdote about a friend’s husband who died young after leading US initiative to clean up Soviet bioweapons.
* Death of Jeffrey Archer — total ratbag. Wonderful obituary in The Times (gift) which says rather nicely: ‘His elastic relationship with the truth made telling his life’s story a tricky task, since it became clear that nothing Archer ever said about himself could be accepted without independent corroboration.’
The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.
The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in last year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.
Listeners’ Choice nominations can be made at the NZ Podcast Awards site between now and 9th October, and then voting on the Listeners’ Choice award is open between 12th October - 26th November.
(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free.)
Ngā mihi nui.
Bernard
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