He also gets the majority of his information from the trade union bar in Auckland, with his sources being whoever happens to be around at the time. This might go to explain how he is so often so incredibly wrong.

In the 1990s he lived in Dunedin, and I think…

In the course of his sojourn in the US Davy would have become familiar with the ideas of the celebrated political journalist Walter Lippmann. During World War I,…

When he isn't being melodramatic, Trotter is one of our most perceptive political writers.

Perhaps this is because demanding proper journalistic standards might actually put him out of a job?

I tend to agree that Chris Trotter is one of our best political writers, putting aside whatever that suggests about…

It was the habit of Americans to declare that they did not believe in standing armies or fleets.…

Well, while we are plugging histories of NZ, here is my new favourite, and from one of our greatest Prime Ministers no less!

Wow. Just wow.

Introduction

A free, online copy

but he's a lot like Christopher Hitchens

except for the height and drinking prowess. But there's a similarity of sorts in their rhetorical style. Sometimes you like what the write even when one disagrees but at others you dislike what they write even when one agrees.

The main problem I…

When he isn't being melodramatic, Trotter is one of our most perceptive political writers.

Well, I thiink today's effort in the DomPost today wasn't so such 'emlodramatic' as pure self-parody. But let's be honest about it, would Trotter be the media's favourite lefty (as a rather puffy piece in the…

Oh, and interest rates. They've already de-coupled from the Reserve Bank's official cash rate, and if liquidity really becomes an issue they could go quite high.

Speaking of agriculture, how damn rich did the dairy farmers get yesterday?

Up to their eyeballs in white powder today :-) Scenes from Scarface flash up before me.

Still, I don't begrudge farmers their time in the sun. As I have said before the lamb growers are having a tough…

My politics may not have changed much over the years but my sense of righteousness has. I think Trotter and other are too convinced of being right and others being wrong to offer much new insight, IMvHO.

I certainly couldn't lure him into any nuance over the reforms of the…

National has always been (with perhaps a small interregnum of the post-WW2 consensus under Holyaoke) the party primarily concerned with looking after its backers – farmers and the business elite.

This may be true but behind that concern is surely a belief that those sectors drive wealth and wellbeing. You…

The occasions I only glance at it are when he gets right into his more melodramatic type of writing.

Melodrama is always inaccurate. It relies on shining…

...and Coates was looking for ways to weather the storm. As the first New Zealand prime minister actually born in this country

Bzzz!
The intellectually brilliant Francis Henry Dillon Bell beats Coates as the first NZ born PM (though admittedly it was only for a short time). Still – it…

I've always been convinced the key difference between Labour and National is Labour is a party at least founded upon a progressive principle; National has always been (with perhaps a small interregnum of the post-WW2 consensus under Holyaoke) the party primarily concerned…

Damn, another book to buy. And I already have too many to read...

And not a short one, either ...

One interesting thing to emerge from the interview is that characters who are essentially grey men in Michael King's Penguin History emerged quite differently in Chris's book. King found them…

the pithy observation that modern politics was 'the shadow cast upon society by big business'

And he hadn't even heard of John Key....