Reports & Media

Late last year, embattled Chancellor Angela Merkel resigned the leadership of her Christian Democrat CDU party and announced she would not seek a fifth term. After a tight contest, the party’s general manager Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer succeeded Merkel as leader. Read more

When it comes to funding our roads, the average New Zealand driver is not getting the best deal. For one, we have been paying for our streets and highways roughly the same way for the past 50 years, despite technological advancements and global best practice. Read more

This year’s close alignment of Easter and Anzac public holidays translated into 10 days of joy, family time and… congestion – with the New Zealand Traffic Agency (NZTA) issuing multiple heavy traffic warnings across the nation. Unfortunately, traffic jams are not restricted to holiday seasons in New Zealand. Read more

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake it for the genuine article.” Poe’s Law warns that without strong warnings, parody will confuse people. We occasionally get into a bit of a pickle with the third column in our Insights newsletter. Read more

The primary teachers’ union, NZEI Te Riu Roa, has called a series of nationwide meetings to decide on industrial action to take place early next month. NZEI proposes primary teachers “work to rule” from 15 May, culminating in a national strike on 29 May. Read more

Essayist and author Nassim Taleb is more than a little tedious on Twitter. But he gets one big thing very right. Read more

In a letter to a select committee last week, Liz MacPherson, chief statistician of Statistics New Zealand (SNZ), said about 240,000 individuals had only partially completed the 2018 census. This, on top of the 480,000 individuals who did not complete the census at all, increased the census data gap to more than 700,000 individuals (or 14.3 per cent of the population). Read more

It seemed a simple enough question. It was, really. Read more

A shocking 700,000 individuals - or 14.3 percent of New Zealand’s population - either partially completed or did not complete the 2018 Census. More shocking than the numbers themselves was how this information was made public. Read more

“Unintended consequences” are outcomes unforeseen by purposeful action, an idea popularised by American sociologist Robert Merton in the twentieth century. Since then, the so-called law of unintended consequences has morphed into a warning: intervening in a complex situation tends to create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes. Read more

Flames and smoke on the roof of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris: When I saw the pictures, still half-asleep, early Tuesday morning, my first thought was the fire was so high up that perhaps some aerial firefighting support was called for. Upon further consideration, and with the benefit of having woken up by then, I realised that was a daft idea. Read more

Last week, we all saw the first-ever image of a black hole scientists have been able to create. Once sucked into a black hole, you get pulled apart into smithereens while time stands still. Read more

Big organisations get up to a lot of stuff that looks pretty silly from the outside – and even from the inside. Corporate retreats with ridiculous team-building exercises. Read more

Since the release of the Tomorrow’s Schools report last December, the education community has been talking about nearly every aspect of school organisation: Who should govern schools? For what term lengths should principals be appointed? Read more