NOT IN WRITING

The Ministry of Education’s planned changes to the curriculum have been deemed so awesome that if the public found out it would cause a riot of zealous joy.

A Ministry of Education senior official has been caught on camera telling staff not to put information shared with education minister Erica Stanford’s office in writing because it could be made public under the Official Information Act (OIA).

Staff at the MoE are often coming up with fancy new things to make teachers teach kids, usually stuff they’ve found out about at university, and it’s always been wildly popular with the taxpaying public. 

MoE staffer and official information expert Laura Hunter says sometimes the OIA needs to be sidestepped as a way of maintaining public order. 

“There’s some really popular stuff in these undocumented discussions. So much cool stuff that we want teachers to teach kids on top of reading, writing and maths.

“If the public found out about our ideas during the early stages, you never know what could happen. There could be a stampede of people rushing to our offices to give us an excessive amount of high fives,” said the concerned policy advisor. 

“We have to think about public safety.”

Hunter would not elaborate further about what new changes the Ministry wants to make to the curriculum, for the reasons she’s already given. 

“Look, our work is so awesome and revolutionary that you can’t just go around making official records of it. What if the information got into the wrong hands? Imagine if the Taxpayers Union got hold of it!” she said in horror. 

“Sometimes when you’ve got big plans, you’re better off keeping them all under wraps until the time is right.”

More to come. 

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IDOL RETURNS

Former NZ Idol winner Ben Lummis has confirmed he can be ready to perform at next week’s NRL Grand Final, should organisers suddenly realise they need someone to sing in front of 80,000 people.

The 2004 NZ Idol winner has largely remained out of the musical spotlight for the past two decades, but says he has been closely monitoring developments after negotiations between the NRL and Australian singer Tones And I collapsed.

Tones And I had been approached to perform at the October 4 decider, but the deal fell through after she was unable to commit due to a prior commitment with Macklemore in the United States and rumours she didn’t want to perform their hit single “Dance Monkey”.

With the NRL deciding not to seek a replacement headline act, Lummis has reportedly decided the time is right for his long-awaited comeback.

“I can be in Sydney next weekend,” Lummis said.

“I don’t want to put too much pressure on the NRL, but if they need someone who won NZ Idol 22 years ago, I’m available.”

Lummis also assured organisers he was more than capable of performing Tones And I’s biggest hit, Dance Monkey, despite having absolutely no prior connection to the song.

“I’ve heard it and I know the general vibe of the song, but it would be good if they let me perform my only hit single too..”

The NRL has reportedly declined to comment on whether Lummis is being considered, although officials are understood to be weighing up whether spending $1 million on grassroots rugby league initiatives is preferable to finding out what Ben Lummis has been doing since 2004.

Lummis, however, remains confident.

“I won New Zealand Idol,” he said.

“And if Tones And I can’t do Dance Monkey, I’m happy to give it a crack.”

More to come.

The post Ben Lummis Confirms He Can Be Ready By NRL Grand Final Day appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

CHANGING THINGS UP

After putting out yet another left-leaning book about politics this week, writer Nicky Hager says his next book will be “delightfully different”. 

Hager’s book Dirty Work reportedly focuses on how much he hates the Taxpayers Union, but next year’s book, which he has been writing in the background for the last two years, will be a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy from Levin.

“Sometimes writing all these books about how terrible everything is can take a toll on you,” said Hager as he signed copies of his book at Unity Books in Wellington. 

“The book I’m putting the final touches on now is a beautiful celebration of adolescent discovery, beauty and wonder in the Horowhenua.”

Hager says the book is based around many of his own experiences growing up in Levin and says it features “all the real life characters you’d expect to find in small town New Zealand.”

“It’s so nice to write something light and cheerful in the evenings after I’ve been investigating dodgy backroom deals and seedy underbellies all day. It’s a story about simpler times back when you didn’t have to worry about all these people out to get you,” he said. 

“I’m still working on the title so you’ll just have to wait and see,” said Hager with a wink. 

The published book is expected to be out in time for Christmas 2027. 

More to come.

The post Nicky Hager Says Next Year’s Book Will Be Something Light And Cheerful appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

THE CURSE.

A Palmerston North man has come forward anonymously to confess to causing the Warriors to lose their NRL semifinal over the weekend.

“Simon”, as he will be known for the purposes of this story, describes himself as a “part time fan” of the team, and generally doesn’t bother tuning in to the Warriors’ season unless they’re winning.

“Every couple of years I’ll hear that the Warriors have been playing well, which sometimes entices me into watching a game. All this hype starts building up around them and people start saying things like “our year”. Only problem is whenever I watch them, it’s basically a guaranteed loss,” said Simon, his face concealed and his voice changed to protect his identity. 

“This year was supposed to be different. This year has been their best ever in terms of games won and fan attendance, and I decided it was my duty to keep their winning ways going by not watching a single game.

“But it all became too much for me. After they lost to the Dolphins, a game I didn’t watch, I thought surely that was the signal for me to get on board and watch their semifinal on Sunday. Surely I was allowed to see the Warriors do well just this once,” he said, head down in shame over what he had done. 

“But it wasn’t to be. I selfishly decided to watch the game and ruin the season for everyone in New Zealand. I knew it could happen, but I did it anyway.”

Simon now believes that the only way it is possible for the Warriors to ever win an NRL title is if he never watches them again.

“If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it. I’ve learnt my lesson. The Warriors will win it one day, but I won’t be a part of it. That’s my role and my burden,” said Simon solemnly. 

“It’s my curse and I will keep it to myself.”

More to come. 

The post Man Comes Forward About Watching No Warriors Games All Year And Then Causing Semifinal Loss By Watching It appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

MIND OVER MATTER

A Wellington man gave the acting performance of his life in the office earlier this week, as he endured the audible female outrage against famously attractive model and actress Sydney Sweeney. 

Sweeney is in hot water for going nude in an ad, something that has apparently never been done before by anyone. The ad was for sports betting, with many female athletes in particular thinking that Sweeney was attempting to represent something other than simply encouraging lads to lose their money on multis. 

Jayden Jones was at his desk when the one-sided discussion at the Lambton Quay consultancy unfolded.

“I kept my eyes firmly fixed on my computer screen and I had an email open, deliberately not engaging with the discussion. I had obviously seen the ad a couple of times by this point.

“Laura was saying something about her having a responsibility to be a good role model for girls, and Georgia was saying that she’d dragged women’s sport back half a century,” he said, knowing full well that Sweeney’s ad never had anything to do with women’s sport. 

“About a minute in, with my eyes still straight ahead I could begin to feel multiple sets of eyes on me, as I had not said anything at all up until this point. At that moment I nodded three times and made a “mmm” sound to defuse the situation, before I was finally rescued by a Microsoft teams call from a random saviour,” said Jayden, pleased to have made it out of the ordeal unscathed. 

Jones said that it was just as well that colleague Ryan was not at his desk at this moment, as the two would most likely have made eye contact and communicated telepathically about the truth of the matter, which would have been unacceptable to his female colleagues. 

“Shit it was lucky Ryan wasn’t there. They’d all be watching our micro-expressions like hawks, waiting for us to slip up. They can read the thoughts in the air. We would have been outnumbered six to two with no chance of survival.”

Jayden then managed to hide from his team mates in various office “focus rooms” for the rest of the day. 

More to come. 

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PENNY WISE

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced plans for his Government to break up Foodstuffs, which owns New World and Pak ’n Save, in a bid to make supermarket prices cheap enough for ordinary Kiwis to finally experience the legendary $60 weekly grocery shop he claimed to manage himself.

During the 2023 leaders debate, Luxon claimed to have only spent $60 for his weekly grocery bill, much to the amusement of many New Zealanders who generally spend more than four times that. 

Speaking to our reporters while wandering around a Pak’n Save, Luxon said the supermarket duopoly had made it unnecessarily difficult for ordinary New Zealanders to experience the same level of grocery affordability he enjoys.

“What I will say is what we’re doing here is making sure everyone can get their grocery bill down to where I said mine was,” Luxon said while looking at a very empty trolley.

“I’ve been saying for years that you can do a weekly shop for around $60, and clearly the supermarkets in this country haven’t been listening.”

Luxon believes that breaking up the country’s supermarket duopoly would create enough competition to bring grocery prices down to a level where more families could afford to purchase an entire week’s worth of food for roughly the price of a takeaway dinner.

“I want every shareholder of New Zealand to be able to walk into a supermarket, spend $60, and walk out knowing they’ve got everything they need for their family for the week.”

Luxon said he understood that some New Zealanders remained sceptical.

“Look, I get what Kiwis are saying, but what I will say is I think once we get the competition settings right, people will start to see what I’ve been saying for a long time. You can do your weekly grocery shop for only $60.”

More to come.

The post Luxon Breaking Up Supermarket Duopoly So He Can Finally Achieve His $60 Weekly Shop appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

MIXED MESSAGES

All Blacks flanker Du’Plessis Kirifi has been named as the prime suspect behind the bizarre referee communications blackout that delayed the All Blacks’ fourth Test against South Africa for almost ten minutes.

The loose forward was initially left out of the 44-man All Blacks squad selected for the seven-week South African tour, despite many believing he had done enough to earn selection by leading the Hurricanes to a Super Rugby title a couple of months ago.

Kirifi was subsequently left with plenty of free time while the rest of the squad travelled around South Africa and eventually ended up in Baltimore.

Investigators now believe that free time may have been put towards mischief-making.

Referee Karl Dickson lost contact with the TMO during the first half, forcing the match into an extraordinary period where fans couldn’t hear the referee or his whistle and music played around the stadium for close to 10 minutes while they attempted to fix the issue, frustrating fans and viewers around the world who had no idea why there was no play.

World Rugby who are leading the investigation claim Kirifi was seen “acting suspiciously” around a communications switchboard in the stadium in Baltimore.

“I’ve got nothing against the All Blacks,” Kirifi explained. “I just think they should be very careful about who they leave at home for seven weeks,” Kirifi explained, while discarding an array of cables into a nearby rubbish bin.

“I only knew the comms were down because everyone was talking about the comms being down, not because I knew they were going to be down or how the incident occurred,” he concluded.

South Africa eventually won the Test 43-28 and the series 3-1, meaning Kirifi’s alleged communications sabotage ultimately failed to prevent the Springboks from winning.

He remains a person of interest.

More to come.

The post REVEALED: Du’Plessis Kirifi Named As Prime Suspect After Referee Comms Blackout appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

PEOPLE POWER

Greens leader Chlöe Swarbrick has updated the job descriptions of her parliament MPs today to make sure they’re doing their bit to make ‘Kiwimart’ work. 

Parliamentarians like Ricardo Menéndez March and Tamatha Paul now get the chance to add much needed “retail experience” to their CVs, as they will be doing night shifts at the new government-owned supermarkets, once they get up and running. 

“We’ve talked the talk, and now we’ve got to walk the walk,” said Swarbrick triumphantly during a Monday morning stand up with her team. 

“You’ll all be on grocery night fill shifts, stocking shelves with affordable food for kiwis in a controlled market. It’s physical work lifting boxes and unpacking them, but it will be so satisfying to know we’ll be making our supermarket dream a reality.”

Swarbrick said that with her team working full days doing face-to-face negotiations in parliament, using all of their interpersonal energy, it wouldn’t be right to put any of them on the checkouts during the day. 

“Stocking shelves is a safe bet for this lot at the end of a long day in parliament. They can clock out of the office at 5 and have a quick break for dinner before their 6-10 shift at Kiwimart. This is what it takes to make a revolution work,” she said with gusto. 

Chlöe then turned back to her colleagues and said “If you don’t have what it takes to be Green MPs, you know where the door is.”

More to come.

The post Chlöe Says All Greens MPs Will Be Stocking Shelves At Night In Government-Owned Supermarket appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

THERE IF HE NEEDS THEM

A 30 year old man with an okay-paying job brushed off claims this morning that he is in fact wasting his money on streaming platforms he doesn’t even use. 

Nathan Burnham, an Auckland-based designer says that they don’t even cost that much and “it’s good to know they’re there if I need them”.

“I’m a pretty busy guy and so I spend a lot of time working, going to events and doing various social sports in the evenings. So I don’t get that much time to sit on the couch. I’ll watch the odd thing on Netflix if people are talking about something new,” he said as he scrolled his phone on the couch. 

While he only gets the “basic plans”, Nathan is likely spending around $40 a month across Netflix, Neon and Disney for basically no reason at all. 

“Hey look it’s still good to know that I’ve got them there in case I need something to watch in my downtime. And they come out with new stuff all the time,” he said breezily. 

When asked why he doesn’t just stick to some of the free streaming services since he doesn’t watch anything anyway, Nathan seemed to be emphatically against the idea. 

“Ohh nah the free stuff is just lower quality. Nothing much worth watching on TVNZ or Three. You get what you pay for as they say,” he said, despite the fact that he is literally getting nothing for the $40 he pays every month. 

“Anyway the subscriptions I have aren’t that much over a whole month.”

More to come. 

The post Local Bloke Still Paying Monthly Bills For Three Streaming Services He Doesn’t Use appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

DEATH AND TAXES

With the election just round the corner, hybrid monstrosity Chris Luxkins, also known as “MEGA CHRIS” has announced a new and improved android campaigning for Natbour this year. 

“Taxinda 2.0” is the next generation robot programmed exclusively to take more money from New Zealanders, while claiming that this would somehow be a good thing. The manufacturers say that the new Taxinda will be much more effective at extracting cash than the previous model. 

Luxkins, who was famously spawned out of the unholy union of the bodies and spirits of Chris Luxon and Chris Hipkins, says Taxinda 2.0 will do its job well for Natbour. 

“New Taxinda love money. Love taking money from puny New Zealanders,” said the massive humpty-dumpty-esque character as he stalked the halls of parliament. 

Taxinda 2.0 is running for Natbour this year under the sub-brand “Opportunity”, which is managed by former Labour Minister and workplace creep, Iain Lees-Galloway. The Opportunity brand is focused on a “land tax”, which is a fresh new way to take money that doesn’t belong to them, and a “citizen’s income”, which definitely doesn’t sound communist at all. 

Greens leader Chloe Swarbrick would not be drawn on claims that Taxinda 2.0 is trying to steal her thing by wanting to tax the country to death. Instead she announced the new Greens policy which is to have government-owned supermarkets. 

Built for an agile world, Taxinda 2.0 updates its own software (and policy) regularly whenever asked a difficult question by Jack Tame. However the android does pick its battles carefully when it comes to media. 

Luxkins says his new candidate will be a great fit for his brave new world. 

More to come. 

The post Chris Luxkins Releases Brand New Humanoid Robot Candidate For Natbour, “Taxinda 2.0” appeared first on The Whakataki Times.