Your Daily Ten@10

This is edition 2026/149 of the Ten@10 newsletter.

Hi all,

This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.

Enjoy!

1. What Kiri Allan Tells Us About Power and Influence

Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project

📘 Memoir Go Hard or Go Home: chemo drip, outgoing CE of her own department lobbies half an hour for post-exit board jobs. “Where power and patronage actually sit… and who feels entitled.” She won’t name him.
🔄 KLA consultancy: iwi, Māori collectives, central/local govt, private business — climate adaptation, emergency management, hazards. Same files she held as minister. No lobbying register, no stand-down. Herald op-ed on National Iwi Chairs Forum hui omitted her Disaster Recovery ILG adviser role; Tamihere “outright lies” fix still no disclosure.
🏛 Tour attack: state service “overpaid, bloated and slow”; senior bureaucrats “more political than politicians.” PSA: cheap shot; feeds privatisation narrative while she pushes devolution to communities/iwi/private — her client set.
🎯 Takeaway: revolving door + unnamed patronage + undisclosed hat when reporting. NZ still has no way to tell lobbyist from “professional hustler.” (Paid after paywall.)

2. Q & Q & A: Jack Tame Puts TOP Under the Blowtorch

Liam Hehir — The Blue Review

📺 Qiulae Wong on Q+A: composure yes; specifics no. “Clean politics” package bans corporate donations while taking one from a board member’s company — held the status-quo line but didn’t flip it.
📜 Board can overrule caucus in the constitution; she said no, then retreated. Tax trap: citizens’ income costed $69b not ~$80b because residency/citizenship gates — so skilled migrants + returning Kiwis pay harsh land/income taxes without the UBI. Wealth flight? No modelling.
💼 MSD “repurpose” 2,000 vs plans that assume billions from cutting staff — eventually conceded cuts. Bag of clichés: bigger picture, attractive to invest/come home.
🎯 Takeaway: not a bloodbath, far from assured. Won’t hurt TOP much — low-info vibes constituency + outsider/technocrat brand can still clear 5%.

3. Rinse, Repeat, Revolt

Simon O’Connor — On Point

🔁 April’s Rinse and Repeat → August sequel: another challenge, another Luxon “win,” underlying causes untouched. Pause, not ending. Ambition filling vacuum where party principles thinned.
🧪 Catalysts: personal ambition + Luxon unforced errors (Rotorua, MMP) + list rankings as high-sensitivity period + media eager to amplify. Start with MPs talking; some outlets more interested in Nat wounds than opponents’.
🐐 Penk as Girard scapegoat: need to show consequences after April’s soft landing; easiest target, not sole plotter. Military/legal/conservative type more likely to say aloud what others whisper.
🎯 Takeaway: “We’re going back to work” was the right line. Centre-right bloc may hold even if Nat bleeds to ACT/NZF. Winning Nov may be easier than fixing the caucus.

4. Bigger Councils Are No Bargain for Business

Nick Clark — Brash & Mitchell / NZ Initiative

🏗 Head Start deadline: unitary authorities favoured; no accepted plan → compulsory process after 2028. Bishop: planning system. Watts: cut duplication. Neither proves bigger = cheaper/faster for firms.
📊 Infra Commission 2022: no clear link between population and efficiency on roads/consents/overheads (>half opex). Auckland “savings” never got the promised post-merger review; opex rose like peers.
🔁 Next-door competition (Selwyn/Waimakariri vs Chch) is a rare check — rates, consents, growth. Big merger dulls exit option. Chch lost building-consent accreditation 2013; size no safeguard.
🎯 Takeaway: GST share of new builds, publish comparable consent times/fees, stronger councillor oversight — work with or without boundary changes. Cabinet in September: public costs before design.

5. Final Verdict on the Exculpation of Judge Aitken

John McLean

⚖ Restored to District Court after April 2026 Judicial Conduct Panel (Brown KC, Mallon JA, Mateparae) found Northern Club 22 Nov 2024 conduct short of removal.
🤥 Key finding McLean calls fiction: she ranted “he’s lying / this is lies / room full of judges” without knowing it was Peters — despite open doorway, known voice, 2m NZ First banner, then boasted “I’ve just called Winston Peters a liar.”
📜 Compartmentalised to the night; mock findings on “poor understanding” fixable by education and brief “comity” breach “in ignorance.” She recanted unreserved apology; still adamant she did nothing wrong. Northern Club banned her, Galler, Reed KC.
🎯 Takeaway: if knowing it was Peters would end the career, the panel’s “didn’t know” was the only lifeline. Tenure to Feb 2027; Peters on tikanga primacy was “for practical purposes true.”

6. Universities and Media Are to Blame for Arday’s Rise — and Maybe His Death

Michael Shellenberger — Public

🕯 Jason Arday found dead nine days after resigning Cambridge chair; Met “unexpected, not suspicious”; family: “campaign of misinformation was too much.” Shellenberger: blame those who elevated and shielded, not those who checked.
📺 BBC 2023 hagiography still online with false claims; Cremin: “best in the world.” THE killed plagiarism story after libel threat; Cambridge called scrutiny “vile”; Good Law denied plagiarism. Pig’s head: Met “categorically” no investigation. Schoolmates: he spoke, cracked jokes.
📉 Mismatch: Sander bar-pass depression; SAT gaps treated as racist tests. Arday as symbol not colleague — Icarus who flew on wings the Left built.
🎯 Takeaway: lowering standards isn’t compassion. Kindness was honest marking in 2023, not a chair and a seven-figure memoir.

7. FBI Gave Jim Jordan a Fake “Defensive Briefing”

Michael Shellenberger — Public

🎙 Jordan exclusive: same farce briefing Grassley/Johnson got — “they told us not to do what we were doing, looking into Hunter.” Spreadsheet “conduits”: Giuliani #1, Jordan #8.
📅 Jul 2020 Dem letter + Politico frame Johnson probe as laundering Kremlin ops → Aug 6 briefings → Oct Post laptop → 51 intel officials letter → Biden debate line. FITF/Round River; Floris “shadow government,” routine Wray briefings; later WFO intel chief; Patel forced out May 2025.
📱 Twitter call: agent blurts laptop real, “CLOSE HOLD,” Dehmlow/OGC cut off. Chan/Baker path to censorship despite Roth seeing no Russian dump.
🎯 Takeaway: holistic deception — Hill, press, platforms — while Bureau sat on authentic drives since Dec 2019.

8. On the Rot in Higher Education

Alex Berenson — Unreported Truths

✉️ Anonymous public-uni professor after Arday piece: AI cheating is diagnostic, not the disease. College as points → credits → job; Claude/ChatGPT = free Chegg.
📉 Decades of NCLB metrics, no-fail culture, parent-as-customer, retention/evals punishing hard graders. “I’m not afraid to use my trauma.” Michigan freshman no first-semester grades. Non-tenure: don’t renew, don’t fire.
💰 ~$100k sticker; employers already discount degrees. When credential ≠ mastery finally breaks, only richest brands walk away clean.
🎯 Takeaway: “When we begin requiring students to learn, we may discover some won’t cut it.”

9. Polling Errors: Michigan and Wisconsin

The New York Times — The Upshot

📉 Dem primaries: El-Sayed (prog) ~1-pt win after double-digit poll leads in MI Senate; Francesca Hong lost WI gov primary after ~20-pt averages. Luntz joke: shut Midwest primary polling until we know what’s going on.
🧮 Cohn/briefing: primaries always hard; open primaries, nonresponse, young-voter overweight, late negative press (Hong). 20-pt miss ~90th percentile historically — unusual because polls overestimated the progressive, usually underestimate leaders.
🎯 Takeaway: not proof the industry is broken; proof primary turnout models still break. (Full Upshot paywalled/blocked here — contemporaneous Times briefing + results coverage.)

Cindy Harper — Reclaim The Net

🏛 Conseil constitutionnel 14 Aug: under-15 ban disproportionate hit to free expression; age proof for everyone lacks privacy safeguards. Due 1 Sept; existing accounts four-month close — scrapped.
📣 Macron export model; von der Leyen EU-wide push; UK vote expected by Christmas; Spain/Greece/Denmark/Australia already or planning. Digital minister: “all of us… will have to prove our age.”
📝 Only Article 1 dies; school phone ban stands. Macron orders rewrite before 2027 election he can’t contest — must specify how age proof is collected, held, bound.
🎯 Takeaway: protecting kids ≠ blanket age-gated internet for the whole population. Court: not adapted, necessary, or proportionate.

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