Your Daily Ten@10

This is edition 2026/150 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!

Chris Trotter

🔬 Once “social laboratory of the world” (suffrage, Social Security, ACC). 1980s flipped white coats → lab rats: Rogernomics/Ruthanasia without mandate; “TINA” killed party membership as transmission belt.
📋 MMP lists reward docility; neoliberal critique unsayable even when crises expose failures. Nat+Lab ~59% combined. Hipkins Captain’s Call killed Robertson/Parker fiscal break — Clark/Cullen 2000 lesson: deviate and get mauled.
📺 TOP at 8% (Verian) for “transformation”; Tame’s fiscal fusillade on Q+A = orthodoxy’s reflex. Uniparty spars over who colours inside the lines.
🎯 Takeaway: if nobody moves, nobody in the top 1% gets hurt. (First on Interest.co.nz.)

2. Opportunity: What Does TOP Really Stand For?

Grant Duncan — Politics Happens

📊 Four polls over 5%, peak 8%. Will work across House but approach largest party first; C&S not necessarily Cabinet. Nat: won’t work with them — policy gulf.
👥 First ten candidates: 6W/4M, env/sustainability heavy, young, “none career politicians” = zero parliamentary experience. “Evidence-based,” rebuild trust, escape left/right boxing.
💰 Tax reset: LVT + citizen’s income “fiscally positive” (~$4b net) — then $60b infra borrow / 10yrs, interest $2.5–3.5b pa swallows surplus and more. Not small-target.
🎯 Takeaway: look at the list, not just Wong. How it all adds up is the unpaid half. (Paid after paywall.)

3. The Lesotho Option

Liam Hehir — The Blue Review

🗳 TPM campaign launch: chase electorate votes; soft-pedal party vote → possible overhang (keep extra electorates, Parliament expands). Not mere Epsom/Coromandel insurance — “give party vote to friends.”
🇱🇸 Lesotho 2007: LCD+NIP deal → ~50% votes → ~70% seats → violence, SADC intervention, eventual one-ballot reform. Temporary advantage, poison the well.
⚠ Hehir (supports Māori seats as mild tradition): if gambit decides who governs, ACT/NZF abolition case explodes; millions see reserved seats as weapon vs popular will. Overreach may kill the feature TPM needs.
🎯 Takeaway: squeeze MMP balloon, it pops elsewhere. NZ has been tolerant — limits exist.

4. Should Nats Follow the TPM Method?

Peter Allan Williams

📺 TPM ~3% and falling: electorate-only push logical (maybe 4 seats ≈ party share). Tell supporters party-vote Lab/Green for “right” Māori MPs.
🔢 Nat ~29–31% → ~36 MPs in 120. Hold 44 electorates (5 list). Average polls ≈29.9%. Lose ≤8 seats → still ~electorate-only House. Worst/best: −10/+3 = 37 → overhang 1; Willis/Bishop list risk.
🎯 Brash/Williamson line: dump “two ticks blue”; electorate Nat + party ACT/NZF. Not pure MMP spirit — “needs must” vs “terrifying” alternatives.
🎯 Takeaway: leaders won’t say it; smart voters already can.

5. The Architecture of Belief

Rodney Hide — Brash & Mitchell

🧒 Child atheist/materialist → science needs unprovable order (Popper’s metaphysical programmes). Green church: Ehrlich/Club of Rome failures never revise the anti-industry conclusion → economics exile after free-market heresy.
🏛 Parliament: moral accusation > evidence. Rupture = gender theory in primaries — “wrong body” vs every cell sexed. Critical theory: power only currency; dissent = oppression proof.
🙏 “Evil” forced the question materialism can’t answer. Grace at dinner → church → baptism. Everyone worships something; gender ideology = rival religion (privilege as original sin, heresy tests).
🎯 Takeaway: dispute isn’t biology — what is a human, and what are we for?

6. Cynical Coverage of the USS Abraham Lincoln

Elliot Ackerman — The Free Press

🚢 Carrier 260+ days underway (record), ~40 in combat; sailor overboard (recovered); more attempts reported. BBC/NYT wall-to-wall; CENTCOM debunks rumours; Blumenthal/Gallego demand answers.
🪖 Marine vet: 2006 Iwo Jima suicide after Lebanon ops — strain is endemic, not Trump-Iran novelty. 470–525 active suicides/year; 17 vets/day. Surge 15-month Army tours dwarfed this deployment.
🎯 Valid Iran criticism: no post-decapitation strategy, Hormuz hostage economy, munitions drawdown. Using one sailor’s darkest hour as partisan ammo is vulgar — same word critics pin on Trump.
🎯 Takeaway: war is hell under every president. Cover it always, or admit the outrage is timed.

7. The Tragedy of Jason Arday

Douglas Murray — The Free Press

🕯 Dead Friday after plagiarism + memoir fabulism storm. Sadiq Khan: “pernicious public shaming.” Zarah Sultana: white middle-class academic wouldn’t face it. Kendi: “media lynched” him.
⚔ Murray: Stock, Tim Hunt hounded without this sympathy. Blame racism; dodge true cause of collapse. (Full paywalled after open.)
🎯 Takeaway: defenders should admit what brought him down — not rewrite it as a race crime by the press.

8. No, Jason Arday Wasn’t the Media’s Fault

Matt Taibbi — Racket News

📜 30k-sign Good Law letter wants inquiry into “relentless harassment.” Al Jazeera “institutional murder”; Kendi “lynched.” Bollocks: should have been a one-day story if Cambridge hadn’t called scrutiny a “vile campaign.”
🏫 School knew ~year; THE killed Sept exposé after lawyer letter; Met probed reporter Jack Grove four months. “Playbook” speech: media scrutiny of black academics = cancer. Wagon-circle: Baron-Cohen letter, equalities minister meeting, S&S “integrity.”
🍎 Story isn’t race first — institutional rejection of reality (Newton’s apple can freeze mid-air if ordered). They made him a symbol; then gravity applied. OK to be flawed Clapham dude — too late after selling Flash/Christ memoir.
🎯 Takeaway: you can’t remake reality without casualties. More of these if we keep saying what goes up need not come down.

9. FBI Manufactured Trump-Russia While Soft-Pedalling Swalwell, Clinton, Biden

Michael Shellenberger — Public

📁 New files: 2014 Swalwell probe aimed to indict him + Christine Fang (parents “known MSS”). He admitted physical relations; Fang straw donations + interns. Feb 2017: drop Swalwell, keep Fang only. Defensive briefing → he cut ties.
⚖️ Double standard: Crossfire Hurricane, no defensive brief for Trump/Page; Steele dossier warrants; Durham/Horowitz catalogue. Clinton: slow-walk FISA on foreign donor plan; close email case. Biden: laptop real Dec 2019 → Round River red-flag as Russian disinfo; “shadow government” Floris daily to Wray.
🎯 Master frame: evidence vs Trump = Russian influence; evidence vs Dems = Russian disinfo. Same narrative weapon, opposite ends.
🎯 Takeaway: partisans in the Bureau used one story the audience already believed — from 2015 on.

10. Why Does Everyone Hate Data Centers?

Nate Silver — Silver Bulletin

💬 Chat with Jasmine Sun: data-center backlash as midterms issue; Silicon Valley caught flat-footed; side dish on why Claude can be so weird.
🏭 Local power, water, noise, land fights collide with national AI build-out. Politics is catching the industrial footprint of “the cloud.”
🎯 Takeaway: the server farm is no longer invisible infrastructure — it’s a ballot-box neighbour. (Politics section, Silver Bulletin.)

What our members are saying about Ten@10

Elizabeth
These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items!

Lynne
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Murray
Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou

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Jocko
Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks.