Defending the Undefendable
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2020 7:16 AM
To: ‘Rodney Hide’
Dear Rodney:
Best regards,
Subject: Re: Goodbye Cruel World (short and funny)
Dear Dr Block
I was lucky enough to get included in your reply-all which has emboldened me to reply to you simply to say that your book Defending the Undefendable had a huge impact on me.
It shocked me. And enriched me.
It was a wonderful experience and it has never left me even after all these years.
Thank you
Dear Bob:
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2020 7:40 PM
To: John O’Sullivan ; Melissa O’Sullivan; Jill Evans; Dr. Alan J. Moran ; Eduardo Helguera ; Elisalex von Wuthenau
Defending, Part 2
Subject: Re: Goodbye Cruel World (short and funny)
Oh it was No 1. Until just now, I was unaware of II.
In looking up II, I read of the many distinguished scholars who like me were shocked and enriched by your book.
I am in good company.
Rodney
Dirty Politics was published to give the full and comprehensive list of winners and losers.
The naked truth is that there were so many outrageous abuses of power outed in this book that it’s difficult to highlight the worst ones because they were all so fucking uniquely grotesque!
It’s like lepers judging a beauty contest, where do you start?
WINNERS:
Big Sugar – without a doubt, Big Sugar are the biggest winners of
Dirty Politics. Being able to publicly torment and molest any public health researcher who dared suggest a sugar tax was of enormous help to lobbyists Carrick Graham and Katherine Rich and the fact that we are further away from imposing a sugar tax than ever before shows how incredibly good
Natasha Martin/Stuff
Productivity Commission chair Dr Ganesh Nana’s combination of productivity and wellbeing is “arrant nonsense”, argues Damien Grant.
OPINION: It would make more sense for the conclave of cardinals to elevate the Archbishop of Canterbury as Pope than it did to appoint Dr Ganesh Nana as chair of the Productivity Commission. Nana is an accomplished academic. He has an impressive body of work behind him and shows no signs of running out of intellectual or physical steam, but he does not belong to the economic discipline for which the commission was established. The commission began life on the first of April 2011. It was forced on John Key by then Act leader Rodney Hide who, even then, was disillusioned with the lack of rigour in Key’s tepid administration.