Caseload - by Jock Anderson

I am gay friendly 

I know that I am writing for an audience of twelve but in any case (load).

Late last year I wrote an epistle about gay lawyers

It lead to an avalanche of scuttlebutt about  gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, takatapui and intersex (LGBTI) and how they do their thing in large law firms. I had to remind a few people Charles Chauvel now works at the UN. Duh. Chauvel is a fabulous gentleman. In fact in 2008 I lived off his scuttlebutt for months.

It is common knowledge I trade in cheap gossip by finding x about QC X and then QC X trades not appearing in my column for spewing their guts about y. In fact I've written columns for years this way.

What makes me more interested as I don't even need to sit in the Queens Ferry to write this column anymore I can be at my residence on Waiheke Island. People keep coming to me with crap about lawyers.

The rooting, the backstabbing, the bitching and the moaning I have covered. The sensationalist headlines? Easy. I mean since my ergh abrupt departure from the NBR since the "unfortunate incident" I have had my niche at the NZ Herald stirring up shit about anyone I want. Despite you know, never actually getting on the "fairy" to Auckland despite eligibility for Winston's Gold Card. I just can't be fucked. 

Law No Place For Mature Lady Briefs

According to the 2013 Census, 55 per cent of lawyers are aged 44 or under. Too many. They are distracting to my friends who are male in the profession and above 65.

Customised data indicates that while 43 per cent of male lawyers were aged 44 or under, they were outnumbered by 71 per cent of female lawyers in the same age bracket. Too many women.

Women make up 46 per cent of all lawyers and made up 62 per cent of those admitted to the profession in 2013. What the fuck was the NZ Law Society thinking?

Women far outnumber men in the age group from 20 to 44, but drop away sharply in the age group 45 to 70 plus. Yes because they take all their first husband's assets and don't need to work!

The number of female admissions overtook men for the first time in 1993, and while Law Society data shows women make up 57 per cent of lawyers in practice for 20 years or less, women make up only 2 per cent of lawyers in practice for 40 years or more.. That's because they all end up shagging them!!  Jesus I would like to but none have offered, Even Lady Chambers.

John Banks' affair not yet over

Expect heads to roll over the botched Crown case against former Auckland mayor and ACT MP John Banks - acquitted and exonerated the other day by the Court of Appeal on a charge of knowingly making a false electoral expenses return.

In the Banks case, the Crown - in the form of prosecuting scum Queen's Counsel Paul Dacre - failed to tell the Court of Appeal of a crucial memorandum it had which was also not disclosed to Banks' lawyers.  Outrageous.

Banks claimed the Crown knew, and were a bunch of scum to throw him under the bus because he's not a member of the establishment.  It was a grand "fuck you" when Mrs Banks saved him.

John Banks was acquitted and exonerated the other day by the Court of Appeal on a charge of knowingly making a false electoral expenses return. 

B*st*rds still and more promised

B*st*rd monitor, John of Wellington, is hard at it.  Hard I say.

"Judge Robbie Ronayne is a moody b*st*rd.  Moody horrible.

Judge David Harvey a very clever b*st*rd.".  

As for Auckland Crown Solicitor Brian Dickey, John says there will be more to come.  He's just Hooton's play thing and we all know he's a b*st*rd.

Dickey had success at the Ellerslie races the other day, as part owner [along with Queen's Counsel Paul Francis b*sr*rd Wicks of Rooting and others] of galloper Gravano.

Reluctant as he is to stifle freedom of speech, CaseLoad is obliged to comment on some other matters raised by John:

"Whether or not there is, or isn't, gossip in racing circles that Mr Dickey's firm Meredith Connell has, or has not, received briefs in horse racing related prosecutions is nobody else's business.

It may well be that such legal work has been handled by Bell Gully for more than 60 years but even if some of what you say is true then perhaps it's time some fresh blood got a piece of the lucrative action..." (No one has a fucking clue what you are ranting on about Jock - Ed)

Thought For The Week:

(From a Very Senior Legal Person) "the Dude behind John Banks has MOOBS.  I tell you. MOOBS.

Note from Editor - Jock got a column when the NBR red carded him. I can't sack him because well argh...I am not sure about that but lawyers live in fear of what he serves up and it means our lawyers are kept in line so jolly good please continue Jock.

Media Watch - by David Cohen

I came over the rise of the hill and the road to Huntly stretched away like a tantalising ribbon unwrapping an unexpected gift before my heat-glazed eyes. Above my sun-scorched pate, but below the azure heavens, telephone wires sang in a manner which pneumatic chested country-and-western gals with names like Loretta and Dolly and June never imagined they could. So this is hinterland tourism, I figured. This is let-down-the-ragtop and shoot the breeze, and no there would not be no tortuous twang of “Stand By Your Man” polluting the sophisticated sound system of this rented auto with my driver. Freedom from Nashville! Freedom from Hillbilly!  Driving really is for peasants.

To be sure the genre has its place, in unsophisticated outback halls mebbe, packed with bow-legged, tobacco-chewin’, spurs-a-janglin’, ruddy cheeked sing-alongers. But surely one must graduate sometime from listening to that endless wailing variation on the theme of somebody done somebody wrong songs?

By Jehovah, if only the mulish music media critics would, as we do, take a little time to see what else is going on out there in the land of staffs and minims, brackets and clefs, tablatures and breves, tempos and caesuras, sharps and (Enough! - Ed). It isn’t too damn well difficult when you subscribe to, read (You really read them all? - Ed) and write for, as many international publications as – cough – yours truly does? Have they not heard of Dylan? Gaga? Leonard? Forgive my modest familiarity but we have interviewed most every muso around, so can supply their full names for those not on such intimate terms as we have been since but a Hutt Valley domiciled minor gangsta, hustling words for coin.

So it is we turn to lament my inability to figure New Zealanders and their tribal hysteria over the ridiculous spectacle when packs of men start hurtling themselves around, chasing or hitting balls across lush, mud-spattered fields of grass? We mean to say, really, at the mere mention of two words “World Cup” the foam-mouthed nation collapses as one into a sea of cringe-inducing idiocy. This is swiftly followed by those poor excuses for sports jocks spurting their grunts and oiks into our poor excuse for a daily media. Cricket? Rugby? Suppresses yawn. We don’t know anything about these so-called sports, but I’ll wager they were invented by the British, who as one tribe, cheered on by those Nazi loving royals, are responsible for everything stupid in this world.  

And look at the screaming masses on the side. Do they know the meme? If they had to really apply their brain to watching courage in action we could take them to boxing but it should be wasteful. Would they know the first thing about boxing? But just don’t call it a sport. It’s about …oh why should we bother you’re all so ignorant. It’s a lost religion; leave that on the table.

A while back we wrote a column “My Time With Andrew” which, as the yoof like to say, went viral. Truth be told it had nothing to do with media commentary, but ‘twas a whine about not being paid by the Labour Party for three months (Why in such a hurry? - Ed). So occupied were we with commissions to pen our thoughts for The Grauniad, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Christian Science Monitor, the Jerusalem Report, the Financial Times, the (Shut up - Ed) it entirely slipped our mind to post an update.

We was paid. 

We always knew a bit of casual political advice on the side for Labour was going to be risky. But when you’re a snotty expert on the Middle East question as we are  (nyah nyah Jon Stephenson) and have dodged bullets and rockets, well you get down and get back up again; you don’t have rocks in your head like everyone else.

So finally, speaking of rocks in heads, we do think it very pre-moderne for some media folks to still be banging on about plagiarism being theft and all.  Seriously, copying and pasting sentences out of someone else’s article, and just rearranging them a bit, is the same as republishing a press release. As the saying goes, nothing in the world is original. (Chuckles to ourself) – see, we just plagiarised that.

Shalom.

Editor - David Cohen has dropped out of everything – school, bassinets, sight from time to time, and once lived in a home for delinquent boys in Lower Hutt (a fact he loves telling anyone who can be bothered listening). Taxpayers’ money will be used to make a movie of his life this year, with Leonard Cohen rumoured to be playing David Cohen. Cohen (David not Leonard) writes columns for anyone who will pay him without his having to have questions raised in Parliament.

Metro - All By Simon Wilson

Simon?

Simon?

Half an hour late now for deadline!!!!!!!

The whole magazine is due and we have no copy!!!!!


Ed - What do you mean he's left?

New Zealand Sport In A State of Mega Crisis - by Chris Rattue

New Zealand sport is at a crossroads, I predict it will turn to crisis very shortly. At the New Zealand Herald we all love a good crisis in a headline.

The All Blacks aren't that good. They have only 93.70 points in the world rankings. Richie McCaw is hopeless. There's twelve better faster open side flankers in Auckland club rugby alone right now. Dan Carter? Well he can't kick can he? They're all too old. And the possible replacements? Well they're all too young. Aaron Smith? Nah inconsistent and unreliable. His pass isn't great. Sam Cane? Over-rated and has sat in waiting longer than Camilla did for Charles. Should have already gone overseas if he was any good.

Let us face facts rugby isn't played seriously by any country in the world that matters so I don't know why New Zealanders are so passionate about it. World leading countries like China, Brazil, India or Russia survive without rugby. Even the Americans haven't taken it seriously until sevens (not a real sport in my opinion) became an Olympic sport. The NZ sevens team will lose to America. They won't win a medal, waste of time offering up All Blacks for the season. America has the best NFL and college track rejects to choose from and sevens is dead easy. Pick up ball and run really fast.

Our cricket team are still hopeless. They came second in the World Cup. Second I repeat, first LOSERS. McCullum the worst captain we have ever had. At least Howarth had the booze to blame for daft captaincy decisions. Kane Williamson? Well his batting average could be higher couldn't it? And captaincy will bugger that all up. Trent Boult? An average bowler at best with injury issues and Ronchi? Well he can't catch and even when he does do something well just remember - he's Australian. The team lacks consistency. A bit like the All Blacks really as they haven't won every game they've played and they should.

Lydia Ko? Nah she's not that good, beginners luck. Valerie Adams? Not that flash. Wouldn't win a thing if it wasn't for the fact she's a large Samoan. It's not her Palagi side tossing that rock is it? Her brother Steven? Yeah well he's only in the NBA to sell shirts. In New Zealand alone 100 have been sold in South Auckland alone. You know they aren't really into basketball those South Aucklanders. Too busy ruining the Blues rugby dynasty. The players are the problem, Islanders, can't communicate with JK. They need someone in Tana Umaga, a Wellingtonian who can teach them how to catch and pass. And read. Umaga was paid large six figures to front that campaign. The Blues have him for a steal.

Shaun Johnson? Hopeless. Only scored 512 points for the Warriors, not enough. The Warriors are in a total meltdown. Every year they should win the Premiership but they don't. Must be the ownership battles leading on to the field. Owen Glenn and Eric Watson can't decide whether the ball should go forward or back.

I don't know why New Zealanders bother watching cricket, rugby, league or our hopeless netballers. Just when the longer good their best players get pregnant or retire. Irene Van Dyk? Left the team in a total state. Not the best goal shooter that I've seen. Probably would have been better for New Zealand if she had stayed in South Africa. Netball has been in a decline since April Ieremia left to read the sports news.

Joseph Parker? Well he's fought bunnies really. Never been tested. Too slow and not big enough to make it past the next level. He should just quit and do what every old boxer does, train new ones.

House prices? Oh god don't get me started on the property market. I met a bloke last week who spoke a lot of sense Bernard Hickey. Yes he commentates on business how I do on sport. The glass is not only half empty but it is non-refillable.

Don't believe the rumours that we have both never been seen in the same gl....I mean room......

Editor - Chris Rattue is employed by the Sports New Zealand as a motivational lecturer and columnist.  Like any good Herald columnist he double dips in his regular missives in New Zealand's leading newspaper. Always looking at the negative, Rattue has embarked on a mission to ensure every New Zealand sportsman and woman gets to read an alternative perspective on their performance. When asked about rumours he was also in a commercial partnership with Gilbert Enoka, sports shrink to the stars Rattue responded that Enoka was "pretty bloody average really".

Exclusive: Michele Hewtison Interview - by Michele Hewitson

Saucy in rare photo

What tribe are you?” I asked Michele Hewitson.

This just exploded out of my mouth like spittle. I had no idea where it came from except she had won columnist of the year at the Canon Media Awards in spite of fierce competition from her colleagues who took oaths they never entered themselves on pain of death. 

She’s renowned for not liking anything. Say hello to her at a bus stop? Sneer. Offer to buy her a drink? Sneer. Tell her you think her writing’s half-way great? Sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer as if well, that’s a given and who the damn hell do you think you are even daring to compliment the greatest living columnist writing for the greatest tabloid organ in this wonderful country called Aotearoa New Zealand. Stab and walk away is Michele.

We’re sitting in a tofu café near where I live in Mt Albert. Michele conveniently agreed to walk to meet me. She’s notoriously private about her own life. Check out Facebook and you will find, as I found, three Michele Hewitsons all spelled the same way. Could be a ruse? I tell her that’s ironic. She drawls why? I say because you pry into everyone else’s lives. She says no I don’t. I say yes you do. Don’t. Do. Don’t. Do. 

She says, “I’m a writer.”

I ask her what she’s that got to do with the price of fish. “You asked me what tribe I am,” she reminds me. Oh yes I’d forgotten my first question. I order trim decaf soy latte with extra hot no-chlorine water on the side. What will you have Michele I ask her? “I’ll have a Why Bother.”

I think that’s a bit rude but she’s known for being a bit rude so I let that one pass.

I say enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of my questions so far?

She says you’ve only asked one question. Next. (Actually, I asked her if she’d like a coffee but that’s not really an investigative columnist question according to the Herald style book.)

I pick up her paws and ask her if she’s going to get nail extensions with the prize money and she says, “Ha ha whatever.” She is a very intelligent young lady of whom Dr Brian Edwards was first terrified then fell in love with when she interviewed him so I think I should follow suit and ask my second question (Third - Ed).

Did you have inappropriate relations with Brian? She sighs and slumps a bit, then points out his sentence which she has as a screensaver on her phone that says “Let me not bore you with the details of an interview that lasted for an hour and a half”. 

Michele says, “Make what you will of that but Sir Brian admitted he was terrified of me, called me a total bitch.”

I Google “bitch” on my phone under the table and find lady dogs with male dogs sniffing around. I guess Brian was pretty smitten by her then.

“I am also known as hugely talented, very perceptive, extraordinarily readable and amusing, according to the life of Brian,” she says. This is also on her phone. Handy research to bring along to our interview and I admit to being impressed.

I think to myself that this is interesting and perhaps the Canon Media Award columnist of the year was self-judged but then I quickly banish that thought from my head and ask her a philosophical question instead.

“Tell me Michele Hewitson,” I ask. “When Brian said he was pretty nervous about being interviewed by you and that no one wants to appear in print looking like a total arsehole…”

“Yeeeees,” said Michele Hewitson, patting down her hair and cocking her head to one side, looking like she was thinking hard about where this was going.

“Do you think that is because he is acknowledging he is a total arsehole and you may discover that and put it in your column?”

Michele Hewitson jumps and spills her blah blah blah drink down her pilled tights, burning her thighs I imagine, which makes me wonder if those are tears of pain pricking her eyes but no, just smoke drifting across from the nearby table where a skinny man in aviator dark glasses has been sitting, smoking nervously and keeping a close watch on our conversation, hiding behind the pages of a slim tatty magazine whose title is slightly obscured but which looks a bit like C-nva-.

I ask why she needed to have a go at all those departing politicians. Why didn’t she have a go at being a politician instead? Did it give her a good feeling of schadenfreude to see others’ pain when she gave them a good skewering on her back page? Was she proud of being described as being famous for her hatchet jobs?

“Well if I don’t give it to them,” she sneered down at me and demanded as she drew herself up to her full height of just five feet - eyes of sleet, “Who?”  

Editor - Michele Hewitson won columnist of the year at the Canon Awards despite her colleagues protesting she doesn't actually write a bloody column it is an interview.  Little is known about Michele.

The Obituary of David Slack - by David Slack

New Zealand’s most boring adolescent, David Slack, has drowned in his own bile. He was 14 years old.

Devonport’s Peter Pan. The man who never grew up. Young Slack thought he could fool all of the people all of the time when he went around misquoting American Presidents and anyone else he thought was a liberal. Wearing nothing but needlecords, a rictus grin, black turtlenecks, and stare-down-the-barrel-of-the-camera attempts at being a straight-up kind of guy Young Slack became obsessed with Housing Minister Nick Smith, and the zenith of his irony was tweeting such lines as Rachel Glucina is an eminent journalist.

In reality he was just a drip. Wet. The kind which makes a man shake his head and hurry on; begone, playground nuisance hanging around the big guys, trying desperately to be funny! 

There were, of course, those who thought him funny. All drips eventually find each other and  form a puddle – water finds its own level after all. There were other pimple-faced, acne-scarred, squeaky-voiced youth whose balls hadn’t properly dropped, sent outside for gardening duty during choir practice – the Russell's and the Simon's , the Giovanni's and the Damian's, they disappeared into the games sheds to exercise their thumbs and index fingers. Young Slack was thrilled to have pals, as they RATFLTAO at the crude sexist jokes they made about what they’d do with the tall, blonde, leggy, gorgeous girl who only bedded brainy men and rugby players. She stared right through them every time she passed a waft of their Old Spice.   Underage Young Slack could only peer in the window on tippy toe, sipping Fanta passed out furtively to him by the gripper.

Poor Young Slack (RIP) - the most misunderstood of all. A speechwriter – how much lower down the food chain does one writer have to crawl before reduced to penning words for brides and grooms too stupid, or too drunk, or too overwrought perhaps, to write their own speeches on their big day. That’s how Slack made extra pocket money . While his chums were out on their cycles delivering papers, Slack typed away, “I’d like to fank me muvver and me farver.” And Slack mailed out an invoice to the ignorami who, unquestioning, sent cheques by return. 

Alas, poor Young Slack, we did not know you at all, (thank Christ - Ed). He graduated from writing speeches to writing obituaries of people who hadn’t died and then he just RATFLHAO, in a manner in which only someone who knew not the difference between dead and alive could do. He muddled satire with cruelty and in the end it killed him.

But then again perhaps we are too cruel to Young Slack, or should we say, Dead Slack? He was a lawyer (No, he had a law degree, there is a difference - Ed) so that may account for the fact he could not string two words together; at least, words which made any sense at all. To wit, we bring you his most famous work titled “That’s My Cab” (why that heading, we have no idea), immortalised for ever on his Signed, Limited Edition, “Island Life” blog (Surely some mistake? No ‘Life’ in a specialist obit writer? - Ed) :

“The front page of the New Zealand Herald this morning honours the memory of George Bernard Shaw. Unable, it seems, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation, it offers us a long, loving description of Chris Carter’s pink shopping bike and many photos of Shane Jones’ banana seat.”

Hilarious? Laugh? The nation nearly started.

Undeterred, Young Slack tried his luck at multitasking - economic forecasting and pretending not to be a left-leaning pinko:

“You want a Labour government scandal? Here’s a scandal. In the first decade of the new millennium, New Zealanders pretended their houses had become worth twice as much as they were, and borrowed 100 billion to make it true. Now they owe that much to the world’s banks, and the debt is a great albatross around our necks. Our kids will have to find twice as much money to buy a house as they would have ten years ago, but their income will be little more than it would have been 10 years earlier.”

If only Young Slack hadn’t choked on his own poison, the Reserve Bank would have beaten a path to his door in an effort to solve our housing crisis.

Sadly, just before he passed on, Young Slack finally finished the book he’d used Radio New Zealand’s The Panel, Radio Live, and Twitter to harp on about for the past decade, appropriately titled, Bullshit.

Editor - We should never mock the dead. Why has this column run so long? Can it die with Metro?

The Book of Mormon - by Matt Nippert

He sat alone with pen and paper in hand. Waiting and scoping the danger. His hat pulled down and scarf wound tight as he strokes his missing unkempt hair that used to straddle both sides of his head. A head so aching after his fifth attempt to quit smoking. The silence around him on Shortland Street that day could only mean one thing, he was about to break the biggest story that New Zealand had ever seen.

A shadowy man walks by and drops a SpongeBob USB stick at the table, he flinched nervously.  This was the sort of once in a lifetime opportunity to master the craft of investigative features. 

Our lone warrior takes the stick and shaking partially with excitement and partially from nicotine withdrawal he presses Spongebob's head carefully into his super encrypted computer that he had just a week ago entrusted to Ben Rachinger to secure. This offer was made after Rachinger showed him a Grinder message from Cameron Slater where Slater offered Rachinger $5.50 to hack our fearless reporter's computer.  It had also been several months since his last contact with the trusted hacker known as "Rawshark" and the heat was now on again. He wondered what possibly could be next in this his multiple award winning career. 

After spending the whole day on Twitter announcing this large scoop to come there was pressure from his colleagues and new-found acolytes like Martyn Bradbury and Lynn Prentice to perform with a massive "hit job". This would make his cut paste of Cameron Slater's emails look like what was -  child's work. The complexity of this story was so wide-reaching he would need to work his entire contact book.

The stick starts up and a message flickers on the screen. "Matt Nippert your a traitorous bastard I'm going to get you". The file opened and the music played "bad boys bad boys what you gunna do what you gunna do when they come for you...". This was followed by thousands of files that looked like high scores from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Kim Dot Com's favourite game he reminded himself and made another note in the NZME. corporate pad that had only recently replaced his Fairfax one.

The list of suspects was a long one as over the years his enemy count was large. Two former employers, one current employer, Mediaworks, Cameron Slater, Carrick Graham, Keith Ng and Ben Rachinger himself. Finance company heads, Mrs Hubbard, the guy he stiffed for a beer in 1989 and Cheryl his ex-girlfriend from High School.  And John Tamihere. Yes that bastard. 

I get lost in the narrative and revert to first or is it third person? The stress in this past few weeks has taken its toll and my employer is about to insist I go to Bali for some well needed beach time but we all know if I go on holiday shit will happen in the karma universe; like my kid gets sick in a third world country or our luggage gets lost and I am left wearing Crocs and "Bali Nine" memorial tee. The pressure is huge from NZME. for me to compete in the presence of Rod Emmerson, Fisher, Savage, O'Sullivan, Manhire, Glucina (good news she's left - Ed), Braunias and the new guy Gilbert. The story was going to take calls to all three of my contacts outside Rawshark, document destruction bin employees Mike, Karl and Doug. I don't dig for dirt I dig for paper. 

My biggest scoop of 2014 needed to be scooped itself and I was hot on the trail to nipping it with a bud (erg no Matt - Ed). I was promised conclusive evidence that indeed Mark Hotchin has had a gender reassignment and was now selling timeshare as Katewin in the state of Utah. This story is huge.  A game changer a cracking story. 

Hotchin is rumoured to have employed Slater, Odgers and Graham (The SGO to those in the know - Ed) once again this time to work to undermine with the intention of removing Thomas S Monson who is currently investigating pressing civil and criminal charges against all gender reassignments in the State. The significance of this shouldn't be lost on New Zealanders, if Slater, Odgers and Graham pull this one off it will be the first time since 1834 an attempt has been made to remove or even punish a Mormon President.  A man so rich and powerful he is allowed to have more than one wife. (Or stupid - Ed).  It has been hard to talk to the main players.  Graham unavailable, Slater ignoring me. Odgers leaves a voicemail with the words f*** off c*** (language please - Ed).  I have tried to link in Jacinda Ardern as she used to be a Mormon and I suspect Slater, Odgers and Graham (The SGO - Ed) are taking orders from the National Party on this one.  

I sit alone at the table with my head in my hands wondering where to now. Just as I am having an epihany using a corporate structure diagram technique I learned after delving into the rubbish bin and pencil sketching over the QC's loose notepad scraps at Speight's Ale House in Timaru during South Canterbury Finance's court case coverage, there is a waft of the cigarette I am longing for mixed in with what I recognise as scent from The Shakespeare. (sentence a bit long, reconstruct - Ed)

A long slender finger touches my shoulder and whispers gently into my ear "Hi Matthew honey I have been expecting you". I turn around and realise it's fucking Braunias who has brought along Fisher and they are pissing themselves laughing.

The lads have set me up.

Editor - Matt Nippert is an investigations reporter bent on business. A Fulbright scholar with a Masters from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York but still no Wolfson, he has spent the past decade in newsbreaking roles at the New Zealand Listener, National Business Review, Herald on Sunday and the Sunday Star-Times.  In fact there isn't a paper he hasn't worked at and resigned from. His stories include sensationalising South Canterbury Finance, lazily sketching New Zealand corporate structures diagrams with conmen and organised crime figures, and being a tool for John Key in the sudden assassination of Judith Collins following the Rawshark hack. Nippert regularly appears as a broadcast commentator and is one of only a few journalists who asks his accountant friend Steve to look at numbers and spreadsheets. His public PEP key can be found here.