Tony Milne

Okay a few days ago I blogged about the teacher promoting conspiracy theories.

Tony criticised me in this post, and I then responded with a fairly robust swipe back at Tony.

Tony feels I have misrepresented him, and has blogged so here.

I’m not going to litigate this issue any more because it is in fact an issue of no importance, but want to explain a few things about my writing style etc.

Firstly I want to state that from the interactions I have had with Tony in real life I consider him to be a really decent guy. To some degree it is because I have met him in real life, and have a positive opinion of him, that I will be fairly vigorous in swiping at him when I see an opportunity. The same goes with Jordan. The more I know someone, the more I hassle them. It’s not an unknown Kiwi trait.

When I criticise No Right Turn (for example) I tend to be far more reserved as I don’t actually know him or have met him.

Secondly I grew up as a competitive debater, and I tend to use debating type rhetoric in some of my posts. So when I say things like Tony Milne wants to use ratemyteacher.com as the basis for teacher pay assessment I am using hyperbole and partly taking the piss. I’m taking something silly Tony said, and exaggerating it. This is what happens in competitive debating, and I use that technique sometimes on the blog. What is unfortunate perhaps is people can’t see the big grin on my face as I type it, as they would in a debate, and realise I am basically having fun.

Finally if ever anyone does think I have been unfair to someone, feel free to let me know. You are welcome to post a comment here or state so on your own blog. But you can also just e-mail me privately and I’ll respond reasonably.