Yesterday I started the programme with an opinion piece where I said the government has offered the teachers as much as they can and they should be congratulated for it and that the teachers continued rejection of the pay offer was reminiscent of truculent children.

When it was published on line that was one of the headlines.  Our teachers are starting to look like truculent children it said.

Later, I got a message and it started like this:  ‘Mr Dickens, I am an ex-teacher’. 

 And I thought ‘uh-oh, here we go’. Ex-teacher outraged that I’m starting to side with the government and losing sympathy for the teachers.  So it went “Mr Dickens, I am an ex-teacher and may I congratulate you on the excellent use of the word truculent.”  Excellent!

So today I thought I’s pay it forward and congratulate my old producer Alex Braae who now writes The Bulletin for the excellent use of the word ‘hyperbolic’  in his column today, which effectively describes much of the discourse that poses as debate these day.

This is how he used hyperbolic. 

Alex wrote: “Environmental groups have reacted with fury to the news Austrian oil giant OMV might drill off the coast of Otago. The ODT reports OMV may end up drilling up to 10 wells, under existing permits. Environmental groups including Oil Free Otago, 350 Aotearoa and Greenpeace say there will be "resistance" to any rigs appearing off the coast. It rather underlines how hyperbolic some of the rhetoric around the oil and gas exploration ban got last year from both sides of the argument, given this situation appears to show that it's basically business as usual."

And this is what I said all along.  Taranaki, as I understand it, still has over 80 consented exploration licences left to explore.  Effectively the ban was on future exploration and not what we’ve already okayed.  But the hype preferred us to say all oil and gas exploration is over. Taranaki is over.  Otago is over.  When they’re not.

Now that’s not to say banning future oil and gas exploration was a good idea, because it’s not.  What we really need is a viable alternative so that oil and gas and fossil fuel goes the way of the very dinosaurs they originally came from. But let's not believe the hype

Hyperbole of course goes both ways.  Politicians are fond of minimising the facts.  Like Simon Bridges and his team over their handling of the so called junior staffer who unilaterally took down an anti-UN migration pact petition from the National Party website on the night of the Christchurch mosque shooting.

Turns out the so called junior staffer is in fact a former senior ministerial press advisor who’s been working for the party for six years and is a crucial part of their team coming up with agriculture and environmental policy. Anything but Junior.  Bridges and his team also told fibs about when the post was pulled down

This poor bugger is now on leave from his job for doing something that many people think was absolutely the right thing to do.  The fact that National, a pro-immigration party, was supporting the hyperbolic protests against the compact was strange in itself and many in the party are uncomfortable with it.  

And what is not hyperbole is that Simon Bridges and his team have once again found to be wanting.