Help us to help Siouxsie

10th November 2025

When I wrote my article about the MENZ website a couple of weeks ago, I briefly mentioned John Potter, the site’s admin, and his connection to the Centrepoint commune/cult as the son of guru Bert Potter. I provided a couple of links to further information, and mentioned that readers should look into Centrepoint if they weren’t already familiar with the details of just how bad things became. Journalist and DeCult conference founder Anke Richter messaged me and suggested that readers might want to read her interview of John Potter, the “absent father” of the MENZ website, that came out in North & South magazine in 2021. It’s a fascinating read, and gives some useful background that may help to explain why John runs a men’s advocacy website full of misinformation and woman-hating rhetoric.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re doing what we can to help out Siouxsie Wiles with her fundraising efforts, as we think she’s well deserving of some help. Katrina has written a dastardly article with some ideas on how to win arguments disingenuously. I’ve been emailed by John Happs, an Australian who used to be the head of the Western Australian skeptics for many years. He believes climate change isn’t a problem, and so I’ve explained how he ended up emailing me, and looked at just a few of the dodgy arguments he used in a talk he gave in Australia recently. Following this, we’ve published an email from John where he explains why he thinks we’re wrong as an organisation to believe that climate change is real, anthropogenic and a risk. Finally Bronwyn has written a monster of an article, the first of a series on a succession of strange groups that occupied a house in Ireland at various times over the last 50 years.

Mark Honeychurch

Donate to Siouxsie and double your money

Mark Honeychurch - 10 November 2025

Donate to Siouxsie and double your money

Siouxsie Wiles is well known to the NZ Skeptics. She has long been an active member of our organisation, helping us out by running Skeptics in the Pub events, MCing and giving talks at our conferences, writing articles for our journal, promoting us in public and much, much more. To illustrate this, these are photos from Wikipedia of Siouxsie sitting on discussion panels at our 2013 and 2015 conferences:

Win any argument… ridiculously

Katrina Borthwick - 10 November 2025

Win any argument… ridiculously

If you are sick of being the skeptical 'voice of reason' in arguments, perhaps as an alternative to engaging in a proper discussion you could try using some logical fallacies, humor, or psychological tricks to confuse, disarm, or simply shut down your opponent.

Why aren't we skeptical about climate change?

Mark Honeychurch - 10 November 2025

Why aren't we skeptical about climate change?

Patrick Medlicott published a piece in our last newsletter about a talk on New Zealand's response to climate change - about what we're currently doing, and what we should be doing. One of our newsletter subscribers, Mike, reached out to me after he received the newsletter, expressing his confusion about the article:

Please don't offer me opinion disguised as fact

John Happs - 10 November 2025

Please don't offer me opinion disguised as fact

I was President of the WA Skeptics for over 25 years before we wound up a few years ago. During this time, we offered a substantial amount of money for any proven claim involving the paranormal and junk science. None was demonstrated. Before we wound up the WA Skeptics, we distributed 750,000 AUD to various skeptical groups and science research projects we deemed appropriate. The Perth Skeptics has never had any link with the WA Skeptics and I'm not surprised they believe in anthropogenic global warming, or is that now climate change or extreme weather.

Lux, Silver, and Elektra: The true-and-false history of Aristasia, Part 1

Bronwyn Rideout - 10 November 2025

Lux, Silver, and Elektra: The true-and-false history of Aristasia, Part 1

This series will be one of the most unusual ones I've written in the 3 or so years I've been profiling cults/coercive groups, namely because I don't even know where to begin! The Wikipedia page describes Aristasia as a “…British female-focused subcultural group—or shared worldbuilding project and role-playing setting—that combined Guénonian Traditionalism with elements of lesbian separatism”. Members wore clothing from the 1920-1950s, and created a fantasy world complete with social hierarchies, lingo, and geography.