I’m Lynne Samkin. I live in rural New Zealand, where life involves a small farm, rather a lot of Golden Retrievers, a husband, grown-up children and grandchildren — and an increasing habit of asking awkward questions about things I read on the internet.
Granny Asks came about because I kept seeing political claims, memes and confident declarations whizzing around social media. Blood pressure rising, neurons firing on all cylinders, deep breath taken…
Hang on. Is that actually true?
I’m left-leaning by nature. I think people should be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, get healthcare when they need it and live with a reasonable degree of dignity. I also think governments have to manage public money responsibly. Those things don’t seem mutually exclusive to me.
I’m not a journalist, economist or political scientist. My background is in computing and education, and perhaps the teaching bit has stuck: I like pulling complicated things apart, finding the original information and trying to explain what it actually says in ordinary English.
I won’t always get it right. If I’ve misunderstood something, missed important evidence or got a fact wrong, I want to know. I’d much rather correct something than defend it simply because I wrote it.
Granny Asks isn’t about telling people how to vote. It’s about looking past the slogans, checking what we can check, acknowledging what we can’t, and asking whether the story we’re being told actually stacks up.
A note about AI: I use AI as a research and writing assistant — to help find sources, check claims, organise information and occasionally untangle my thoughts. The questions, opinions and final decisions about what appears here are mine. I check the sources I rely on, and if I get something wrong, I’ll correct it.