Pandemics, as we all know, are nothing new. What is new is the way we deal with them, but even that is true only to a point. Shakespeare wrote some of his best work while in isolation from the plague. People who were able fled the cities and moved to
Among other things, the discussion between Adrian Orr and Grant Robertson about ways to cool the overheated housing market has included a possible extension of the Bright Line Test, currently at five years. Just to remind you, the Bright Line Test applies to any profit made on the sale of
Grant Robertson has written a letter telling the Reserve Bank that the government is unhappy about the cost of housing, and to find a way that the Reserve Bank can assist the government to relieve the situation for potential homebuyers. Adrian Orr is not someone who likes criticism. The Minister
We are all justified in breathing a sigh of relief that the economy seems to have survived the COVID pandemic reasonably well. Not all sectors, of course. International tourism and education have suffered terribly, and the hospitality sector is also still in trouble. Nevertheless, it is no time to be
My colleague, Ex-PFC wrote an excellent article yesterday about the new tourism minister, Stuart Nash, who has come out and said that he wants only high-end tourists, not those who defecate in our rivers. There are, of course, a number of different views on this. Ex-PFC lives in the Queenstown
I always tell anyone who asks that the battle for equal opportunity was won in the 1970s. By then, employers had no right to fail to employ anyone on the basis of gender, religion, race or colour. These rules have existed in the Western world for decades; in New Zealand,
On this site, we constantly complain about the poor standards of the media in this country. Actual news reporting seems to have completely disappeared. Everything is an opinion piece these days, even the news. (Have you noticed how many times TV and radio news presenters read out a headline in
It is amazing what rubbish you read in the mainstream media these days. Take these statements, issued by none other than our favourite source of ‘truth’, Stuff: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to defend herself against attacks from the Right and the Left on Tuesday morning as criticism mounted
The National Party has been admonished for its election advert claiming that retirees would pay $140 per week if a wealth tax was introduced. Let’s take a look at that figure, shall we? If a little old lady lived in a house in Auckland worth $1,730,000, then
Now that they are not an actual coalition partner in the new government, the Greens are using this opportunity to become unmuzzled. They have decided to go back to the idea of wealth taxes. Perhaps James Shaw is blowing his wealth tax horn because of his massive gaffe over the
It never takes long for the Greens to revert to type. Having done moderately well in last month’s election, but having been denied a seat at the Cabinet table, the Greens are now ramping up demands for significant benefit increases to make life much more bearable for those on
If you think that a Netflix Limited Series (7 episodes) which is all about the game of chess is likely to be extremely boring, then you are in for a surprise. I would not normally go for a series like this, being a very poor chess player myself, but I
There has been a bit of a furore this week about the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, having a moko, otherwise known as a facial tattoo. The usual suspects have crawled out of the woodwork and claimed that anyone who doesn’t like this decision is ‘raaacist…’, even
With the end of Winston Peters’s political career, we have shone a light on the fact that we have had at least one Maori in parliament for 42 years. He is not the only one of course. The first Maori MPs entered parliament in 1868. The list of Maori
At the end of April, the Reserve Bank removed mortgage loan-to-value ratios (LVRs) for 12 months. This decision was made to ensure LVR restrictions didn’t have an undue impact on borrowers or lenders as part of the mortgage deferral scheme implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now there
Every time the Greens bring in new MPs, they are scarier than the last lot. For the last three years, we have been ruing the fact that the Green party saw fit to bring in an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic communist by the name of Golriz Ghahmaran. But Golriz seems like a
