Labour MP and Minister for Maori Development Willie Jackson has to be the joker in the political pack of cards. The card he most often likes to pull out he dealt again at the weekend on The Nation: The institutionalised racism card. It’s the one that he favours because
An opinion piece by Claire Trevett in Thursday’s Herald was very revealing. Revealing in the sense that she seems to know a lot about what is going on behind the scenes in the National Party. Reading her article one could be forgiven for thinking she knows more than the
According to an article in the NZ Herald, there is one truancy officer for 80 schools in Waitemata East. The details are contained in a police truancy overview for the Waitemata District obtained by the Herald from July last year. It found that just under two-thirds of students – 62 per
The wheels are falling off Labour’s Auckland transport policies. They are steering Auckland in the wrong direction. Their priorities mean that further chaos is inevitable down the road. Hopefully, not Dominion Road, unless the loopy light rail project gets the green light. The idea of a tram on Dominion
It has been obvious pretty much from the outset that we have in power a government in name only. All these people know is their ideology. It doesn’t matter to them whether their ideology is applicable to solving a particular problem or not, they implement it regardless because it
The word Government is a complete misnomer for the Labour Party. It’s akin to comparing Megan Markle with the truth. There is no relationship between the two. To use the word Government in its true sense when talking about Ardern and her mob of misfits is an abuse of
Recently, a friend and I had the good fortune to meet up with someone who had a connection to the National Party. We engaged in a discussion about where National is at the moment and what we thought was needed for the party to progress from this point. What we
What a difference some bad economic news makes. Earlier last week Scott Morrison was blaming our government for holding up the trans-Tasman bubble, saying if they don’t want Aussie tourists in Queenstown then Cairns will happily have them. This, as it was designed to do, raised the hackles of
There is a road to victory for National but it’s not on the road they’re on. They need to get out of Labour-lite Crescent and turn onto the Alternative Freedom Expressway. Some of the party’s policies are the right ones but there are others that need to
I have chosen not to watch their interview as I regard it as nothing more than a soap opera akin to an episode of Days Of Our Lives. From the clips I have seen, it appears that Meghan (‘it’s all about me’) Markle has presented details which, while having
It’s just not cricket! or so Jacinda Ardern thinks when questioned concerning criticism of her hero Ashley Bloomfield accepting tickets to a Black Caps v Australia T20 game in his capacity as the Director General of Health. When asked if she thought it was appropriate she replied, “I don’
Ardern and her friend “sleepy” Joe Biden appear to have quite a lot in common. One is hard left and the other, if not hard left, is being run by the hard left. One can legitimately be questioned on the state of his faculties and the other, while appearing to
The words alarmist and apologist are becoming more and more applicable to Ardern. An alarmist is a person who tends to raise alarms, especially without sufficient reason, by exaggerating dangers or prophesying calamities. An apologist is one who argues in favour of something unpopular. These two words seem to sum
From memory, it’s about ten days since I last wrote an article and since then rather a lot has taken place. Auckland was put in and pulled out of a pointless three-day lockdown and now we are in a seven-day lockdown which will prove to be equally pointless. These
The NZ Herald reports that hundreds of children living on rural roads near towns are being barred from school buses under a law that hasn’t changed since 1904. On Inland Road near Helensville two Kaipara College students live 3.8 kilometres from the school but the bus is only
A couple of articles ago I wrote that my favourite NZ Herald opinion piece writer, alongside the persistent pedal pusher Simon Wilson, was Audrey Young. Well, now I’ve got a threesome! Number three is Diana Wichtel. After reading her article in the Canvas I found myself, metaphorically speaking, pretty
