Prosperity is where the mouth is

A young part-Maori woman quit her job at the Whangarei branch of KiwiYo last week because the manager of the shop would not allow her to greet customers with “Kia Ora” insisting instead that she say “Hello” as prescribed in the company manual. The usual rent-a-protest crowd assembled outside the company store chanting and displaying placards and the KiwiYo’s franchise owner was forced to capitulate and apologise, suggesting his manager...

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Has democracy run its course?

I read that in the 1930s travellers returning from Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany praised the hearty sense of common purpose they saw there. They tended to compare them with their own democracies that seemed weak, inefficient and pusillanimous. Democracies today are in the middle of a similar period of envy and despondency. Authoritarian competitors are aglow with arrogant confidence.In the 1930s Westerners went...

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Examining the birthday paradox

Last weekend I had a birthday. One of my granddaughters celebrates her birthday on the same day.Eleanor was fourteen, and I was %#*. My word processor has a direct link to the privacy commission and never discloses information that should not be widely disseminated among the general public. Though to be fair if my father hadn’t been so shy and retiring I’d be two years older than I am now. I’ll give you clue though. About the time I was...

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