A cheerful chuckling chappie

Back in 1995 my wife and I visited Northern Ireland. We spent a weekend in Belfast, hardly a tourist mecca, but then again, not as bleak a city as it is often painted. Anyway its people not places that make a destination and the Irish overwhelm you with their unrelenting hospitality in both the north and the south of this enchanting country. But for all that, Belfast was a bit different. It was incongruous for instance to hear people tell...

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The Pinocchio component in politics

In the film Liar, Liar lawyer Fletcher Reede, played by Jim Carrey, falls victim to his son Max’s wish that his dad won’t be able to tell a lie for 24 hours. For the sake of the plot, the wish comes true. The moral of the story is that we all lie constantly, and not to do so and be brutally honest instead, would get us into a lot of hot water. And so we have seen politicians of all persuasions tell porkies over the last few weeks which...

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Will CGT sink Labour's boat?

Labour’s much-vaunted Capital Gains Tax is starting to look like the old much-despised death duties in disguise. When Labour introduced GST back in 1986 they sensibly resisted calls to exclude certain items of food from the tax. This would be an “administrative nightmare” they quite rightly said at the time. They are not heeding their own advice when on this occasion they have promised to exclude the family home from the new property tax....

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What is happening to my country?

Oh how I yearn for the good old days of the wooden ships and the iron men when governments were decided like horse races - first past the post. Surely everyone’s political leanings were satisfied with Labour and National, just like the Americans are happy with Democrats and Republicans and the United Kingdom with Labour and Conservatives. But no, we had to go and throw out a perfectly good system of governance and now look what we’ve...

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