The changing face of a world

We visited Dublin back in 1995 and as soon as we were ensconced in our B&B I accessed a telephone directory to book in at a cabaret where an Irish comedian I had admired from afar was performing. Booking made, I then perused the phone book and discovered that pretty well all the surnames had a familiar ring. It was like looking through a 1940s Wairarapa directory. No foreign names, but almost exclusively Irish and Anglo-Saxon nomenclatures....

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Good things from small beginnings

I’m no apologist and probably never shall be of Andrew Little’s, but I did feel uncharacteristically sorry for him a couple of weeks ago when, just as he was starting to make traction against the government’s handling of the Panama Papers, a newsreader at TV3 decided to quit her job and subsequently featured in the headlines for days. Mrs Barry’s surprise decision caused unforeseen outcomes and even the unexpected resignation of TV...

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A feathered history of our land

I used to have a pet magpie. I must have been about nine or ten years of age when I was playing with friends in a paddock across the road from the Lansdowne golf course and we were attacked by a magpie protecting her young in the nest. She swooped down on us and inflicted superficial wounds to our faces and hands. My callous response was to steal one of her chicks and take it home and feed it warm milk from an eye dropper and some of Long’s...

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Weak sentencing not the answer

There was once a school of thought that considered the death penalty should be reintroduced in New Zealand, not for murderers, but for drug dealers. It was further considered that people caught accessing drugs ought not to have a conviction entered against their names, and rather than being incarcerated, be sent to rehabilitation facilities. A number of societies agree with this death sentence methodology as the ringleaders of Australia’s...

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