A city in the making

Back in the early 1950’s, when I was but a slip of a kid, a group of local Masterton businessmen set up an organisation called the 20,000 Club. Its major aim was to raise money to build a war memorial. The name was chosen because it was expected that the town, with a population of around 12,000 at the time, would soon grow to the magical figure of 20,000 and Masterton could proudly declare itself a city. The figure has no magic anymore....

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Let the games commence

Some years ago when Georgina Beyer made her much publicised remark that she couldn’t live on the “five hundred bucks” Michael Hill Jewellers in Masterton were paying her a week, the nations talk-back hosts were inundated with critical callers. Many solo mums made the point that they were bringing up kids on a more meagre amount and pensioner couples were also scathing, saying their incomes were less than that and there were two...

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Change may not be in the wind

It’s a bit like the chicken and egg situation. Bill English runs a flawless campaign, wins the election and then husband and wife team Barry Soper and Heather du Plessis-Allen write separate newspaper columns suggesting there is a move within caucus to remove him. This starts the conversation of course, but it is unlikely that it originated from within ranks the ranks of National.The same might be said for constant commentary suggesting...

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Perhaps the greatest wordsmith of them all

I first met David Lange in the flesh – and there was a lot of it – when he gave a keynote address at a Licensing Trust Conference at Solway Park in the early 1990s. As the convention host I sat with him at the top table and not surprisingly found his genial company to be exhilarating. So too was his address. The business philosophy of the licensing trusts dovetails perfectly with Labour Party principles and many of the delegates,...

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