Here is a holiday quiz for when the patience runs out, the scrabble is scrambled and the crosswords are crabbed.
1. Where have the British gone?
We’re all tangata whenua now, Trevor Mallard said (sort of). Which eliminates the British. But where did all those colonisers go? What will keep the Treaty alive if there are no British here any more? And who will defend the Union Jack and God Save the Queen?
It’s the time of the year for political plaudits. My first goes to John Armstrong.
Armstrong does not do politics. He watches and analyses politics for this paper. He does that with honesty and clarity and every now and then with punch. One of his punches in 2003 knocked out Bill English.
For that honesty and clarity and punch he is much respected by peers and politicians. He is without superior in our trade.
Alan Bollard is really bothered about our savings habits — actually, our habit of not saving. Finance Minister Michael Cullen is bothered, too.
The Reserve Bank calculates that households’ dissaving rate is 12 per cent of their disposable income. The country’s dissaving rate is impressive, too: the current account deficit is 8 per cent of GDP and climbing.
I idly bounced a tennis ball Thomas’s way the other day. Thomas caught and held it in his mouth. Interesting. Thomas is a cat.
So it can be done.
Whether it was done 23 years ago is not a matter of great political moment. That was teaching then, as other teachers on both sides of the House could attest. Had David Benson-Pope said in May what he now says — that he can’t recall any such incident — it would have blown over with the police report.
When Jim Sutton was first Minister of Agriculture in 1990 his Australian counterpart assured him New Zealand apples would be in Australia by Christmas. Fifteen years on, we still don’t know which Christmas.
Australian apple growers are the sorts of primary producers who farm politicians in preference to battling the elements and the market. We may yet need the World Trade Organisation to sort them out.
Politicians will shortly engage in bloodsport with Television New Zealand’s board, executives and stars. All good fun but what will it tell us?
It will tell us at least one board member is too nosey-parker, stars are paid too much for the Prime Minister’s liking and much shareholder value has been destroyed. But we know all that.
Things in threes have a pleasing alliteration. So, for example, it is convenient to mark the modern media by three Cs: celebrity, confrontation and crime.
That explains why Christine Rankin (a fourth C) was a headline hit a few years back: celebrity status; confrontation in court with ministers; and, if not crime, allegations of impropriety.
Six years ago this coming Sunday Helen Clark won office. She won a third term in September-October. But is her nemesis round the corner?
Few — and I was not one — predicted six years ago that Clark would get three terms.
We reckoned without export and house price booms.
We reckoned without her evolution in office, with touches of populism in, for example, her championing of the rugby world cup bid and her pitch rightwards since 2002 in forming governments.
Productivity growth is the centrepiece of Helen Clark’s third term and she told us last week “science and innovation are critical to driving our prosperity”. But the numbers — and the logic — don’t add up.
The government’s strategy for “driving prosperity” is in its vaunted growth and innovation framework (GIF). Research, science and technology (RS&T) is a core element of the GIF.
John Key tells of an international bank — not his one — which used to expect its employees around the world to live the business culture of its home country.
It was a one-culture company. It didn’t work. Employees preferred to live their own countries’ cultures.
So the bank became a one-company culture, unified under a brand and certain operational commonalities but accommodating national cultural differences. It has flourished.