I had a call today from a lady at “Enable New Zealand”. My immediate response was to ask her how one enables New Zealand. She hesitated, and said, “by getting a new set of crutches?”
Then the penny dropped. I had been arranging to get a new set of crutches for my six-year-old, who managed to [...]
If you get a new super gold Winstoncard, exclusively designed for the ancient and bewildered, it’s time to abandon all hope.
Owning one shows that you – like the card – are well past your use-by date, so don’t tell anyone, because that Winstoncard certainly isn’t going to do nicely. There are no doctor, chemist or [...]
With barely-concealed glee, grumpies celebrate former Labour leader Mike Moore’s statement that Helen Clark has perfected the art of personal destruction – which is shorthand for ruthless muck-raking and character assassination. He’s probably one of our nation’s leading experts, having been personally shredded by the Great Leader.
What’s crystal clear is that Labour is rapidly rotting [...]
Since when did it make sense for a tax-funded health service to hive off responsibility for drug purchases to Pharmac, an unelected entity that is forced by Government to buy medicines for the lowest cost, rather than for the widest benefit?
Since when did it make sense to dump responsibility for healthcare to District Health Boards, [...]
If financial journalists knew long ago that Bridgecorp and others were dodgy, why didn’t they tell their readers, listeners or viewers? And why does the media go on accepting money from advertisers who promise high returns to ill-informed savers?
There’s a simple answer - and a simple solution.
Any journalist who knows about a flaky financial firm [...]
A few people who should get out more often, spend more time with their families or reduce the size of their egos, have suffered a sudden rush of blood to the head and registered as candidates for the local authority elections in New Zealand.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are either sweating blood to pay [...]
Buy-because-it’s-made-here campaigns have all been dismal failures, ever since Harold Wilson’s “I’m backing Britain” catastrophe and the poorly-constructed “Well-made New Zealand” fizzer.
Back then, no sane person would buy a British car. They were built by Red Robbo’s communists (when they could be bothered to turn up at the factory) and there was a report [...]
We won’t be beaten on price! Words taken straight from a cut-rate supermarket ad, spoken by an Air New Zealand spokesman shortly after Virgin Blue entered the fray.
Well, they weren’t saying any such thing the night before, when they had the market all to themselves.
But Air New Zealand will be beaten on price. [...]
Forget that silly lime-green midget car roaming capitals of the world, blaring out the benefits of Kiwibank. The TV commercial’s a total turkey, compared to the huge attractions offered by Kiwibank ATMs, where you might double your money.
This week, Kiwibank’s Queenstown ATM was like a pokie machine where everyone’s a winner.
(The Allied Irish Bank [...]
Most regulations fall to bits before they’re introduced - and then it gets worse, when some people try to apply them and others find ways to get around them.
People quickly forget the original reason for the rule, and then the rule mutates into an end in itself. This principle probably applies to almost [...]
