About the author: Brian Mackie
Profile: Writer and businessman who distrusts all politicians and what passes for journalism in New Zealand.
Website: http://www.gog.org.nz/
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Posts by Brian Mackie:
How us grumpy old geezers fondly recall those long-lost, innocent days when we would play with train sets. A little later, we learned the value of funny money by playing Monopoly. And we loved our 1/72 scale plastic models, made ...
Expert opinion in New Zealand says that publication of suicide details leads to copy-cat deaths. Newspaper editors, on the other hand, argue that secrecy amounts to censorship. They are all missing the point.
No one in New Zealand likes to talk ...
Fashion experts report that there is a direct link between the depth of the stock market and the height of women’s heels. For every 10 percent fall in the Dow Jones Index, you can expect about an inch increase in ...
Picture the scene. You’re lounging in front of the telly with a micro-waved TV dinner, optimistically watching an ancient edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and marvelling at the catastrophic failure of the British education system and the ...
These days, for us who live in the sticks of New Zealand, a taxi ride is rare, expensive but sometimes rewarding. London taxis are the best. You’d climb into one and be regaled by a bloke who knew every cobble ...
Pilots have a motto with a double meaning: "Don't let the bastards get you down". One meaning refers to air traffic controllers, the armchair aviators who can see hardly anything but profess to know everything (particularly after an event when ...
The male Kiwi is world-famous for his total lack of romance and sexual sophistry. Intelligent female Kiwis, faced with such insufferable pests, have been known to migrate up to 12,000 miles to find a decent mate, preferably of the English ...
There is a notable characteristic of bureaucrats and politicians: they will never fix a dangerous piece of road until enough lives have been lost to prove it. There is, of course, a notable exception to this rule: politicians will not ...
Result! A compromise has been reached. One shed stays, and the other one goes. Hopefully, the more historic one (which is defined as the oldest, ugliest and rustiest) will be preserved. And then we will display to the world a ...
Shortly before the inevitable claim that Maori are entitled to a dividend on the very air we breathe and the water without which we would die, three Maori groups have filed a claim at the Waitangi Tribunal to seek a ...
