I’ve always been a fan of the movie Forrest Gump. In part that’s because I’m a long-distance runner and, hey, any movie that normalizes my somewhat bizarre pastime is a good thing. But it’s also because I identify with…

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A lifetime ago New Zealand was a different place. There was no such thing as big-box retailing and we all still shopped at local retailers owned by people we knew. Sure, the selection was less rich, but it made…

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The other night we gathered around my laptop and watched a movie about the operation that the Israeli army and secret service undertook in 1976 to free the hostages that were being held at the Entebbe airport in Uganda.…

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My parents were refugees to New Zealand 60-odd years ago. New Zealand was a very different place back then – back when pubs closed at 6pm, everyone still called England “home” and the standard fare was mutton and boiled…

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I’ve got an ex-neighbour up the road whose family owned a local farm for an entire century. Graham is a salt-of-the-earth character who often tells me about just how tight things were when he and his brother first took…

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My brother is a craftsman builder who makes his living building things of beauty for well-heeled individuals, many of whom live overseas and entrust the creation of their Antipodean bolt hole to him. He’s entirely self-taught and adheres to…

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Henry Ford is famously quoted as saying, about the time that he was conjuring up the Model T Ford, that if he’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse. That’s the thing with…

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The other day I was wasting time looking at YouTube videos and I came across Peter Bence’s channel. Bence is a Hungarian musician who does incredible things with only a piano and a loop machine. His cover of Despactio…

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I’ve been thinking about all the economic stimulus that is occurring in an effort to restart the New Zealand economy to lessen the negative impacts of Covid-19. I’ve already written about government procurement but today I wanted to opine…

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