As we (and by we I mean me, obviously) get older, our once razor-sharp vision tends to blur a little and where once we saw the world with crisp edges, things take on a softer focus. This change isn’t…
The business world is full of platitudinous one-liners. Indeed an entire publishing industry has been built up around the slightly annoying tendency to take a one line quote and inflate it into an entire 200 page book – with…
Recently I wrote about just how much governance has changed in the past decade or two. Whereas historically governors could turn up to meetings and spend time discussing their golf handicap and enjoying savories, today board members have to…
Anyone who knows me will realise that I have a tendency to make bad choices sometimes in terms of what I say on public fora. In my defense, it’s never malicious or calculated, simply the failings of someone who…
I wear an exceedingly large chip on my shoulder from the fact that I’m not a university graduate. Despite familial (and self) expectations that I would follow paternal exemplars and study medicine, I instead dropped out of high school…
There’s an old Jewish joke that suggests when three Jews are present in a room, there will be at least five opinions about a particular topic. We Jews have a genetic predisposition for argument, borne of millennia studying holy…
I’m lucky enough to have a decent-sized orchard at home where we grow all manner of fruit, berries and nuts. There’s nothing I like more than a summer-session of apricot jam making or an intense mission involving heirloom-variety apples…
I have a buddy who prides himself on sense-checking every societal norm – no matter how much that sense-checking departs from his being politically correct. He delights in railing against what he sees as the dragging of society into…
The other day my wife and I happened to be driving through Sheffield in Canterbury en route to Arthur’s Pass. We took the opportunity to visit the establishment that is the Sheffield Pie shop, world famous (or at least…
My parents were refugees from Eastern Europe who fled communism and the reality of post-Holocaust Eastern Europe. When they came to New Zealand back in the 50s, the path for any immigrant not from the United Kingdom was very…