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This year’s football World Cup held a big surprise: England can win a penalty shootout (oh, and please don't mention the German performance - I know). If you are not into football, you might wonder what is so hard about kicking a ball into the goal from short distance. Read more

New Zealanders love to grumble about the state of politics. We hold our politicians in roughly the same regard as real estate agents and used car salespeople. Read more

Two high-profile cabinet members of the UK’s governing party have resigned in protest at prime minister Theresa May’s position on Brexit. David Davis, the UK’s Brexit Secretary, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson stepped away from their roles, saying their government made too many concessions to the EU in the two-year-old Brexit negotiations Theresa May’s government presented a Brexit plan that in a nutshell equates to free trade with the EU in goods, not in services, using technology to determine which products went where and what tariffs they were subject to. Read more

While New Zealand is in political Neverland, I am taking refuge in rural France. Just an hour north of the vineyards of Bordeaux, it is no great hardship. Read more

After missing my chance to meet Scarlett Johansson last year, I was distraught and confused over the weekend as I read the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) findings and conclusion on film subsidies in New Zealand. In three reviews commissioned by MBIE, the reports concluded that without the film subsidies (New Zealand Screen Production Grants), the New Zealand film industry would disappear. Read more

"One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past”, the late American legal scholar Robert Bork once wrote. One might add that another use is the prevention of repeat mistakes. Read more

This seems about the worst possible month to be suggesting that anybody should try to emulate anything going on in America. The place seems to be going mad in ways no longer funny to laugh at from very far away. Read more

Last week a long-standing geologist friend chewed my ear about the government’s irresponsible ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration. I call it irresponsible because on the evidence no meaningful consideration was given to the interests of New Zealanders. Read more

A couple of years ago we got the lads together and set off on a South Island road trip. It was a great opportunity to get away from the rat race and show some of my North Island mates around the South Island. Read more