This week’s resignation of New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was something of a surprise, but for me not too surprising. Her reasons – not enough in the tank for another three-year term – were sound enough. If you haven’t got the energy left for the job, it’s professional to step down, and with an … More Jacinda Ardern’s resignation and social media
Back in 2021 I wondered whether the year could be worse than 2020. It was. And this year, 2022, has been worse still: for New Zealand, certainly, it’s featured a month-long occupation of Parliament grounds that ended with a street battle such as New Zealand has not seen since 1913. We have rampant inflation created … More Have a happy festive season!
The world seems to be teetering on the precipice of a cliff right now. Just this week the Russo-Ukranian war has escalated to a new and dangerous level, Russian people are fleeing their own country, there appears to be war ‘by other means’ being waged against NATO – evidenced by the destruction of the gas … More Armageddon is just a few steps away
I had to get some assistance this week with my website hosting – various bits and pieces of maintenance had to be done, including migrating it to a different server because the one it was on didn’t host the right software. It was quite a saga. The company I deal with operates a help desk … More How to deal with website hosting, part 486,309
The passing of Queen Elizabeth II after 70 years on the throne is extraordinary in some ways. Certainly she could not go on forever; but few alive today remember a time when she was not Queen of England – and, incidentally, Queen of New Zealand among a few other places – and she was one … More The end of an era: Queen Elizabeth II
It is 83 years this weekend since Europe crashed into war, beginning a global struggle that did not end until 1945 and which resulted in estimated deaths topping 75 million, many of them civilians. The Second World War was the largest conflict yet seen in the history of humanity, the most lethal, and the most … More The world at war – again
The other week my YouTube feed proposed a channel of intriguing title: Beard meets food. I am not sure why this was presented to me, but because I deliberately turn off Google’s surveillance systems (insofar as I can), Google’s algorithms keep coming up with a default potpourri of wildly irrelevant offerings. This was one of … More How to eat a burger bigger than your head in one sitting
The other day I happened to be grocery shopping in a nearby supermarket that markets itself on ‘low, low prices’ that ‘save’ the customer money. In the fruit and veggie section they’d piled a fair quantity of telegraph cucumbers which were ‘extra low’. Apparently. Personally I don’t think $4.99 is ‘extra low’, especially when it … More How supermarkets lie to you
I keep thinking that living in today’s world is akin to someone holding on for dear life to an aircraft they somehow got outside of, but it’s about to crash anyway. People are on edge. Societies are bending before the strain of a whole raft of factors topped by a virus that, alas, won’t go … More As the world comes undone…
This week New Zealand’s inflation hit a 31-year high after decades when the spectre of relentlessly rising consumer prices seemed to have been conquered forever. What happened can only partly be blamed on domestic issues – a 32 percent rise in the price of fuel, for instance, simply had to be accepted. Although that last … More The inflation monster is baaaaaaack
Matthew Wright 
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