As a House of Lords Member a Lord Peters can serve in a New Zealand government cabinet Knowingly or unknowingly New Zealand caretaker prime minister Bill English has it within his gift to put renegade electoral balance of power holder Winston Peters MP on the high road. The one that leads to the House of Lords. Former National Party prime minister Jim Bolger signalled that Mr Peters wanted “respect.” This can now be interpreted beyond the abstract sense in which until now it has been taken. Neither does it take the form of a knighthood. Mr Bolger has deliberately stood…

Australasia’s long-established Customised operator Out-Distances competition with long-range journeys onto the Roads less Travelled Australasian tour operator Odyssey Traveller anticipated the narrow ultra-specialised consumer requirement so evident today. Now of course the customised preference drift has become the dominant leisure industry direction echoed so distinctly in outward and inward packaged travel everywhere. Tailored around the knowledge-seeking experience Odyssey’s expeditionary-style tours are sharply defined around just a few time-frame durations, notably of nine and 30 days. Focussed on the 50 plus age sector Odyssey’s concentration on the exclusivity of small travelling groups means that the operator can mould its offerings to…

A tumultuous pair-bonding The general public remains baffled about the constant and unremitting castigating of the mainstream media by New Zealand First’s Winston Peters MP. They assume it is a lovers’ tiff. In a way it is. The two parties involved possess the essential characteristics of a tumultuous pair bonding. They cannot live tranquilly together. Yet they cannot live apart. Mr Peters understands also that he is both ward and prey. He helps out by generating news. From time to time he will be fodder himself. He understands something else too. It is this. Journalists would rather be scolded than…

Australasia’s long-established Customised operator Out-Distances competition with long-range journeys onto the Roads less Travelled Australasian tour operator Odyssey Traveller anticipated the narrow ultra-specialised consumer requirement so evident today. Now of course the customised preference drift has become the dominant leisure industry direction echoed so distinctly in outward and inward packaged travel everywhere. Tailored around the knowledge-seeking experience Odyssey’s expeditionary-style tours are sharply defined around just a few time-frame durations, notably of nine and 30 days. Focussed on the 50 plus age sector Odyssey’s concentration on the exclusivity of small travelling groups means that the operator can mould its offerings to…

Regal blended with power   New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade stands out as the obvious and logical destination for Winston Peters MP in the country’s pending new Parliament. It combines for Mr Peters the correct blend of high office and of practical power that he requires in the current Parliamentary re-shuffling. Under New Zealand’s proportional representation system the mix of seats and percentage vote share that his New Zealand First Party achieved leave him as the make-weight in the practical outcome of the general election.. There are two key factors that make MFAT (pronounced M-Fat) as the…

Mysterious background contributes to aura    United States Vice President Mike Pence’s tribute to the passengers who overpowered the crazed psychopaths who sought to commandeer on September 11 2001 United Airlines Flight 93 included reference to a New Zealander who is now all but forgotten in his native land. Alan Anthony Beaven is increasingly being seen as one of the key passengers on the flight who physically suppressed the gang to the point at which the flight from Newark to San Francisco crashed into a field at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of into its target which is now considered to have…

Tattoos and piercings are emblems of tribal allegiances The re-emergence of the North-South divide in the United States supplies further evidence of the way in which the English-speaking zone is being overtaken by tribalism. This fresh evidence of tribal divergence follows on the heels of the determination of the previous United States presidential dynasties to fight their supplanter, President Donald Trump. The continuing politicking of the Clinton, Bush and Obama families campaigning seamlessly against the victorious candidate is classic tribal activity in that it cuts across constitutional political transitional processes, writes our roving reporter National Press Club president Peter Isaac.…

Five questions on a Middle East perspective   From MSCNewsWire's European Correspondent |Wednesday 6 September 2017 | Beirut-based Meguerditch Bouldoukian is an emeritus figure in banking in the Middle East and the EU. Mr Bouldoukian (pictured with Paul Volcker) now answers our five questions on New Zealand’s Middle East positioning ….. There is evidence of a belief here in a short Middle East memory. We have the defaulting on the old Development Finance obligations. Then we have the U-turn on the undertaking on live sheep exports to Saudi Arabia. Followed by compensation in the form of a covert stock-handling depot…

  Revivalist opportunity perceived at last moment   An outbreak of middle class idealism based on party immigration policy promises to boost the Green vote at the expense of Labour, and to a rather lesser extent, National, and even New Zealand First. A sign of this is the 11th hour awakening is decision of the Greens to field a candidate in Ohariu in which the Labour candidate Greg O’Connor had seemed a shoo-in following the resignation of the enduring independent incumbent Peter Dunne MP. Mr O’Connor (pictured) is one of the very candidates anywhere in the entire Westminster sphere who…

Procedure is killing Party’s election hopes   Eminem’s copyright legal proceedings centred on the rapper’s lawyers claiming that the National Party had heisted riffs of the warbler’s Lose Yourself album for its 2014 general election jingle. The unlikely proceedings conducted in a Wellington courtroom are remembered for sweetening global network talk shows. Presenters in the United States especially discovered humour in the rendering of the word Eminem due to the squished vowel sounds of their New Zealand counterparts. The chuckling involved in the parodies attendant on the New Zealand broadcasting patois along with the bizarre courtroom episode we can see…

This new customised scam gives the old fashioned con artist the full leverage of the electronic funds transfer era.   A new wave of money transfer fraud techniques is on its way to New Zealand. It is the President scam, so called because it is centred on the departure from secure procedures triggered by a very senior official in the targeted organisation intervening and giving the appearance of wanting the fraudulent transfer to take place. Under the President modus operandi someone poses as the boss of an organisation. They then conjure up an exception of some kind and which requires…