Jason Connery 2009 film proves that Life does follow Art Graham McTavish might not be everyone’s idea of a travelling companion. A grotesque dwarf in Sir Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, the grizzled fiery lead in Preacher, the only actor to play opposite to Sly Stallone in both Rambo and Rocky….. Sidekick Sam Heughan presents a milder aspect as the two Outlander stalwarts hit the glens in their Clanlands travel book aided by a strong tailwind in the form of a forward by Outlander creator the American author Diana Gabaldon. All a bit other worldly you might think as the footloose…

Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull’s true belief in Opposition policies haunts Australian politics The Turnbull Test is designed to show the degree to which a political party leader has their heart in their own party. Or in the other side’s. It is named after Australian Liberal Party leader and federal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. He consistently demonstrated that far from being a conservative his leanings were anything but conservative and that in fact that his heart was very much with the Opposition in the form of the Australian Labour Party and the Green Party. Mr Turnbull’s inability to disguise his preference…

NZ Herald takes up eccentric infectious diseases scientist’s trolling retribution Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles publicly advocated the required national response to Covid-19 and at the same time estimated the effect of this response. Having nudged the nation toward sidestepping the worst of the virus the clinician has taken on the power of making uncomfortable the very people who should be grateful to her. Phillida Perry’s documentary Siouxsie and the Virus www.loadingdocs.net/Siouxsie intriguingly taken up by the New Zealand Herald has taken the scab off this undercurrent and will ensure that the bizarre outcome will remain a suitable case for study. In…

Political Class Activism Eclipsed Quarantine priorities Identity politics submerged climate change as the overriding moral issue in New Zealand, often considered a global weather vane of moral causes. Mass marches switched from the extinction-rebellion climatic catastrophe ones to those vilifying the colonial era and those seen as benefiting from it, then and now. The political-class rendition of this mild-mannered, fair-minded, and considerate nation as being in fact the repository of a bigoted, tyrannical majority, the kindest categorisation being racist, often delivered in the local dialect as “rashe-ist,” writes National Press Club president Peter Isaac. This followed on the heels of…

United States remains first and only nation founded to do good in the world President Trump’s brandishing of a King James Bible in front of a church was a unifying signal which the mainstream media perversely chose to interpret as a divisive gesture, a stab at the soul of the union, even idolatry. In fact the King James Bible ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as an underpinning United States document. It was carried by the original Mayflower pilgrims and became the founding moral handbook of the United States, writes National Press Club president and sometime White…

Family Cluster Lockdowns were Bleaker and Longer In 1956 schoolboy Brian Bourke found himself in an Ashburton hospital ward, a victim of New Zealand’s annual and brutal polio wave. He was one of 897 victims in New Zealand that year of the polio virus. It cost him his left leg, writes National Press Club president Peter Isaac. Nationwide that same year 50 other victims were not so lucky. They lost their lives. Mr Bourke a chartered accountant recalls now that his nurses were completely shrouded in sterile material and he was not to identify any one of his carers until…

Instinct is up close, personal and infectious Antipodeans instinctively keep their distance from each other. Right or wrong? Wrong. The inhabitants of the thinly populated South Pacific outpost of British reserve and stand-offish-ness cannot in fact keep their hands off each other Touching and feeling is the raw material of social codes of behaviour new and old. These range from modern introduced sporting activities through the run of hugs, kisses, and handshakes to greetings ancient characterised by the Polynesian hongi or rubbing of noses. The myth is that of the man-alone. The reality is that of the direct opposite. Males…

Lethally Dangerous Policeman-turned-Preacher Prepares to take tithe United Nations at one and the same time has enthralled and betrayed New Zealand and now it fully intends to collect from the beleaguered nation a sum considered to be in the region of 1.5 billion dollars as a climate contribution. This is after its wholly controlled subsidiary World Health Organisation utterly failed to warn New Zealand about the imminence of the Covid 19 virus and continues to actively block from WHO membership Taiwan the one nation capable of giving early warning of this and other such pathogens. Unapologetic about its shocking failures…

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things?” Constant repetition by climate campaigners of words signifying conceptual disasters of great magnitude debased these words and diluted their meaning and their impact to the point at which when taken up by Fleet Street they failed to deliver the required message in the event of a true calamity, the Coronavirus one. Peter Isaac the president of the National Press Club conjectures that initial warnings about the damaging effects of Coronavirus were blunted and lost impact just because so many of the words used were associated with moral cause propaganda…

The progressive political class’ unquestioning adherence to the United Nations fixation on man-made global warming as the existential threat of the era can be viewed now as being at the expense of considering an actual global scourge such as the present Coronavirus one. Why was it that the United Nations agency World Health Organisation started talking about the insurgent virus at the same time as everyone else? Why is it that western governments even now are so frightened to support Taiwan’s membership of the World Health Organisation? Taiwan, otherwise known as the Republic of China, has long warned of the…

Arts in New Zealand scream conformity, acquiescence, patronage-induced passivity Anglo-New Zealand artist Derek Cowie has categorised the nation’s art scene as one in which practitioners without even realising it bend their output to the demands of a top-down patronage system. The reliance on patronage led to a passivity in which the artistic purpose of igniting discussion and debate was now submerged in an obedient quest to conform. Art, he insisted, should invite controversy, and not by-pass it. Mr Cowie’s art is renowned for its depiction of the tribulations encountered by everyday individuals and especially the damage inflicted on tem by…