Brexit reminds us that we need to take a lead in making globalization fairer

Brexit was an interesting campaign to watch, and there’s not too much I can add that hasn’t been stated already. I saw some incredibly fake arguments from Brexit supporters, including one graphic drawing a parallel between the assassinations of Anna Lindh in 2003 and Jo Cox MP, saying how the murder of the former led […]

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Volkswagen is a case for critical thinking, not blind following

Here’s an article from Autoblog that combines several of the themes I enjoy writing about: cars, leadership, management and education.    I’ve already hinted at this on my Facebook fan page, where I seem to post some of the pithy things these days. I sometimes try to avoid blogging about the same thing—a lot of […]

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In the wake of the ’quake, a time to be bold

The Christchurch earthquake is certainly not over, not while the city rebuilds. And the bill, at a meeting I had with some other luminaries last Thursday, is estimated to be in excess of the NZ$20,000 million that the New Zealand Government predicts.    So, other than juggling the funds, what does the Government intend to […]

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Taranaki food shop must be a front for international finance

In the Fairfax Press today, this story: ‘Food shop protest “racist”’.    From what I can make out from this story, New Plymouth District Councillor Sherril George (her address, telephone number and email are here) has been urging people to boycott a Waitara food outlet run by some folks of Cambodian ethnicity.    This business, […]

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Even as Liu Xiaobo gets a Nobel prize, Beijing can be smug

As I watched actress Liv Ullmann read Liu Xiaobo’s address, ‘I Have No Enemies’, on BBC World, I was quite moved.    The address is what the Nobel Prize-winning author and intellectual delivered prior to his sentencing by a Red Chinese court for subversion.    What is fascinating is the dignity with which the words […]

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How MG Rover mirrored the developments at Lada

I still have Adam Curtis’s The Mayfair Set, a TV series charting the decline of British power and the rise of the technocracy, recorded on video cassette somewhere. I consider him someone who can see through the emperor having no clothes, and in The Mayfair Set, he certainly saw through the Empire having no clothes. […]

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I do not stand for John Key’s defeatist talk

I’ve heard it all before. In the 1980s, the New Zealand Government promised that, with the introduction of Goods and Services’ Tax (GST), people would be better off, because it would mean more money in our pockets.    With the proposal to hike GST to 15 per cent under the current government, Prime Minister John […]

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Google’s rethink on Red China: you can’t stop the Chinese people

If I were Google, would I have entered Red China with the censored version of Google.cn, hiding things from the Chinese people for the sake of money? In February 2006, I blogged about this very issue and concluded, ‘No.’    Obeying the law is one thing. Providing the people with slanted views to prop up […]

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