Rather locked down than living within a controlled experiment

As a dual national, I hope there’s some exaggeration or selective quoting in the Bristol Post about its report of former police officer Mike Rowland, who’s stuck in Auckland with his wife Yvonne. Apparently, New Zealand is in ‘pandemonium’ and he feels like he’s in ‘Alcatraz’.    As we are most certainly not in pandemonium, […]

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When the media advocate racism to hide the real culprits behind bad driving

This op–ed in the Fairfax Press smacks of typical yellow peril journalism that has come to typify what passes for some media coverage of late.    Yes, some Chinese drivers are awful in their home country and they will bring those bad habits here. But I’d be interested to get some hard stats. For instance, […]

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This week it’s the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models; what’s next for our destination marketing?

In Lucire’s publication history, more Americans than New Zealanders have read from the title. Online, that was always the case, as we started off in 1997 with a 70 per cent US readership, which has dropped to around 42 per cent with other countries catching up with web browsing over the last 16 years.   […]

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Joan Rivers had better facelifts, but it’s the future of the black cab

Part of me admires Nissan for going after the taxi market in a big way in New York and London.    Another part of me wonders why on earth the London Hackney Carriage solution is so ugly.    I think Nissan should have asked Mr Mitsuoka for advice on how to Anglicize one of its […]

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When it comes to convention centres, it pays to think ahead

The New Zealand International Convention Centre has been announced in Auckland. In 2010, my campaign team proposed a convention centre for Miramar Wharf, which would include a technology complex, in a format that could have been licensed to other countries, earning royalties for the Wellington business that came up with the idea. The location was […]

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Some positive news a month on from the Christchurch ’quake

Tomorrow, it will be one month since the Christchurch ’quake.    It’s tempting to argue scale—the Japanese earthquake and tsunami versus our own—but at the end of the day, people are people, and our nations have both been hurting. We have become united, through disasters that emphasized that we live in an emerging global community. […]

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