Tough on the causes of crime by Susan Grimsdell
What makes a youth offender? I can never understand how people can vote for someone who doesn’t ever spell out the detail of what he (in this case) is going to do. Tama Potaka has just won the by-election in Hamilton West and all I’ve heard so far is that he is going to be “tough” on crime. What specifically does that mean? Shariah law perhaps? Nobody wants to be the victim of crime. But surely to reduce crime, we have to first understand what causes it? My son, and probably your… Read More
Christmas is coming by Angela Caldin
It’s the second of December as I write and I’m thinking about putting up my Christmas tree this weekend. Nothing unusual in that you might think since decorated trees have been appearing and Jingle Bells has been playing in the shops since about the end of October. But I have to admit that it’s unusual for me because for many years I was a Christmas curmudgeon. Everyone else in our street would have their tree twinkling in their front window from early December, but I would make my family wait until two… Read More
Reading, writing and reason by Trevor Plumbly
A codger’s lament I decided to let the brain off the leash this week and wallow in an old-fashioned moan. I’ve found that one of the gifts of age is the ability to use hindsight as a diagnostic tool for heaps of today’s ills. The popular conception is that age brings wisdom, but even in my case that’s not strictly true; however, for those keen to foster the myth, some subtlety of phrase dealing with younger folk is always a good option. For instance, I never use ‘in my day’ because kids… Read More
Losing the art of reading by Susan Grimsdell
Recent statistics indicate that reading books is a fast-disappearing pastime. It seems that some young people leaving school can barely read at all, let alone read great works of literature. Access to the classics They have trouble grasping the meaning of words and sentences, so to think of them picking a book like Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” or Dickens’ “Great Expectations” off the shelf is laughable. It just doesn’t happen. I remember not long ago a young person won the prize for a critical essay on Harper Lee’s “To Kill a “Mockingbird” and… Read More
Flying again by Susan Grimsdell
Leadership When Covid first hit in NZ, our Prime Minister took a leadership role right away. “Stay home,” she said, and explained why. We believed the science and we believed her and it seems it’s a good thing we did because our death rate was miniscule. The key to us all complying was her strong leadership. She didn’t say “We’d appreciate it if you stayed home as much as possible.” She said loud and clear, “Stay Home!” World wars bring out that kind of leadership – people all over Europe put up… Read More
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