Voltaire wrote that one great use of words is to hide our thoughts. I remembered this when Grant Robertson said the tax working group would improve “fairness” in the tax system. I don’t mean to suggest the Minister was dissembling or concealing some ulterior purpose. While fairness is part of the New Zealand kaupapa, literal “fairness” is however an unhelpful word. What does it mean? Let me illustrate with reference to three traditional models of fairness; equality of outcome, equality... Read more

On 3 November I wrote about the Manukau DHB’s refusal to entertain the idea of a Ronald McDonald house at Middlemore Hospital. On further enquiry this decision becomes even more risible. It appears that the decision was an executive decision on the advice of health professionals, not a board decision. I cannot elicit any response or explanation from the DHB. This is disappointing from an institution that needs to be engaged with its community and stakeholders. Read more

Idiocy comes in many forms. Some people choose not to vaccinate their children.   Others think it better to extract multiple teeth from school children rather than have them drink fluoridated water. In some American states disturbed fantasists may openly carry loaded assault rifles in public, near schools and playgrounds.In New Zealand, our latest idiocy is to deny gravely ill children and their stressed parents the succour and respite of special accommodation and rest at the hospital. Read more

Going to sleep at night, in bed with a hot water bottle and a teddy bear, it is comforting to know that somewhere some academic is toiling away, advancing the frontiers of knowledge. Associate Professor Ranjit Voola of the University of Sydney Business School has done this. He has announced that business must "unlearn" the purpose of business. According to reports, he said that business must stop its sole devotion to maximising shareholder value. Read more

A solipsist is a person who believes that only they exist. For a solipsist, the external world only exists through their perception of it. When two solipsists meet, there is always silence. They wonder which one of them is a figment of the other’s imagination. Solipsists are self-centred. The external world exists only to serve their purposes.A remarkable example of New Zealand political solipsism occurred last week. Read more

A popular myth is that NASA spent millions of dollars producing a writing pen for the Apollo space programme. The space pen could write in zero gravity and would not leak combustible graphite into an oxygen rich space capsule. The Russians went in another direction and just used a pencil. The truth is that both used special space pencils but the myth still satisfies for its appeal to simplicity. Read more