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Everything has its season. The slow January news period brings Oxfam’s annual condemnation of wealth inequality and calls for redistribution. Read more

Every January, Oxfam releases a report on global wealth inequality. This year's Oxfam report contrasted the drop in wealth held by the less wealthy half of New Zealand with the rise in wealth enjoyed by the two Kiwis who made it on to Forbes' 2018 list of billionaires. Read more

We have to take the flower by the thorns and cut the animalism out of our everyday language. That is the message this week from PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Read more

Community sponsorship helps Canada accept far more refugees than the government’s quota could accommodate on its own. And it looks promising for New Zealand as well. Read more

Life is unfair, especially as you get older. That is what Dutchman Emile Ratelband must have thought when the court of Arnhem rejected his request to lower his age by 20 years. Read more

In the old days, quitting smoking was apparently a miserable affair. So miserable, in fact, that even when faced with the prospect of ‘quit smoking or die’, too many smokers tragically fell into the latter category. Read more

The trouble isn’t so much the things we don’t know, as the old aphorism goes, but rather the things we know that aren’t so. Simply not knowing things can often be fixed. Read more

The Tax Working Group’s high-level advice is absolutely correct: The government should simplify the alcohol excise structure, put tobacco excise increases on hold, and not proceed with any sugar taxes until it figures out what it is trying to achieve. This sound advice relies on a rather reasonable summary of the issues produced by the Tax Working Group’s secretariat. Read more

In the media they say if it bleeds it leads. That may be so, but last Friday I took the unusual step of writing a column about some good news. Read more