What growth policies are National Party formulating to take on those of Helen’s moribund regime? If Opposition Finance Spokesman John Key’s latest public utterances are a guide, the conclusion can only be —“good question – shame we don’t know the answer.”
In a speech to the West Harbour Rotary Club earlier this month (see National’s website for the full text) Mr Key promises to issue forthcoming solutions to “How we lift New Zealand from having one of the poorest levels of productivity to having one of the best.” Surely, if he knew the answer, he’d have told the Rotarians then and there. The analogy British broadcaster Andrew Marr gives in his book My Trade on how to speed-read newspapers springs to mind: if the headline is styled as a question, it’s doubtless a space-filling non-story. Which is precisely why National languishes in Opposition. It’s headlines aren’t credible.
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How’s this for two curious phenomena in Russia.
The first is pretty innocuous: there is no Sunday newspaper market in the same way as is present in the UK or New Zealand. Gap in the market? English-speaking Russians I spoke to on the issue looked at me vacantly. There just isn’t the tradition here of depositing oneself on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and working one’s way through the supplements. The second is rather more serious: to obtain a driver’s licence, you can pay a nominal fee and sit standard written and practical tests or, alternatively, pay US$300 and avoid both procedures entirely. Which goes a long way to explaining why the roads of the Russian capital are a veritable death-trap.
Spotted in the UK’s Daily Mail - more good news for those who like a glass or two: seems red wine is now good for your teeth!
Canadian scientists have found compounds called polyphenols in red wine reduce inflammation arising from periodontitis and stave off periodontal diseases which often lead to permanent tooth loss.
The Mail’s online site has space for reader comments. Responses to the vino story were wide-ranging: from comical “Lovely teeth and liver failure”, to downright doctored-out: “I long ago gave up listening to so-called experts. Over my lifetime, they have told me that dairy products were good for me, then bad for me; they’ve told me to leave the skin/peel on fruit and veg for roughage, then to make sure I peel everything to get rid of pesticides; fat is bad, but not eating enough may cause cancer; coffee is a killer, but is good for me; now red wine is the universal panacea. Why don’t they just tell us that everything in moderation is OK and then get a useful job?”.
Whatever your view, one thing’s certain: every news website should devote room to reader feedback as a barometer of audience reaction to issues of the day. With consumers increasingly going online for their news, news organizations should lock in their loyalty at every turn. Making sites interactive, as per the Mail’s, is surely a step in the right direction.
Days after an extended run of sunny weather lulled me into believing Spring was on its way, a fresh dumping of the white stuff was a reminder Winter ain’t over yet.
Yet because Moscow is inland, the thermometer can drop to -10C and life carries on as normal - something picked up on in a piece on oil workers in Siberia in a surreal excerpt from week’s Sunday Times: “Samer Slim grew up in the heat of Lebanon, but he has made a quick adjustment to the bone-chilling temperatures of Siberia. If it gets above -10C, he works in a T-shirt. It sounds mad, but -10C feels warm in Siberia, where the temperature can drop to -40C.” (Make or Break for Shell in Russia, 12.03.06).
Snow is more than just a novelty that wears off as quickly as the picture- postcardesque powder turns to sludge. It’s also a metaphor for the Janus-faced nature of so much of Russia. This from a recent feature on the country in The Economist: “The winter snows of Moscow cover many of the city’s flaws: the glum architecture, and the grime and clutter of its breakneck growth. But the winter and the snow also reveal other, hidden aspects of modern Russia: the superpower status it still retains among its neighbours; the desperation that lurks beneath the oil-fuelled glitz; the brutality, lawlessness and all-permeating corruption.” (“A Winter’s Tale”, 16.02.06).
