Author Archives: thesentinel2012

New Zealand has gained some more publicity after the Prime Minister announced that the so-called Lockdown was over, and the coronavirus Covid-19 has been ‘eliminated’. Contrary to this public relations, the lockdown actually continues, and it is doubtful whether ‘community … Continue reading →

It is difficult to write, or even think about, anything apart from the current pandemic, and the so-called novel Corona-virus. I haven’t got much to say, other than that we have been lucky so far in New Zealand. But I … Continue reading →

Mike Moore was briefly the Prime Minister of New Zealand in late 1990, just before the Labour Party’s richly deserved loss in a landslide. Apparently he saved the Labour Party from completed annihilation under the previous leader, Geoffrey Palmer, a … Continue reading →

This is the first post of the year, and probably the last year of the blog. Hard not to be totally disheartened, firstly by events in the Northern Hemisphere, but mostly by the complete and utter ecological disaster in Australia. … Continue reading →

Everybody is still writing about the UK election. Didn’t he do well, that Boris. When he wasn’t hiding in a fridge, running down the clock, like the ice sculpture at the TV debate that the Conservatives didn’t see as a … Continue reading →

I don’t bother with social media any more, unlike during the previous UK election in 2017. Prospective electoral candidates should avoid it too, since writing rubbish on Facebook is bound to catch up with you. But there was something awfully … Continue reading →

More on the British election from a New Zealand perspective. Boris Johnson continues an incredibly erratic performance, and the Conservative Party are full of tricky manoeuvres and funny games on social media. Johnson launched the Welsh Conservatives campaign and the … Continue reading →

I got an email yesterday from Amnesty International in Australia, entitled ‘Behrouz is finally free’, with a photo of the Amnesty man greeting Behrouz Boochani at Auckland airport. Behrouz Boochani is an Iranian Kurd, an asylum seeker who has been … Continue reading →

It’s Saturday the second of the November, and today was meant to be the day that New Zealand won its third rugby world cup in a row. Instead, it will probably be England. So conventional wisdom is that if the … Continue reading →

Some short confessions of an Anglophile, I hope. I’ve had the misfortune to be fascinated by the Brexit process, and its lack of progress through the House of Commons. And I’ve lost sleep over it, given the time difference with … Continue reading →