As we say goodbye to 2024 and welcome in 2025, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of some of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to business, these are some of the voices and views our audience loved
I got scammed, now I'm cashing in on my own misfortune - Ryan Bridge
Technology is like legs. Excellent when working but crippling when they’re not, writes Ryan Bridge. Photo / Getty Images
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Before you go thinking I’m one of those suckers who replied to a text message from the IRD’s Delhi office or Fedex’s headquarters next door to the Kremlin, it was far more mysterious (and nefarious) than that!
Two hundred bucks was withdrawn from my account from Woolston in Christchurch. I’ve not had the displeasure of visiting Woolston and nor has my credit card, which remained tucked up in its secret hiding place in the fruit bowl on the kitchen bench at home.
The bank won’t yet say how this happened nor whether a refund is due, but I’ve learned a darn good lesson from this most unfortunate escapade – the value of cash. I’ve been dolling out Sheppards, Rutherfords and Ngatas like it’s 1993. Thank goodness for the emergency cash stash kept hidden in that same secret fruit bowl where you’ll also find a phone charger, plasters, nail clippers and other essential items – except actual fruit.
Mailing out a new credit card takes at least a week for urban areas and Lord knows how long for rural folk, once we’ve sent what’s left of our postie workforce to the slaughterhouse.
It’s easy to dismiss the old-fashioned and seemingly antiquated things in life until you really need them. Cash. Posties. Transistor radios when natural disasters strike.
Technology is like legs. Excellent when working but crippling when they’re not. Read more >
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That sinking feeling when critics try to blame diversity - October 9, 2024
As the HMNZS Manawanui slowly sank off the coast of Samoa, the inevitable onslaught of social commentary began.
Feeds, blogs, group chats and private message boards lit up with three politically charged letters: DEI. For those unfamiliar, they stand for diversity, equity and inclusion.
The gist of the commentary goes like this: Did you hear the captain who sunk that ship was a woman? Typical. I bet she was a DEI hire! Why else would they put a woman in charge of a $100 million Navy asset?
The problem with this reaction is two-fold.
Firstly, Commander Yvonne Gray is not a DEI hire. Far from it. Beginning her Navy career as a warfare officer in the UK back in 1993, Gray worked her way up the ranks and eventually landed on our shores, where she has served as Commanding Officer of the Royal New Zealand Navy’s Mine Counter Measures Team and for the past two years as Commander of the HMNZS Manawanui.
This brings us to the second problem with this DEI issue. It’s the perception it creates.
Specific quotas aimed at boosting the number of so-called “minorities” in certain workforces only undermine the credibility of those who worked hard to get there on merit. Read more >
Driven to distraction – are speed limits the issue or lazy Kiwi drivers? - October 2, 2024
Simeon Brown is copping heat from experts and academics for wanting to reverse Labour’s blanket speed reductions.
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They’re saying more of us will die on the roads if so-called safety measures are reduced.
The answer, they reckon, is lower speed limits, more safety barriers, more pedestrian crossings, more speed bumps, more speed humps, judder bars, bike lanes, median barriers and raised crossings.
Is it possible that the more we wrap ourselves up in safety features and safety measures, the shittier we become at actually driving? We’re all a bit bubble-wrapped and not paying much attention.
Who needs to focus when something will beep before disaster? Why not text on your phone when you’re crawling at 20km/h through the city? Why watch the road carefully when the bumpy paint will guide your way?
We’re not paying attention to who and what might be around us. We’re just blissfully drifting through red, green, red, green. Orange means speed up or miss the light and never escape the city.
At some point don’t we have to just let people drive and allow accidents to be the lesson? Read more >
Hospital beds, not berths – don’t sink Govt cash into Am Cup defence - October 23, 2024
After a fantastic weekend for Kiwi sports abroad, attention has swiftly tacked into the business of who should pay for all manner of things, including hosting the America’s Cup.
Helen Clark was among the thousands of Kiwis who trekked to Barcelona for what sounded like one hell of a party.
As patron of the team, Clark is keen to have the competition return to Auckland and warns it cannot be done “on the smell of an oily rag”.
On this, the former Prime Minister has a point. The last one cost tax and ratepayers $250 million. The money was split between infrastructure for and direct funding of the event itself.
The end result was a net loss of $156m for us old mugs who picked up the tab. We had closed the borders due to Covid, so that certainly didn’t help the bottom line.
The government of the day told us not to worry – the nearly one billion viewers watching around the world would one day boost tourism numbers.
I note this week another plea from Auckland Airport, with international visitor arrivals stubbornly sticking around 80% to 85% of pre-pandemic levels.
How do we know the America’s Cup viewer ratings actually benefit our long-term tourism prospects? I would have thought it’s quite a difficult thing to measure and be certain of.
On that point, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment this month revealed it had been incorrectly calculating the cost-benefit analyses of major sporting events for at least the past two years.
Even if we could defy the odds and turn a profit, and even if we could trust the projections being bandied about, surely everybody living in this country right now realises such investments are nowhere near the top of our priority list? Read more >
Wouldn’t it be easier if we banned kids? - September 18, 2024
Why do we waste so much precious time, energy and resources trying to police young people when they clearly have no respect for our efforts?
The “youth”. Such an ungrateful bunch. Unruly failures. The lot of them. All vape and no vocab. All TikTok, no textbook.
A lost cause if you ask me. And yet here we are trying to ban them from doom-scrolling in school, which has had some success, though notably not in those clearly more sophisticated centres for education that insist bans not be enforced in “green spaces”.
We try banning them from vaping, but they continue puffing away without a care for the rules we place upon them. They’re apparently vaping in the loos at school. They’re flouting the sale and purchase laws by going online to get their fix.
All the kids know it’s the dark web for drugs. The normal web for vapes and destructive social media brainwashing. All at the click of your fingertips.
And we try to ban these things, restrict the sale of things, control the behaviour they encourage.
If we’re all being really honest, wouldn’t it be easier to ban kids?
Not only would we no longer have to worry about their plummeting numeracy and literacy rates and skyrocketing addictions to all manner of modern perils, imagine the money we’d save on education.
What this issue really boils down to is parents and their ability to guide children through their formative years. Read more >
