New Zealand Listener Issue 52 2021

I figured out a few years ago why I love planes so much. The reason I’m so fond of the whine of a jet engine is that it’s the sound of a magic carpet ride to somewhere that’s not here. British philosopher Alain de Botton summed it up so well in 2002, in his book The Art of Travel: “How pleasant to hold in mind, through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere.” Okay, so that book hasn’t aged so well. The world’s runways have been much quieter than usual over the past couple of years, thanks to a certain pandemic. The bush-clad hills of the Waitākere Ranges, where I to live, have also been much…

FINALISTS Christopher Luxon: “I intend to keep the focus on our Key assets.”– Dean Scanlen, WhangāreiLuxon: “We are going to increase National support by this much!” –John Mills, ChristchurchNicola Willis (thinking): “Rule No 1, Luxie, never demonstrate a measurement with thumb and forefinger…”– Kate Highfield, HastingsLuxon: “So, we measured them and I won because Simon’s is only this big.”– Paul Hoek, FeildingLuxon: “Yes, I know she follows me everywhere this closely and says nothing … but I am CEO.”– Alan Hough, BethlehemWillis: “As a well-grounded high-flyer, he’s now our foxymoron.”– Alan Belcher, ChristchurchLuxon: “Well, about this long, actually, but my wife wasn’t keen on the blue colour.”– Brian Farrant Caption Competition {listenercaption@aremedia.co.nz} TO ENTER Send your captions for the photo at left to listenercaption@aremedia.co.nz, with “Caption Competition No 441” in the subject line. Entries…

Warm thanks to Professor Richard Dawkins (Letters, December 18) for what is the best letter I’ve read this year. The craven idiocy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in supporting the vacuous claims of Māori “knowledge” bearing some nebulous kinship with science represents the nadir of the society’s integrity. Let’s go back to, say, 1964. It was a good year for most of us, with no anti-vaxxers and very few Creationist Christians (you could actually argue about religion, which we often did as university students), and although climate change was not on our radar, the more thoughtful of us had an uneasy feeling that there was major trouble ahead. Jeff D Upton(Darfield) At last, the voice of sanity. As a retired research scientist, I participated in a number of useful conferences hosted…

“Who created RealMe and why do they hate people?” – seen on Twitter“I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artists that exist now and the ones that come after.” – Musician Drake on the 2020 Grammys. He has chosen to withdraw both his 2022 nominations“I don’t imagine it’s easy to manage a caucus where you have three past leaders within it … so I do wish him good luck. That wasn’t a dig, by the way. It’s a statement of fact.” – Jacinda Ardern“You kept things stable, you stood up for democracy and you never once appeared on…

Why do we pull crackers at Christmas time? It all started in the 1840s, when a London confectioner and baker called Tom Smith took a trip to Paris. There he fell in love with the French bonbon – a sugared almond wrapped in twisted tissue paper. Smith brought the idea back to the UK, and it was a hit. He started selling huge quantities, especially at Christmas. They were mostly given as gifts to young, single women, so he began to include a small note inside the tissue wrapper, usually a love motto or a sentimental poem, which went down well with his Victorian clientele. Although Smith patented his first cracking device in 1847, it wasn’t perfected until 1861, when he named his new product Bangs of Expectation. You didn’t unwrap these; you…

The unwillingness of many governments and companies to condemn Chinese disinformation about the plight of tennis star Peng Shuai has revealed a lack of principles. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” is a quote often attributed to George Orwell (real name Eric Blair). The word “Orwellian” is overused, but if the writer were to come back from the dead, China would certainly be one of his subjects. The Chinese regime understands information is power, so it controls what its citizens see and hear at home while spreading disinformation abroad. Sometimes, as in the case of Covid, the Chinese messaging abroad and at home is more or less the same – we are better than the West – but not so when the issue is the behaviour…