New Zealand Listener Issue 3, 2022

Early evidence from South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first detected, shows that Omicron infections appear to have less serious symptoms than previous Covid mutations and result in fewer hospitalisations. That means our Covid response should immediately shift to ensuring our frontline, community-based general practice teams are resourced to be able to manage the inevitable surge that is coming. We can no longer say we are protected by our closed borders. Omicron is already in New Zealand, and if we look at what is happening with Covid cases in the UK – a country now with broadly similar vaccination rates to ours – we need to plan for, on average, each general practice in New Zealand providing tailored daily care and support for more than 45 of its patients, plus…

Police Association president Chris Cahill’s idea of a fully armed “modern” police force is a plan to increase the number of New Zealanders shot (“Call to arms”, December 18). Overseas, general arming has increased violence, making everyone, police included, less safe. The injuries and deaths are disproportionately suffered by people in margin-alised communities and with mental-health challenges. The article said firearm incidents in 2019 were the highest for a decade, but the police confirmed to the Council of Licenced Firearms Owners recently, following an enquiry under the Official Information Act, that numbers fell in the 2020/21 year. Police had arms presented at them only 24 times. The threat to police staff is overstated. Only 13% of the constables who answered the Police Association survey claimed to have been threatened by a firearm in…

“Character, the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life, is the source from which self-respect springs.”– Joan Didion“To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.”– Bell Hooks“I do love you, and I just wish I’d been born 10 years earlier, I might have been in with a chance. Lots of love and thanks for being cool.”– Helena Bonham Carter reads a signed autograph addressed to her by co-star Daniel Radcliffe on TV’s Harry Potter reunion special.“The fact that 2021 is already over is proof that time also flies when you are NOT having fun.”– seen on Twitter“I have no regrets at all. None. I consider myself to be the luckiest old broad on two feet.”– Betty…

1. Which film includes the quote, “We all go a little mad sometimes”? ❑ Psycho ❑ The Omen ❑ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ❑ Rosemary’s Baby 2. Which of these is considered to be New Zealand’s smallest endemic bird? ❑ Silvereye/tauhou ❑ Fantail/pīwakawaka ❑ Rifleman/tītitipounamu ❑ Saddleback/tīeke 3. Who invented the ZX Spectrum home computer and a diminutive battery electric vehicle called the C5? ❑ Bill Hewlett ❑ David Packard ❑ Elon Musk ❑ Clive Sinclair 4. Which book includes the line: “It sounds plausible enough tonight,” said the Medical Man; “but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning”? ❑ The Time Machine ❑ Jurassic Park ❑ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ❑ Gone Girl 5. In Slavic folklore, the witch Baba Yaga lives in a hut that stands on what? ❑ A giant tree stump ❑ Slabs of gold ❑ A pile of bones ❑ Chicken legs 6.…

The QI elves are a team of writers and comedians who find the answers to impossible questions, doing the research for the long-running QI TV series, podcasts and the spin-offbooks. For the next little while, we’ll be running some of their finest findings: the weird, wonderful, witty and wise, from their latest book, Funny You Should Ask … Again. Why do we have two nostrils rather than one big one? Having two nostrils lets us detect a wider range of smells and do so more quickly than we would with just one larger one. When analysing smells, our nostrils take it in turn to be the “main” detector. You can check which one this currently is by holding one side of your nose closed, taking a breath and then switching sides – one…

This year marks the anniversary of an institution that is so inextricably tied up with British identity that it is loathed almost as much as it is loved. In 1922, the BBC started out as the British Broadcasting Company in a cramped office downwind from the mighty buildings of Fleet Street. No one seemed to know what its purpose was, only that there was a new technology – wireless – that was ripe for development. A few years later, it turned itself into a corporation and won the right to report news – a prohibition originally won by Fleet Street’s anxious press barons. Thereafter, it grew and grew to become not just the biggest and most-trusted broadcaster in the UK, but also one that extended through the colonies and then the…