New Zealand Listener Issue 51, 2022

The vampires arrive every day about 4am. You can hear their trolley wheels rattling on the hard floor as they come into the ward. At least they check the vital signs are good before they take our blood. We know vampire is a harsh term for hard-working nurses, but it isn’t exactly a social hour of the day. The blood samples will dictate today’s medications and infusions. What will be the magic recipe for each of us today, I wonder? I am one of four blood cancer patients in Motutapu ward Room 3, or Red Cell 3 as we like to call it, thinking our double meaning very clever. Call us patients or inmates, it doesn’t matter; we were total strangers before we arrived. But in three days, we have formed…

WINNING CAPTION Niels Jonker, Wellington FINALISTS Rebecca Good: “Can I lend you a hand?” – Ann Neale, Nelson Jacinda Ardern: “Some of those overseas reporters are so amazingly courteous.” – Philip Lynch, Upper Hutt Ardern: “Oh, goodness, no, I won’t need an identity tag. Everyone knows who I am.” – Niels Jonker, Wellington Good: “It’s no time for Over the Rainbow.” – Mavis Irik, Lower Hutt Good: “Trudeau wanted to know if you required a lift?” – Conal Atkins, Nelson Ardern: “Oh, no! Of all the days to forget to put my bra on!” – Isabel Neyland, Auckland Caption Competition {listenercaption@aremedia.co.nz} TO ENTER Send your captions for the photo at right to listenercaption@aremedia.co.nz, with “Caption Competition No 491” in the subject line. Alternatively, entries can be posted to “Caption Competition No 491”, NZ Listener, PO Box 52122, Kingsland, Auckland 1352. Entries…

Jane Clifton, in her “Young and voteless” column (Politics, December 3), makes a number of interesting points regarding lowering the voting age to 16. A key part of the Supreme Court’s judgment was the inconsistencies regarding age (eg, paying taxes, age of consent), yet ironically there have been a number of appeals in the courts in which a key defence argument has been that teenagers and children didn’t have the neurological development of adults. Admittedly, as Clifton notes, you could well argue that many adult voters suffer from the same issue. However, a voter is considered to be an adult, therefore here’s a question for those who are advocating the change of voter age to 16: are they prepared to accept other, less-attractive, logical consequential legal changes such as the lowering of…

“One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.”– John Steinbeck“I would seriously rather be in a long line at the [Department of Motor Vehicles] than eat with people I don’t know.”– Anne Lamott“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”– John Lennon“There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.”– Martin Scorsese“When my kids grow up, I’m gonna go to their house and ask for food and then change my mind the second they give it to me.”– seen on Twitter“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”– Franz Kafka“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”– Eleanor Roosevelt“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”– John Keats“It seems like our first food memories, no…

1. The longest river in New Zealand is the Waikato. Which is the second longest? ❑ Clutha/Mata-Au❑ Mataura❑ Whanganui❑ Taieri 2. Who painted Girl with a Pearl Earring? ❑ Rembrandt❑ Vermeer❑ Bruegel❑ Frans Hals 3. What is the capital of Latvia? ❑ Vilnius❑ Minsk❑ Riga❑ Warsaw 4. Tulip mania, in which bulbs reached astronomical prices in what is now the Netherlands, occurred in which decade? ❑ 1590s❑ 1630s❑ 1710s❑ 1840s 5. A backlog, a reserve supply or accumulation, originally referred to a wood log at the back of a fire. True or false? ❑ True❑ False 6. Who is the stepfather of actress Kate Hudson? ❑ Kurt Russell❑ Bruce Paltrow❑ Martin Sheen❑ Dennis Quaid 7. What was the job of the gongfermor? ❑ Ratcatcher❑ Cleaner of cesspits❑ Leech gatherer❑ Leather tanner 8. Which city is the capital of Canada? ❑ Quebec❑ Vancouver❑ Toronto❑ Ottawa 9. Which…

At the height of the post-George Floyd-murder boom in books highlighting white privilege, I was going to interview Layla Saad, British-born author of Me and White Supremacy. Her book featured the standard analysis of several similar bestsellers, which was that racism was based on an idea of white supremacy–all white people were white supremacists, whether they recognised it or not, and any resistance to that fact only proved the racism of the denier. What fascinated me most was that Saad mentioned she had left Britain some years before and moved to a place where she didn’t suffer racism or sexism, somewhere she felt at home: Qatar. I remember looking forward to discussing this unlikely Gulf utopia with her – after all, Qatari women cannot leave the country without the permission of…