Author Archives: thesentinel2012

This is my photo of the good ship Arahura, on its last voyage in commercial service, linking the North and South Islands in New Zealand. It is coming into Wellington Harbour, after leaving Picton three hours earlier, and I’m standing … Continue reading →

Ingrid Hipkiss is the relatively new anchor on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report programme. She was recruited from the private sector media agency called Newshub, and was a regular weather presenter, and then briefly anchored their late news programme. Newshub … Continue reading →

This may look like a meeting of an academic department’s admin committee but it is actually one of the first sessions of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid Response in New Zealand. Note that there is no formal … Continue reading →

It’s been a hard few weeks for rock music fans, and the shock announcement of Robbie Robertson’s death is not an easy one to bear just now. It happened during a summer day in L.A., but here it was the … Continue reading →

This is a miscellany of items from two separate auction purchases recently. The political campaign buttons were a small part of a mixed collection, which were mostly from volunteer organisations, and one-off buttons for school reunions, for what seemed to … Continue reading →

Why have these two people become a Knight and Dame for doing well-remunerated jobs poorly? So not long after Dr Ashley Bloomfield receives his gong from the Governor-General, we have the public holiday for the King’s Birthday. It isn’t actually … Continue reading →

Chris Hipkins, the boy from Lower Hutt who has assumed Ardern’s legacy of identity politics I was going to write something on May Day, which still provides a focus on trade union and labour mobilisation around the world. Not just … Continue reading →

This is the Ministry of Health in central Wellington, just up from the Parliament, and commanding a position above the urban motorway. It used to be the scene of press conferences on Covid and presumably the centre for the response. … Continue reading →

In the dramatic second episode of Survivors the engineer Greg encounters the aristocratic Anne, who has shacked up with the unfortunate Vic Thatcher. Vic has had an accident with a tractor and his legs were pinned, before Greg got him … Continue reading →

Professor Peter Openshaw told the BBC’s global audience yesterday (at 10am British time) that the mRNA vaccines have not caused serious cases of myocarditis. This appeared to be in response to an earlier interview on BBC News, that only their … Continue reading →