One of the underappreciated joys of parenthood is lying to your children. Read more

Moving to New Zealand in 2003 was a bit like stepping into an underpowered time machine. The new-release movies in theatre were ones that had hit the big screen in the US months earlier. TV series lagged by months, or even a season. Some web-based services seemed years behind. Read more

It is too easy to convince ourselves of things that are not true. Read more

Sometimes, being at the front of the queue isn't a good thing. Read more

The Government can pass whatever legislation it likes regulating the relationship between landlords and tenants. Some of it might make sense; some of it might wind up harming the people it’s intended to help. Read more

New Zealand’s basic bargain around firearms ownership and policing always seemed rather sensible. It was very much a feature of New Zealand’s general “Outside of the Asylum” approach to policy. Read more

There was a great old The Three Stooges bit about plumbing that teaches us a lot about regulation. Read more

In a world without laws about fists meeting noses, it would make a lot more sense to prohibit us from punching someone else on the nose without their consent than to ban us from punching ourselves on the nose. It might make sense to ban both, but it would be ridiculous to start by banning people from punching themselves. Read more

I often describe New Zealand as the Outside of the Asylum – the last sane place in a world going mad. Read more

I don’t know if anyone ever really believed manufacturing televisions in New Zealand made sense. Controls in place until New Zealand’s reforms prohibited importing fully assembled televisions, to encourage manufacture and assembly in New Zealand. But it resulted in nonsense practices guaranteed to make televisions more expensive. Read more

Suppose I told you that anticompetitive activity right here in New Zealand was behind a transfer of wealth amounting to, at the very least, hundreds of billions of dollars. Read more

Despite all your predictions to the contrary, the children still have not colluded against me. Read more

When Arthur Dent complained that he had not been informed of Council’s plans to bulldoze his house for a bypass, Mr Prosser, the Council officer, calmly told him that the plans had been on display for months - in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’. Arthur found the plans there the day before the bulldozers showed up at his door. Read more

This week, the Chinese government celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s 1949 takeover of the country. Read more