Damien Grant: Tamatha Paul calls English ‘a bastard language’ - She’s missing the point

English is a bastard language, claims Tamatha Paul. She declared, with a confidence devoid of comprehension: “It’s a bastardisation of Greek, Old Norse, Latin…”

Seems disrespectful. Let’s break this down.

Damien Grant: The tax lesson that starts with a surf trip....

....and ends with a warning for Labour

Who is Ceteris Paribus? Sounds like a Roman general who came to a sticky end fighting Asterix in the backwoods of Gaul. Sadly not. That is as fun as this column gets.

Let me paint you a picture; you painting a fence for $300 a day. It isn’t much but it is honest work. Enough to pay the rent, Netflix and a few beers come Friday.

Damien Grant: Ex-Navy officer Chris Penk can see the iceberg ahead....

......yet National threw him overboard

Last Wednesday I was presenting to the Construction Industry Council. An excellent organisation, despite their lapse in judgement regarding the calibre of their guest speakers.

As I waited my turn, between checking my phone for the revelation on who would emerge as this week’s Prime Minister and silently checking X, a senior executive from the construction division of MBIE was addressing the conference on upcoming and ongoing reforms.

Damien Grant: One blunt speech, one apology, and a Prime Minister losing control

There is, the Prime Minister observed, a “parent-child mentality” when it comes to businesses relationship with government. “ I have literally sat in boardrooms across New Zealand, and the conversation goes: 'I wonder what the government's going to do? I wonder what the government's going to think?'. Who cares what the government thinks or does? Our job is to be adult, adult, adult.”

The Prime Minister was right although I’m not sure it was wise to say it out loud.

Damien Grant: NZ’s inflation is moving faster than you think....

Like an accelerating e-scooter, NZ’s inflation is moving faster than you think

Picture the Waitemata. It’s expansive. The bridge to your left, Rangitoto on the right, CBD behind you and an e-scooter weaving wildly just out of your vision. Ice cream in hand, pistachio and mango, clear sky allowing the winter sun to warm your soul. We really are lucky to live in such a beautiful country.

When the idiot on the e-scooter ploughs into your side, tipping you forward so your face breaks the fall and the ice cream scatters across the creosote, which matters more; the speed that the e-scooter was travelling at the moment of impact or, alternatively, how far it had been ridden in the previous hour?

Let’s talk inflation.

Damien Grant: New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious

Dear reader. Last weekend I went to the New Zealand First conference and election launch at the Due Drop Events Centre in Manukau. You know the one. It is meant to resemble a Polynesian fale. Reminds me of two praying mantises engaged in a death match.

Moving on.

For three decades the Odysseus of New Zealand politics has navigated the turbulent seas of electoral fortune. He fell to Helen Clark’s sirens touting the baubles of office, only to wrench himself free. He was caught under Ardern’s spell to spend three years trapped by his own Calypso before being tossed into the lotus island of obscurity.

Damien Grant: Inside the Cerberus coalition....

Inside the Cerberus coalition: The deep ideological divides behind the political growls

As you approach Hades, treading into eternity, you traverse the River Styx. The toxic stream that Achilles was dipped in by the ankle. Upon entering the underworld, you will be confronted by a monstrous three-headed dog on his eternal patrol.

Mythology does not explain how Cerberus coordinates his duties. Three minds. One body. Does it bite itself or act with a hive mind? The questions that challenged the ancients remain unresolved.

Let us examine our own Cerberus. National. Act. New Zealand First.

Damien Grant: The maths behind TOP’s biggest promise falls apart

It had been my optimistic belief that I could ignore The Opportunities Party. Like Scientology, Aromatherapy and anything to do with Gwyneth Paltrow, some things are so ridiculous no commentary is necessary.

Sadly; it seems some of you have been telling pollsters you intend to vote for a party that was so moribund they advertised for their current leader by posting in the Situations Vacant section of the internet.

Damien Grant: Why default is inevitable under our current fiscal trajectory

I’d ignored the Budget. I am good at ignoring things. Dental appointments. Column deadlines. Parking fines. Eventually they catch up with me. Like death, taxes and tooth decay.

It was the American polymath Benjamin Franklin who is credited with the quip that only death and taxes can be certain and a few wags have pondered that perhaps he meant debt and taxes. It’s a good joke but what Franklin actually wrote was “... excepté la mort et les impôts.”

That’s French. Franklin was writing in French. Dette and mort don’t rhyme. And given everyone his age had false teeth I think tooth decay should have been included. I am off-track.

Damien Grant: If Chris Luxon is proud of our nuclear-free position.....

If Chris Luxon is proud of our nuclear-free position he should not be leading a centre-right political party

During a cold evening in late January 1940 the First Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, gave a speech on the dire situation on the continent. Chamberlain was still Prime Minister but the MP for Epping gave a sombre assessment on neutral powers seeking refuge in anonymity.

Damien Grant: Buckle up, the future is going to be magical and terrifying

Predictions are tricky. In 1943 the chairman of IBM speculated the world would have a demand for, maybe, five computers. Al Gore declared there would be no snow on Mt Kilimanjaro by 2016. Thomas Edison famously stated that the “…baby of the 21st century will be rocked in a steel cradle”. The inventor of the light bulb didn’t foresee the rise of plastics.

I have a fraction of the insight of these great minds and insufficient wisdom or humility to prevent me from joining them in making absurdly incorrect predictions. Buckle up.

Damien Grant: Nicola Willis talks fiscal discipline — then Winston Peters enters the chat

We saw two very different visions of our economic future last week, from two parties in the same government. Let’s take a closer look.

Nicola Willis has discovered fiscal discipline. She has promised her budget will begin a process of reducing the public service headcount by nearly nine thousand and cutting most agencies operating budgets by 2% in the coming year and 5% in subsequent years.

Damien Grant: The Estonia trip, the ‘Mean Girls’ parody and the fall of an FMA chair

There is an absurdity at the heart of our regulatory state. Civil servants, most of whom have never run a chicken coop, are given the state’s authority to regulate a sector that few have the competence to participate in. Imagine asking me to judge Japanese poetry. You get the idea.

Those that can, do. Those that cannot, regulate.

Damien Grant: The grand solution Wayne Brown believes has New Zealand’s best interests at heart

“They are all mad Damien,” His Worship the Mayor advised me. I wasn’t certain to who Wayne Brown was referring. We were at his victory party so I assumed he was being dismissive of his supporters but I’d misunderstood. Brown’s irritation was at the wider political class. “Idiots. Most of them.”

There are, Brown believes, sensible, competent and moderate people in both major parties. There are also, he has observed, individuals of less outstanding calibre in the minor parties.

Damien Grant: Chris Bishop has emerged as the main pretender to a shaky crown.....

Chris Bishop has emerged as the main pretender to a shaky crown. How shall we assess his performance?

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent bishop?" cried King Henry the Second, yelling to the ceiling in frustration at the antics of the archbishop of Canterbury, the soon-to-be-murdered Thomas Becket. It is, if you forgive the literary fudge alert readers will have noticed, a sentiment our Prime Minister may be feeling as his premiership is undermined by the persistent stories that the current Hutt South MP has been counting the numbers. It is also a lesson in being clear with your retinue on your intentions.

Damien Grant: There’s no reason to listen to millionaires complaining about mining projects

I have never been to Central Otago. There is every likelihood I will slither into my crypt without stepping into that pristine environment, treading on the brown grasslands or gazing at the uninspiring vistas that serve little purpose other than as a backdrop for postcards no one will ever send.

Somewhere in the wilderness that has never been troubled by my walking boots is the Dunstan Mountains. Until I began the research for this column, I’d never heard of this aspect of our geographical heritage and, well, I’d have been happy if that remained the case.

However, this obscure and untrampled slice of Kiwi Paradise is getting attention because multi-millionaire actor, vintner and local activist, Sir Nigel (Sam) Neill, is upset that someone wants to mine these hills for gold.

Damien Grant: Hug your kids today. They may be drafted tomorrow

I don’t often cite Karl Marx but the gentleman wasn’t without insight. In a letter to his colleague Frederick Engles in 1863 he wrote about decades that passed without incident “… though these may again [be] succeeded by days into which 20 years are compressed.”

This is the genesis of the saying that nothing happens for decades and then decades happen in a week. This past week seems one of those.

Damien Grant: Is this moment that the PM forces me to eat my words? I hope so

While our collective focus is on the impending economic collapse driven by a lack of petroleum, my attention has been diverted by a speech given by a relatively obscure, but important, government apparatchik. The Reserve Bank chief economist Paul Conway.

The problem with government economists is their language is constrained by the necessities of convention. They would describe an invasion of Orcs pouring over the balustrades howling with bloodlust as an incoming negative external shock with the potential for adverse economic outcomes in the short to medium term.

Damien Grant: John Key and Jacinda Ardern both turned to debt when disaster hit

There are many revelations in the Covid report that a cantankerous columnist with libertarian inclinations could focus on but I am going to bring your attention to this one;

“… a country’s opportunity to adopt an exclusion/elimination policy is largely contingent on … being a high-income nation … that is, on New Zealand’s ability to efficiently produce the goods and services demanded in global markets, supported by prudent economic policies.”

Damien Grant: To Helen Clark - Sorry, but international law won't stop an Iranian nuke

How hard is international law? I see that Helen Clark has joined a growing phalanx of freshly graduated experts in the field so I thought I’d give it a go.


The basis of international law is the UN Charter which stipulates that one sovereign nation cannot attack another. Seems fair. However, Article 51 has an exception.