John McLean: Dame Patsy, forever on commission

Reddy, Set, Go. Please, please...just GO

In May 2024, Dame Patricia Lee Reddy turned 70 years of age. That’s the biblical threescore years and ten. Psalm 90/10 in the King James Version of the Bible goes like this:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away

John McLean: Key indicators

Inconvenient truths about the former New Zealand Prime Minister

Aotearoa is a strange and changeable lady. In her youth, she didn’t take herself too seriously. New Zealand satirists A. K. Grant and Tom Scott, in their superb early 80s mock history of New Zealand The Paua and the Glory: the story of New Zealand's rise to international insignificance, amusingly speculated on the origin of “Aotearoa” …without being cancelled. (Their thesis was that, on arrival of the first Polynesian canoe on New Zealand shores, one of the Tānes instructed one of the Wāhines, “Out eh Aroha”.)