Ross Meurant: End of the Rainbow

As a kid I was told, that at the end of the rainbow, there was a pot of gold.

In 1980 Rt Hon Rob Muldoon (as he was then) responding to Bob Jones (as he was then), demonstrated astonishing prescience, when he said that by 2030 the population of NZ (which at the time was 3 million) would be 2 million. (1)

He went on to describe “a future world in which national barriers were virtually non-existent, in which trade and people flowed freely” and the huge cities which at the time were generally regarded as “dangerous and unpleasant, would instead become meccas of excitement”, whereas NZ would become, “a quiet retreat, its youth and its vitally creative people constantly moving abroad, particularly to Australia”.

Clive Bibby: “Money is for nothing”

That old Dire Straits favourite is a “tongue in cheek” parody of what we all know from personal experience.

However, one of our enduring problems is that a large percentage of the world’s population actually believes it has a place in society which they refer to as either “affirmative action” or welfare expenditure.