Articles by Richard Prosser

The headline for this article is a double entendre, which I’m pointing out just in case anyone was thinking about getting offended. It’s Tick-The-Box time coming up again shortly in New Zealand, and where some folks may still not be completely au fait with the vagaries of the MMP voting system – whilst others, being more nerdy in a political sense, are better up with the play –…

I had a crappy day the other day, quite literally. The macerator pump for our toilet and greywater system chose Saturday morning to put itself into Coronavirus lockdown, so I spent the day lying on my belly in a two-and-a-half-footby-Very-Long tunnel under the building, headlight torch on, up to my elbows in the stuff that toilet macerator pumps deal with. I felt like one of my…

There’s only one show in town right now, and it’s a chart-topper. I’m actually somewhat loath to launch into coronavirus, given that it’s such a rapidly-moving piece of theatre and I’m writing this a week ahead of publication; but regardless of how the spread of the world’s newest and most popular disease unfolds over the next fortnight, there are truths interwoven through the…

As this edition goes to press, New Zealand and the world are approaching the anniversary of the horrific events in Christchurch on March 15th 2019. Nearly a year on from that dreadful day, what has changed about New Zealand – both for the better, and more pertinently, for the worse? On March 15th, 2019 I was in a shop in Rangiora. As a Police patrol car went screaming past in the…

Through all of history, everywhere in the world, recorded or otherwise, it has been proclaimed that The End is Nigh. Preachers, politicians, protestors, pundits of every ilk and hue; from the pulpit to the podium to the sandwich board in the street, all manner of doomsayers have sung and shouted and chanted their various predictions as to the impending demise of Mankind. One day,…

Whatever reservations one might have regarding the wisdom of holding an election on the day of a full moon, Britain has just done just that, and the result has been a stunning but completely predictable victory for Boris Johnson and the Conservatives. I say completely predictable because many mainstream media polls failed to predict it; and much accompanying commentary in the…

Right now, in New Zealand, a quiet revolution is taking place. It isn’t technological, or a change to the education system, or a new and widespread understanding of an holistic approach to health and wellbeing. Rather, it involves the steady, systematic, and stealthy overturning of more than eight centuries of established rights and freedoms that New Zealanders have inherited…

Seven hundred-odd kilometres south of Papakura, as the crow flies, the Department of Conservation is waging war on introduced pests. Great stuff, many people might think, giving the matter a quick nod of approval before carrying on with their busy lives. This is what DOC does, after all. It conserves. That’s what conservation means, doesn’t it? They work tirelessly to preserve…