by Paul Thomas | Jun 27, 2015 | Sports
Paul Thomas2015-06-27 For years the English satirical magazine Private Eye has boasted about the Curse of Gnome, the bad karma that tends to befall powerful individuals who take legal action against the Eye to prevent it publishing embarrassing material or in revenge... 
by Paul Thomas | Jun 12, 2015 | Strange Days Indeed
Paul Thomas2015-06-12 Jerry Collins’ fatal accident is a stark reminder that there’s one form of sudden death to which we’re all susceptible. We think of death on the roads as something that happens to other people. But when that other person is someone we feel we... 
by Paul Thomas | May 2, 2015 | Sports
Paul Thomas2015-05-02 Many top-line athletes are combinations of beauty and the beast but few more so than Uruguayan soccer player Luis Suarez. Playing for Barcelona in a Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain, Suarez scored two breathtaking goals both of... 
by Paul Thomas | Mar 14, 2015 | Sports
Paul Thomas2015-03-14 Almost 30 years on, Buck Shelford’s scrotum is back in the headlines. A new book by French investigative journalist Pierre Ballester (sic) exposes widespread drug use in French rugby during the 1980s and 90s. Ballester quotes the French team... 
by Paul Thomas | Jan 30, 2015 | Kiwiana
Paul Thomas2015-01-30 Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker-prize winning novel The Luminaries shows she knows a thing or two about astrology, but I doubt she foresaw the stoush triggered by her remarks at an Indian literary festival. It was a heavyweight clash: in Catton’s... 