Columns
Paul writes a weekly column on current affairs for the New Zealand Herald and is the New Zealand Listener’s sports columnist.
The articles below are presented with permission from (and thanks to) those organisations.
2017 Sports Quiz
There’s more to sport than high shots, low blows and fine lines. Test your familiarity with sport’s rich tapestry by tackling this quick quiz of the 2017 sporting year!
What Now For The Trump Show?
Among the many things Donald Trump either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about is the Christmas message of peace on earth and goodwill to men.
What Exactly Is Trump?
As we count down to a presidential election in which the rest of the world will feel it has even more of a stake and less of a say than usual, we wonder: what exactly is Trump?
Obama - Lone Adult in the Schoolyard
As never before, the international community wishes it had a say in the American presidential election.
Is Patriotism Flagging?
History, they say, is written by the victors and few victors have relished the opportunity as much as Sir Paul Beresford, MP.
Terror Fails as Long as We Stay Grounded
Are the terrorists winning? Donald Trump thinks they are – “totally.”
Maria Sharapova and Meldonium
So tennis superstar Maria Sharapova has tested positive to a banned substance, been dumped by some big brand sponsors and faces a lengthy ban. Oh dear. How sad.
Martin Crowe: Requiem for a Perfectionist
Two of the new faces in the 1977/78 Auckland cricket training squad were a journeyman all-rounder (me) and a 15 year old Auckland Grammar boy named Martin Crowe.
Choice is not a Matter of Taste
It seems most Kiwis fit into at least one of the following categories on the question of whether to stick with the current flag or replace it with the Lockwood design.
Big and Bigger - Jonah Lomu
Jonah Lomu’s death was a reminder of sport’s essentially ephemeral nature and its paradoxical capacity to engage emotions and transcend race, language and geography.
Disregarding the Truth Works for Candidates
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and, if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it.
It’s Our Game
And with a single result we were free. The All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup triumph is laden with significance but perhaps its single greatest merit from the New Zealand rugby public ‘s perspective is that it delivers peace of mind…
Boksing on
Given that the build-up often verged on the surreal, the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup quarter-final performance against France was appropriately out of this world.
Eyes on the ball
In November 2013, when the All Blacks were in London preparing to play England, a Daily Telegraph journalist exploited lax security to sneak into the hotel room where team meetings were held.
Us vs them and us
Given that New Zealand is the world’s leading exporter of rugby players, it’s perhaps appropriate that the All Blacks were on the receiving end of the most famous performance by a foreign-born player in international rugby history.
Putin’s stragetic Syria win more a Russian bear trap
Suddenly we’re back in a Cold War world in which, depending on your taste in metaphors, the Russian bear is on the prowl or the Russian chess master is several moves ahead of his floundering western opponent.
Yesterday’s Heroes
As that unlikely alliance of our parents and the Rolling Stones often pointed out, you can’t always get what you want. In my 2015 wish-list (Sport, January 31), I expressed the hope that no-one would die of heat exhaustion at the Australian Tennis Open (check)…
Making a pig’s ear of managing PM’s sins
Imagine being British Prime Minister David Cameron’s public relations adviser. Conservative Party headquarters, central London. A foppish young man sits at a desk working on a press release headed “Queen could face firing squad if Corbyn becomes PM.” The phone rings…
Heads we win, tails you lose
You could argue – as many have – that test cricket is an absurdity.
As electorates convulse, there is silliness afoot
A narcissistic blowhard leads the Republican presidential race. A bearded weirdo leads the British Labour Party. Australia goes through prime ministers like a banana republic on fast-forward. What’s going on here?
It takes a hardish heart to live in a lucky country
Burning Monk Syndrome (BMS) has always been with us but is becoming more prevalent due to advances in communications technology. The condition takes its name from the periodic spectacle of monks setting themselves on fire to draw the world’s attention to the suffering being inflicted on their country, often but not always Myanmar.
Corbyn’s socialist quest likely to end in tears
They say there’s nothing new under the sun and, as usual, they are pretty much on the money. Fashions, trends, fads, waves, movements come and go. Then the wheel turns and they come around again…
Trump and being an ass
For the sake of argument let’s assume Donald Trump is, in American parlance, an asshole. So the question is: why is an asshole – and not just any old asshole but someone widely regarded as a gigantic asshole, one of the world’s biggest – holding a commanding poll lead…
Republican Party Trump Card
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz called it “the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history.” What was he referring to?
Polynesian All Blacks
Next week’s All Blacks-Samoa test in Apia will be, among other things, a celebration of the Samoan influence in New Zealand rugby.
The Ugly Game
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 it.
Jerry Collins
Jerry Collins’ fatal accident is a stark reminder that there’s one form of sudden death to which we’re all susceptible.
Luis Suarez
Many top-line athletes are combinations of beauty and the beast but few more so than Uruguayan soccer player Luis Suarez.
Buck Shelford
Almost 30 years on, Buck Shelford’s scrotum is back in the headlines.
Eleanor Catton
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.