Back in early 2010, I attended the New Zealand Institute of Directors’ Company Directors Course. Frankly, I did it to test a hunch and, as usual, hunches are right. It was a week well spent, on reflection, this is what I brought away… The role of an independent director is to act in the best [...]
If only it were so simple… The second day on this saga was spent being transferred between NZ Customs and NZ Post with a particular nuance: the NZ Post people were customs brokers and the Customs people were in the Mail Centre. Finally, a breakthrough! I was given an email address to which I sent [...]
The other night we attended the NZSO’s opening concert for 2012 at which Perry So guided the orchestra through “Yellow River Piano Concerto” and Beethoven’s 6th, the “Pastoral Symphony”. Observations from the stalls… Perry took exquisite care of his soloist. It was just the small gestures, the glances to ensure they were in the same [...]
New Zealand is an island nation, our economic livelihood depends on our imports and exports and the processes around them. We also have low productivity, I wonder why? Here’s my recent experience. On 7 January 2012 I ordered a product from a supplier in Germany, it was picked, packed and despatched on the 9th, a [...]
Economically simplistic but still perhaps the cleverest and simplest description of the debt problems facing both the US and many European counties. Why the U.S. was downgraded: U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000 National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000 Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household [...]