Chris Trotter

THE EXPRESSIONS of stunned horror that greeted the news that Donald Trump had won the 2016 Presidential Election spoke volumes.

THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S new “Culturally Arranged Marriage Visitors Visa” offers a powerful demonstration of multiculturalism at work. It signals to all those persons intending to settle in New Zealand that their traditional cultural practices will not be forbidden or discouraged by the authorities of their prospective new home. Regardless of how jarring those practices might be to the native-born population, official tolerance is guaranteed.

If the members of Generation X and the Millennial Generation really want to improve their lifestyles, then they should force up the price of complicity in class oppression by threatening to embrace or, even better, adopt for a generation or two, the precepts of Marx’s class struggle.

CHRIS LUXON has some explaining to do. He has been identified as an evangelical Christian, which, if you’ll pardon the religious cliché, covers a multitude of sins. That’s why I believe Chris Luxon owes New Zealanders a working definition of evangelical Christianity – and how he intends to practice it.

SHANE JONES may just have come up with a sure-fire MMP threshold-busting election strategy. He has committed NZ First to formulating a comprehensive “population policy”. If handled adroitly, this exercise will likely evoke a strong electoral response from “native” New Zealanders. Almost certainly powerful enough to guarantee the party’s return to Parliament.

WHERE’S THE PLAN? Across the planet massive protests, like Californian forest fires, rage out of control. In Santiago, Chile, hundreds-of-thousands…

Not that she didn’t value the job. It wasn’t all that taxing and the pay was great. But is this what a degree in Political Science and English Literature got you? Managing “Paulabots” in a National Party troll farm?

WHO WILL RESCUE TV3? Almost certainly not the private sector. Not only is the commercial free-to-air broadcasting model broken, but TV3 remains burdened by its previous owners’ insatiable appetite for debt.

PERHAPS THE BEST WAY to assess the quality of the NZ Herald’s “Land of the Long White Cloud” is by studying Tom Clarke’s characterisation of James Cook. Clarke begins by making Cook a member of the British aristocracy. He gives him the accent of Hugh Laurie’s Bertie Wooster, along with most of his mannerisms. Clarke then proceeds to deliver a false description of Cook’s mission – complete with jokes about planting flags and claiming countries.

WHAT’S HAPPENED to our universities?