What a brilliant take‑down by New Zealand’s best columnist, Mike Hoskings, of the appalling Greta Thunberg.

Being nagged and insulted with melodramatic hyperbole by a child is deeply irritating.

Greta is a crashing bore, plainly relishing her new found Joan of Arc fame. She’s a certainty for the Nobel Peace Prize, an award already stained by some of its past injudicious nominations.

We’ve had three years of non‑stop Trumpian outrages and three years of non‑stop Democrat desperate calling for impeachment action.

The over publicised and sometimes shrill Alexandra Ocasio‑Cortez, the youngest ever member of Congress, has been in the vanguard of impeachment trumpeting but a month back, the sagacious top Democrat and House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, effectively told her to put a sock in it. Basically, Nancy’s wise advice was that a failed impeachment action would strengthen Trump’s re‑election prospects and further deepen the already huge rift in American society today.

“Samoa survive Russian scare in dramatic clash”, so claimed the Herald website.

Good Lord! Surely not; after all the Russians would be murdered by every New Zealand provincial side and had already been butchered by minnow Japan in the tournaments opening match.

Expectantly, I clicked on the story, only to find that “surviving Russia scare” comprised winning by 34 to 9.

Rugby fans shouldn’t be too hasty writing off England. Comparing their score with the All Blacks’ tally against Tonga, is short‑sighted.

I know that in boxing ‘A’ can beat ‘B’ and ‘B’ beats ‘C’, then seemingly against the odds ‘C’ beats ‘A’. Why?

It’s all about different styles. England’s rugby style is unspectacular and heavy on defence. For the All Blacks to beat them first requires they get the ball, something England’s larger and stronger pack will make very difficult. While on current form the All Blacks should beat Wales and probably make the final, another possibility not to be dismissed is their final opponent is the Irish.

News that Andorra’s national anthem was mistakenly played as Albania’s before the Albanian Euro football qualifying match against France, delighted me, specially when to compound the blunder, the French Emcee then apologised to, – wait for it – the Armenian team.

It brought back memories of a 1972 Commonwealth light-welterweight championship bout in Wellington between our Joey Santos and Ghana’s Joe Tetteh.