Dr Melissa Derby is a no-nonsense part-maori university academic mate of mine.

Melissa shares my anathema to fashionable nonsensical group think, a specialty of Auckland university.

The Roald Dahl saga has had lots of coverage but below are Melissa’s observations on it anyway.

Back in the late 1980s the then Local Government Minister Michael Bassett instituted a major local government restructuring which with a couple of exceptions, gained justified public support.

It’s often been said that Argentina would have been one of the world’s richest nations was it not for its history of appalling politicians. In the post-war years the rot started with Peron and they’ve arguably got worse ever since.

In an interesting interview with the Phoenix football team’s star goal scorer, Polish migrant Oskar Zawada, the writer Phillip Rollo (plainly a pseudonym) asked, “You and your wife announced late last year that you are having a baby (note “a baby” – singular). Will they be born in New Zealand?”