Putting aside the blowhard regulars, mostly I suspect, retired males with nothing else in their lives, I derive much pleasure from many of the letter writers.

Derek Quigley, the former minister in the last term Muldoon government (1981-1984) who led a failed 1982 coup attempt to replace Rob as leader with a very reluctant Brian Talboys, has written his autobiography.

I check the obituaries daily in the newspaper albeit most of the people I’ve known in my life are now dead.

But there are other reasons of interest.

Recently The Herald reported the recovery at Massey University’s Wildbase Hospital, of a kiwi that had been hit by a car.

Over my half century as a newspaper columnist, beginning back in the mid 1960s, whenever my topic was an economic one I took pains to stress that economics is emphatically not a hard science of absolute rules.