My God this country is infantile at times. In a heated debate over Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s injudicious act of censorship re the Canadian intellectual right advocates, now the subject of a court action, mayoral challenger John Tamihere responded to Phil’s attempt to justify it by crying “Sieg Heil.”

The outcome- shock, horror. How mind-blowingly childish!

Following the announcement of the World Cup All Blacks team the Dominion-Post, with as usual in quiet New Zealand, no real news to write about, devoted their front page to the public reaction.

It turned out there wasn’t any as the reporter, Olivia Caldwell, walked around the capital’s CBD and asked 30 people for their thoughts on the selection until finally managing to scrape up three who gave a damn. And one of those was a visiting Colombian woman.

The Dominion Post invited the three Upper Hutt mayoral candidates to submit circa 400 words on their credentials and policies.

Current longstanding mayor Wayne Guppy, befitting his pharmacy background, knocked out some straight‑forward rather dull comments then challenger Steve Taylor knocked himself out by commenting, “The reality is our rates need to increase.”

Steve may well be the first aspiring politician in entire human history to seek voters support by proposing to tax them more.

It’s unbelievable! The entire front page, plus another inside, is devoted to an argument going on over trivia in the grey power movement. To indicate its pettiness, a complainant in the movement has called for an “uncomfortable conversation about its culture.”

In fairness she’s an American migrant, probably from California where talking cock is normal, nevertheless when she gets that “conversation” started I’d be delighted to provide the discomfort with some periodic flogging.