The week in good news
Philip Matthews looks on the bright side.
Climate crisis, impeachment, the ongoing dramas of Harry and Meghan and Andrew . . . The world can indeed be a dark and confusing place. But there is good news, too, if you know where to look.
BRIGHTER LIGHTS, BIGGER CITY
A long-running argument has finally been settled, thanks to the application of facts and the pluck and determination of a Christchurch journalist. We refer of course to the monumental news that Christchurch is indeed bigger than Wellington and is therefore the second city in New Zealand, trailing far behind so-called ‘‘super’’ Auckland.
Residents of Christchurch have felt this for some time, but parochial, one-eyed Wellington has refused to accept it. Refuse no longer!
To cut to the chase, not only is Christchurch city now more populous than Wellington city, Greater Christchurch, which includes the sleepy commuter towns of Rangiora, Kaiapoi, Rolleston and Lincoln, had 457,600 people in June 2019 compared to Greater Wellington’s 418,000. Greater Wellington takes in Upper Hutt, Lower Hutt and Porirua but excludes remote, coastal Ka¯ piti.
‘‘Am I a Wellingtonian? Not bloody likely,’’ said a typical Ka¯ piti resident interviewed by the Dominion Post. Case closed, at last. Next week: Timaru v Oamaru, in the battle of the Marus.
GETTING WARMER
New Zealand’s second city is set to improve even further with the long-awaited opening of New Brighton’s seaside salt water hot pools expected in late March.
The $11.2 million complex, to be known as He Puna Taimoana, meaning ‘‘coastal pools’’ or ‘‘seaside pools’’, will have five outdoor pools ranging from a mild
28 degrees Celsius to a scorching
40C, plus a sauna and steam room, cafe, changing facilities and seating areas.
The complex should also help in the wider regeneration of the charming but rather down at heel seaside suburb that has struggled since the earthquakes of 2010 and
2011.
NERVES OF STEELY
It was astonishingly good luck that no-one was killed when a ‘‘runaway’’ double-decker tourist bus rolled down a busy street in central Auckland this week, hitting a mother and her baby.
The bus came to a stop at a construction site for Auckland’s rail link network, and one of the construction workers, Steely Ashley, has been described as a ‘‘brave selfless person’’ for his response. Ashley instinctively crawled under the bus to look for the woman and her baby.
In a video he explained that when he heard the crash, he ‘‘freaked out a little bit and then all of a sudden, body and brain went into autopilot.
‘‘I ran around to the front of the bus, heard a child screaming, dreaded looking under the bus because I thought I was going to see a poor kid pinned against a wheel. Looked anyway, saw she was free, crawled under the bus, grabbed her, pulled her out, got out and gave her straight to St John who passed the baby on to the mum.’’
A nearby retailer, Satender Phogat, also helped with the rescue: ‘‘It was so horrible for me, I’ve never seen anything like this before.’’
RABBIT, RUN
The doubters had doubts. A Hitler comedy? Could this stuff be funny? Would anyone buy it? The critics were not unanimous in agreeing with Kiwi writer and director Taika Waititi that this movie needed to happen, but the six Oscar nominations for Jojo Rabbit validate everything.
‘‘I’m from New Zealand, so we try not to take anything seriously, but this is quite a big deal,’’ Waititi said.
The six Jojo nominations are for Best Picture, Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson, who is also nominated for her lead role in Marriage Story), Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Film Editing and Production Design. In the screenplay category, Waititi is up against another New Zealander, Anthony McCarten, who wrote The Two Popes. The winners are announced on February 10.
TRUE NEWS
It’s been a bad week for the tabloid press, which means it’s been a good week for the human race. Increasingly, people are challenging the tabloids’ world view.
This is the legendary
Hugh Grant, defending Prince Harry and blaming the UK tabloids: ‘‘I’m rather on Harry’s side, I have to say. The tabloid press effectively murdered his mother, now they’re tearing his wife to pieces.’’
Closer to home, there was the remarkable challenge to the Murdoch-owned media empire’s reporting of the Australian bushfires. Murdoch columnists and editorial writers have routinely downplayed climate change and attacked ‘‘woke greenies’’ but James Murdoch, son of Rupert, broke ranks to criticise News Corp and Fox News for their ‘‘ongoing denial’’ of the flaming obvious.