Meet the new Bill, same as the old Bill
Philip Matthews reaches the end of a long news week.
The patient English
The boring truism that a week is a long time in politics has never been, well, truer. Has a political week ever felt so long? This time last week, we were wondering how the Mt Roskill by-election would go and whether Labour leader Andrew Little would still have a job. Only about three people knew of the political bombshell to come: Prime Minister John Key is calling it a day after eight years. It was a very well-managed resignation and transition: Key asked for his deputy, Bill English, to take over from him and his caucus duly obliged. English has been patient: he tried and failed to become prime minister in 2002 but in reassuring news for losers everywhere, he shows that if you stick around long enough, they give you the job.
The young fogey
Don’t be fooled by English’s youthful visage: he has been in Parliament since 1990. But can the brainy policy wonk became a charismatic, vital frontman? Or is English set to be the 21st century Bill Rowling, the interim man? Remember how you hated the bizarre and unpredictable 2014 election? Maybe this is what you wanted instead, the battle of the gruff men, with English squaring off against Little and Gareth Morgan as the election’s Kim Dotcom-like wild card.
A moonage daydream
Here is some strange 2016 synchronicity. The year started with the devastating news that David Bowie had died in New York, aged 69, just days after releasing the marvellous Blackstar album. There was a spaceman in the Blackstar video, reminding us of earlier spacemen in Space Oddity, Starman, Ashes to Ashes and the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. Cut to December and astronaut Buzz Aldrin is rushed to hospital in Christchurch from Antarctica and we learn that the starman’s doctor is named ... David Bowie. Which is fantastic.
Don’t call me N-word, Canterbury
Three North Canterbury places with offensive names – have you ever been to N ..... Stream,
N ..... head or even N ..... Hill? – are to be finally renamed, in a nice gesture towards post-racist sensibilities. They will become Pukio Stream, Tawhai Hill and Kanuka Hills respectively. There were nearly 100 submissions objecting to the changes. You might even expect that one or two submissions claimed that political correctness had gone mad.
Stadium rocked
Cantabrians have fond memories of Lancaster Park. Maybe you saw U2 play there in 1989. Maybe you saw Pope John Paul II there in 1986. Maybe you protested the Springboks there in 1981. The unrepaired concrete coliseum, a cathedral of sport if you will, has spent six years as a weed farm and we were promised a report on its viability after the 2016 council elections. So here it is: Mayor Lianne Dalziel says the stadium is ‘‘uneconomic to repair’’. It was insured for $143 million and would cost between $255m and $275m to fix. At one point, the insurer claimed the stadium could be repaired for less than $50m, which Dalziel calls ‘‘ridiculous’’. The central, $470m multi-purpose stadium proposed in the 2012 rebuild blueprint looks like the obvious option. The next question: what happens to the land?