The Price of Booze and Smokes

Stats NZ released its Consumer Price Index today. Booze & Ciggie InflationHere’s what’s been happening to the relative cost of your weekly booze and smokes.Booze and smoke annual prices increased approximately 1.6% faster than other goods and services between 1988 and 2009. All other goods and services increased in price,…

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The Best Stories are Economic

I’m watching These Final Hours. All the best movies are grounded in economics.This wasn’t a Wall Street movie. It wasn’t about money, or greed. It was about economics: choice, constraints, outcomes and uncertainty. It was an apocalypse story based on economics. Wasn’t this an Australian Sci-fi?That’s the thing about sci-fi…

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Scoundrels and rogues

Thank you, I have just come back from a very lovely lunch with my H2R recruitment consultant, Sharyn Saxby.And on the way, I came across this sign about Edward Wakefield one of New Zealand’s “Founding Fathers”:Here’s a picture of Ed:The signs are located on a unassuming concrete wall, at 90…

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Fill your Mind

Back in the day, when the internet wasn’t behind a firewall, you could download and listen to all of Berkeley University’s first year lectures.I used to download all of these onto my MP3 player, and go cycling for 2-3 hours, feeding both body and mind.I’ve found they’ve archived all the…

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