Watching the All Black debacle against Ireland yesterday was a painful experience. And Silver Lake must be having second thoughts about their investment.

The obvious reaction from All Black supporters is that something has to change. How could such good players perform so badly as a team?

But how do we know that our players are as good as we think they are? What makes us think that our domestic rugby is at such a high standard?

I have recently been watching some of the French Top14 club rugby on television. My perception is that the standard is markedly higher than anything we see at home. Little wonder that France – now the top-ranked team in the world, must now be reckoned as red hot favourites for the World Cup to be contested in their own backyard in 2023.

But whatever the individual skills and commitment of the players, this still doesn’t explain why the All Blacks performed so badly as a team. As a team, the effort was there, but the teamwork and tactical appreciation were not. Isn’t this the responsibility of the coaches? Shouldn’t there be some evidence that the team is operating according to a strategy (other than simply try harder)? Shouldn’t that strategy be designed to utilise and maximise the impact of individual skills and to counteract the perceived strengths and exploit the perceived weaknesses of the opposition?

The record of the current coaching team is now well established and can no longer be gainsaid.
If the current coaches are going to keep their jobs through to the World Cup, they are in urgent need, at least, of supplementation.

The most valuable addition to the team would be Wayne Smith, but he is currently otherwise (and helpfully) engaged in raising the standard of the Black Ferns. Failing his co-option, what else is to be done?

If we are agreed that “something” must be done, we have no alternative but to look at the role of head coach. There may be few coaches with the necessary skills, track record and availability from whom a choice can be made, but there are one or two, and the inquiry must be undertaken. If we want to make a realistic challenge at next year’s World Cup, time is running out.

Stand by! If I read Boris correctly, we might expect to see the following scenario unfold.

Boris will declare that he is himself a candidate for the leadership. He will argue that the fact that he is the incumbent, at least pro tem, is an advantage, not a disqualification. He will calculate that a significant number of other hats in the ring will split the anti-Boris vote, and that he will stand a very good chance, accordingly, of coming in the top two.

In a poll of party members, the challenger, whoever he or she might be, will come under increased and critical scrutiny and Boris will further calculate that his star power will persuade a majority that he remains their best chance of seeing a further Conservative government – and, beyond that, he will fancy his chances against a somewhat wooden Keir Starmer in a general election.

Any bets against?

As in so many other areas of public policy, attitudes towards overseas investment in New Zealand – and anywhere, for that matter – boil down in the end to ideology.

For proponents of the “free market”, there is really no issue. The market, in their view, must never be second-guessed; it must always be allowed to do its thing. It will always produce the optimal outcomes; any attempt to inhibit it or even just to guide it will inevitably mean sub-optimal outcomes.

And such purists go further. The market recognises no limitations or boundaries; it will go where it will, with a supreme indifference to considerations of geography or sovereignty or democracy. It crosses national boundaries without a care or thought; its proper sphere of operation is the whole world, and any wish or attempt to constrain it within man-made or political boundaries must be resisted.

I was led to these truths when I read, a few weeks ago, an opinion piece published in the Herald. It was written by a New Zealand businessman and self-described “entrepreneur” named Andrew Barnes. He took as his theme the futility and impropriety of the attempts by the Overseas Investment Office to regulate the level of foreign investment in our country.

Barnes is not a fool or a troglodyte. He is a leading advocate of a shorter working week and is doing good work to gather support for this possibility. But, on the subject of foreign investment, he revealed himself to be a prisoner of free-market ideology.

When he contemplated the prospect and reality of increased overseas investment, he saw nothing but the proper and beneficial operation of market forces. For those of us who see a little further, and perhaps think a little deeper, he had nothing but contempt – and perhaps something approaching sympathy. We are, he seemed to suggest, starting at shadows, frightened of phantoms.

He was airily dismissive of (in the sense that he did not even recognise) the concerns that many of us have. If the ownership of large tracts of land or of substantial business enterprises passes into foreign hands, he thought, we should have no legitimate cause for concern; we should instead congratulate ourselves on the price we had secured for these assets – and to forestall such deals would be an unacceptable interference with market forces.

The possibility of downsides was simply not recognised. Yet, does a change in the ownership of an asset not carry with it the power of decision as to what should be done with that asset and with any income it produces, and does foreign ownership not mean that those decisions will be taken by those who have no primary concern for or interest in the welfare of the inhabitants of this country?

Does foreign ownership of an asset not mean that it could be put to purposes that are quite inimical to the future wellbeing of this country? Does a significant proportion of foreign ownership not mean that the national interest is substantially at the mercy of those who do not necessarily share it or recognise it?

What would be the impact on the objectives of social or environmental policy, if the income produced by foreign-owned resources and needed to implement those policies were siphoned off overseas, or if the resources themselves were put to counter-productive purpose by their foreign owners?

What would be the point of electing our own government if institutions, such as banks, that fulfil a central role in our system of government are answerable to the government of another country?

The ideologues are nothing if not single-minded. Questions such as these, if Andrew Barnes is anything to go by, simply do not occur to them.

The televised hearings into the storming of the Capitol are revealing to the American public a truth that was obvious to some of us from the outset – that the Trumpian “big lie” about a “stolen” election was part of a determined attempt at a coup that would have been – if successful – a total denial of the democratic process.

The violence of the assault on the Capitol and the threat (apparently endorsed by Trump himself) to “hang Mike Pence” show without any doubt how far Trump and his supporters were prepared to go.

I was, in the period leading up to that fateful day, contracted to write a weekly column for the NZME-owned Bay of Plenty Times. I had written several columns that were critical of Trump, and I had, as the events unfolded surrounding Trump’s claim that the election had ben stolen from him, sent in a column that warned that what we were seeing was a “slow-motion coup” happening before our very eyes.

I was surprised to get a phone call from the editor, in which he said that he would not publish my piece. I stuck to my guns and the outcome was that my contract was terminated.

I don’t expect, now that the accuracy of my observation has been vindicated, to have my contract restored or to receive an apology. But I do wonder why NZME (and I assume that it was their decision that had been relayed to me by the editor) were so solicitous about protecting Trump’s good name?

The question is worth asking because the sickness arising as a consequence of Trump is still doing its damage around the world. American politics (and especially the Republican Party) are still in thrall to Trump’s lies – and the “far right” across the globe still derive their undesirable influence and crusading zeal from their endorsement of his anti-democratic attitudes. We need to know why New Zealand’s most powerful media organisation should find it necessary to protect him from criticism.

It is somehow appropriate that in today’s Herald, Mike Hosking, in his anxiety to pin the blame for inflation on the government, should ignore the evidence from around the world of world-wide inflation rates and supply-side constraints occasioned by the pandemic and the Ukraine war, and should go further – by calling in aid the former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Don Brash.

Brash, it might be recalled, was a major player in subjecting this country to Rogernomics and “the mother of all budgets”. He also distinguished himself by repeatedly demonstrating in the pages of the Herald that he was completely ignorant on the question of what money is and where it comes from – even to the point of disputing and even (so far as one could tell), refusing to read, a detailed paper produced by the Bank England, which set out precisely how the banks create money out of nothing, principally by lending on mortgage.

As both Hosking and Brash demonstrate, virtually any position is tenable – if your starting point is unassailable ignorance.