OPINION: Far from being a celebration of art, Passing Red is a symbol of a political and financial debacle that has bled the arts dry in this town.

OPINION: We may not all be card carrying members of the city's literati but we love, celebrate and support this place in all its colours and idiosyncrasies, writes Denise Irvine.

"You remind me of a tomcat I owned in Jerusalem, Michael," said Shmuel Ovnat, Israel's Ambassador to New Zealand.

OPINION: Reader Kerrianne Lindsey wrote to me not long ago with a query about the word none.

With the Academy Awards ceremony less than a week away a once-close race for best picture now looks anything but.

Late one evening in Parliament, during the Budget debate that my next speaker wasn't in his seat ready to take the call.

Things were chugging along OK until recently. The rain came just in time and the grass kept growing.

OPINION: The Hamilton Theatre Review report has arrived and, to many, the recommendations are not surprising.

OPINION: Torture is one of the moral issues of our time.

OPINION: Mick Hart wants to know the difference between compared with and compared to.

It's a reflection on the sentimental side of human nature that familiarity need not always breed contempt.

Why settle for impartial advice when you have already made up your mind?

MICHAEL COX - © Fairfax NZ News

One can be smug about how well we look after our poor and the aged.

In my farming career, I have found plenty of elephant traps on farms, often the hard way.

We've all got a few irrational fears. Quite often they involve sinister stuff like spiders, cockroaches, vermin, old boyfriends, burning houses . . . That kind of thing.

OPINION: Joshua Drummond peeks into the future to see what Hamilton will be like in the year 2040.

Have we just created one generation of rich dairy investors and to hell with the future?

I have previously spoken of my early convent miseducation at St Bernard's Convent, Brooklyn, Wellington in the 1950s, although have not spoken of the actual process of instruction, which was a hit-and-miss affair.

Love him or loathe him James Bond has become a cultural constant.

They came thundering over the horizon and across the Canterbury Plains in a swirl of dust and heat and beating hooves, nail pockets flapping wildly in the wind and spirit levels at the ready in the saddle holster.