John Armstrong

Borrow and hope; tax and spend. For months, that has been Bill English's pithy, double-phrased encapsulation of how Labour would run the economy.

As British prime minister, Harold Macmillan was once asked what was the most likely thing to blow a government off course. "Events, dear boy, events," he famously replied.

As much as Bill English downplayed yesterday's downgrades of New Zealand's credit rating, the double whammy from Standard and Poor's and the Fitch ratings agency inevitably casts a big shadow over National's claim to be the most competent manager of the economy.

Contained within Labour's thoughtful and thought-provoking recovery plan for earthquake-shattered Christchurch is what might appear to be a rather generous promise.

Few politicians routinely get such a bad press as tends to be the case with Murray McCully. The starting point seems to be if Mr McCully is involved, then that means trouble, much of it unnecessary.

A politics-free period may be useful for Phil Goff as he tries to put some distance between himself and the rekindling of speculation a few weeks ago regarding the Labour leadership.

Is the surge in support for the Greens the result of the party doing most things right? Or is it simply down to almost everything going wrong for Labour?

For the past three years, Phil Goff has tirelessly pushed his boulder Sisyphus-like up the hill, only for it to roll back down each time.

It's welfare reform, Jim, but not as we know it. National's first substantial foray into territory from which it fled in undignified retreat in the Ruth Richardson-Jenny Shipley era is very cautious, very measured and very unthreatening - deliberately so.

Mission impossible? The green light may have been given for a long-awaited parliamentary inquiry into the price of milk, but the approval may have come too late for the commerce select committee to come up with any findings before the election.

The Labour Party does not have very much cause to feel grateful for anything right now. But it should get down on bended knees and thank the Almighty that hardly anybody would have been watching Parliament late on Wednesday afternoon.

A major exhibition of Maori artefacts - more than a decade in the making - "Te Ao Maori: Maori Treasures from the Otago Museum" opened last week at the Shanghai Museum, in Dunedin's Chinese sister city. John Gibb accompanied a 16-strong Otago Museum delegation to the opening.

Chalk this one up as something of a triumph for Phil Goff. So far, at least.

Phil Goff is not just risk averse. He is risk-phobic.

National's first move towards gutting state housing?