To be fair to the good burghers of Dunedin (though I’m not feeling very charitable at this moment), they are not the only people in the world doing stupid things right now with other people’s money.

Sports stadiums seem to hypnotise local politicians. All around the world they lose their senses whenever a much-loved sports team asks for subsidies or grants for a fancy concrete and glass monument. In America the pressure is even greater because sports franchises there are mobile and threaten to jump to other cities if they don’t get their big toy. It happens too in Australia (the Telstra Dome in Melbourne and the ANZ Stadium in Sydney are both bankrupt) and Britain (Google “Wembley Stadium” and “delay” to find 44,800 links in 0.33 seconds for a laugh).

Dunedin City Council doesn’t even have the imminent threat of the Highlanders departing as an excuse. The Highlanders are unlikely to

…

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Santa Monica in California. I’m on holiday here with my lovely wife Lynn and our two equally gorgeous daughters, Eilish and Maddie, and am about to embark on an RV trip across America to Orlando in Florida.

Lynn will attend a conference on digital scrapbooking at Disneyland in Orlando in a fortnight if we make it. I’ll tell her story about how she came to be a digital design exporter (earning a lot more than me…) in this blog at a later date.  Suffice to say, this trip will more than pay for itself in US dollar earnings.

I’ll try to blog about the trip and what I learn from an economic and business point of view as often as I can. It should turn out a lot easier to do than in New Zealand. Free cable broadband or WiFi access

“New Zealand’s largest company, Telecom New Zealand, provides telecom and information technology (IT) products and services to residential and business customers in New Zealand and Australia.

“NZT is now priced at or near its 52-week low; it is also among the best international dividend stocks (7%).

“Fourth quarter profits fell as the company suffered from reduced margins in the face of stiff competition from Australia’s Telstra and the UK’s Vodafone.

“Telecom New Zealand (NYSE: NZT) is considered one of the cheapest, high-quality companies in the world,” saysd David Fried editor of the top-notch The Buyback Letter.

track his picks at:

http://trackthepros.com/stocks/category/1728

“NZT has gone through an extended period of upheaval after the government forced the company to split into three and open up its networks to rivals in an effort to enhance competition.

“Company leaders think it is performing well in this period of profound change,