Canary in the Mine

There are some baffling contrasts between New Zealand's planned cricket tour of Zimbabwe, and the Springbok Rugby tour of the early 1980s. Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff says the Government has no legal means and would not try to exercise any means through the law to physically prevent New Zealanders from leaving this country. The Springbok tour caused close to civil war on our streets, but protests over the cricket tour have been almost muted. In both cases, we are talking about highly repressive regimes with a long catalogue of extreme human rights abuses. When the Cavaliers pseudo-All Blacks went to South Africa, they were vilified, and it cost some of them their careers. The Black Caps have been given the opportunity to withdraw without penalty, but none have done so, and there is nary a bleat on the streets. What has changed about New Zealand in 20 years?

City councils all round New Zealand are watching closely the outcome of the case in the Christchurch High Court this week, in which the owners of several brothels are challenging the Christchurch City Council's brothel bylaws. Forget all the flimflam about whether there are sufficient sexual services in Christchurch. There is only one real point at issue: did the City Council have the right to make its bylaw? The Council made its bylaw under several Acts, including the Prostitution Reform Act, the Local Government Act, and the Resource Management Act. The judge will be considering essentially whether those Acts gave the Council the power to do what it did. And this is why other councils around the country are intensely interested. If the judge rules against the CCC, it's going to be back to the drawing board for pretty well every council.

Classic Kiwi fundraisers - the sausage sizzle and the cake stall - are under scrutiny as part of a sweeping review of food safety regulations. The Food Safety Authority is making the first major review of food controls in 25 years so it can set up regulations whose objectives would include reducing the food-poisoning rate, which is the highest in the developed world. That means the humble sausage sizzle, cake stall and school gala - where food is sold to the public - are under inspection. The review, which was first announced two years ago, has raised the ire of some community groups who fear their fundraising will be overtaken by red tape. Mad Butcher Peter Leitch says it's another nail into the coffin of freedom in this country.

Real estate agents could be unhappy about this move. Trade Me has launched a new property site. The company claims that only 3% of kiwis visit the biggest real estate site currently, but seeing 48% visit Trade Me, it can do a whole lot better. And they allow almost unlimited space for photos and description.

Meanwhile, The Economist says it has been warning for some time that the price of housing is rising at an alarming rate all around the globe, including in New Zealand. "Now that others have noticed as well, the day of reckoning is closer at hand. It is not going to be pretty. How the current housing boom ends could decide the course of the entire world economy over the next few years. This boom is unprecedented in terms of both the number of countries involved and the record size of house-price gains. Measured by the increase in asset values over the past five years, the global housing boom is the biggest financial bubble in history."

Figures from the world of UK culture and entertainment will launch a last-ditch campaign this week against the religious hatred bill, a law which they fear will encourage religious bigots to go to court every time their sensibilities have been offended.

The black cleric appointed last week to the second-highest office in the Church of England boasts that he sent innocent people to jail as a young magistrate under Idi Amin, the Ugandan tyrant. Shock, horror! But there is a twist. It was a ploy by John Sentamu, the new Archbishop of York, to save the accused from summary execution. The 56-year-old primate has explained that he was acting in the spirit of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis.

A couple has been wed in Britain's first legally recognised humanist ceremony. The ceremony for Karen Watts and Martin Reijns at Edinburgh Zoo was led by a humanist celebrant, one of 12 members of the Humanist Society of Scotland granted the right to legally conduct marriages by the country's registrar general starting June 1. Previously, wedding ceremonies had to be conducted by a religious minister or a civil registrar. Incidentally, humanism was declared a religion in a US Supreme Court case of 1961. Prior to that, in 1933, John Dewey and others wrote the humanist manifesto, A Common Faith.

Allan Carlson, the head of The World Congress of Families, has launched a campaign for a Parents Tax Relief Act in the USA. Calling it "the most important piece of pro-family legislation to be introduced in decades", it's aimed at making life easier financially for families. The large majority of parents, Carlson noted, believe that having at least one parent in the home is the best arrangement for the care of young children. However, the US Census Bureau reports both parents are in the workforce in nearly two-thirds of households with preschool children. The PTRA would end fiscal discrimination against parents who choose at-home child care instead of commercial day care, and increases opportunities for parents to spend time with their children through employer-sponsored telecommuting and home-based businesses.

Does anyone else see the irony in the ACLU demanding that the detainees at Guantánamo get a Koran, yet asking that all references to Christianity be removed from American life?

"Inquiring minds may be urged to study every failed prophet from Karl Marx to Che Guevara, but they're told not to eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden. The most profound of books, both deeply conservative and genuinely revolutionary, is the one declared off-limits. Yes, strange. And sad. How did we get to this pass? Through a series of vague, confusing court decisions that left educators fearful of crossing some imagined line."

Tail-out: A folk dance tutor claims he has solved the mystery of illustrations in the Book of Kells that has puzzled historians for generations. Alan Nowell says the interwoven patterns depict monks performing ancient mystical dances.