One of the biggest opinion polls in New Zealand, the TV One-Colmar Brunton poll has just delivered another savage blow to Labour and its leader Phil Goff.

This week the Law Commission released a discussion paper recommending a number of changes to our liqour laws in the wake of growing evidence that we are a country which has a terrible binge drinking culture.

It was 25 years ago today, July 14th, 1984, that I witnessed as a teenager one of the most transformative and ultimately disastrous moments in our political history - the arrival of the Fourth Labour Government and with it the free market counter-revolution heralded by Rogernomics.

This week Bill English put this country on a tough Budget driven diet of restricted spending, no tax cuts and minimal increases in social spending. All of this came at a time when John Key and Bill English differed over the objectives of the budget.

Anybody living in Auckland might soon be proclaiming those words after the National Government's announcement that Auckland is to become a super city following next year's local government elections.

In recent weeks the world has been experiencing the re-birth of a once discredited economic philosophy - Keynesianism.