Josie has been sanctioned by the Russian Government.

Josie joined Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale to discuss US-China tensions, the US anti-inflation package, National’s Reserve Bank review call & more

Listen here.

Shaw is a realist. He wants to do good, not just feel good. He knows that, if you want change, you have to persuade more people and that, with 8% of the vote in 2020, the Green Party doesn’t have a mandate for a green revolution. He is radical, not an extremist, in the sense that he wants the opposite of a conservative, the opposite of the status quo, while the extremes are distant from the median voter.

Josie's column is here.

We're being pickpocketed. Tea-leafed. We are being systematically fleeced, shaken down and gouged by what looks to be a pattern of corporate arrogance.

There's something else going on other than just lack of competition regulation. I think it's inequality. Look into the salaries of oligopoly executives and you routinely find million-dollar salaries, often multimillion. They are out of touch. I don't mind big incomes for entrepreneurs (so long as they pay fair wages and their share of tax), but these are not start-ups making a killing with innovative ideas and disrupting tired business models. The executives are not risking their own coin.

Full column here.

The last time inflation was this high, it was closer in time to The Beatles’ first hit than to today. For younger readers, The Beatles were a popular band in the 1960s. Inflation was a less popular soundtrack to the 1970s and 80s. But, like an ageing rock star doing one more world tour with greying hair and a dwindling fan base, inflation is back and playing near you.

$10 blocks of butter and eye-watering visits to the petrol station are just the start. The Economist predicts chaos. “All around the world, inflation is crushing living standards, stoking fury and fostering turmoil.”

Sovereign debt all over the world is part-owned by ordinary retirement savings accounts. Your Kiwisaver has had a bad year. Worse may come. In New Zealand, prices will keep rising. Interest rates will continue to rise. Household budgets will be further stretched and business investment will slow. Even if we enter a recession, energy prices will remain high into next year.

Josie's DominionPost column offers some advice about the policies needed to respond.

Josie participated in the Future of Britain conference in the UK, held as Boris Johnson's term as prime minister reached its end.

Although the theme of the London conference was the Future of Britain, the call to a radical centre resonates in New Zealand: “To be radical isn’t to be extreme. To be exciting isn’t to be unrealistic. To be muscular doesn’t mean shutting out the vulnerable,” a paper accompanying the conference states.

Josie wrote about it in the Dominion Post here.

‘’To be both radical and centrist, to be exciting and pragmatic, and to be muscular and compassionate. To offer a politics of hope, and a vision rooted in the lives of people. That's the kind of politics we need."

If Nato is the Oscars, CHOGM is a garden party, with an acronym that sounds like an Oxbridge drinking game.

That Russia is still on the Security Council 4 months into an illegal war, makes the appointment of nuclear North Korea to chair the Conference on Disarmament in June look normal.

Too often international organisations let the rule breakers get away with it ‘betraying universal values in airy conference rooms where the out of touch negotiate with the out of line.

Josie's Stuff column is here.