Challenges to the Comfortable

This entry was posted in Listener, Literature and Culture on 22nd December 1984 by Brian Easton.

Listener: 22 December, 1984.

Keywords: Literature and Culture;

It is strange to recall the public outcry caused by the arrival of abstraction in painting. We now accept that form and colour are relevant and important. Abstract painting is now safe, for while it challenges us intellectually there is – as with landscapes – a distance between the picture and our human preoccupations. Where then does the painter af social realism, the commentator an our lives, fit in? Not in the boardroom or the living-room; paintings which glare at us, challenging the way we live, do. not belong in those places – do. they?

1966 and All That

This entry was posted in Literature and Culture, Macroeconomics & Money on 12th May 1979 by Brian Easton.

Listener 12 May, 1979

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

The terms of trade measure the value of our exports. In the 1950s and the early 1960s they were high, which meant that we were able to buy a lot of imports for each tonne of wool, meat or butterfat. It may well be that for those 18 years we experienced the longest period of high terms of trade in our entire history .As a result New Zealand had one of its most sustained periods of prosperity. Not the least of the achievements were moderate economic growth, low inflation and negligible unemployment.