This week's quiz
1. Since what year has there been a Cook Strait rail ferry service?
a. 1894
b. 1921
c. 1954
d.1962
2. Where was the Aramoana built?
a. Aramoana
b. Todd Motors
c. Belfast
d. Dumbarton
3. What is the name of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Flagship?
a. HMS Prince of Wales
b. HMS Churchill McChurchillface
c. HMS Victory
d. HMS Sweaty Andrew
4. Eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse Microbus appear in what narrative?
a. Convoy by CW McCall
b. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
c. A South Island techbro thriller by Eleanor Catton
d. The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift
5. What did Trump say to a journalist pressing him on his Epstein connection ?
a. Quiet, Piggy
b. I can smell the uranium on your breath
c. Absolutely, that’s a good thing. Yep, good thing
d. I make no apology for being a miserable excuse for a human being
6. What did Luxon say to a question about prison numbers?
a. Quiet, Piggy
b. I can smell the uranium on your breath
c. Absolutely, that’s a good thing. Yep, good thing
d. I make no apology for being a miserable excuse for a prime minister
7. What can we infer from this excerpt of a Ryan Bridge commentary on NewstalkZB?
a. Ryan has changed the way he speaks and has an original take on something
b. Ryan is conversant with global trends and the US stock market
c. Ryan grasps the purpose of the CGT
d. Lazy Ryan is now getting ChatGPT to write his reckons
8. Who coined the expression Doolally?
a. Kiwi soldiers in a Cairo brothel
b. Taylor Swift in The Life of a Showgirl
c. British soldiers in an Indian village
d. Eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse Microbus
9. In the past two decades Paris pollution levels have dropped by how much?
a. Un peu
b. Un bit more than un peu
c. Quite a bit more than un peu
d. Heaps, mon frere
10. What song did John Peel declare to be the worst of all time?
a. Where Do You Go To My Lovely, Peter Sarstedt
b. I’ve Never Been to Me, Charlene
c. Montego Bay, Jon Stevens
d. Africa, Toto
Dude we saw yesterday exercising. Nearly asked if he had any experience in ferry-buying.
Answers
1. Since what year has there been a Cook Strait rail ferry service?
d.1962
Before then, you’d put your boxes of apples or oranges onto a railway wagon and down they would go to Wellington to be unloaded from the wagon and loaded onto a ship to Picton or Lyttelton, where they’d get unloaded and put onto another wagon and railed the rest of the way.
Possibly things could be that way again!
But only if Winston doesn’t come through!
And Winston always comes through, doesn’t he?
2. Where was the Aramoana built?
d. It was the last vessel built by William Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton, on the River Clyde.
These announcements all seem to leave one asking: Yes, but what are we getting exactly and what will it cost exactly?
We still don’t know for sure that they can get the necessary port facilities built for a competitive price, because all the imponderables about getting anything built that attended the original project also attach to this one.
The one number they really want us to look at is this is how much we’ve saved you New Zulland, even though that requires two hard numbers — what it was going to cost altogether for ferries and facilities, and what it is now going to cost altogether for ferries and facilities — and neither of these numbers actually exist.
Also, we’re in a completely-non-apples-with-apples situation. Also, they appear to be conducting the customary Kiwi dance of getting it for a little bit less, by cutting the guts out of what we’re going to get.
But only if Winston doesn’t come through!
And Winston always comes through, doesn’t he?
3. What is the name of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Flagship?
a. HMS Prince of Wales
4. Eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse Microbus appear in what narrative?
a. Convoy by CW McCall
5. What did Trump say to a journalist pressing him on his Epstein connection ?
a. Quiet, Piggy
6. What did Luxon say to a question about prison numbers?
c. Absolutely, that’s a good thing. Yep, good thing
Mr Accentuate the Positive mostly wants to convey his friendly cuddly xmas card pajamas vibe, but occasionally we get his Old Testament face and somehow that one tends to feel more authentic, don’t you think?
7. What can we infer from the following?
d. Lazy Ryan has used ChatGPT to write this.
Short Sentences. Clipped phrases. “But here’s the thing.” Like fingernails on a blackboard, so are the very many ghastly expressions AI loves to use over and over and over.
Ryan and AI were made for each other.
8. Who coined the expression Doolally?
c. In the late 19th century Deolali was the location of an army base and sanatorium where soldiers leaving India were sent before leaving for home. Those who became mentally deranged after contacting a fever, or Tap in Urdu, were said to have gone Doolally Tap.
The Green Party’s promise to revoke fast-tracked consents on seven mining projects prompted Willis to declare it Doolally.
When I travel internationally, one of the things people say to me is, ‘We like you New Zealand because you’ve got stable institutions, you’ve got rule of law and we can rely on you’. What the Greens are doing is ripping up that reputation that has taken decades and successive governments to build. They will be saying, ‘Invest in New Zealand? Massive sovereign risk, we could pull the carpet out from under you at any time’
said Willis, whose most notable act so far as finance minister has been, er, to revoke a billion dollar ship building contract with South Korea by email. Or was it a text?
9. In the past two decades Paris pollution levels have dropped by how much?
d. Heaps, mon frere. Since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014, more than 100 streets have been closed to cars. Tens of thousands of parking spots have disappeared. Hundreds of miles of bike lanes have been added. In response, car traffic keeps dropping.
What have these changes done for local air quality? Pollution levels have dropped roughly by half compared to 2005.
I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s really striking how much clearer the air is now, and just how much the noise has reduced. It’s wonderful.
10. What song did John Peel declare to be the worst of all time?
a. Where Do You Go To My Lovely, Peter Sarstedt
1,000 bonus points if you guessed that MTAF considers each of the other answers to be a thousand times worse.
