1. Which mountain’s name means the five treasures of the snows?
2. Who said: “Why was I a writer? Why hadn’t I gone in for soemthing easy like running the country?”
3. Who wrote the poem which begins A little piece of heaven fell from out the sky one day.It landed in the ocean not so very far away. . . and ends . . . But that wouldn’t bring three million, seven hundred, and sixty eight people back. Would it?
4. What is a korimako?
5. What is New Zealand’s oldest daily newpaper and who was its first editor?
Business New Zealand has released a paper analysing claims that farms and other businesses will be subsidised by households under the proposed emissions trading scheme.
The subsidy myth is based on the mistaken belief that ‘households are good and business is bad’ and that business should be punished for any emissions.
“The truth is not so one-sided. In reality, we are all in this together. Businesses are consumer-driven, and consumers need to see a price signal on carbon in order for carbon emissions to be reduced.
“By making an early start on emissions trading we will be putting NZ export companies in a vulnerable position – they will have to compete against companies overseas that won’t be paying any carbon charges. Allocating carbon credits is simply a way of reducing that vulnerability in the short term, and is in the interest of all New Zealanders.
“Once other countries also adopt emissions trading that vulnerability will cease, reducing the need for carbon credit allocations. So, alarmist publications about ‘decades of subsidies’ are wrong in fact as well as assumption.
“Emotive statements about ‘bludging business’ have the effect of undermining confidence in emissions trading. They reflect an anti-business attitude that could harm our future prosperity.
“We have an altogether more positive view on how businesses and consumers can adapt to carbon pricing,” Mr O’Reilly said.
One of the questions about the ETS no-one seems able to answer easily, is where will the money go? Paul Henry tried to get an answer from carbon credit expert Seeby Woodhouse on Breakfast this morning, but he wasn’t entirely successful.
If no-one can say where they money’s going how can anyone know if it will do any good?
Especially when, as Matthew Hooton pointed out in Friday’s NBR (print edition not online) that any government which seriously proposes paying a liability will be kissing re-election goodbye.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech, Doug Martin of MartinJenkins and Associates and independent consultant Greg Hill will look at ECan’s resource management performance.
Civil engineer Doug Lowe, consultant Julie Clausen and economist Alison Dalziel will look at the regional council’s governance, policy functions and relationships with other councils.
It might be only a tiny step with many giant steps needed before anything actually happens, but President Obama’s support for a Trans-Pacific Partnership is a welcome move towards a free trade agreement.
It’s frustrating that so much time and energy goes into these country by country negotiations when it would be so much better to have a global agreement.
. . . why I posted videos to mark the birthdays of Petula Clark and Frida Lyngstad but not one for Mantovani’s, I decided that some things are best left to memory.
Labor has agreed to a keystone Coalition demand that agriculture be excluded permanently from the carbon pollution reduction scheme, raising hopes that Government legislation will pass through Parliament before the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
. . . confirmed the government had agreed with the Coalition to exclude agriculture from its proposed emissions trading scheme, to be debated in Parliament this week.
This is one of the reasons that an ETS won’t be imposed on farming in New Zealand when it’s first introduced.
If our ETS isn’t in step with Australia’s we’ll be exporting production across the Tasman, making no reduction in global emissions and depressing the economy in the process.
I’d forgotten that she sang Sailor but I remember it on 4ZB’s Listeners Requests which provided the background music to Sunday dinners when I was a child.
Since November 2008, thirty-five print and online journalists have been murdered,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee “All over the world, writers and journalists and bloggers are suffering for practicing their right to speak out on issues that matter.”
On 15 November 2009, International PEN’s membership of writers world wide will commemorate their colleagues world wide who are imprisoned, attacked and even killed. In any given year PEN is monitoring around 1,000 cases of attacks on writers, journalists and publishers. Of these around 200 are in prison, some serving sentences of over 20 years. Others are suffering unfair trials, harassment and threats.
The New Zealand Society of Authors, honours the day as Courage Day:
. . . named jointly after James Courage, a novelist and poet whose novel A way of love was banned because he dared to express homosexuality in his writing prior to the setting up of the Indecent Publications Tribunal in 1964, and his grandmother Sarah Courage whose book describing colonial life in New Zealand was burned by neighbours who resented comments she made about them.
NZSA is asking for letters of support for writers imprisoned for expressing their opinions.
Addresses and templates for letters are on the NZSA website.
Now is not the time to confess I’ve never been interested in what some call the beautiful game.
The last time the All Whites qualified for a FIFA World Cup was 1982.
I was in Britain then. As happens when you’re overseas and someone from home does something of note, even those of us who had no interest in what we then called soccer and is now known as football, got excited.
Posted by homepaddock 
Posted by homepaddock 
Posted by homepaddock 
