Six weeks after falling on my hand I’m still having problems with it so John Key has my sympathy after a fall which left him with two breaks in his arm.
At least my problem was with my left arm and I’m right-handed. John’s broken his right arm, which will be very frustrating in many ways, not least with the little things we do without thinking one of which is greeting people. He’ll have to act like a boy scout and shake hands with his left hand.
He may be the first PM to break a limb in office but he’s not the first MP. Eric Roy broke his leg while hunting with his sons, walked some distance in the bush to his vehicle, was taken home, flew up to Wellington next morning, went to caucus and only then sought medical attention.
The plaster meant he wasn’t able to wear trousers for several weeks so made good use of his kilt.
The European Union decision to resume export subsidies on butter, cheese and milk powder which were suspended a couple of years ago is a blow to free trade hopes and our dairy industry.
The world milk price has fallen steeply in recent months, the EU is already subsidising butter storeage and the new subsidies will encourage further supply which is unrelated to demand.
Trade Minister Tim Groser and Agriculture Minister David Carter say it’s a negative signal when so much effort is going in to reducing protection.
Groser said this makes completion of DOHA negotiations even more urgent and Dear John says the prohibition of these subsidies should be the number one goal of current WTO negotiations.
New Zealand farmers were brought kicking and screaming into producing without subsidies in the 1980s. The pain at the time was intense but farmers are more efficient and more secure now than we ever could be with subsidies.
This message has still to get through to producers, manufacturers and politicians in other parts of the world and everyone is paying the price of unsustainable production because of that.
Rumpole of the Bailey graced television screens when I was a student with better things to do than watch the small screen so my delight in Rumpole is relatively recent and comes not from TV but through John Mortimer’s books.
I was very sad to read that Rumpole has made his last speech for the defence because the author died yesterday.
The Rotary Club of Wanaka’s second hand book sale started on Thursday.
They set up on Wednesday and left the books, covered with old sheets, sitting in the back of a mall with no security.
It’s great that level of trust still exists and even better that it wasn’t absued.
These sales are good for buying travelling books – the sort you can read with half a mind and abandon.
A friend buys paperbacks and tears out pages as she reads them to lighten her luggage. My Presbyterian upbringing and respect for books won’t let me do that but I don’t mind leaving books I’ll never read again for other travellers.
The Rotary sales are also good for out-of print print books and I picked up Peters Pence, the story of an attempt to kidnap a Pope, by Jon Cleary; Snow Tiger, set in New Zealand about a trial in the wake of an avalanche, by Desmond Bagley; and a who-done-it, Mangrove Murder, by Mary Scott and Joyce West.
Full marks to the police for the swift arrest of a man who has been charged in relation to rape and theft from Dutch tourists who were sleeping in their car in Tuatapere.
Oh dear, I don’t need any more excuses for work avoidance but Inquiring Mind has pointed me to Alf Grumble, the long-serving, hard working and obviously modest MP for Eketahuna North who has been driven to blogging by the MSM’s failure to notice him.
I’m delighted to have another provincial/rural voice in the blogosphere. While I still chortle over John Clark’s skit A Mystery in Eketahuna, and have passed through the town I’m not familiar with Alf’s electorate and have to confess I didn’t realise he was in the National caucus although this post suggests he is.
Somewhat further to the left, and without Alf’s sense of humour, is another newish blog, Kiwipolitico which has joined my list of daily reads. Today Anita is wanting to know who took down Winston?
For something usually sans politics but with plenty of humour, Laughykate is also worth a regular check.
Where poetry stars on Homepaddock on the last day of the working week, it’s Friday Frocks over at Craft Is The New Black (and who couldn’t like someone adicted to presents, chocolates, cherries and sun?).
On the subject of delicious things, Bitsontheside has discovered chocolate pencils.
Back to matters rural, The Bull Pen is another must-read.
The T.S. Elliott poetry prize, which is awarded for the best collection of new poetry published in the UK and Ireland in the past year, was won by Jen Hadfield on Monday.
The award was given for her book Nigh-No Place published by Blood Axe Books, 2008.
That was a good excuse for a second Friday’s poem which comes from that book and was written when she was working in a fish factory.
Ten-minute break haiku
Just the blades prattling
on cartilage – cut here, here -
a good, fat fillet.
My friend the Cuckoo
Wrasse, hauled from his dark holler,
wilting on ice. Alas.
Breading haddock, I
bury in the coarse, bright dunes
the pale, wet children.
I finger the curious, quilted sphincter, being
like this, inside, too.
Gut-worms, christ! Still I
pluck them from the membranes,
one by one.
The ODT reminded me that today is the first anniversary of Hone Tuwhare’s death which makes his poem, No Ordinary Sun, an appropriate choice for this Friday’s poem.
Tree let your arms fall:
raise them not sharply in supplication
to the bright enhaloed cloud.
Let your arms lack toughness and
resilience for this is no mere axe
to blunt nor fire to smother.
Your sap shall not rise again
to the moon’s pull.
No more incline a deferential head
to the wind’s talk, or stir
to the tickle of coursing rain.
Your former shagginess shall not be
wreathed with the delightful flight
of birds nor shield
nor cool the ardour of unheeding
lovers from the monstrous sun.
Tree let your naked arms fall
nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.
This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,
no dashing trade wind’s blast.
The fading green of your magic
emanations shall not make pure again
these polluted skies . . . for this
is no ordinary sun.
O tree
in the shadowless mountains
the white plains and
the drab sea floor
your end at last is written.
Immigration NZ has tightened the criteria for migrants seeking work on dairy farms, requiring at least two years relevant work experience.
This is a response to the incresing number of dairy workers from the Phillipines and is a ploy to protect jobs for New Zealanders. That might be okay if there were locals willing and able to work on dairy farms but the rapid expansion in the industry has led to a shortage of good staff.
Note the word good – because any worker is not necessarily suitable and most employers would put the right attitude before experience when seeking staff.
Besides work on overseas farms may be so different from ours that “relevant” work experience it isn’t much use anyway.
Treasury presented a gloomy forecast to the government today with the bad indicators going up and the good ones down.
They’re predicting unemploying rising to 7.5% and economic growth slumping to zero.
Yesterday’s release from Statistics NZ showing a 26% fall in the number of building consents issued in the year to November is a symptom of the slowdown. But given the international financial meltdown wasn’t evident until September the next lot of figures are likely to be even worse.
New houses are still being built in Wanaka but locals say that it’s much easier to get tradespeople than it was even a few months ago.
But what’s happening in New Zealand isn’t as important as events overseas because job losses and business failures there will further depress the volume and value of our exports.
Dairy products are generally considered staple foods but lamb is a luxury item in many people’s shopping baskets and luxuries go when belts get tightened.
Any Girl Guide would know that you’re supposed to raise a flag at sunrise and lower it at sundown.
We’re not as regimented as that and once we put a flag up our flag pole it tends to stay there for days on end, or longer.
It might even stay up when we’re away, although we found out that’s not a good idea.
When we got home we noticed that our New Zealand flag which had been quite bright when we left just 10 days earlier was faded and tatty. We took it down, rolled it up, put it in a cupboard and forgot about it until a neighbour, an Australian with a sense of humour, asked for his flag back.
Oh dear, he’d swapped our bright, newish New Zealand flag for his older, faded Aussie one and while we’d noticed the state of it we hadn’t looked carefully enough to realise it had five white stars rather than four red ones.
This story will be grist to the mill of those who argue we need a new flag and one of the reasons for that is it’s so easily confused with the Australian one.
While not strongly attached to the current design I’ve yet to see any alternatives which appeal more but I’m open to the idea of an improvement on what we’ve got now.
A lot of people feel more strongly about flags and see suggestions we change ours as treason. Many too have very strong views on the Tino Rangatiratanga flag and whether it should be flown from the Auckland harbour bridge on Waitangi Day.
I don’t have strong views on that either but I agree with Keeping Stock who agrees with John Armstrong who commends John Key for his handling of the issue.
Key has very adroitly lobbed the issue back to Maori by saying a Maori flag can fly from the bridge providing Maori were consulted and the flag’s meaning was agreed upon.
Cactus Kate reckons Key is using the sort of tactics you might employ with young children or bickering employees. She’s right which confirms my theory that managing families, business and countries require similar skills and strategies and while our Prime Minister is new to the latter he has a lot of experience with the first two.
Charlie Brown reckoned happiness was a warm puppy.
Life and technology have moved on and now you can get happiness, or at least learn how to be happy, through a CALM website.
This week’s Listener cover story interview with John Kirwan (preview here) highlights the seriousness of depression. It’s debilitating and people may well find it easier to get help from a website than ask for it in person.
Dr Tony Fernando at Auckland University says many students struggle to cope with everyday life.
“Many of them, if not all of them, are so smart, but some of them don’t have the skills to deal with daily life,” he says.
Skills like maintaining healthy relationships.
That’s a sad commentary on modern life and I wonder if it has anything to do with the time spent communing via text and with websites (and that includes blogs) rather than interacting in person with family and friends.
The use of this technology is controversial but I understand why propsective parents might choose to use it.
Our sons had degenerative brain disorders the cause of which was never determined but which was almost certainly genetic.
Neither passed any of the developmental milestones which left them with multihandicaps. Tom lived just 20 weeks and Dan died 10 days after his fifth birthday unable to do anything more by himself when he died than he could when he was born.
We decided the one in four risk of having another baby with the same condition was too great.
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) wasn’t available 20 years ago and given no-one knew what to test for wouldn’t have been an option anyway. But if we could have used it we almost certainly would have.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has dismissed a complaint by Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro against talkback host Michael Laws.
Dr Kiro had complained to the BSA the Laws’ remarks on the programme were unbalanced and unfair to her.
She argued that the programme “often cast aspersions on (her) competence” and that she was personally mentioned more than 50 times during the three-hour talkback programme.
But the BSA said listeners would not expect a range of balanced views from Laws’ talkback.
It said the host’s criticisms were not unfair in the robust talkback environment.
“Indeed, it is an essential element of free speech that even the most trenchant criticism of public figures be allowed,” the authority said. “As an appointed official carrying out a public function, Dr Kiro’s work and her conduct were appropriately the subject of scrutiny, comment and criticism.”
The authority agreed with the broadcaster that talkback was a means for the public to express their views on a range of issues. There was no requirement for those views to be well-informed, balanced or considered.
Radio Live, which broadcasts Laws’ show is claiming this judgement as a victory for free speech, as it is.
Like it or not talkback is full of ill-informed, unbalanced and ill considered rants and while it might not seem fair the public, which includes talkback hosts, has the right to criticise people in public positions.
Our first trip to Argentina was in 1997 when the peso was pegged to the $US.
When we returned in 2003 the peso had been floated and was worth about 33 US cents and about 50 NZ cents.
There aren’t many countries where our dollar is worth more than the local currency so we enjoyed the bargains – good wine for about $NZ10 a bottle, quality leather shoes and bags for less than half what we’d pay here and similarly low cost restaurant meals.
Prices and the difference between our dollar and the peso hadn’t changed much when we returned in 2005 and 2007 but when we went back last month our dollar had fallen and Argentinean prices had risen.
Because of that I was suprised to read that the offical inflation rate had fallen to 7.2%, the lowest level since 2004.
However, I read on and found:
Independent economists have suggested that true inflation was at least 20 percent, but that officials underestimated it to save money on inflation-linked bonds.
That independent assessment is a truer reflection of what we saw than the official version.
Wine and leather cost more than they had last time we were there, although they were high quality and good value and Argentina is still not an expensive place for travellers. But life is more difficult for locals with the prices of fuel and every day goods in supermarkets much higher than we remembered from previous visits.
They’re advertising it as The Best Job In The World and it certainly sounds alluring – six months in paradise being paid $6000 a week and all you have to do is a weekly blog with video updates and photos:
The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef is a newly created position. There are a few minor tasks that need to be taken care of, but the most important duty is to report back to Tourism Queensland (and the world) and let us know what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.
The successful applicant will be paid $150,000 and get a rent-free three bedroom house for six months for such arduous duties as:
Explore and report back
There’s so much to see and do, so you’ll have plenty to write about in your weekly blog. And with so much life above and below the water, you’re sure to capture some entertaining moments for your video diary and photo gallery. To keep you busy, Tourism Queensland will organise a schedule of travel and events on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Your schedule could include sampling a new luxury spa treatment at qualia on Hamilton Island, trying out new snorkelling gear on Heron Island, or bushwalking on Hinchinbrook Island.
Feed the fish
There are over 1,500 species of fish living in the Great Barrier Reef. Don’t worry – you won’t need to feed them all.
Clean the pool
The pool has an automatic filter, but if you happen to see a stray leaf floating on the surface it’s a great excuse to dive in and enjoy a few laps.
Collect the mail
You’ll have some time on your hands, so why not join the aerial postal service for a day? It’s a great opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of the reef and islands.
It’s a real job but it’s also a ploy to increase tourism in Queensland and if the interest generated counts, it’s already been successful.
I got on to the sotry via the ODT but it took me several attempts before I got on to the website. This could be a result of the traffic its getting – it crashed yesterday after it was overloaded by hits from Britain.
After this week’s news regarding Fonterra is this another litany of lies?
I believe it is time for John Key to intervene in the interests of New Zealand (as Helen Clark would have already, I believe). Henry van der Heyden and Andrew Ferrier should resign before the whole New Zealand economy goes down the drain.
JOHAN MARINUS DE WIT
Hamilton
Adam initially thought it was black humour but then decided the writer was serious.
I hope his initial reaction was right but I too fear it isn’t and Adam provides various acts of foolishness by the previous administration which might incline people to believe government intervention in private businesses is normal.
But the writer is not only politically misguided, he’s also worrying unnecessarily about Fonterra.
The Sanlu investment was a disaster and the management and directors may still have questions to answer over that; and the milk payout, already well down on last season’s, is likely to go lower.
But the company has already written off Sanlu, last season’s payout was a record, the drop is largely the result of international commodity markets and even if it drops below $5 it will still be above the longterm average.
The world is in a financial mess and New Zealand is in recession but Fonterra is not in crisis and even if it was if the government was the answer you’d be asking the wrong question.
Margaret Baynes and her 22 year-old daughter Ingrid have set the first women’s two-stand eight hour lamb shearing record.
TVNZ reported (not yet on line) that they had aimed to shear 800 lambs but managed to shear more than 900, with Ingrid shearing a few more than her mother.
Record attempts are refereed with points off for cuts or wool left on so it’s not just quantity but quality which counts.
I can’t remember the last time I had bad service from Air New Zealand and recent experiences with staff on the ground and in the air have been very good.
However, I haven’t had such luck with cheap, last minute fares as Poneke, although that could well be because I’m not always flying between main centres.
I usally book on-line and have discovered that using the multi-stop option can be cheaper than a straight return fare to and from the same destination.
I just tried the website Air NZ website for a flight to Auckland tomorrow and back on Thursday and found it would be $908 return.
All flights from Oamaru go to and from Christchurch but there were no choices given for connecting flights so I then tried Oamaru – Christchurch – Auckland – Christchurch – Oamaru and found I could do the trip for $630.
That means a short stopover in Wellington on the way up and a flight 35 minutes earlier from Auckland coming home.
But curiouser and curiouser, if I pick the same Christchurch-Auckland-Christchurch flights as given on the return option – it’s still cheaper at $843 than the return fare of $908.
I’m not sure if I believe my own calculations so I’ve checked twice and still get the same result - unless I’ve read this incorrectly I could spend a little more time on the computer to make a multi-stop booking and add a little more to the travelling time to save $229 or choose the same flights offered for the return booking and still save $65.
There’s only one flight in and out of Oamaru a day but why aren’t alternative times and prices offered for connecting flights?
I don’t want to go to Auckland tomorrow, but next time I do I’ll be comparing the return fares with the multi-stop options before I book.
Posted by homepaddock 
