Council chamber

More pics of the Oamaru Opera House.

This was the Oamaru Borough’s council chamber and the ODT reporter reminded me the press used to have to sit in front of the mayor’s chair where everyone could see if they were taking notes or not.

Rain on the Roof

This Friday’s poem chose itself because we’re having a lovely rain – just what those of us trying to grow grass need, although anyone trying to harvest may not be quite as enthusiastic.

I first came across Rain on the Roof  by Janet Frame in Otago University’s paper Critic when I was a student, but copied it today from Janet Frame stories & poems published by Vintage.

 

                 Rain on the Roof

 

My nephew sleeping in a basement room

has put a sheet of iron outside his window

to recapture the sound of rain falling on the roof.

 

I do not say to him, The heart has its own comfort for grief.

A sheet of iron repairs roofs only. As yet unhurt by

     the demand

that change and difference never show, he is still able

to mend damages by creating the loved rain-sound

he thinks he knew in early childhood.

 

Nor do I say, In the travelling life of loss

iron is a burden, that one day he must find

within himself in total darkness and silence

the iron that will hold not only the lost sound of the rain

but the sun, the voices of the dead, and all else that

      has gone.

 

                      - Janet Frame -

Property rights foundation of economic & social progress

New Zealanders’  high level of home ownership ought to ensure a high regard for property rights but this is disputed in a paper by Professor Lewis Evans and Professor Neil Quigley of the Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation at Victoria University of Wellington with Kevin Counsell of NERA Economic Consulting.

Protection of Property Rights and Just Compensation argues that we have a poor record of safeguarding property rights and puts the case for including them in the Bill of Rights Act because they are a human right and essential for economic and social progress.

The authors undertook five case studies of the harm done by the current lack of protection of property rights, one of which looked at the confiscation of the value of crown pastoral leases and concluded:

In our view this taking of the lessee’s property right should be possible only if the lessee is compensated for the loss of income. This conclusion holds whether the taking is actually the destruction of the economic viability of the lessee’s pastoral farming by the change in the rent, or whether it is the taking of public access rights or conservation land in exchange for remission of the new rental charges back to the level at which pastoral farming is viable.

Another case study of particular relevance to rural property owners was on the destruction of value of pre-1990 forests under the Emissions Trading Scheme. But a threat to any property right is a threat to all so the other case studies are equally interesting: the destruction of Maori land value by Crown pre-emption rights; the nationalisation of petroleum; the confiscation of the foreshore and seabed; and the attack on the value of shares in Auckland International Airport Ltd.

The study looks at legislation which devolves the ability to take property rights:

 

The RMA is particularly notable for the power that it provides for local body administrators to routinely set aside private property rights without compensation.

 

The authors also took issue with Fish and Games’ challenge to pastoral leaseholders’ right to exclusive use of their land.

. . . Fish and Game New Zealand is advocating confiscation of rights which Crown pastoral lessees have long presumed that they held (albeit that this is to be determined by the courts). . . because Fish and Game is taxpayer funded, its actions illustrate the substantial asymmetry that may exist between rights holders and special interest groups who ‘represent’ popular causes that are supported by politicians: the resources of the latter are very often vastly in excess of those of the rights holders. . . property rights are a solution to the problem of the commons created by open access. Overriding rights of exclusive occupation will create an outdoor commons that will itself require regulation and inhibit socially desirable multiple-use activities in a world of increasing scarcity.

 

Investment and growth depend on confidence. Safeguards to property rights would give businesses and individuals greater confidence to invest and from that would come growth with obvious economic and social benefits.

 

HAT TIP: Matthew Hooton & the Exceltium Quarterly.

The auditorium

Inside the Opera House

The motif for the Oamaru Opera House is a mask, created by Donna Demente:

Blessing and blessed

A medly from a lone piper serenaded those gathered outside Oamaru’s newly refurbished Opera House before dawn.

As the music stopped, the large white curtain which cloaked the building fell:

We were led inside to find Waitaki Mp Jacqui Dean, Mayor Alex Familton, councillors, council staff, representatives from Ngai Tahu and a minister on the stairs facing us.

A blessing in Maori, a reply from the Mayor, a prayer and the combined singing of Whaakaria Mai followed then the voice of a soloist on the stage called us into the auditorium.

The mayor spoke briefly then a young ballet dancer, representing those who will perform in future, took the stage and commanded (yes, that was the word she chose) the Opera House open.

We were then invited to explore the building, and what a treasure it is.

We are fortunate that more that the people from a previous generation gave us this building and that there were enough in the current generation of councillors and supporters who were prepared to work hard to not just preserve but to restore and improve it for the future.

There’s a daylight photo of the outside here and I’ll post some interior shots later.

Of course it will affect rates

The Auckland Regional Council lost $1.79m when too few people turned up to a football game but:

Mr Winder said the ARC was determined the loss would not have any effect on rates or ratepayers.

How can this be?

It’s not just money spent directly by the council which affect rates and ratepayers.

A loss for the council’s business unit is money not available for other projects which directly or indirectly impacts on the council budget and the people who fund it.

Fortnightly fix insufficient

Last Friday I looked, as is my wont, for my Friday fix of Jim Hopkins in the NZ Herald, but alas my search was fruitless.

Neither a column nor an explanation for its absence were there.

This morning I looked more in hope than expectation and found to my delight he’s back but only fortnightly as, I gather, is the case for other columnists who aren’t on the Herald’s staff.

Tough times no doubt lead to tough decisions but this isn’t the right one for writer or reader.

For several years I wrote a weekly column for the ODT, then I got a call from the editor saying they wanted to reduce my contribution to a fortnightly one and the space left in alternate weeks would be filled by a staff writer.

That was the beginning of the end. When I was doing the weekly column I established a pattern: gather ideas and mull them over, mentally writing, discarding errant phrases and refining the ones that worked while I was doing whatever else needed doing until a couple of days before deadline. Then I rang the friend who did a picture to accompany my words to tell her what the column was going to be about, the next day I wrote it and began gathering ideas . . .

The fortnightly deadline broke the rhythm, two weeks was too far away to start the gathering of ideas for anything which might be topical by publication date and the week off in between made it much harder to get the creative flow going again.

I approached other editors in the hope of getting a weekly stint, or a space in the alternate fortnight but they weren’t interested.

The difficulty with the stop-start writing was my problem but the fortnightly offering didn’t work for readers either, they kept telling me they couldn’t find the column and then they stopped looking for it because they thought I’d given up.

The Herald may not be worried that they’re making writing more difficult for columnists but they ought to be concerned about disappointing their readers.

Unless it’s considerably more generous to its freelancers than other papers, cutting their contributions in half isn’t going to save much money. But every cent counts and if they think this is a necessary economy measure, they’d be better to get rid of half their contributers rather than halving the output from them all.

That said, I don’t want Hopkins to be one of those that goes. He’s one of very few satirists writing in New Zealand and as such he should be accorded the respect due to a member of that endangered species which has both the wit and words to poke the borax at those in high and not so high places.

Take this from today’s column, for example:

The fact that senior people in gummint departments aren’t able to write a decent letter suggests we’ve got an education system so useless it can’t even teach kids how to light a fire by rubbing two policy analysts together.

But that’s a story for another day. The point here is, if anything, even more disturbing. It turns out Winz has been dashing off lots of “badly written” letters. Seriously! Judge for yourself …

You can judge more for yourself by reading more  here.

A sign of the times

When I moved here just over 26 years ago there were three schools, three rugby clubs, a tennis club, a badminton club, two Young Farmers clubs, active branches of Federated Farmers and Womens Division plus one Catholic and three Presbyterian churches * in the valley.

A few years later the ag-sag struck, jobs were lost as farmers retrenched, young people left for education or work and few returned, the average age of the remaining population went up and one by one the institutions and organisations folded.

The development of irrigation in the last few years reversed the population drift and has brought younger people back, but life won’t return to how it was.

One of  the Presbyterian churches is still in use but the schools all closed, two were sold and the third is leased by the Bretheren Church which buses children to it from as far away as Dunedin and Timaru – an hour and a half and an hour away respectively.

None of the other organisations or clubs remain which makes this a sign of the times:

It’s advertising the 50th reunion of  the Enfield Rugby Club which went out of existence nearly two decades ago so it’s been out of existence for nearly as long as it was active.

That won’t of course, stop those who attend the reunion enjoying it.

*we are on the right side of the Waitaki

Did you see the one about . . .

Skirt lengths as an economic indicator at Rob’s Bockhead .

Letter from the boss at Cactus Kate.

Lying on wait at Macdoctor.

Sorting the numbers and raising feminists at In A Strange Land.

Judas Tizard at goNZofreakpower.

It’s just art at Something Should Go Here.

Let’s hear it for the Ernies at NZ Conservative.

Stories like this fill me with joy at Laughy Kate.

And if you want a big read: Home & away by Karl du Fresne,

Could Kiwibank become a co-operative?

 The idea of the taxpayers owning a bank was such an anathema to me that I didn’t step foot in a post office for more than two years after Kiwibank was established. So deep is my aversion to it, I still enter one only when there is no alternative.

National made a pre-election pledge that it wouldn’t sell any assets this term and made it clear that if it had plans for any sales after that it would make that quite clear before the next elections so voters would know.

They have more than enough on their hands at the moment without worrying about a possible second term, but when they start to look ahead they ought to consider this suggestion from Peter Macdougall, chair of the NZ Cooperatives Association and a director of Ballance, in the association’s latest newsletter:

Before becoming the Government, National didn’t see why a government should be involved in banking. All the major trading banks in New Zealand, however, are owned offshore and their profits go to their investor shareholders.

 

If Kiwibank were to become a cooperative bank, expanded rapidly into the agriculture sector, would it be supported?

 

I believe it would, I believe it should, and the timing is clearly right – “Kiwibank, owned by New Zealanders for the benefit of its cooperative members”.

I don’t have a problem with foreign ownership but many people do so this idea is worth investigating because it would get the bank off the government’s books while still satisfying those who want it to stay in New Zealand hands.

Aiming at agriculture isn’t silly either because the growing demand for food means that primary producers are likely to lead the recovery from the recession.

There is already a very successful example of co-operative ownership of a bank which is active in rural financing. Rabobank , which is owned by the Dutch, has a triple A rating which shows the model could work.

UPDATE: Anti-Dismal says no and explains why.

Great minds . . .

Conspiracy theorists might see something sinister in the coincidence of  Garrick Tremain and Rod Emmerson coming up with a similar idea in today’s papers – the first in the ODT, the second in the NZ Herald.

I think it just shows that great cartoonists think alike.

 

 

By Rod Emmerson

You’ve gotta know when to hold up . . .

. . . know when to fold up, know when to walk away . . .

Garrick Tremain’s cartoon, printed several days ago, shows that then Otago District Health Board chair Richard Thomson didn’t heed the words of the Gambler.

He didn’t accept the invitation to walk so Health Minister Tony Ryall relieved him of his chairmanship.

The ODT doesn’t agree  with that decision:

While Mr Ryall’s demands for accountability are understandable, he picked the wrong scapegoat.

. . . It was other executives and senior staff who, surely, carried far more responsibility, particularly because warnings about Swann were not passed on.

But the Minister of Health has no control over any of these people so is it possible he’s using  one of few weapons in his armoury – the right to appoint, and disappoint, the chair – to encourage the board to take further action which he can’t?

The Minister of Corrections Judith Collins is similarly constrained over the continuing employment of Barry Matthews in spite of a damning report from the auditor general about the department he heads. He is answerable to her but she is not his employer so it is up to the State Services Commission to sack him, or not.

The Prime Minister supports his minister  :

“The New Zealand public is entitled to expect accountability, and quite frankly, that report made such damning reading they can have no confidence at this point that the department is following an approved set of procedures that they promised they would follow.”

The operative word is accountability.

It’s not blame or responsibility, and anyone with the ability to chair a board or lead a government department ought to understand that, and to know that it is better to fold up and walk with dignity than to wait to have your cards taken from you.

School isn’t fattening

Today’s correspondence page in the ODT had this gem:

The fact that the Minister of Education has removed the requirement for schools to only provide healthy food and drink options is correct. Yes, it is without doubt a school’s role to promote nutrition but it is not the school’s role to become the food police.

It would seem that your correspondents (16.2.09) want schools to be exactly that. As a parent, I believe that it is my responsibility what I feed my children and not the school’s business; and as a school principal, it is not my business to tell parents what they can and cannot geed their children. Sensible schools will have sensible guidelines in place for parents but, at the end of the day, it is about personal responsibility. I think you will find that going to school is non-fattening.

David Grant,  Principal, Big Rock Primary Schools, Brighton.

Word lovers of the world unite

The gatekeepers at Collins are discombobulated because there are too many words for their dictionary so they’re seeking to cull some of those which are seldom used.

The Times has taken up the cudgels for the words which are languishing on the list of linguistic losers -  or as it puts it, those in danger of fading into caliginosity – with a call for readers to rush to their rescue.

If you want to save one from what  Comment Central calls the semantic scrapheap you can go there to  vote for your favourite from a list of 24 which are doomed by the designers’ desire to detruncate the dictionary.

I can understand that there are financial and practical constraints on the size of a dictionary but I share the The Virtual Linguist’s  concerns:

I was surprised at some of the comments made by journalists and readers, many of whom had the attitude ‘So what? There are far too many words in English anyway’.  I was reminded of George Orwell’s Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where undesirable words were eliminated from the language and ‘reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum’ (from the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four).

I may not like the juxtaposition of rural and rustic with unpolished and uncouth in the definition of agrestic, but that’s no reason to vilipend it or regard it as recrement.

Breadth and depth of language are intrinsic parts of our ability to communicate and help us not just to articulate our thoughts and feelings but to recognise them in the first place.

Besides, if these words disappear from the dictionary where do you go to determine their definition when you come across them?

I went to Save The Words for guidence but found it a temporary state of apanthropinization.

Hat Tip: Jim Mora

It’s now the GFC

Do we have to worry or take it more seriously when something becomes an acronym?

Corin Dann said on Breakfast this morning that the global financial crisis is now the GFC.

CORRECTION:

Neil has pointed out in a comment below that I was wrong to use the term acronym. He’s right, an acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of other words and GFC isn’t a word.

SO question for word lovers: is there a word which I could have used for a collection of initial letters used instead of the words without forming a word?

Unhelpful help desk

The internet wasn’t connected when I checked the computer this morning so I rang the Orcon help desk.

A very cheerful recorded voice answered telling me something to the effect that they were all out partying and to ring back later. It was a joke but I wasn’t greatly amused because this was 6am and the help desk wasn’t going to open until 8.

Two hours later I called back, got a real person and explained the problem, pointing out there were red lights on the wee box which I thought were normally green.

He said not to worry about that, and to turn everything off and back on again. I’d already tried that so he told me to delete the connection icon and talked me through setting it up again but there was still no service.

He then asked me to hang on while he consulted a colleague, left me listening to the sort of music I wouldn’t normally choose to listen to and eventually came back to tell me the colleague was busy and would call me back.

Another two hours later no-one had called back so I rang the help desk again. The woman who answered asked me to turn everything off again but the internet still wouldn’t connect when I turned it all back on. She then left me listening to more music I wouldn’t normally listen to while she consulted a colleague before coming back to say there must be a problem with our connection so she’d talk to their technician and ring me back.

This time it took only a few minutes to get the call back to tell me there was a problem with the network in our area and technicians were working on it.

Would it be too much to ask that when there’s a problem with the network, someone lets the people on the help desk know so that they can tell customers about it when they call so the customers don’t waste their time wasting the time of the help desk staff?

Let’s not go back there

Phew, thank goodness the government appears to be back tracking  from suggestions yesterday that it would bail out Fisher and Paykel.

In a country where more than 90% of businesses employer fewer than 20 people, a company with 1600 staff is unusual and the impact of those job losses should the company collapse would be significant for the individuals, the wider commnity and the economy.

But the company is not about to collapse and even if it was I’m very wary of any suggestion that the government should invest to save it.

Easing the way should a foreign company wish to take a stake in the business would be okay but there’s nothing iconic about whiteware and even if there was that’s not a reason to invest taxpayers’ money in a company which makes it.

If there are any iconic industries here then they are those based on what we do best because of our climate and topography – growing grass and turning it into protein.

Fran O’Sullivan   writes about a couple of those, PGG Wrightson and Fonterra.

Speculation can easily turn into self-fulfilling prophesy so it’s important to make it clear that neither company is facing a situation which might make them need or ask for taxpayer assistance. However, if they were I’d be just as opposed to any suggestion of any government  investment in them as I am to the idea of a state bail out of F&P.

New Zealand dragged itself away from governement interference in, protection of  and subsidies to businesses in the 1980s with considerable pain for those caught in the fallout and we should resist any attempt to go back there.

There may be a difference between government investment in a company and a subsidy to producers, but I wouldn’t want to be in Tim Groser’s shoes if he was asked to explain that while putting New Zealand’s case for freeing up trade to our competitors.

If we make a sacred cow of a company which manufactures whiteware we’ll be in a much weaker position to argue against countries which build alters of subsidies for their primary producers.

For the record: I own a few Fisher & Paykel shares and our farm supplies Fonterra.

One down another to go

The Electoral Finance Act has gone so the government can turn it’s attention to addressing another threat to freedom of expression – the Guilt by Association law Section 92A.

 

See more at:  goNZofreakpower, MacDoctor, Hand Mirror,  Not PC, WhaleOil,  Kiwiblog,  Juha Saarinen and Russell Brown.

SFF & PGW no longer good friends?

Silver Fern Farms is not impressed by the offer of $10 million from PGG Wrightson in compensation for failing to complete a partnership deal last year.

PGG Wrightson (PGGW) yesterday issued a statement offering mediation and $10 million in compensation to Silver Fern Farms.

Silver Fern chief executive Keith Cooper was caught unaware by PGGW’s press release, a tactic he said was antagonistic.

“It is particularly antagonistic to start playing negotiations via the media with something that appears to be heading towards the courts.”

When two parties start communicating via media release it’s a sure sign their relationship is deteriorating.

PGW’s half year report is due out next week and it’s unlikely to be very pretty.

The company’s offer to take a 50% stake in SFF upset a lot of its clients. It didn’t go down well with a lot of its staff either, some of whom have left the company and set up in opposition to it.

On top of that drought and other problems in Uruguay combined with the fall in the international price for milk will be hurting its dairying venutres there.