Poverty for baby boomers?

Poverty for baby boomers, the headline says.

The story reinforces it:

Baby boomers could end up living in poverty if the Government does not urgently address issues of income, housing and health, says a study published today.

But that is only part of the story.

The living standard of baby boomer retirees – and everyone else – depend not just on the government addressing these factors.

It also depends on other government expenditure and income. Both of those will be affected by and have an impact on economic growth and productivity. And those will be the major determinants of what the government and individuals can afford.

Future wealth and well-being also depend a lot on what we do for ourselves. If we look  only to the government, we’re making ourselves prisoners of public fortunes and political whim.

Monday’s Quiz

1. Who adopted Anne Shirley?

2. Who said, “People who life in New Zealand by choice as distinct from an accident of birth, and who are committed to this land and its people and steeped in their knowledge of both, are no less ‘indigenous’ than Maori.”?

3. Where is Colonia del Sacramento, (if there’s more than one, I’m looking for the World Heritage site).

4. What is a haugh?

5. How many teeth does a hogget have?

In praise of democracy

Last week was the the first time, New Zealand’s Prime Minister and the next four in Cabinet were out of the country at the same time. That left the fifth ranked minister, Tony Ryall in charge.

Life, and government, continued as normal.

Democracy worked.

Let’s not take that for granted when at the same time, at least 26 people in Afghanistan were killed in election-related violence.

What does $10 buy?

The ODT reports most Otago schools will abandon adult learning next year when changes to government priorities withdraw funding from hobby classes.

“You could still run courses, but the adults would have to pay all of the fees. They won’t be subsidised any more.”

Mr Craigie said adult students paid about $50 a term for ACE courses.

However, without the Government’s funding, they would be expected to pay more than $100 a term for each course.

Over a four-term year, it could cost students between $400 and $500, making it too expensive for many adults.

Let’s get add a little more to this discussion.

There is a high attrition rate in night classes. In each of the four years I’ve taught Spanish people rarely come to every class and several drop out altogether. That isn’t a reflection on my teaching, other teachers report a similar falling off in numbers, particularly over winter.

On average we had about 15 people on the first night. When we went for one term four or five dropped out and when we went for two terms the last couple of classes had only seven or eight students. Missing the odd class is inevitable, because people have other things to do, some knew when they started they wouldn’t finish the course because they were off on the holidays which prompted them to learn Spanish in the first place, some had other more important things come up and some found learning Spanish wasn’t for them.

Would it have made any difference if they had been paying more for the classes? I’m not sure. However, I am quite sure it is not good use of taxpayers’ money to subsidise classes for people who don’t turn up.

Another point to consider is that a lot of courses don’t run for the full year. Most continue for only one or two terms which would drop the cost to students to quarter or half the $400 to $500 cited.

That’s still a lot of money for some people, but regardless of how long the courses run, it’s only about $10 a class.

What else will $10 buy you? You’d pay more to go to a film.

But the more important question is, what is the best use of taxpayers’ moeny?

Keep in mind, we are facing a decade of deficits. You don’t just have to consider what else the money could go on now, you have to remember that it is borrowed money which will have to be repaid, cutting in to what is available for future spending.

Given that, what would you rather spend the money on, classes to improve literacy and numeracy for people who really need it, or on hobby classes for people who may or may not turn up to them?

Keeping it simple better all round

Dairy farmers are being criticised for using palm oil kernel expeller.

Environmentalists are concerned about the effects of felling tropical rain forests which have been replaced by palm plantations.

There is another side to that debate.  Andrei at NZ Conservative points out the hypocrisy of criticising developing nations for doing what developed nations did for years.

However, I have some sympathy for the criticism, albeit for different reasons.

New Zealand’s natural advantage is the climate which enables us to have low cost, free range farming systems. Feed supplements like PKE increase production but they do so at a cost. That might be justified at last year’s record payout but now that the forecast payout for this season is well back it probably isn’t.

The payout goes up and down and there’s very little farmers can do about that. But we do have a fair bit of control about inputs. Keeping the cost of them down with simple systems, based on grass feeding, helps maximise profits in the good years and minimises the damage in the bad ones.

What farmers feed their cows is a business one. But sometimes what’s good for the environment is also good for business and I think less PKE might be better for both.

August 24 in history

On August 24:

79: Mount Vesuvius  erputed.

1591 English poet Robert Herrick was baptised (Date of birth not known).

Robert Herrick, illustration based on Hesperides impression.

1875 Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swin the English Channel.

1878 Wellington’s steam-tram service opened.

1891 Thomas Edison patented the motion picture camera.

1899 Argentinean write Jorge Luis Borges was born.

1932 Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic, the first woman to do so.

Amelia Mary Earhart c. 1935

1936 English noelist A.S. Byatt (Dame Antonia Susan Duffy) was born.

1947 Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho was born.

1957 English comedian and actor Stephen Fry was born.

Sourced from Wikipedia & NZ History Online.

Anyone else having blog trouble?

Late this afternoon I couldn’t access any WordPress blog, including this one, although I could get to other web pages, including blogspot blogs.

Now Worpdress problems seem to be sorted but twice tonight I haven’t been able to post comments on blogspot blogs (I keep getting a message saying there are errors in this form).

Is anyone else having problems and does anyone know how to solve them?

UPDATE: The comment problem has solved itself. maybe it was just a temporary tantrum from  the tech fairy.

Riverstone

Thirty years ago the Lower Waitaki plains were dry and barren. The stone-strewn paddock supported a few sheep and crops which only did as well as the weather let them.

Then came irrigation. In its wake new business opportunities followed, on and off farm. One of these is Riverstone gift shop:

 It grew and then came Riverstone Kitchen which offers delicious food, efficient and friendly service in delightful surroundings.

We lunched there today. It hadn’t occurred to me to book, but I will next time because it is now so popular we were lucky to get the second last free table.

Misses nine and four were happy with the play area inside and the swings, chickens and peacocks outside while waiting for the food. The menu catered for them and the adults.

Chef Bevan Smith uses good quality, fresh ingredients. He grows what he can in the garden on-site and sources as much as possible of anything else he needs from local suppliers.

 Today I enjoyed the Italian Provincial Soup:

Then my sister in law and I shared a chocolate sour cream cake with berry compote and vanilla bean ice cream:

Did you see the one about . . .

Man vs Mutt – the Skeptical Doctor on why it’s better to be sick as a dog (Hat Tip: Not PC).

The Weldon Index - Cactus Kate’s CEO income assessment tool.

Hello Sailor - Quote Unquote spots a floating double entendre.

Another Day at the Office  - Waitaki Blog’s working view.

Competitive mothering, a non-contact sport, confessions from a real mother from Eleanor Black at Pundit.

A get-rich quick scheme - Lindsay Mitchell adds what just about everything is costing us.

So that’s how it works - In A Strange Land shows how the sewing machine works.

Truly Glorious - Laughy kate luaghs at a fancy dress party failure.

Really, really old

My Australian nieces have brought their parents to visit us.

As you do when you’re in North Otago they went to look at Elephant Rocks and the skeleton of the baleen whale.

Miss four was telling me about the whale, ” . . . and it didn’t have any skin.”

I explained that was because it was really, really old which got the inevitable question, “how old?”

I replied millions and millions of years. She looked blank.

I said, “even older than me.”

The light went on.

Bringing history alive

North Otago is justifiably proud of its beautiful old limestone buildings.

Old, though is relative. Nineteenth century is old in New Zealand, because we’re such a young country. But it’s little more than yesterday when compared with Europe where it’s possible to visit so many more buildings which are bigger, more beautiful and much older.

We can however, give visitors something more, if we can bring the buildings, and our history, relatively recent though it is, to life.

This is the motivation behind Inside Victorian Oamaru.

The concept was revealed at a presentation on Friday which opened with this video:

 

It continued with an introduction by the steering committee which was interrupted by professional actors who gave us a taste of what visitors might see and hear.

The presentation was brilliant and if the project succeeds it will be even better.

The concept will use 21st century technology to tell 18th century stories and bring history alive for modern audiences.

Visitors will be able to watch a storm in the harbour, 3D will make it seem as if the boat is coming at them, 4D will allow them to feel the wind in their hair and spray on their faces.

You can get a small taste in 2D version of what visitors will see in 3D here.

I was enthralled by the presentation and I’m excited by the potential of the project.

It has been developed by talented people. One of the men behind the concept, and project is Scott Elliffe of Living History, which brings The Great Storm of 1868 to life every summer evening.

The ODT lists some of the others :

Grant Major, who won an Academy Award for production design on Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and also worked on King Kong, Heavenly Creatures, An Angel at My Table and Whale Rider.

Michelanne Forster, an award-winning script writer, Zoe Hobson, of Dunedin-based 38 Pictures, Gallien Chanalet-Quercy, involved in the production of the 3D Experience at the Sir Edmund Hillary Centre at Aoraki Mt Cook, and Hillary Norris, an accomplished New Zealand actor and director, were also involved.

It’s a brilliant idea, they’ve done the homework and put a lot in to getting it to his stage. To go further needs more money though and the Waitaki Development Board has applied for a $2.1 million grant fropm the Ministry of Economic Development to launch the project.

If they get the money, Inside Victorian Oamaru could be bringing history to life within 12 months. That would, in the words of Development Board and Steering Committee chair, Phil Hope, make Oamaru not just a place to drive though, but a place to go to.

What’s in it for us?

North and South editor Virginia Larson tells us in this month’s editorial she requested an interview with All Black captain Richie McCaw.

I wanted to find out what makes a leader out of a young man; what people and places shaped him in his childhood; how he bears the hopes and expectation of thousands every time he leads his team into the arena.

After some exchange of emails with McCaw’s agent, a final phone call came to this: “What’s in it for us?” said the agent. Well, there was no money, of course, and on the spot I couldn’t guarantee a cover . . . But didn’t he value a thoughtful, in-depth profile to be read by close to 3000,000 people . . .

Clearly, he didn’t. Access denied.

If the All Blacks, want to gain back the place they once had in New Zealanders’ hearts, the question isn’t what’s in it for them but what’s in it for us, the public.

My father and brothers weren’t interested in rugby, they preferred sailing. But radio commentaries provided a background to my childhood Saturday afternoons because my mother often listened to them, especially when her nephew was playing for University or Otago.

I didn’t watch a game until I was 17 when the prefects from Waitaki Girls’ were invited to watch inter-school matches at Waitaki Boys’. It didn’t really matter what was on, it was an excuse for an afternoon out of class and with boys.

A few excursions to Carisbrook when I was a student followed and there were also some late/night early morning parties when we crowded round a black and white television to watch a test from overseas. But the attraction was not so much what was happening on the field as the opportunity for fun with friends.

The next memory I have of rugby was 1981 and the Springbok tour. While some people a little older than I am feel it was a defining issue, I didn’t. I was in my first job as a journalist and reported on local reactions, and happened to be in Christchurch with friends when there was a test somewhere which we watched on TV, but it was not a major concern or interest for me.

I was overseas the following year, returned home to be married and have vague memories of gatherings with friends at our home or theirs to watch the odd test in the next few years.

It wasn’t until 1995 when we hosted an AFS student from Argentina who played rugby that I watched a live game. That was a World Cup year and the All Blacks toured New Zealand, stopping in provincial towns to meet their fans. I took our student who could speak only a little English, to meet them. His excitement at exchanging a few words in Spanish with Eric Rush and shaking hands with Sean Fitzpatrick brought home to me the strength of their influence and international reputation.

The Super 12 competition started the following year and we travelled down to Dunedin and Christchurch to watch several games. We watched a few NPC games  at Lancaster Park and Carisbrook too, including the one when Otago didn’t win the Ranfurly Shield and one when they did win the NPC competition.

Then what happened? The season got longer, the competition didn’t have the same attraction and frustration at the way rugby interfered with other functions grew. I’ve watched a few North Otago games but last year went to Dunedin only once for an NPC game, this year I half-watched a Super 14 game on TV and haven’t yet watched a test.

I know just enough about the game to sit through a match, but I need an emotional connection to enjoy it. I might have that with Valley which is our local team and North Otago, but I no longer have it with any teams higher up. I’d be hard pressed to name any Highlander or Otago players and couldn’t name more than a handful of All Blacks.

Part of the reason for that might lie in a comment from Graham Henry which caught Alf Grumble’s attention:

“. . . I guess the product’s not too great and that’s disappointing.”

When I read that I begin to wonder if Karl du Fresne really had been in the All Black dressing room when he wrote:

The meeting opened with a team official launching a withering attack on player A, who had been seen in a Durban bar wearing a non-approved hair gel. The player’s excuse – that he had a new executive assistant who had packed the wrong makeup kit – was contemptuously brushed aside.

Next, player B was fined for having turned up late at a promotional appearance to launch the ABs’ new personal fragrance range, evocatively named Scrum. . .

It didn’t used to be a product. The players were heroes but not plastic celebrities. They were real, grounded people connected to and respectful of the public who admired them.

At least some of the current All Blacks might still be like that. From what I know of Richie McCaw, who grew up in the HakaValley not far from here, he definitely is. But his agent has let him down and has also let rugby down.

When the agent had to ask, “what’s in it for us?”  and the coach talks about the product they’ve both lost sight of what’s important.

It’s not a product it’s a game. The All Blacks aren’t royalty who command attention, they’re players who need to connect with the public if they want to win back fans.

I’m writing this on Saturday evening. The All Blacks will be playing the Wallabies soon. I might turn the TV on to watch the national anthems and the haka and to see if I can catch sight of some people I know in the crowd because they happened to have important business in Sydney this weekend.

But I won’t stay awake for the game and while I’ll hope that New Zealand will win, that’s no more than I’d want if it was the national tiddlywinks team playing the Australians.

I’m over rugby which isn’t of any great concern if it’s only me. But it’s not. A lot of people, especially women, share my lack of interest and that ought to be of great concern for the Rugby Union who wants us all to get behind the World Cup.

They haven’t got long to get us enthusiastic again. They could start by realising that unless they can persuade us there’s something in it for us, there isn’t anything in it for them. A good first step would be for that agent to phone North and South to arrange a time that suits the journalist for an interview with Richie.

August 23 in history

On August 23:

1754 Louis XVI of France was born.

King of France and Navarre

1912 US singer and dancer Gene Kelly was born.

1947 Assisted immigration  resumed after being stopped during World War II.

1948 the World Council of Churches was formed.

1951 Queen Noor of Jordan was born.

Queen Noor in 2006

Whitebait season beats bridge building

On the West Coast they know what really matters.

Taylors Contracting have to move a river twice during a major rebuilding of a road and rail bridge over the Arahura River, between Hokitika and Greymouth.

Their deadline for doing it is determined by the whitebait season.

The boy on the beach

A family of four wandered on to the beach and settled down near us.

The parents were very attentive, swimming with the two young children, playing with them in the sand and watching them play by themselves. They frequently admired what the children were doing and chatted with them.

Every now and then the wee boy, who was about three, would do something to annoy his younger sister. His parents reprimanded him, quietly and calmly. He continued to annoy her, the reprimand, still calm and quiet became sterner. He snatched his sister’s toy. His mother picked him up, took the toy from him, set him down at a distance from his sister, told him to stay there and play by himself. She also warned that if he annoyed his sister one more time he’d be smacked.

A few minutes later, he ran up to his sister, pushed her over and took another toy.

The mother smacked his hand, lightly. His lip quivered, he looked her in the eye, sniffed, took a deep breath, sat down and began playing happily again.

Smacking in general is not a good thing to do, there may have been a better alternative to it in this particular case, but should what the mother did be against the law?

This took place in Fiji where it isn’t. Had it happened here the mother would probably not have been arrested and charged for breaking the Crimes (Substitution Section 59) Amendment Act, but she had broken the law.

The memory of this scene is one of the reasons I voted no in the referendum.

It doesn’t mean I condone smacking. It doesn’t mean I think it’s a good way to discipline children.

It just means I know that parenting is an imperfect art, even the best parents don’t get it right all the time, and when they get it wrong in a way that does not physically or emotionally harm a child, they should not risk criminalisation.

It doesn’t matter that no-one has been charged for a trivial smack like the one given to the boy on the beach. It doesn’t matter that no-one has got away with using much more force if it was reasonable in the circumstances and for the purposes of prevention, which the law permits.

A law which allows an action for one reason but disallows a similar, or maybe even lesser, one for another is bad law. A law which means parents risk being criminalised for a trivial action is bad law. A bad law shouldn’t be tweaked when it needs to be changed.

This is a bad law and one bad law undermines all the other good ones.

Apropos of this:

Keeping Stock has written a very good memo to John.

Kiwiblog looks at Key’s response (to the referendum not Keeping Stock’s memo).

Dim Post leaks some changes to  smacking law.

Chris Trotter writes on the Deafening Echo at Bowalley Road.

Karl du Fresne posts on Losing 40 – nil and blaming the ref.

Ice Cream Pudding

My mother called it ice cream pudding, other people’s mothers called it ice cream custard.

Either way, it still tastes good.

Ice Cream Pudding

 4 Tablespoons butter       4 Tablespoons sugar

 4 Tablespoons flour          1 egg

 1 teaspoon vanilla        2 cups milk

 

 Cream butter & sugar, stir in flour & mix.

 Stir in egg & vanilla & mix.

 Heat milk, remove from heat and gradually add to the rest of the mixture, stirring as you go so it won’t go lumpy.

 When all the milk is stirred in, put mixture back in pot, return to heat and stir until it thickens and boils.

Serve warm or cold with fruit.

Smoking bad for environment

It isn’t news that smoking is bad for human health but now it seems it’s bad for the globe’s health too.

The number of outdoor heaters has increased since smoking inside was banned and environmentalists are concerned about the carbon emissions from them.

 “100,000 homes all using a standard patio heater on average of one hour per week would generate a carbon footprint of approximately 18 000 tonnes, that’s equivalent to a medium-sized car travelling from Auckland to Wellington and back again around 60, 000 times,” says Kathryn Hailes, from Carbonzero programme.

“If these households stopped using their patio heaters cost savings could be potentially around $20 million dollars per annum, that’s a lot of savings that people could keep in their back pocket rather than using to heat the ambient temperature of the neighbourhood,” says Ms Hailes.

But do 100,000 homes all use a standard patio heater for an average of an hour a week?

We have a couple of patio heaters which we use for a few hours a few times a year – less than 10 hours in total.

We use a barbeque a lot more often, though usually for less than 15 minutes at a time.

“What seems very bizarre about them is that we’re busy insulating our houses so that we can minimise the amount of heat that we need to keep warm and here we are burning fuel outside with not even walls let alone insulation heating up the entire universe,” says Jeanette Fitzsimons, Green Party MP.

Environmentalists say they produce the same volume of climate-changing gases as a speeding truck. They’ve also calculated they consume as much energy as five electric fan heaters on full power.

The European parliament is in the process of banning the outdoor heaters and Australia is wondering about the environmental cost of them.

Here in New Zealand there are no plans for a ban but the energy efficiency and conservation authority says it’s keeping a close eye on developments in Australia.

Jeanette Fitzsimons doesn’t support a ban but says she is concerned about the heater’s carbon footprint. . .

 “It’s a question of personal responsibility of the person using them and that’s one of the things that a price on carbon emissions will start to create as it will raise the price of fuel and then people can decide ‘Do I really want to spend that much on outdoor heating or have I got better things to do with the money and the fuel,’ and for those determined to head outdoors on chilly evenings there’s always the option of putting on another jersey,” says Ms Fitzsimmons.

Personal responsibility and letting people make their own choice based on price is a pleasant change of tone from the Greens which have in the past been more keen on bans.

However, has anyone thought that if people weren’t outside enjoying themselves they might be somewhere else doing something else which caused even more emissions?

2 + 2 = whatever the journalist thinks

The headlines says: 

Key suggests Hide’s minister days are numbered

The first paragraph says:

Prime Minister John Key has suggested Rodney Hide’s days as a minister may be numbered.

And the Prime Minister actually said:

Mr Key says he respects Mr Hide’s position and it’s the sort of thing that can happen with MMP governments.

“He’s effectively said he’d resign as minister of local government and from there on in it would be up to me as Prime Minister to determine,” Mr Key says. “But lets cross that bridge if we ever come to it.”

How that adds up to intro and headline beats me.

Am I missing something or is this just another example of what Macdoctor’  calls Spam Journalism?

Champion gas in need of a champion

It’s time someone stood up for CO2. This humble little gas needs a champion.

There’s plenty of people willing to stick up for dead dogs in umus or dead galahs in aviaries (and so they damn well should!). And there’s heaps of folk happy to defend any beneficiary lucky enough to gross a grand a week (where can the rest of us apply?) but no one, it seems, is willing to stand as CO2′s advocate.

If it was a gay gas hoping to adopt, there would be benchfuls of judges saying, “Why not?” If it was an ethnic gas, seeking a seat at the Super City table, there’d be coalitions of politicians saying, “Good on you, CO2!”

That’s a taste of Jim Hopkins’ column in the Herald. If you want to find out more about cinemactivists emoting about emitting and Greena, The Worrier Princess then read more here. Your laughter lines will thank you for it.

On a similar theme, Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson asks, could greenicide enter the English lexicon as a corruption of that all-defining slogan, clean and green?

Most farmers are clean because of high standards of farm management. Most farmers are green because farms are our offices as well as our homes. The vast majority of New Zealand’s farmers take environmental management very seriously.

Yet clean and green has been corrupted into greenicide, being the adoption of green policies at any cost.

He explains how much the campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 40% would cost, says reductions can’t and won’t work and introduces the convenient truth – that humans evolve.

Technology will enable humans to prosper and grow and that’s a positive and realistic vision of the future farmers support.

Controlling emissions demands an investment in science research and technology. This reconciles a basic human yearning “for more” without killing our planet.

. . . That’s why the Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen negotiations seem more like a big jobs scheme. Too much spending is on policy, appearance and spin, not nearly enough is spent on solutions.

. . . If New Zealand put 0.05 per cent of gross domestic product into research instead of the emissions trading scheme, it would pump $87.5 million into climate variation research. In the United States, that figure would be some $11 billion and globally, over $34 billion would be raised.

The amount raised also illustrates New Zealand’s very small part in a much bigger global picture. New Zealand doesn’t produce 99.8 per cent of global emissions.

New Zealand can lead internationally on research without killing the economy.

The heroes aren’t the doom merchants who tell us how to live, but the scientists and farmers who enable us to live and prosper. Greenicide is not the solution.

That is the most sensible view on the issue of climate change I have come across.

Money for research will do far more for the environment, without the social and economic damage, than an ETS.

Whatever target we aim for, the ETS is not unlike the medieval system of religious indulgences, which required people to pay before they sinned, and will do as little good.

Which part of no don’t you understand?

The noes have it.

Preliminary results of the referendum on child discipline were:

Votes Number of Votes Received Percentage of Total Valid Votes For the response Yes 191,495 11.81% For the response No 1,420,959 87.60% Informal Votes 9,696 0.60% Total Valid Votes 1,622,150 100.00%

 

The number of invalid votes cast was 802.

A total of 1,622,952 people voted which is a turnout of 54.04%.

That compares with a 26.9% (652,394 voters) turnout in the 1995 referendum on the number of firefighters.

A total of 2,059,948 people voted in the referendum on the number of MPs  and  2,056, 404 voted in the referendum on the criminal justice system. Both of these were held in conjunction with the 1999 general election.

The two referenda held in isolation got a much lower turnout than the two held with the general election. The latest one which was by postal ballot got a much higher turnout than the 1995 one which required people to vote at a polling booth.