Cavorting with the Victorian domestic goddess

An appointment with the Victorian domestic goddess is one of the sell-out performances at Oamaru’s annual Victorian Heritage celebrations.

Last night we were invited to cavort with her and promised an evening of frivolity and pleasure should we do so.

The cavorting was of a decorous nature although there were some delightful double entendres in the badinage between the goddess and her friends.

We also learned the intricacies of Victorian sporting behaviour, vicariously enjoyed a seaside picnic with culinary dishes to delight any gentleman and experienced social behaviours and amusements in a colonial settlement.

We were given the option of sherry or lemon barley water as we entered. The evening finished with a supper of Victorian delicacies and we were sent home with a Cyclopedia of Valuable Recipes.

This treasure house of useful knowledge for the wants of everyday life includes instructions on how to make smelling salts, Spiced Rose Water for a Casting Bottle and Most Delicate Cucumber Sandwiches.

Inflation is theft

Some things are too important for politicis – monetary policy is one of them.

But Phil Goff has turned his back on 20 years of concensus with his announcement that fighting inflation is no longer the most important priority.

“Our Reserve Bank policy targets are not well designed to produce a stable and competitive exchange rate, nor to keep interest rates as low as possible,” Mr Goff said in a speech to Federated Farmers in Wellington.

The battle against inflation was no longer the most important priority — growth and wealth creation were equally vital, Mr Goff said. . .

He might have remembered that you can’t have real growth and wealth creation with inflation if he’d read Eric Roy’s post on the National Party MP’s new blog:

In the mid eighties . . . I had just purchased an additional block next door.  The budgeted $40K surplus I calculated disappeared to a $90K deficit as interest rates soared to, in my case, 23.5% . . .

Those interest rates were driven in large part by soaring inflation.

Inflation is theft.

It erodes the real value of investment, adds to the cost of doing business and makes exports more expensive. Just look at Zimbawe.

Goff spent nine years in a government which undertook several reviews on monetary policy. He could have changed it then but did nothing, now he’s decided from opposition, where he can’t do anything, that he wants to something.

Not just one thing, but four: he wants a stable and competitive exchange rate; reduced interest rates for businesses and home owners; continued priorities of price stability and low inflation; and to guard against expectations of price rises.

Matt Nolan at the Visible Hand in economics explains the flaws in that wish-list:

So, with goal 1 they want to reduce the flexibility of NZ$ prices, which will lead to higher unemployment and a worse allocation of resources.  Furthermore, they want to keep the dollar low which implies subsidising exporters to the cost of households in the short-term.

With 2 they want to punish savers.

And with 3 and 4 they want to contradict themselves – as by limiting price flexibility and holding the exchange rate and interest rates down they WILL drive an increase in inflation expectations, dump price stability, and remove any chance of a low inflation environment.

 He has related posts here,  here and here.

Offestting Behaviour seconds that.

BK Drinkwater says reads Nolan’s posts and weep for the integrity of the Labour Party, who are leveraging public ignorance of economics to embark on a feckless campaign of populist short-termism.

Kiwiblog says if inflation gets out of control we all get poorer.

Not PC doesn’t want tinkering he wants abolition.

Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson says government spending is the root of the monetary policy problem.

Macdoctor counters some fiscal ignorance.

November 20 in history

On November 20:

1620 – Peregrine White,  was born – first English child born in the Plymouth Colony.

 

The Pilgrim Hall Museum owns the original Peregrine White cradle and Elder Brewster Chair

1765  Sir Thomas Fremantle, British naval captain, was born.

1820 An 80-ton sperm whale attacked the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville‘s 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this story).

1889  Edwin Hubble, American astronomer, was born.

1900 – Chester Gould, American comic strip artist, creator of Dick Tracey, was born.

1908 – Alistair Cooke, British-born journalist, was born.

1910 Francisco I. Madero issued the Plan de San Luis Potosi, denouncing President Porfirio Díaz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution.

1917 Ukraine was declared a republic.

1925 Robert F. Kennedy, American politician was born.

1942  Joe Biden, 47th Vice President of the United States, was born.

1945 Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals started at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.

1947 Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey.

1956 – Bo Derek, American actress, was born.

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis ended: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ended the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.

 

1975 Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain, died after 36 years in power.

1985 Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released.

1992 A fire broke out in Windsor Castle, badly damaging the castle and causing over £50 million worth of damage.

2008 After critical failures in the US financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level since 1997.

1937 Parachuting Santa, George Sellars, narrowly escaped serious injury when he was able to sway his parachute just in time to avoid crashing through the glass roof of the Winter Gardens during the Farmers’ Christmas parade.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

His bum did look big in that

A bloke who tried to break in to a supermarket through a small window got caught in two senses.

He was trapped part-way in and lost his trousers then he was arrested by police after firemen freed him.

Report card

John Key has issued a report card on his government’s first year in office.

It includes a list of achievements and next steps.

The Prime Minister mentioned many of the achievements and plans for the future in a speech, securing a brighter future, in which he said:

 . . . I’ve tasked my Government ministers with working on the key drivers needed to realise these ambitions.  They are about: 

1. Ensuring our tax system encourages people to work hard, save and invest in productive Kiwi businesses. 
   
2. Focusing the Government’s considerable share of economic activity on better, smarter frontline services, rather than waste and backroom bureaucracy.
3. Providing all New Zealanders with the education and skills they need to perform productive well-paid jobs.
4. Building the transport, broadband, and other infrastructure networks that people and businesses need to get their jobs done as efficiently as possible.
5. Removing the red tape and cumbersome regulation that can prevent businesses from expanding, taking on new workers and making the most of new ideas.
6. Supporting Kiwi firms to grow and develop new ideas by connecting them with our smartest researchers and scientists, and helping them reach more global consumers by signing free trade agreements with our trading partners. 

That constitutes a huge programme of work, over a wide range of areas.

As a Government, it is a matter of rolling our sleeves up, focusing on the issues that matter and, in some cases, making some difficult decisions.

By creating the right conditions, we can give people the confidence to work hard, invest in a business, and take up new opportunities.

The last sentence resonates with me.

Good government isn’t about a government doing everything. It’s about creating the right conditions to allow people to succeed by themselves.

Paying a fair share

Trans Tasman thinks the motorcyclists’ protest was a perfect illustration of the political and economic difficulties we’re going to face:

The bikes thundered into town down the motorway. Grey ponytails streaming into the wind behind them, paunches looming threateningly over their petrol tanks. You are unlikely to see a greater gathering of engaged, aging baby boomers, outside the upcoming Carole King concert. Their air of aggrieved entitlement reminds one these people will be collecting their superannuation in a few years.

And this is the problem. Speeches to the gathering from the protesters made it clear they believe it’s unfair they should have to pay the costs of the risky activity they undertake.  The rest of us should pay. Extrapolate this to superannuation, and health, and you have the starkest illustration possible of the long-term problem.

No-one wants to pay more – directly in fees and levies or indirectly through taxes – but almost everyone wants the services.

As for the motorcyclists’ case, Kiwiblog has some stats. on motorbike accidents and also spots the irony:

. . .  the same people who support banning pies from tuckshops on the basis it may extend someone’s life by a few months in 60 years years time, don’t think incentives to reduce the number of motorcycle accidents are justified.

It’s so much easier to have the state telling other people what to do when it doesn’t affect us directly than to pay a fair share towards something that does.

Trans Tasman is a weekly political and economic newsletter. You can subscribe here.

Relatively better isn’t the same as good

New Zealand tops Transparency International’s 2009 corruption perception index.

The others in the top 10 are: Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands and Australia, Canada and Iceland which are 8th equal.

The countries at the bottom are: Chad, Iraq, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia.

Corruption is a form of oppression and this map shows how widespread it is:

While it’s good to be relatively good, what really matters is not how good we are perceived to be relative to anyone else but how good we are fullstop.

A score of 9.4 does mean we’re perceived to be pretty good.

That makes it more likely that other countries and other people will trust us and our institutions.

But we need to be vigilant to ensure that reality matches the perception.

Hat tip: Poneke.

10/10

This week’s Dominion Post political quiz : 10/10 in 47 seconds with no guesses.

There’s races . . . Updated

There’s races and there’s the heritage race day which opened Oamaru’s annual Victorian heritage celebrations.

Alf’s Imperial Army stood guard over the official party as Celebration committee chair, Sally Hope,  welcomed the crowd:

There were horses and sulkies – full size with professional jockeys and ponies with young drivers.

The celebrity celebrity race featured Waitaki Mayor Alec Familton, the Wizard, The Queen of Victorian Oamaru and North Otago rugby player Ross Hay, paired with reinsmen.

There was also a race for penny farthings:

Many of the race goers dressed in Victorian finery, some of whom competed for the fashion in the field awards.

The Queen declared the celebrations open with cut-glass vowels and was still smiling sweetly, loyal guardsman at her side, at the end of the day:

The ODT coverage of the day is here.

The heritage celebrations started modestly with a small fete 19 years ago and are now the biggest annual event in the Waitaki District.

This year’s programme includes a Swaggers and servants dance, a ball, the national penny farthing championships and the world stone sawing championships. Celebrations conclude on Sunday with a Victorian fete.

UPDATE: TV3 was at the races too with words and video.

Fonterra shareholders vote for new capital structure

Fonterra shareholders have backed the company’s plans for capital restructuring.

Fonterra Chairman, Sir Henry van der Heyden, said the high vote expressed “great confidence in the Co-operative and our future.”

“It is also a great comment on our farmer shareholders,” he said. “They told us they wanted to retain 100% control and ownership of our Co-operative. They said give us the opportunity to back our Co-operative. Today they have stepped up to the plate in a big way to strengthen our Co-op.”

The vote means shareholders will be able to buy more shares than the amount of milk they supply entitles them to. It will also enable suppliers to sell shares to each other.

November 19 in history

On November 19:

1600  King Charles I of England was born.

1805  Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and Suez Canal engineer, was born.

1816  Warsaw University was established.

1863 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 

The only confirmed photo of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg (circled), taken about noon, just after Lincoln arrived and some three hours before the speech.

1905  Tommy Dorsey, American bandleader, was born.

1916  Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn established Goldwyn Pictures.

1917  Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India was born.

1933  Larry King, American TV personality, was born.

1942  Calvin Klein, American clothing designer, was born.

1942  Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launched the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR’s favor.

1961  Meg Ryan, American actress, was born.

1962  Jodie Foster, American actress, was born.

1969  Football player Pelé scored his 1,000th goal.

1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel.

1984 A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.

 

1992 The Fred Hollows Foundation was launched in New Zealand.

1997 , Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive. They became the first set of septuplets to survive infancy, with all seven alive in 2009.

 

1998  Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

Mickey Mouse & Friends Band Concert

Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse.

Mid-week music

It’s W.S. Gilbert’s birthday.

Of all the talents I don’t have that I wish I did, the one I miss the most is the ability to sing in tune. Because of that I was never even in the chorus of school musicals.

I did however, assist backstage for one – The Mikado from which comes I’ve Got a Little List.

In and out of touch

We’d finished the meeting, shared taxis to the airport, checked in and regrouped in the Koru lounge.

A few years ago we’d have chatted to each other until our flights were called.

Instead, a couple checked and dealt with messages on their mobiles, two turned their computers on and started typing and another checked emails on a Blackberry.

Spot the irony.

The technology which makes it so much easier to stay in touch with people in other places makes it far too easy to be out of touch with people in the same place.

Missing numbers

 The commentary on births and deaths in the year to the end of September records  a decline in infant mortality and still births:

During the September 2009 year, the number of infant deaths (under one year of age) registered in New Zealand totalled 290. The infant mortality rate (infant deaths per 1,000 live births) has dropped over the last 40 years. In the September 2009 year, the infant mortality rate was 4.5 per 1,000, down from 5.5 in the September 1999 year, and 17.6 in 1969. The Māori infant mortality rate was 6.2 per 1,000 in the September 2009 year, down from 23.0 in 1969.

 

Neonatal deaths (under four weeks of age) made up 55 percent of infant deaths in the September 2009 year. The neonatal mortality rate (neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births) was 2.5 in 2009, down from 2.9 in 1999. The post-neonatal mortality rate (infant deaths over 27 days of age per 1,000 live births) also dropped, from 2.6 in 1999, to 2.1 per 1,000 in 2009.

Australia has also experienced a drop in infant mortality rates in the last decade. In the December 1997 year, New Zealand’s infant mortality rate was 6.5 per 1,000 live births, compared with 5.3 per 1,000 in Australia. By 2007, New Zealand’s infant mortality rate had dropped to 4.9 per 1,000 and Australia’s rate had dropped to 4.2 per 1,000. (The 2007 data is the most recent available for Australia.)

Scotland (4.7 per 1,000 live births), and England and Wales (4.8) had similar infant mortality rates to New Zealand’s in 2007. However, a number of other low-fertility countries had lower infant mortality rates: Sweden (2.2), Finland (2.7), Norway (3.1), France (3.6), and Denmark (4.0).

There were 380 stillbirths in the September 2009 year. This corresponds to 6.0 stillbirths per 1,000 births (live and stillbirths combined).

The sharp decline in infant mortality is encouraging, but I am left with a question – how many of the babies who survived received some sort of damage during birth which left them with a disability?

These stats are for births and deaths so there is nothing untoward about the absence of any records of babies who were damaged during birth and survived, here.

But those numbers ought to be recorded somewhere and readily available and they don’t appear to be.

The optimum outcome of pregnancy is not just a live birth but a healthy baby.

There are growing concerns about our maternity system. The trend in the number of babies who are damaged during birth but survive would be one measure of whether or not these concerns are justified.

Do directors have the skills?

A media release from Health Minister Tony Ryall on his expectation that District Health Boards will collaborate more includes this:

DHBs across the country have responsibility for overseeing budgets from $100 million to over $1 billion a year. They also have in total around $160 million of unfunded services (DHB deficits) inherited from the last Government.”

“The Ministry of Health advises that only around 10% of Board members have specific financial expertise.

Only around 10% of board members have specific financial expertise?

I wonder how that compares with other boards?

Financial expertise isn’t the only skill required of directors but it’s one of the most important.

It’s moments like these . . .

 . . . you wonder what passes for customer knowledge in Cadbury.

The experiment with palm oil in chocolate failed when consumer pressure forced them to return to the old recipe with cocoa butter (and very nice it is too).

But they haven’t learned from that expensive exercise because now they’re meddling with Minties.

Cadbury is changing the recipe of the lolly and switching production to Thailand.

The confectionery company acknowledges the lollies are now “a softer chew” and a different taste.. .

New Plymouth woman Tania Garcher used to love Minties, she says she chewed them for stress relief. But after Cadbury changed the way her favourite lollies were made, her stress levels have raised considerably.

“All I care about is the taste. If they tasted fine – that’s great, but they don’t – they taste totally different to me,” she says.

Minties are Minties because of both taste and texture.

Meddle with one or both and Minties fans will be reaching for something else to get them through their moments.

November 18 in history

On November 18:

326 The old St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated

1477  William Caxton produced Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first book printed on a printing press in England.

 

Caxton showing the first specimen of his printing to king Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.

 

1626 St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated.

 

1785  David Wilkie, British artist, was born.

1836  Sir William S. Gilbert, British dramatist, was born.

1836  Cesare Lombroso, Italian psychiatrist and founder of criminology, was born.

1861  Dorothy Dix, pseudonym of US journalist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, was born.

1874 The Cospatrick caught fire off the coast of South Africa en route to New Zealand, killing 470 people.

1903 The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

1916 : First Battle of the Somme ended when British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig called off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.

1918  Latvia declared its independence from Russia

1926 George Bernard Shaw refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”

1928 The release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.

1939 Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer, was born.

1942  Susan Sullivan, American actress, was born.

1947 The Ballantyne’s Department Store fire, Christchurch, New Zealand, killed 41 people.

1963 The first push-button telephone went into service.

1978 Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children.

 

1983  Jon Johansen, Norwegian software developer, was born.

1993 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in the House of Representatives.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

If You Could Read My Mind

Happy birthday Gordon Lightfoot.

Peter Cook

Peter Cook would have been 72 today.