Men catching up on life expectancy but birth rate barely at maintenance

New Zealanders are living fractionally longer but the birth rate is barely holding its own according to Statistics analysis of births and deaths between 2006 and 2008.

Life expectancy at birth increased by .2 years for both men and women.

A baby girl can expect to live, on average, 82.4 years and a baby boy 78.4 years, based on mortality rates experienced in 2007–09. The latest life expectancy figures are included in the abridged period life table for 2007–09.

“Life expectancy for women is still higher than it is for men, but the gap has narrowed from more than six years in 1975–77 to four years in 2007–09,” Population Statistics manager Denise McGregor said. “Since 1975–77, life expectancy at birth has increased by 6.9 years for females and 9.4 years for males,” Mrs McGregor said. 

For years life expectancy has been one area where women have had an advantage over men. Women’s life expectancy is still growing but men’s life expectancy has grown faster, I wonder why?

Other points of interest from today’s release are:

• in the first decade of the new millennium there were more than half a million (588,500) live births in New Zealand
• there were 62,540 live births registered in New Zealand in the December 2009 year, down from 64,340 in 2008
• the birth rate was 2.1 births per woman in 2009, down from 2.2 in 2008
• deaths registered in 2009 totalled 28,960, down slightly from 29,190 in 2008. 

These figures reflect the declining birth rate and ageing population which is typical of most developed countries.

The birth rate has to exceed 2% to maintain the population to take account of early deaths, so at best 2.1% is barely maintenance.

It’s become much easier for women to make their way in what used to be considered men’s roles but not nearly as much progress in making what were traditionally seen  as women’s roles more attractive for men.

Career demands on both men and women are not conducive to having and raising a family and a sorry flipside to the rise of women in the workforce has been a devaluing of the role of parenting.

Where women of my generation tended to assume that we’d marry and have children, neither of those options are necessarily natural considerations for young women now. A few more men are taking time out of the paid workforce to take on the primary care role in family but they’re still a minority.

It’s women who have the babies and it’s still largely women who do more parenting and I can understand why these days they might be choosing to delay having children, have fewer or end up not having any at all.

Monday’s quiz

1. Who is the patron saint of tax collectors?

2. What is a mast year?

3. Who wrote, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know and in which poem?

4. What is a windrow?

5. Who said/wrote: A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.?

Attacks on police attacks on society

What a dreadful weekend for police – an Oamaru officer was taken to hospital after being assaulted. That follows two other unrelated attacks on police - an off duty officer was beaten  unconscious in South Auckland and in Whangarei an officer’s lip was bitten off.

Drugs and alcohol are part of the problem – biting off someone’s lip is deranged behaviour – but a lack of respect for police and the law are also contributing factors.

Police Minister Judith Collins said she would consider a law change to better protect police officers, but rebuilding respect for the law should be the first step.

“What I’ve asked to find out is whether or not the law is being properly applied, that’s one side of it. But actually we’d rather stop the attacks in the first place, and I think it’s extremely important that we start to rebuild the respect and fear for the law that we expect,” she told Radio New Zealand.

These attacks on police are attacks on society, if they’re not safe we aren’t either.

Polls show public accept reality?

The government is open to a rise in tobacco tax; there may be fewer government departments at the end of this parliamentary term;  the requirement for a 9% return on equity from Crown Research Institutes will be relaxed; Cabinet is considering more oil exploration; Bill English is disappointed with DOC and RadioNZ playing politics; long term economic restructuring is more important than short term jobs; and falling business confidence is a dose of reality.

A media release from TVNZ highlighted these points from the Guyon Espiner’s interview with Finance Minister Bill English on Q&A yesterday.

The most important of these is that government focus on long term economic restructuring rather than short term jobs.

It takes courage from a government to do what’s right in the long term when they’ll be judged at the ballot box in the short term.

The last administration bought lots of votes and we’re paying for it now. This one is facing criticism from the left for being too tough and the right for not being tough enough.

In spite of that and the need for strong medicine the polls are holding up for National. Perhaps that shows that the public realise this and have also accepted the  dose of realism which businesses are facing up to.

February 22 in history

On February 22:

1495 King Charles VIII of France entered Naples to claim the city’s throne.

1632 Galileo‘s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published.

 

1732 George Washington, First President of the United States, was born.

1744 War of the Austrian Succession: The Battle of Toulon started.

1797 The Last Invasion of Britain started near Fishguard, Wales.

1819 James Russell Lowell, American poet and essayist (, was born.

1819 By the Adams-Onís Treaty, Spain sold Florida to the United States for $US5m.

 

1847 Mexican-American War: The Battle of Buena Vista – 5,000 American troops drive off 15,000 Mexicans.

1855 Pennsylvania State University was founded as the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania.

1856 The Republican Party opened its first national meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1857 Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, English founder of the Scout movement (, was born.

1862 Jefferson Davis was officially inaugurated for a six-year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia.

1879 Frank Woolworth opened the first of many of 5 and 10-cent Woolworth stores.

1882 The Serbian kingdom was refounded.

1889 Olave Baden-Powell, English founder of the Girl Guide, was born.

1902 The Kelburn cable car opened.

1904 The United Kingdom sold  a meteorological station on the South Orkney Islands to Argentina.

 

1908  Sir John Mills, English actor, was born.

1915 Germany instituted unrestricted submarine warfare.

1918 Robert Wadlow, American tallest ever-human, was born.

Robert Wadlow compared to his father, Harold Franklin Wadlow

1922 Britain unilaterally declared the independence of Egypt.

1924 U.S. President Calvin Coolidge was the first President to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.

1926 Kenneth Williams, English actor, was born.

1943  Members of White Rose were executed in Nazi Germany.

 Members of the White Rose, Munich 1942. From left: Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst. Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

1928 Bruce Forsyth, British entertainer, was born.

1944 American aircraft bombard the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer by mistake, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone.

1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.

1950  Julie Walters, English actress, was born.

1958 Egypt and Syria joined to form the United Arab Republic.

1959 Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500.

 

1962  Steve Irwin, Australian herpetologist, was born.

197 An  Irish Republican Army car bomb was detonated at Aldershot barracks, killing seven and injuring nineteen others.

1974 Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit conference started in Lahore.

1979 Independence of Saint Lucia from the United Kingdom.

1980 Miracle on Ice: the United States hockey team defeated the Soviet Union hockey team 4-3, in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

 

1983 The Broadway flop Moose Murders opened and closed on the same night at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

 

1986 Start of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines.

 

1994 Aldrich Ames and his wife Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, were charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union.

1995 The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, was declassified.

 

1997 Scottish scientists announced that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

 

2002 Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in a military ambush.

 

2006 At least six men staged Britain’s biggest robbery ever, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.

 Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Ave Maria

Happy birthday Charlotte Church – 24 today.

Thank You Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck would have been 83 today. We never met, but through her books I felt like she was a friend and I will always be grateful for her writing which makes me laugh and makes me cry.

I first came across her books in San Francisco. When we came across the bookshop  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven – three floors of books, comfortable chairs, a cafe, loos and it was open at 10.30pm.

One of the several books we walked out with was Erma’s  Motherhood, The Second Oldest Profession. It’s a collection of mostly humorous tales about real life mothers and mothering. But among the funny stories are some poignant ones, including A Special Mother.

It tells of a conversation between God and an angel about choosing which baby goes to which mother.

. . . Finally, He passes a name to an angel and smiles, “Give her a handicapped child.”

The angel is curious. “Why this one, God? She’s so happy”

“Exactly,” smiles God. “Could I give a handicapped child a mother who does not know laughter? That would be cruel.”

“But does she have patience?” asks the angel.

“I don’t want her to have too much patience, or she will drown in a sea of self-pity and despair. Once the shock and resentment wear off, she’ll handle it.” . . .

It was just a couple of years since our son who’d had multiple disabilities, had died and it moved me, but not as much as the next chapter entitled Ginny.

It tells of a woman bringing her sister a copy of The Special Mother. Ginny who’s son is profoundly disabled, isn’t impressed. But when her sister leaves, she catches her own reflection in a mirror.

She was stunned by what she saw. A thirty-year-old woman with hundred-year-old eyes. Eyes that were dull and listless. Eyes that held no joy. Eyes that looked but never seems to see anything that interested them. Eyes that reflected no life – only pain.

. . . She knelt beside B.J. “Look B.J. there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’m no saint. It’s important to me for you to know that. I have cursed you for my guilt, my exhaustion and my life. I have questioned why both of us were born. I haven’t figured out yet why He brought us together. I only know there is something special between us . . . I couldn’t bear it if you were not here, or if you had never been. . .

“B.J. I’ve never made any demands on you. I’ve never asked you for anything, but right now, I want you to say ‘Mama’. I know it’s not going to be perfect, but try. Just make a sound. . .

The saliva came out of the conrer of B.J.’s mouth. No sound came forth. then Ginny noticed his eyes. they stared back into hers in a way she had never seen before. They didn’t focus right away, then they looked at her for the first time. . . He knew who she was!

. . .B.J. had just spoken his first word with his eyes. He had called her ‘Mama’.”

This was the first thing I’d come across which expressed the reality of life with a disabled child and even now, more than 15 years after our son’s death, I still can’t read it without crying.

Both of these are still under copyright which is why I haven’t copied them in full. A search for Erma Bombeck, special mother or disabled child will take you to several copies of A Special Mother. I haven’t been able to find a copy of Ginny online.

If you knew

Nina Simone would have been 87 today.

Wine & Food festival sold out

We were warned that tickets to Oamaru’s annual wine and food festival were selling fast but I kept forgetting to get some when I was in town.

When I finally put it on my list I was too late, they’d sold out.

The organisers then announced there would be 500 tickets sold at the gate this morning but by the time we read about that in yesterday’s ODT we were in Wanaka.

One of the attractions this year is Gin Wigmore, about whom I have to confess I know almost nothing. But it’s always a great day, set in the town’s beautiful public gardens.

Memo to self: get in early next year.

Dairy welfare code leaves no doubt

The Animal Welfare (Dairy) Code of Conduct which has been released by Agriculture Minister David Carter provides guidelines for minimum standards which are exceeded on most farms.

Unfortunately a very few farmers don’t treat their stock as they should and the code leaves no doubt about what is required.

The new code covers all areas of dairy cattle management from stockmanship and husbandry practices, to food and water, shade and shelter, and health.  This is the first time such a code has been issued. 

“It aims to encourage all those involved in the farming of dairy cattle to adopt the highest standards of handling and care,” says Mr Carter.

“Like all codes of animal welfare, this is particularly directed at the worst players in the industry, not the best ones.”

The Minister has asked for separate advice on the long-term housing of dairy cows, like that proposed for the Mackenzie basin, because it wasn’t an issue when the code was being developed.

DairyNZ says the outcome based approach in the code is common sense.

DairyNZ Chairman John Luxton said the new code will strengthen the regard in which our industry is held internationally.

“Our approach to welfare and stockmanship is widely respected because it is backed by the world’s best science, which farmers fund through their DairyNZ industry levy,” Mr Luxton said.

“Our dairy farmers have a history of taking proactive steps to keep ahead of the demands of our international consumers, which is why we have that respect. This code is another positive step.”

DairyNZ Chief Executive Dr Tim Mackle said the major improvement to the new code is its focus on outcomes for animals and the recommended best practices to show farmers how they can keep ahead of minimum standards.

“This new code reinforces the welfare outcomes we want for our cows, without being prescriptive, and it points farmers to recommended best practices.”

There is no excuse for ill-treating animals and unfortunately just one example of less than optimal animal welfare could taint the whole industry. The code will leave no-one in any doubt about what is required and anyone who disregards it will face penalties under the Animal Welfare Act.

February 21 in history

On February 21:

  1245 Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, resigned after confessing to torture and forgery.

1440 The Prussian Confederation was formed.

1543 Battle of Wayna Daga – A combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeats a Muslim army led by Ahmed Gragn.

1613 Mikhail I was elected unanimously as Tsar, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.

1743 The premiere of George Frideric Handel‘s oratorio “Samson” took place in London.

1804  The first self-propelling steam locomotive made its outing at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales.

 

1842 John Greenough was granted the first U.S.A. patent for the sewing machine.

1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto.

1875 Jeanne Calment, French supercentenarian and longest-lived human on record (, was born.

 

1879 An explosion in a Kaitangata coal mine killed 34 men.

1885 The newly completed Washington Monument was dedicated.

1903 Anaïs Nin, French writer, was born.

1907  W. H. Auden, English poet, was born.

1910 Douglas Bader, British pilot (, was born.

1913  Ioannina was incorporated into the Greek state after the Balkan Wars.

1916 Battle of Verdun started.

1918 The last Carolina parakeet died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

1919 Kurt Eisner, German socialist, was assassinated.

1921 Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia adopts the country’s first constitution.

1924 Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbambwe, was born.

1925 The New Yorker published its first issue.

1927 Erma Bombeck, American humorist, was born.

1927 Hubert de Givenchy, French fashion designer, was born.

1933  – Nina Simone, American singer, was born.

1935  Mark McManus, Scottish actor, was born.

1937  Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile.

 

1937 – The League of Nations banned foreign national “volunteers” in the Spanish Civil War.

1945 Kamikaze planes sank the escort carrier Bismarck Sea and damaged the Saratoga.

1947 Edwin Land demonstrated the first “instant camera,” the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1952 The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolished identity cards in the UK to “set the people free”.

1952 In Dhaka, East Pakistan (present Bangladesh) police opened fire on a procession of students that was demanding the establishment of Bengali as the official language, killing four people and starting a country-wide protest which led to the recognition of Bengali as one of the national languages of Pakistan. The day was later declared as “International Mother Language Day” by UNESCO.

1953  Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of the DNA molecule.

 

1958 The Peace symbol was designed and completed by Gerald Holtom, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

 

1960 Cuban leader Fidel Castro nationalised all businesses in Cuba.

1965 Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

1970 A mid-air bomb explosion in  Swissair Flight 330 and subsequent crash killed 38 passengers and nine crew members near Zürich.

1971 The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was signed at Vienna.

1972 President Richard Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China to normalise Sino-American relations.

   

1972 The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 landed on the Moon.

1973  Israeli fighter aircraft shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 jet killing 108.

1974 The last Israeli soldiers left the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt.

1975 Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison.

1986 Charlotte Church, Welsh singer, was born.

1995 Steve Fossett landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

2004 – The first European political party organization, the European Greens, was established in Rome.

2007 Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned from office. His resignation bus rejected by the President Giorgio Napolitano.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

To Sir With Love

Happy birthday Sidney Potier, 83 today.

Amor de Loca Juventud

Ibrahim Ferrer would have been 83 today.

Up Where We Belong

Happy birthday Buffy Sainte Marie 69 or 70 today (there’s a question over which year she was born).

I’d always associated her, perhaps incorrectly with the song LA International Airport,  but fortunately YouTube had lots of other options, including this:

Saturday’s smiles

During his speech at our wedding breakfast, my farmer said that if my mother treated him as well as she treated the milkman he’d have no complaints.

He then went on to explain that he’d seen her taking empty milk bottles out of the oven. When he asked why, she’d explained that was to make sure they were properly dry so the milkman didn’t have to contend with dribbles when he tipped out the tokens.

Does anyone still get milk deliveries? No-one does them in our part of the world now, but when they did they must have enjoyed getting notes like these:

Dear Milkman, I’ve just had a baby, please leave another one.”

“Please send me a form for cheap milk, for I have a baby two months old and did not know about it until a neighbour told me.”

“Milk is needed for the baby. Father is unable to supply it.”

“Please leave an extra pint of paralysed milk.”

“Please don’t leave any more milk. All they do is drink it”

“Milkman please close the gate behind you because the birds keep pecking the tops off the milk.”

“Sorry not to have paid your bill before, but my wife had a baby and I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket for weeks.”

“Sorry about yesterday’s note. I didn’t mean one egg and a dozen pints, but the other way round.”

My daughter says she wants a milkshake. Do you do it before you deliver or do I have to shake the bottle.”

 

“From now on please leave two pints every other day and one pint on the days in between, except Wednesdays and Saturdays
when I don’t want any milk.”

“Please leave no milk today. When I say today, I mean tomorrow, for I wrote this note yesterday…or is it today ?”

“No milk. Please do not leave milk at No. 14 either as he is dead until further notice.”

New regional water authority for Canterbury?

The independent review into Environment Canterbury  recommends that the government sets up a new Canterbury Regional Water Authority (CRWA) to assume all water related responsibilities in the Canterbury Region.

ECan has failed miserably in its responsibilities for water management in the region where it is of most importance. The report says:

The issue of freshwater management (both ground and surface water) is the single most significant issue facing the Canterbury Region.  The Review Group acknowledges that the scale of the issues being addressed in terms of water availability and quality in the Canterbury Region and the scale and nature of competing demands for that resource is significantly greater than that confronted by other regional councils throughout New Zealand. They are correspondingly of much greater significance to the nation’s well-being.

There are four major river catchments in the region but the Waitaki is the only one with an allocation plan and that was imposed on Ecan by central government when Project Aqua showed up the council’s shortcomings.

The creation of an entirely new specialist entity is, we believe, the only way that the Government can be certain that it has an institution capable of dealing with the complexities involved in resolving freshwater issues in the Canterbury Region. The Authority would assume responsibility for all of the functions of Environment Canterbury related to the management of freshwater in the Region.  This includes:

• Addressing the complexities involved in balancing the competing interests for the relevant resources.
• Producing relevant plans for the allocation and management of water resources and water quality within a timeframe to be specified in the legislation.
• Allocation, monitoring and enforcement of consents relating to water.
• Addressing the water quality issues that are currently the responsibility of Environment Canterbury.

The Review Group also recommends that the council be replaced by a temporary Commission.

Both recommendations are wise.

All the territorial authorities in the Canterbury Region have been complaining about ECan for years, so too have many of the groups and individuals who’ve had to deal with them.

There has been a welcome improvement since Alec Neil took over as chair last year but the Review Group thinks the problems are too deep-seated to be solved by the existing council which is still divided.

The government has yet to consider the recommendations but I wonder if a complete reorganisation of local authorities in the region might result.

The city and district councils have been looking at a unitary authority. A supercity based round Christchurch and a provincial council further south, perhaps?

February 20 in history

On February 20:

1472 Orkney and Shetland were left by Norway to Scotland, due to a dowry payment.

1547 Edward VI was crowned King of England.

1792 The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, was signed by President George Washington.

1810 Andreas Hofer, Tirolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon’s forces, is executed.

 

1835 Concepción, Chile was destroyed by an earthquake.

1872 New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opened.

1873 The University of California opened its first medical school.

1887 Vincent Massey, Governor-General of Canada, was born.

1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.

1906 Gale Gordon, American television and radio actor, was born.

1909 Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro.

1913 King O’Malley drove in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.

1924 Gloria Vanderbilt, American socialite and clothing designer, was born.

1925 Robert Altman, American film director, was born.

1927 Ibrahim Ferrer, Cuban musician (Buena Vista Social Club) (d. 2005)

1927 – Sidney Poitier, American actor, was born.

1935 Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.

1941  Buffy Sainte-Marie, Canadian singer, was born.

1942 Lieutenant Edward O’Hare becomes America’s first World War II flying ace.

1943 – The Parícutin volcano erupted Parícutin, Mexico.

1950  Walter Becker, American guitarist (Steely Dan), was born.

1951 Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born.

1952 Emmett Ashford became the first African-American umpire in organised baseball.

1954 Yvette Williams won a gold meadl for the long jump at the Olympics.

1962 Mercury programme:  John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in 4 hours, 55 minutes.

 

1965  Ranger 8 crashed into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo programme astronauts.

 

1976 The Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation disbanded.

1989 An IRA bomb destroeds a section of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England

1991  A gigantic statue of Albania’s long-time dictator, Enver Hoxha, was brought down in the Albanian capital Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.

 

1998 American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

2002 In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire on a train injurds over 65 and killed at least 370.

2003 During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the club ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.

2005 Spain became the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.

Upstaged

I wasn’t watching TV news last night but a friend who was told me that during a report on a political matter an Opposition point of view was sought.

And who did they ask? Helen Clark.

David Farrar reckons Labour supporters still yearn for her, perhaps at least one reporter does too.

It can’t be much fun being Phil Goff, holding the poisoned chalice of a leadership which no-one else will touch and still being upstaged by his predecessor.

Wondering Star

Lee Marvin would have been 86 today.

Tears of a Clown

Happy birthday Smokey Robinson – 70 today.