If you keep on doing . . .

. . . what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.

Labour wants to continue borrowing and spending.

Another reason to be pleased it’s Bill English and not David Cunliffe delivering the Budget today.

Hu-Hu’s the winner

Old Hu-Hu  by Central Otago write Kyle Mewburn, illustrated by Rachel Driscoll is the New Zealand Post Children’s Book of the Year.

It also won the Picture Book of the Year.

Other winners were: E3 Call H0me by Janet Hunt – Non Fiction; The Loblolly Boy by James Norcliffe – Junior Fiction; Blood of the Lamb: The Crossing by Mandy Hagar – Young Adult; Wonky Donkey by Craig Smith & Katz Cowley – Chidlren’s Choice; Dear Alison edited by Simon Pollard – Children’s Choice Non-Fiction; Friends: Snake and Lizard by Joy Cowley & Gavin Bishop – Children’s Choice Junior Fiction; Brainjack by Brian Falkner – Children’s Choice Young Adult Fiction.

The Word Witch by Margaret Mahy & David Elliot, edited by Tessa Duder, won an Honour Award.

 The Best First Book Award went to The Bone Tiki by David Hair.

We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are

Day 20 of New Zealand Month is also Budget Day which reminded me  of Fred Dagg singing We DOn’t Know How Lucky We Are.

On Budget day

On Budget Day the people listened and they heard the words of the Minister.

“Verily,” he said, “ask not what the Budget can do for you, ask what it can do for the economy.

“For it is written in the history books that a government which takes more than it needs from all, to redistribute to some, whether or not it is needed, will plunder the public purse, empty treasury’s coffers, deprive people of their independence and be cast into the wilderness.

“Let us learn from history and realise that measures which produce a bigger pie are better than those which divide the pie into ever smaller pieces.”

Some of the people heard not the words. They were distracted by the sound of the gnashing of teeth from the wilderness. They spoke over the Minister and asked, “What’s in it for me?”

But the rest of the people listened and pondered on what they had heard and realised that the words were wise and gave thanks to the Minister.

These people swallowed their medicine gratefully and so it came to pass that the economy grew and the people found they had enough from the fruit of their own efforts and they were content.

A picture of a daffodil because . . .

a) if winter’s here can spring be far behind?

b) it’s a tiny electronic attempt to capture some carbon.

c) Busted Blonde asked me to.

Update: Thanks to Inventory 2 at Keeping Stock for pointing me at the video. The relevant comment is at around 3 minutes:

May 20 in history

On May 20:

325 The First Council of Nicea – the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church was held.

526  An earthquake killed about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia.

685  The Battle of Dunnichen or Nechtansmere is fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who are decisively defeated.

1217  The Second Battle of Lincoln resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke.

1293  King Sancho IV of Castile created the Study of General Schools of Alcalá.

1497  John Cabot set sail from Bristol,on his ship  Matthew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date).

1498  Vasco da Gama arrived at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.

 

1521  Battle of Pampeluna: Ignatius Loyola was seriously wounded.

1570  Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas.

 

1609  Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1631  The city of Magdeburg in Germany was seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.

1733 Captain James Cook released the first sheep in New Zealand.

1772  Sir William Congreve, English inventor, was born  (d. 1828).

 

1776 Simon Fraser,Canadian Explorer, was born  (d.1862).

1799 Honoré de Balzac, French novelist, was born  (d. 1850).

 1802 By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies.

1806 John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, was born (d. 1873).

1813 Napoleon Bonaparte led his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia.

1818 William Fargo, co-founder of Wells, Fargo & Company  was born (d. 1881).

1835  Otto was named the first modern king of Greece.

1840  York Minster was badly damaged by fire.

 

1845  HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sailed from the River Thames, beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

 

1861  American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality.

1862  Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law.

 

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church – in the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fight in this Confederate victory.

1873  Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1882  The Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was formed.

 

1883  Krakatoa began to  erupt.

 

1891 The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype kinetoscope.

1896  The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier fell on the crowd resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.

 

1902  Cuba gained independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma became the first President.

1916  The Saturday Evening Post  published  its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (“Boy with Baby Carriage”).

 

1920  Montreal radio station XWA broadcast the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.

1927  By the Treaty of Jedda, the United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1927  At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh took  off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, touching down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

 

1932  Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.

  

1940  Holocaust: The first prisoners arrived at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1941 New Zealand, British, Australian and Greek forces defending the Mediterranean island of Crete  fought desperately to repel a huge airborne assault by German paratroopers.

1946  Cher, American singer, was born.

 1949  In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, was established.

1949  The Kuomintang regime declared  martial law in Taiwan.

 

1956  In Operation Redwing the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean;

 

1965  PIA Flight 705, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 720 – 040 B, crashed while descending to land at Cairo International Airport, killing 119 of the 125 passengers and crew.

1969  The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ended.

1980  In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

1983  First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo individually.

1983  A car-bomb explosion killed 17 and injures 197 in the centre of Pretoria.

1985  Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, began broadcasting to Cuba.

 

1989  Chinese authorities declared martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations.

1990  The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections were held in Romania.

1995  In a second referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a slight majority the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

1996   The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

2002  Protugal recognised the independence of East Timor , formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and 3 years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

Sourced from Wikipedia & NZ History Online

Really?

A study shows that men helping with housework, shopping and childcare reduces divorce risk.

Libertango

Happy birthday Grace Jones – 62 today.

Fatitude

Happy birthday Victoria Wood – 57 today.

Sisters win Steak of Origin

New Zealand’s tastiest steak is from a Limousin/Angus cross produced by Whangarei sisters Kathy Child and Yvonne Hill.

The 400 entries in the Steak of Origin contest were whittled down to a top 20 and these were judged by BMX World Champ, Sarah Walker, Farming Show host Jamie McKay and former All Black Richard Loe with the expert assistance of professional chefs, Graham Hawkes and Hester Guy.

Jamie is interviewing the winners on his show which will be online here soon.

Tauramunui On The Main Trunk Line

Day 18 of New Zealand Music Month - When The Cats Been Spayed sing Taruramunui On the Main Trunk Line:

Greenpeace vs Fonterra again

First it was palm oil, now Greenpeace is protesting against Fonterra’s  use of coal.

Fonterra has done a lot to reduce its energy consumption and it encourages shareholders to do so too.

I wonder how far the protestors travelled and by what means to make the protest and what was the environmental impact of that?

They got the headlines they were seeking but will have achieved nothing else and will have wasted fuel doing it.

11/15

Another “adequate” performance in this week’s Dominion Post political triva quiz - 11/15.

May 19 in history

On May 19:

1499  Catherine of Aragon, was married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine was 13 and Arthur 12.

  

1535  Jacques Cartier set sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona’s two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).

1536  Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII , was beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.

 

1568  Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots.

 

1643 Thirty Years’ War : French forces under the duc d’Enghien decisively defeated Spanish forces at the Battle of Rocroi, marking the symbolic end of Spain as a dominant land power.

1649  An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth was passed by the Long Parliament.

 

1749 King George II granted the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River.

 

1780 New England’s Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover caused complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.

1795 – Johns Hopkins, American philanthropist, was born  (d. 1873).

1802  Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Légion d’Honneur.

1828 President John Quincy Adams signsedthe Tariff of 1828 into law, protecting wool manufacturers in the United States.

1846 Thomas Brunner, Kehu, a Ngati Tumatakokiri Maori, and Charles Heaphy reached Mawhera Pa.

1848 Mexican-American War: Mexico ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for $15 million USD.

 

1861  Dame Nellie Melba, Australian opera singer, was born (d. 1931).

 

1864 American Civil War: the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House ended.

 

1879 Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, American-born politician, was born (d. 1964).

1881 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1st President of Turkey, was born (d. 1938).

1890 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese leader, was born  (d. 1969).

1897  Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol.

1919 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed at Samsun on the Anatolian Black Sea coast, initiating the Turkish War of Independence.  The anniversary of this eventis also regarded as a date of remembrance for Pontic Greeks on the Greek genocide.

1921  The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.

1922 The Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union was established.

 

1925 Malcolm X, American civil rights activist, was born (d. 1965).

1925   Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator , was born (d. 1998).

1928 Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Cars, was born (d. 1982).

1939 Nancy Kwan, Hong Kong actress, was born.

 

1941 Bobby Burgess, dancer, singer and original Mouseketeer, was born.

1943 World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the cross-English Channel landing (D-Day). It was later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

1945 Pete Townshend, English musician (The Who), was born.

19948 Grace Jones, Jamaican singer and actress, was born.

 

1951 Joey Ramone, American musician (The Ramones), was born  (d. 2001).

1953 Victoria Wood, English comedian and actress, was born.

1954 Phil Rudd, Australian drummer (AC/DC), was born.

1961  Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

1962 A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy took place at Madison Square Garden. The highlight is Marilyn Monr0e’s rendition of Happy Birthday.

1966  Jodi Picoult, American writer, was born.

1971   Mars 2 was launched by the Soviet Union.

 

1983 Jessica Fox, English actress, was born.

1987 The attempted hijacking of an Air New Zealand Boeing 747 at Nadi airport was thwarted when a member of the cabin crew hit the hijacker over the head with a whisky bottle.

1991 Croatians voted for independence at their independence referendum.

2009  Sri Lanka announced victory in its 27 year war against the terrorist organisation, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

Tuesday’s poem

This Tuesday’s poem is The Jubilant Butter Thief chosen by Fifi Colston.

The sidebar has links to other blogs who post a Tuesday poem – their own or what my Scottish aunt would call some other body’s. Among these are: Family Man by Tim Jones;  Claire Beynon’s choice Late in the Day by David Howard and Mary McCallum’s A Poem.

Swan Lake

Dame Margot Fonteyn would have been 91 today.

Magic Moments

Perry Como would have been 98 today.

Tuesday’s answers

Monday’s questions were:

1. What contains 44 grams of carbohydrates, 26.7 grams of protein, 22.9 grams of fat, 5.3 grams of fibre and .9 grams of sodium?

2. From which direction do the mistral and levante blow?

3. Who said: “If we focus too intently on the past, we risk walking into the future backwards without seeing the great possibilities that lie ahead“?

4. What are the main ingredients of a daiquiri?

5. What’s the gestation period of a cow?

Scores for answers:

David got 1 1/2 with a bonus for his scientific approach to the gestation period even though he was a month out.

Greavedodger got three witha  bonus for extra amusing information.

Bearhunter wins the electronic bunch of flowers with  four right and a bonus for humour.

Paul got three – and a question over what he does with his breakfast cereal if his weetbix has all that fat.

Ray got three with a bonus for identifying the impact of shed building on gestation periods of cows. (BTW the cafe is now called Bean on Thames).

PDM got 2 1/2 and a bonus for honesty over his involvement in calving.

Tuesday’s answers follow the break:

I Got You

Day 18 of New Zealand Music Month - Split Enz with I Got You.

Taxes not low when Tax Freedom Day’s in May

Last Tuesday was Tax Freedom Day.

That’s the notional day when the Business Round Table calculates that the  average New Zealander stops working for the government.

Executive director Roger Kerr said:

 . . .   the calculation of 11 May was based on central government core expenditure, which is forecast to be 35.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the government’s December 2009 Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update.

 ”Tax Freedom Day in 2008 and 2009 fell on 10 and 11 May respectively, according to revised data. However, it arrived two weeks earlier in 2007 (27 April). The big delay in the arrival of Tax Freedom Day since then reflects the rapid growth of spending during the last term of the previous government. The present government’s forecasts indicate little relief for taxpayers in the next three years. Mr Kerr said that the Business Roundtable regarded government spending as the best measure of the overall tax burden because almost all government spending ultimately has to be financed from present or deferred taxation (borrowing). It ‘looks through’ periods when the budget is in deficit or surplus.

The growth in spending in the previous government’s last term shows how expensive the 2005 election was and how much of our money was used to win it.

The dead rats National had to swallow before the 2008 election and the response to the world recession has kept state spending higher than it ought to be.

There’s little comfort in the finding that Tax Freedom Day here is earlier than the OECD average of June 14.

This reflects the sharp expansion in spending by many OECD countries, partly in response to the global financial crisis. It highlights the need for “large scale fiscal adjustment” as countries recover from the economic downturn which is recommended by the International Monetary Fund.

A comparison with those countries  came up again last week with a report showing that our tax wedge – individual tax as a percentage of labour costs – is amongst the lowest in the OECD.

However Kiwiblog  points out this report isn’t comparing apples with apples:

This is not a measure of the overall level of taxation in the economy. It is a measure of the difference between gross pay and net pay. There is a huge difference.

 Macdoctor also noticed that report  didn’t take account of consumption taxes, compulsory superannuation and employers’ contributions to social security.

Back to the Business Round Table report which noted:

 A number of fast-growing Asian and other countries have levels of government spending, and hence tax burdens, that are well below the OECD average. Their advantage has increased as they have not generally increased spending to the same extent as developed countries.

 If the tax burden is measured as a ratio of taxation to GDP instead of spending, the picture of New Zealand as a highly taxed country is accentuated. The latest OECD figures show that the ratio of ‘general government total tax and non-tax receipts’ to GDP for New Zealand is 40 percent for 2010, well above the average OECD ratio of 36.6 percent and much higher than Australia’s ratio of 33.1 percent.

Kerr isn’t suggesting there should be no tax:

“While soundly based government spending on public goods and a safety net is justified, economic research suggests that beyond a certain point government

spending and taxation are harmful to economic growth.”

Finance Minister Bill English has given pretty strong signals we’ll get tax cuts in Thursday’s Budget.

That in tandem with measures to improve public service efficiency and economic growth gives some hope that Tax Freedom Day will be earlier in future.

That will provide security for essential public services while allowing us to retain a bit more of our own money.