Competitive advantage quality not price

New Zealand can’t compete with producers from countries like Brazil and Uruguay on price, our competitive advantage must be quality.

This was Agriculture Minister David Carter’s message to last weekend’s National Party conference and he’s right.

Our competitive advantage isn’t price but quality.

Food safety, environmental sustainability and animal welfare are what we have to safeguard and use as selling points.

If you’re poor and hungry price is the most important thing; you don’t worry about where your food comes from and how it’s produced. But people with discretionary income do care and make decisions based on quality as well as price.

Domestic producers in our overseas markets know this and will use non-tariff barriers  to keep our produce out if they can.

We can’t afford to give them any excuses to do so.

Right to die gives right to kill

When proponents of euthanasia talk about the right to die they omit to explain that it involves other people and would also give the right to kill.

Would health professionals who are bound by the Hippocratic oath to do no harm want to do that?  Is it fair to ask them to? Even if the answers to those questions were affirmative, how could we be sure decisions would always be based on medical and humanitarian grounds?

Macdoctor points out the dangers of a financial incentive to hasten the end of dying patients.

This brings me to the central problem I have with human euthanasia.

It is a cheap cop-out.

Least I be called insensitive in the face of Dr Pollock’s eloquent and  emotional letter, let me say that I say this entirely in the context of medical practice. I do not consider Dr. Pollock’s desire to die rather than suffer a “cop-out”, I consider the legalisation of euthanasia to be a cheap (and nasty) alternative to adequate palliative care. And therein lies the chief dilemma.

Governments being what they are, as soon as euthanasia is legalised, there will immediately be a subtle drive to euthanase dying people.

 Would it be possible to have safe guards that ensure that those who wanted to opt for voluntary euthanasia  could without the danger that others would feel pressured into it?  They may feel they have to opt for an early death, not for their own sakes but that of their family and friends or even because they felt they were using scarce resources and wasting the time of the people caring for them.

Most of us think if we were severely disabled we would opt to forgo treatment, but would we?

Theodore Dalrymple writes of a man whose life support was about to be turned off until he blinked:

Mr Rudd, 43, was injured in a motor accident. He was paralysed and thought to be severely brain damaged. . .

However, taken to the neuro-intensive care unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, he was kept alive by the miracle of modern technology, without which he would undoubtedly have died.

His close relatives and doctors thought that the life he now had was not worth living. They prepared to turn off the machines keeping him alive. They thought this is what he would have wanted. It is also what most of us probably would have thought too.

At the last hour it was noticed he was able to move his eyes and that by doing so he could communicate a little. And what he communicated to everyone’s surprise was that he wanted to continue to live, even the life that he was now living. In other words his relatives and the doctors, with the best intentions in the world, had been mistaken. . .

That would have been a fatal mistake.

Dalrymple goes on to explain about Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) and how that measure could influence treatment.

Health policies are often decided on the basis of QALYs. Interestingly and alarmingly the QALY assumes that the life of a quadriplegic (someone paralysed from the neck down) not only has no value for the person who lives it but has a negative value for him: that is to say such a person would rather be dead and in fact would be better off if he were dead.

Whatever they thought before they were paralysed, however, most quadriplegics think their lives are worth living.

With a few exceptions, such as the young rugby player who was accompanied by his parents to Switzerland to be able to be given assistance in suicide, they don’t want to die. The fact that before they were paralysed most quadriplegics thought (as most people, including health economists think) that life as a quadriplegic would not be worth living but change their minds once they are quadriplegic, has very important implications for the idea of living wills.

In fact it invalidates the very idea. It is impossible to decide in advance what would be intolerable for you until you experience it.

When discussing this situation most of us think we would choose death rather than a life with severe impairments, but how can we know how great the desire for life, or death, would be until we are faced with making a choice?

When euthanasia is spoken of, it’s usually described as providing a merciful end, but would we feel the need to hasten our deaths if we could have a painless and natural one instead?

Dalrymple raises another problem. If we did legalise the right to kill, where would we draw the line and how would we stop it moving?

One of the problems with assisted suicide and euthanasia is what the Americans call mission creep. We live in non-discriminatory times: why should only certain categories of patients have the benefit of what Keats called “easeful death”? Indeed, when euthanasia was legalised in Holland it was not long before a psychiatrist killed a patient with supposedly intractable depression.

Why should only the terminally ill and the quadriplegic have the right to assisted suicide or euthanasia? Do other people not suffer equally, at least in their own estimation?  An old saying goes that hard cases make bad law and it is also true that there are pitiful cases in which a quick death would seem a merciful release.

Unfortunately it is well within the capacity of carers to make suffering unbearable and therefore death seem the preferable, quick and merciful option. And if people have a right to death on demand then someone has a duty to provide it, otherwise the right is worthless, a dead letter.

Who is this person who has such a duty? Will we strike off doctors for refusing to kill their patients? This is something that the indomitable Mr Rudd would not approve of and I think he deserves to be heard.

Euthanasia is not the same as choosing to forgo treatment. It is not passively letting someone die or even giving pain relief which might have the side effect of hastening death. It is actively killing and if we give the right to do that how can we be sure it wouldn’t be misused?

Rather than agitating for the right to die we should be agitating for the right to live with dignity and without pain.

The right to die sounds like control is in the hands of the patient and I struggle to see any difference between that and suicide.  But euthanasia is much more than that. In legalising the right to die we’d also be legalising the right to kill.

UPDATE:

Lucia Maria aat NZ Conservative has similar concerns in  euthanasia raises it’s ugly head again.

Dim Post is cautiously in favour of legalising euthanasie but also sees the dangers in death panels.

goNZo Freakpower supports legalisation in any last requests,

So do Brian Edwards in the doctor and the right to die and Richard McGrath at Not PC in Cancers – personal and parliamentary.

Lindsay Mitchell asks what happend to the death with dignity bill?

July 23 in history

On July 23:

1632  Three hundred colonists bound for New France departed from Dieppe, France.

1793 Prussia re-conquered Mainz from France.

1829 William Austin Burt patented the Typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.

1833 Cornerstones are laid for the construction of the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio.

1840  The Province of Canada was created by the Act of Union.

1851 Twenty-six lives were lost when the barque Maria was wrecked near Cape Terawhiti, on Wellington’s rugged south-western coast.

1862 American Civil War: Henry W. Halleck took command of the Union Army.

1874  Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos was appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa.

1881  The Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, the world’s oldest international sport federation, was founded.

1881  The Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina was signed in Buenos Aires.

 

1888 Raymond Chandler, American-born author, was born (d. 1959).

1892  Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, was born (d. 1975).

1903  The Ford Motor Company sold its first car.

1914  Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

1926 Fox Film bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.

1929  The Fascist government in Italy bannedthe use of foreign words.

1936  The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia was founded through the merger of socialist and communist parties.

 

1940 United States’ Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles‘s declaration on the U.S. non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

 

1942 The Holocaust: The Treblinka extermination camp  opened.

 

1942  World War II: Operation Edelweiss began.

 

1945  The post-war legal processes against Philippe Pétain began.

1947 David Essex, English singer, was born.

1950 Blair Thornton, Canadian guitarist (Bachman-Turner Overdrive), was born.

1952  New Zealand’s first female Olympic medallist, Yvette Williams (now Corlett) won gold in the long jump with an Olympic-record leap of 6.24 metres (20 feet 5 and 3/4 inches).

1952 Establishment of the European Coal and Steel community.

1952 General Muhammad Naguib led the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser– the real power behind the coup) in the overthrow of King Farouk of Egypt.

1956 The Loi Cadre was passed by the French Republic in order to order French overseas territory affairs.

1961 Martin Lee Gore, English musician and songwriter (Depeche Mode), was born.

1961 The Sandinista National Liberation Front was founded in Nicaragua.

1962 Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

1962  The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos was signed.

1965 Slash, American guitarist (Guns N’ Roses), was born.

1967  12th Street Riot in Detroit, Michigan  began in the predominantly African American inner city (43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned).

1968 Glenville Shootout: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins that lasted for five days.

 

196  The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft  when a 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers was taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

1970 Qaboos ibn Sa’id became Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Sa’id ibn Taimur.

1972 The United States launched Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.

1973 Himesh Reshammiya, Indian Bollywood composer, singer and actor, was born.

1980 Michelle Williams, American singer (Destiny’s Child), was born.

1982  The International Whaling Commission decided to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.

 

1983 The Sri Lankan Civil War began with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam .

1983  Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel and made a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba.

 

1986  Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

1988 General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigned after pro-democracy protests.

1992 A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI) established that it was necessary to limit rights of homosexual people and non-married couples.

1992 Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia.

1995 Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered and becomes visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.

1997 Digital Equipment Company filed antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.

1999 Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan was crowned King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the death of his father.

1999  ANA Flight 61 was hijacked in Tokyo.

2005 Three bombs exploded in the Naama Bay area of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.

 

2008 Cape Verde  joined the World Trade Organization, becoming its 153rd member.

2009 Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox  became the 18th pitcher to throw a perfect game in Major League Baseball history, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays 5-0.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Desperado

Happy birthday Don Henley, 63 today.

Take The Long Way Home

Happy birthday Rick Davies, 66 today.

From gloom to growth

Finance Minister Bill English is encouraged by signs some of the imbalances handicapping New Zealand’s economy for the past five or six years are easing,

It’s an indictment on the spend and tax policies of the previous government that the tradeables side of the economy -  exporting and import-competing industries -went into recession about six years ago.

At the same time  the non-tradeables sector – government and domestic industries - grew by about 12 per cent.

That’s a recipe for disaster but measures introduced by this government are having a positive impact.

Mr English identified a number of indicators which suggest New Zealand’s economic imbalances are at least stabilising.

“First and foremost, the economy is now growing, as opposed to shrinking as it did in Labour’s last term. The Budget also forecast 170,000 new jobs over the next four years and average household incomes to rise by about $7000 in that time.

“Second, the tradeables sector grew 3.4 per cent in the nine months to March 2010, compared with just 1.2 per cent growth in the non-tradeables sector. This is the largest positive gap between the two sectors over a nine-month period since December 2002.

“Finally, New Zealanders are being more careful with their spending. Per capita private sector consumption increased by only 1 per cent in the past year, after consistently increasing by more than 4 per cent, year on year, between 2002 and 2007.

“Reserve Bank figures show household debt is also easing for the first time in more than a decade. After increasing rapidly from 100 per cent of disposable income in early 2000 to a peak of 159 per cent in mid-2008, household debt has eased to 155 per cent of disposable income.”

Mr English emphasised that these were only early signs of the economy rebalancing and more work was needed to build this momentum, particularly with New Zealand – households, business and the Government – owing almost $170 billion in debt to the rest of the world.

We’re on the right track but only a short way into the journey back to budget surpluses and sustainable growth in the tradeable sector rather than artificial growth spurred by a property bubble, government spending and consumption funded by borrowing.

My parents, like most of their generation, went through the Depression and never forgot the lessons they learned. Too many people either didn’t learn from the 1980s or forgot the lessons and the global financial melt-down was a sharp reminder of the dangers of that.

Hurunui moratorium right decision

A moratorium on new water takes from a river is unusual, but it’s the right decision  for the Hurunui River.

Environment Minister Nick Smith says:

“The Hurunui moratorium proposal makes good sense when there is no proper plan for the river and catchment,” Dr Smith said. “It will provide much needed breathing space in which stakeholders can develop a balanced and comprehensive plan for the Hurunui River ahead of major decisions on proposals for irrigation development and water conservation orders that will impact upon the future of the river for generations to come.” . . .

. . . “This moratorium will breathe life into the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and the recently announced Hurunui-Waiau Zone Committee. It provides a window of opportunity for a collaborative local approach in which provision is made for both the economic development and environmental sustainability of the Hurunui River.

“That the first use of the special powers under the Environment Canterbury Act (2010) is a moratorium reinforces the Government’s intent that irrigation development in Canterbury needs to occur in a planned and sustainable way.” 

Both irrigators and those who want to leave the river untouched are happy with the decision.

Irrigation NZ says it makes sense when there is no water plan.

Irrigators are often accused of not being mindful of environmental issues but most understand how important it is not to degrade waterways by taking too much water from them. Existing irrigators are also mindful that without a plan their water rights may be compromised.

Conservation groups are also supportive though Nick Smith points out the irony in that. This move is only possible because of the Environment Canterbury legislation which at least some of those on the green end of the political spectrum opposed.

At last a Labour ag spokesman

It’s a sad reflection on Labour’s regard for agriculture that the party hasn’t had anyone in its caucus with responsibility for the portfolio for several years.

Jim Anderton might have been Labour in all but name but he wasn’t in the caucus when he was Minister of Agriculture in the Labour-led government. He talked lots and delivered little as minister and I can’t remember anything of note he’s said since he became the opposition spokesman after the 2008 election.

Now he’s giving up completely to campaign fulltime for the Christchurch mayoralty at our expense :

“In my time remaining as an MP, I have decided to prioritise workable models for affordable dental treatment and the reform of alcohol legislation.” .

Damien O’Connor will take over the role with two things going for him – he was (perhaps still is?) a dairy farmer and he is a member of the Labour caucus where he might have a chance of influencing policy.

Kiwiblog and Keeping Stock have similar views  on Anderton.

Future-proofing pensions

If we regarded tax as an insurance premium without complaining that a lack of catastrophe means we can’t make a claim, the debate on pensions in the future would be simpler.

Most people would accept that universal superannuation at 65 is not necessarily good policy and pensions would be means tested.

However, that is politically unpalatable for at least two reasons: 

• people who’d done nothing to help themselves would get taxpayer assistance while those who’d made sacrifices and worked hard to  save for their retirements would not.
• too many of us regard tax not like an insurance premium but more like an investment and superannuation is therefore one of the dividends.

Various attempts have been made to sort out an enduring and sustainable policy on superannuation. Don Brash is among those who think we haven’t got there yet.

In a speech entitled challenges for New Zealand’s future pension system he says:

. . . it’s estimated that the fiscal cost of New Zealand Super will increase from its present level of 4.4% of GDP to over 8%.  Of course, that’s still lower than the current fiscal cost of the age pension in Greece (at 11.5%) and some other European countries, as noted, but that’s not a lot of consolation given the fiscal challenges those countries currently face! 

Part of the reason for this prospect is the sharp fall-off in the birth rate, but the main driver of the increased cost is the arrival at age 65 of the baby boomer generation, and in particular the increased life expectancy which we all enjoy.  Over the past half century, life expectancy at birth has increased by nearly two years every decade.  While that increase is projected to slow, a person turning 65 in 2050 can expect to live an additional 24 years, more than four years longer than a 65 year-old in 2008[5], and of course considerably longer than when the age pension was first introduced for those reaching 65 in 1898.

When the increased fiscal cost of healthcare and long-term care for the elderly is added to the increased fiscal cost of New Zealand Superannuation if the present parameters remain, it’s clear that, if we’re to avoid a substantial increase in the tax burden on that portion of the population which is still employed, something needs to change.

His solution is to gradually raise the age at of eligibility for superannuation, giving people a choice between retiring sooner with a lower pension or delaying retirement and receiving a bit more.

 We raised the age of eligibility from 60 to 65 in the nineties and there was widespread acceptance of the need for that change.  Nobody seriously suggests lowering that age again.  There is a widespread understanding that we are living much longer than we were in the past, and that that is a continuing trend.  Most 65 year-olds no longer feel “elderly”, or ready for the scrap-heap. 

Last year, Australia announced that the age of eligibility for their age pension will be progressively raised to 67.  Germany and the US are also raising the age of eligibility to 67, and the UK is going for 68.  Denmark is targeting 67, and then indexing the age of eligibility to future improvements in life expectancy.

In my own view, raising the age of eligibility could be made more politically acceptable if we were to allow a degree of flexibility regarding when the pension is actually taken.  If the age of eligibility were 67, for example, under a policy allowing flexibility regarding the age at which it could be drawn somebody might choose to take the pension at, say, 65.  At that younger age, the amount received would be actuarially adjusted downwards, and would remain at that lower level (with regular upward adjustments with wages of course) until death.  Conversely, if somebody chose to defer drawing the pension until, say 69 or 70, the amount received would be actuarially adjusted upwards. 

Such a system would allow people a greater degree of choice about when to retire.  It would not directly reduce the fiscal cost of New Zealand Super of course – by definition, the amounts paid would be actuarially equivalent to drawing the pension at the age of eligibility.  But by encouraging people to stay in the workforce for longer, it would have fiscal benefits in terms of higher tax revenue and, probably, lower health costs, given that there is evidence that people who remain employed are often healthier, physically and mentally, than those who have left the workforce.

One of our staff is 80 and still works fulltime, another is 76 but not quite as diligent – he takes Wednesday afternoons off to play bridge. Neither has plans to retire soon yet both have been receiving a pension since they turned 65.

Not everyone has the ability, or will, to work into their 70s and beyond, but I can see the appeal of giving those who might the choice to do so.

It won’t happen while J9ohn Key is Prime Minister.

During the last election campaign he was asked about future changes to superannuation.  

His first answer was there would be no changes in the first term, that led to a question about future terms. It was one of those have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife questions for which he couldn’t give a right answer. Had he  stuck to ”not in the first term” or refused to answer, political opponents, and the media, would have turned no commitment to make no changes in a future term into accusations that there would be change.

That is unfortunate.

No matter how hard people have worked and how much tax they’ve paid, simply turning 65 isn’t a good reason to start giving them something back when there are so many more urgent calls on taxpayers’ funds.

Don’s suggestion of a gradual increase in the age of eligibility, with a choice of lower payments for earlier retirements and higher payments for later ones, has merit but that’s not a good enough reason to go back on a pre-election commitment.

July 22 in history

On July 22:

838 Battle of Anzen: the Byzantine emperor Theophilos suffered a heavy defeat by the Abbasids.

 

1099  First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon was elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.

 

1298 Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk – King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeated William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons.

1456 Ottoman Wars in Europe: Siege of Belgrade – John Hunyadi, Regent of Kingdom of Hungary defeated Mehmet II of Ottoman Empire.

1484  Battle of Lochmaben Fair – a 500-man raiding party led by Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas were defeated by Scots forces loyal to Albany’s brother James III of Scotland.

1499  Battle of Dornach – the Swiss decisively defeated the Imperial army of Emperor Maximilian I.

 

1510 Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was born  (d. 1537).

1587  Colony of Roanoke: a second group of English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.

1793 Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.

1805  Napoleonic Wars: War of the Third Coalition – Battle of Cape Finisterre – an inconclusive naval action was fought between a combined French and Spanish fleets under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve of Spain and a British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder.

 

1812  Napoleonic Wars: Peninsular War – Battle of Salamanca – British forces led by Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) defeated French troops.

1844 William Archibald Spooner, English priest and scholar, was born  (d. 1930).

1849 Emma Lazarus, American poet, was born (d. 1887).

1864 – American Civil War:  Battle of Atlanta – Confederate General John Bell Hood led an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill.

1890  Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, American Kennedy family matriarch, was born (d. 1995).

1894  First ever motorised racing event was held between the cities of Paris and Rouen - won by comte Jules-Albert de Dion.

 

1908 Amy Vanderbilt, American author, was born (d. 1974).

1916 A bomb exploded on Market Street, San Francisco during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40.

1932 Oscar De la Renta, Dominican/American fashion designer, was born.

1933 Wiley Post became the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

1934 “Public Enemy No. 1″ John Dillinger was mortally wounded by FBI agents.

1936 Tom Robbins, American author, was born.

1942  The United States government began compulsory civilian gasoline rationing due to the wartime demands.

1942  Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto began.

 

 1943  Bobby Sherman, American singer and actor, was born. 

1944 Anand Satyanand, Governor-General of New Zealand, was born.

1944 Estelle Bennett, American singer (Ronettes), was born (d. 2009).

1944  Rick Davies, British musician (Supertramp) , was born.

1944  The Polish Committee of National Liberation published its manifesto, starting the period of Communist rule.

 

1946  King David Hotel bombing: Irgun bombed King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British civil and military administration, killing 90.

1947  Don Henley, American musician (Eagles), was born.

1951 Dezik (Дезик) and Tsygan (Цыган, “Gypsy”) were the first dogs to make a sub-orbital flight.

 

1962 Mariner programme: Mariner 1 spacecraft flew erratically several minutes after launch and had to be destroyed.

 

1970 Craig Baird, New Zealander racing driver, was born.

1976  Japan completed its last reparation to the Philippines for war crimes committed in Japan’s imperial conquest of the country in the Second World War

1977  Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was restored to power.

1980 Scott Dixon, New Zealand racing driver, was born.

1983 Martial law in Poland was officially revoked.

 

1987 Lotto went on sale for the first time with a first division prize of $360,000.

1992   Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison.

1993  Great Flood of 1993: Levees near Kaskaskia, Illinois ruptured, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barges operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

1997 The second Blue Water Bridge opened between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario.

2002 Israel killed terrorist Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas’s military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

 

2003 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attacked a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, plus Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.

2005  Jean Charles de Menezes was killed by police as the hunt started for the London Bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 London bombings.

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

Pointers on self defence

Don Knotts would have been 86 today.

Morning Has Broken

Happy birthday Cat Stevens. 62 today.

This was a hit song in the 1970s. It  improved singing at my school assemblies where hymns weren’t generally regarded with much enthusiasm.

Did you see the one about . . .

I’m not finished with Duncan Garner yet - Brian Edwards gives credit where it’s due.

Dinner with the Stars - Not PC asks  where and in which period in history you’d pick as being the best in history in which you might get a large number of your heroes around a dinner party table.  He also has a post on the malapropisms of refudiation.

Vagrant spotted in Parnell – Inquiring Mind gets satirical.

Under Aotearoan skies - goNZo Freakpower takes us star watching.

Star the nineteenth - In A Strange Land continues her stellar effort for Dry July.

Question (and answer) of the day - Keeping Stock found a gem from question time.

The Shape Of Words

This Tuesday’s Poem is The Shape Of Words (desert love poem) by Odawni AJ Palmer.

It’s beautiful, and those who weren’t charmed by last week’s prose poem may be relieved to know this one is a poem poem (there has to be a better phrase than that).

One of the links in the sidebar led me to Stoatspring where Harvey McQueen had chosen A.R.D. Fairburn’s Song At Summer’s End.

The opening lines Down in the park the children play/rag-happy through the summer’s day . . .  took me back to third form English where we learned the poem by heart and were introduced to the power of metaphor.

Better to campaign with clothes on

The Australian election campaign has only just opened but it will be difficult to top this quote:

“It would be better to attend campaign events fully clothed.”

It came from Prime Minister Julia Gillard in response to a stunt by Conrad French, who works at ALP Victorian election campaign HQ, and who interrupted opposition leader Tony Abbot while dressed only in speedos.

It’s a reminder of  Don Brash’s  ”I don’t want any candidates talking about their testicles, to be quite frank.” after a comment from then-Tauranga MP Bob Clarkson.

Things like this may be amusing for onlookers and the media but are very frustrating for parties and their leaders who are trying to keep campaigns focussed and positive.

Aimed at the few not the many

The people squealing in outrage at the proposed improvements to employment law labour under the misapprehension that all employers are bad and all employees are good.

They’re not. The changes are aimed at the few poor employees not the many good ones. That’s better than the existing regime which makes employing people harder for the many good employers because there are a few bad ones.

Employers aren’t going to request medical certificates, which they have to pay for, from every employee who takes a day or two off for illness once or twice. It will just be the few who abuse the system by regularly pulling sickies who are asked to prove they’re unwell.

When the law changed to allow workers to take up to three days off without needing proof of illness a meat company noticed a significant deterioration in employee health, particularly on Mondays and Fridays.

That came at considerable cost to the company and that ultimately impacts on its ability to pay its staff.

15/15

15/15  in this week’s Dominion Post political triva quiz.

Though Kiwiblog is right to say the answer given as correct to one question is subjective. For the answer given to be correct, the question should have been what was the most controversial issue from  the National Party conference not at it.

The planned changes to Labour laws may have upset the left outside the conference but were greeted with enthusiasm by delegates inside.

July 21 in history

On July 21:

356 BC Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

 

285 Diocletian appointed Maximian as Caesar and co-ruler.

365 A tsunami caused by an earthquake estimated to be 8.0 on the Richter Scale devastated Alexandria, killing 5,000 people in Alexandria, and 45,000 more outside the city.

1403 Battle of Shrewsbury: King Henry IV defeated rebels to the north of  Shropshire.

1545  The first landing of French troops on the coast of the Isle of Wight during the French invasion of the Isle of Wight.

 

1568 Eighty Years’ War: Battle of Jemmingen – Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva defeated Louis of Nassau.

1718 The Treaty of Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Republic of Venice was signed.

 

1774 Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji ending the Russo-Turkish war.

 Here at 10-21 July 1774 was signed the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. . .

1831 Inauguration of Léopold I of Belgium, first king of the Belgians.

1858 Alfred Henry O’Keeffe, New Zealand artist, was born (d. 1941).

1861 American Civil War: First Battle of Bull Run – the first major battle of the war began.

 

1865 Governor George Grey oversaw the capture of the Pai Marire (Hauhau) pa at Weraroa, Waitotara.

1865  Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.

1873 Jesse James and the James-Younger gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.

 

1899 Ernest Hemingway, American writer, Nobel laureate, ws born (d. 1961).

1904  Louis Rigolly,  became the first man to break the 100 mph (161 km/h) barrier on land. He drove a 15-liter Gobron-Brille in Ostend.

 

1918  U-156 shelled Nauset Beach, in Orleans, the first time that the United States was shelled since the Mexican-American War.

1919  The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, killing 12 people.

1920 Isaac Stern, Ukrainian-born violinist, was born  (d. 2001).

 

1922  Mollie Sugden, British comedic actress, was born  (d. 2009).

1924 Don Knotts, American actor, was born (d. 2006).

1925  Scopes Trial: high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

 

1925  Sir Malcolm Campbell became the first man to break the 150 mph (241 km/h) land barrier at Pendine Sands in Wales. He drove a Sunbeam to a two-way average of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).

1944 World War II: Battle of Guam – American troops land on Guam starting the battle.

 

1944  Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators were executed in Berlin, Germany for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

 

1946 Barry Whitwam, British musician (Herman’s Hermits), was born.

1948 Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English singer/songwriter, was born.

1948 Garry Trudeau, American cartoonist, was born.

1949 Hirini Melbourne, New Zealand musician and composer, was born (d 2003).

1949  The United States Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty.

1951 Robin Williams, American comedian/actor. was born.

1953 Jeff Fatt, Chinese-Australian actor was born.

1954  First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference partitioned Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

 

1955 Howie Epstein, American musician (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), was born (d. 2003).

1956 Michael Connelly, American author, was born.

1959 Elijah Jerry “Pumpsie” Green became the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last team to integrate.

1961 Jim Martin, American musician (Faith No More), was born.

1961  Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission – Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 became the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).

1964  Singapore Race Riot – every year since then, Racial Harmony Day is celebrated on this day.

 

1966 Sarah Waters, British novelist, was born.

1969  Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission.

 

1970  After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed.

1972  Bloody Friday bombing by the Provisional Irish Republican Army around Belfast, Northern Ireland – 22 bomb explosions, 9 people killed and 130 people seriously injured.

1973 In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents killed a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in 1972′s Munich Olympics Massacre.

1976 Christopher Ewart-Biggs British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland was assassinated by the Provisional IRA.

1977  The start of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War.

1983 The world’s lowest temperature was recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2°C (−129°F).

1994  Tony Blair was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way for him to become Prime Minister in 1997.

1995 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People’s Liberation Army began firing missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.

1997  The fully restored USS Constitution (aka “Old Ironsides”) celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

2004 The United Kingdom government published Delivering Security in a Changing World, a paper detailing wide-ranging reform of the country’s armed forces.

2005  Four terrorist bombings in London – all four bombs failed to detonate.

2008  Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Serbia and indicted by the UN’s ICTY tribunal.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Teddy Bears’ Picnic

Jimmy Kennedy, Irish lyricist, was born on this day in 1902.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Happy birthday Sally Ann Howes, 80 today, and thank you for the pleasure this film gave me a decade or four ago.