Word of the day

Hamartia – tragic flaw in a character leading to his/her downfall.

Did you see the one about . . .

An email from Matt McCarten - Whale Oil received a thank you from Matt.

It’s not all doom and gloom despite the earthquake and SCF collapse - Beranrd Hickey finds 10 reasons to be cheerful.

Proof: Wellington council wardens are ticketing against council policy – Big News cuaght them at it.

Science explained Something Should Go Here Maybe Later, who’s made a welcome return to blogging, illustrates the differences between biologists.

Milestone for Beattie’s Book Blog – post 10,000 in a little under four years 1311 visitors for the day by lunchtime on the day the post was written.

6/10

6/10 in the NZ Herald’s weekly news quiz.

Farm sales and property values drop

The volume of farm sales and prices paid dropped in the three months to August.

From a high of $4,650,000 in August 2008 the three month median price for dairying properties is down by a third to $3,100,000 in the latest REINZ Rural Market Report statistics released today.

Only 17 dairy farms were sold in the three months to August, one less than in the same period last year and significantly below the 67 transactions in the three months to August 2008. Just three dairy farms sold in August at an average price of $2,543,333, and the average price per hectare decreased to $31,598 from $36,435 in July. The average price per kilogram of milk solids has fallen further to $33 from $37 in July, $40 in June and $45 in May.

 

From a peak of $90,125 in August 2009, the average price per hectare of all types of farms has fallen to $29,739. The 192 farms sold in the three months to the end of August is an increase on the 183 in the same period last year, but less than the 516 transactions in the three months to August 2008.

The national median farm sale price eased up from $1,118,500 for the three months to July to $1,127,754 for the three months to August 2010. Well down on the median of $1,742,500 for the equivalent period in 2008, the latest August figure is fractionally above the median for all farms of $1,000,000 for the same three months in 2009. However with the low number of sales currently occurring, price fluctuations, both upwards and downwards, can be impacted by the range of prices of the mix of properties being sold.

On a regional basis the largest number of farm sales during the three months to August was 31 in Canterbury, 24 of them grazing properties, and 27 in Southland, 11 of them grazing properties.

During the past year median prices for farms have declined in eight out of the 14 districts. In the three months to August 2010 compared with the corresponding period in 2009, farm sale prices were down in Waikato from $1,663,655 to $1,187,500, Bay of Plenty from $1,000,000 to $920,000, Hawkes Bay from $1,800,000 to $945,000, Manawatu/Wanganui from $1,275,000 to $1,200,000, Wellington from $3,005,000 to $1,935,000, Canterbury from $1,300,000 to $1,200,000, Otago from $937,500 to $712,000, and Southland from $1,200,000 to $1,125,000.

There was another decrease in the number of sales of lifestyle properties from 1088 at the end of July to 1066 in the three months to the end of August, and the national median selling price eased from $447,500 at the end of July to $436,750 last month. While the August 2010 median is still up on $430,000 for the same three month period in 2009 it is below the August 2008 median of $450,000.

The decline in sales and prices is due to both the recession and the boom which preceded it.

Farm prices for all properties soared on the back of increasing dairy prices until it was cheaper to buy an existing dairy farm than to purchase sheep or cropping land and convert it.

There used to be a rule of thumb that you should never pay more than three to five times the value of a property’s gross income when buying a farm. That was disregarded for not just dairy properties but sheep and beef ones with much less earning potential.

The value of a property is most important when you’re buying or selling or if it’s highly mortgaged.

Lower prices may make it easier for people to get in to farming or increase their land holding, although credit is still pretty tight. But they will also be causing older farmers to re-think their retirement plans and they will be having a detrimental impact on equity of those with mortgages.

That won’t matter if the people can cover interest payments and ride out the current downturn. But it will put pressure on people who were struggling before prices dropped.

However, banks will be mindful that there’s no point pushing for sales when prices are dropping.

The protracted process of the sale of the Crafar properties won’t be helping farm sales and that’s when it’s possible for overseas investors to own farms.

The volume of sales and property prices would drop even more if farm ownership was restricted to New Zealanders.

Zero tolerance of hypocrisy

It’s difficult to understand how senior members of a party could be told by a prospective candidate that he had been through court for identity fraud without ascertaining all the facts.

But when Rodney Hide was interviewed by Mary Wilson on Checkpoint last night he said he hadn’t known the details of David Garrett’s case.

This reflects very poorly on the party and its selection processes.

It’s even more difficult to understand how a man who had been on the wrong side of the law himself couldn’t understand the need to be open about it before entering parliament when he wanted to take such a hard line on crime.

Garrett may have been discharged without conviction in a court of law. But his failure to disclose the full details of his past before he was elected make him guilty of hypocrisy in the court of public opinion which has zero tolerance for the h word .

P.S. goNZo Freakpower has dug up a photo of an Act campaign billboard.

September 18 in history

On September 18:

96  Nerva was proclaimed Roman Emperor after Domitian was assassinated.

324 Constantine the Great decisively defeated Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine’s sole control over the Roman Empire.

1180  Philip Augustus became king of France.

 

1454  In the Battle of Chojnice, the Polish army was defeated by the Teutonic army during the Thirteen Years’ War.

1709 Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer, was born (d. 1784).

1739  The Treaty of Belgrade was signed, ceding Belgrade to the Ottoman Empire.

1793  The first cornerstone of the Capitol building was laid by George Washington.

1809 The Royal Opera House in London opened.

 

1810  First Government Junta in Chile.

 

1812  The 1812 Fire of Moscow died down after destroying more than three quarters of the city. Napoleon returned from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, which was spared from the fire.

 

1837  Tiffany and Co. (first named Tiffany & Young) was founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany and Teddy Young in New York City.

 

1838 The Anti-Corn Law League was established by Richard Cobden.

 

1850  The U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

 

1851  First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later became The New York Times.

1863  American Civil War: Battle of Chickamauga.

1870  Old Faithful Geyser was observed and named by Henry D. Washburn during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to Yellowstone.

1872 King Oscar II acceded to the throne of Sweden-Norway.

1873  The Panic of 1873 began.

1876 James Scullin, 9th Prime Minister of Australia, was born (d. 1953).

 

1879 The Blackpool Illuminations were switched on for the first time.

 

1882 The Pacific Stock Exchange opened.

1885  Riots broke out in Montreal to protest against compulsory smallpox vaccination.

1889  Doris Blackburn, Australian politician, was born (d. 1970).

1895  Booker T. Washington delivered the “Atlanta Compromise” address.

1895  Daniel David Palmer gave the first chiropractic adjustment.

 

1895 John Diefenbaker, 13th Prime Minister of Canada, was born (d. 1979).

 

1898  Fashoda Incident – Lord Kitchener’s ships reached Fashoda, Sudan.

 

1900 Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 1st Prime Minister of Mauritius, was born (d. 1985).

 1905  Agnes de Mille, American choreographer, was born (d. 1993).

1905  Greta Garbo, Swedish actress, was born(d. 1990) .

1906 A typhoon with tsunami killed an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong.

1910  In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrated for general suffrage.

1911  Russian Premier Peter Stolypin was shot at the Kiev Opera House.

1914 The Irish Home Rule Act became law, but was delayed until after World War I.

1919 The Netherlands gave women the right to vote.

1919 – Fritz Pollard became the first African-American to play professional football for a major team, the Akron Pros.

1923 Queen Anne of Romania was born.

1928  Juan de la Cierva made the first autogyro crossing of the English Channel.

 

1931 The Mukden Incident gave Japan the pretext to invade and occupy Manchuria.

1937 David and Mary McGregor moved in to New Zealand’s first state house.

1939 Jorge Sampaio, President of Portugal, was born.

1939 World War II: Polish government of Ignacy Mościcki fled to Romania.

1939   William Joyce made his first Nazi propaganda broadcast.

1940  World War II: Italian troops conquered Sidi Barrani.

1942  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was authorized.

1943  World War II: The Jews of Minsk were massacred at Sobibór.

 

1943 – World War II: Adolf Hitler ordered the deportation of Danish Jews.

1944  World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoed Junyō Maru, 5,600 killed.

1948  Communist Madiun uprising in Dutch Indies.

1948 –Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman elected to the US Senate without completing another senator’s term, when she defeated Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten.

1948 – The Donald Bradman-led Australian cricket team completed the unprecedented feat of going through an English summer without defeat.

 

1952 Dee Dee Ramone, American bassist (The Ramones), was born (d. 2002).

1959 Vanguard 3 was launched into Earth orbit.

1961  U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the war-torn Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1964  Constantine II of Greece married Danish princess Anne-Marie.

 

1971 Lance Armstrong, American cyclist, was born.

 

1972  First Ugandans expelled by Idi Amin arrived in the United Kingdom.

1974 Hurricane Fifi struck Honduras with 110 mph winds, killing 5,000 people.

 

1975 Patty Hearst was arrested after a year on the FBI Most Wanted List.

1976 Mao Zedong‘s funeral in Beijing.

1980 Soyuz 38 carried 2 cosmonauts (including 1 Cuban) to Salyut 6 space station.

1981 Assemblée Nationale voted to abolish capital punishment in France.

1982  Christian militia began killing six-hundred Palestinians in Lebanon.

1984  Joe Kittinger completed the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic.

1988 End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup by the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

 

1991 Yugoslavia began a naval blockade of 7 Adriatic port cities.

1992  An explosion rocks Giant Mine at the height of a labour dispute, killing 9 replacement workers.

1997  United States media magnate Ted Turner donated $US1 billion to the United Nations.

1997 – Voters in Wales voted yes (50.3%) on a referendum on Welsh autonomy.

1998  ICANN was formed.

2001  First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

2006 Right wing protesters riot the building of the Hungarian Television in Budapest.

 

2007 Pervez Musharraf announced he would step down as army chief and restore civilian rule to Pakistan, but only after he was re-elected president.

پرویز مشرّف

2007 Buddhist monks joined anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting the Saffron Revolution.

 

2009 The 72 year run of the soap opera The Guiding Light ended as its final episode is broadcast.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Abapical - lowest point, opposite of apex.

Garrett going

RadioNZ reports that David Garrett has quit the Act Party.

Radio New Zealand understands that if Mr Garrett is ejected from the ACT caucus he won’t go without a fight and is likely to stay on as an independent MP.

However, Midday Report says he’s taking two weeks off to consider his future.

Qutting the party is the best thing he can do for Act but I can’t see how he can continue in parliament as an independent.

The next person on Act’s list in Hilary Calvert of Dunedin.

iPredict has a contract on this possibility.

Online re-enrolment next year, online voting when?

Justice Minister Simon Power is to introduce legislation enabling voters to re-enrol and update their details online in time for next year’s general election. 

Cabinet has decided that legislation to be introduced to Parliament in November, is the first step in a process that will also eventually allow voters to use the Internet to enrol for the first time.

Currently, voters have to complete and sign a written form when enrolling and making changes to their details.

The Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill No.2 allows voters to re-enrol and make changes to their details online using the ‘igovt’ government logon service, which is run by the Department of Internal Affairs. This will take effect from the middle of next year when the legislation is expected to be passed.

The changes will also ensure that all electoral enrolment offences include Internet-based acts.

The Government will also give voters the option of enrolling online, subject to a satisfactory trial of the online re-enrolment service.  A programme for full online enrolment will be developed after next year’s election and introduced in separate legislation.

“Taking advantage of the Internet will make it as simple as possible for people to participate in elections,” Mr Power said.

“In particular, it will make enrolling more accessible to people aged between 18 and 24 who make up approximately 40 per cent of un-enrolled eligible voters.”

 It is sensible to make use of technology providing there are safeguards which enable verification of identity.

Young people are more likely to use online enrolment. They’re also more likely to shift addresses between elections and enrolment packs may not catch up with even if they’ve left a forwarding address.

Full online enrolment will use a robust identify verification service (IVS) which is under development by the Department of Internal Affairs.

“The identify verification service will require voters to provide proof of identity before completing sensitive online transactions with government agencies. 

“The staged roll-out will allow the IVS to be developed in order to make sure the integrity of the electoral system is maintained.”

It’s not a big step from online re-enrolment to online enrolment but it is quite a way from there to online voting.

There’s something about the experience of voting by going to a polling booth with others who are exercising their democratic freedom.

It may also encourage better participation - postal voting for local body elections is cited as one reason participation is much lower than for general elections.

I don’t favour compulsory voting – if we’re free to vote we should also be free to not vote. But robust democracy requires wide participation and online voting could make that easier.

Saved from fire by timely visit

Fire fighters and electricians keep warning us not to leave appliances running when we leave home and I’m usually very careful about following that advice.

In spite of that we came home after a weekend away a couple of weeks ago to find the dishwasher making strange noises and a light flashing on it.

I turned it off and called an electrician.

He still hadn’t turned up when I left home last Thursday and my farmer turned the dishwasher on again. It made strange noises and the light flashed so he turned it off again.

He left home on Friday and our daughter came home the next day to find the dishwasher on, making strange noises, the light flashing and a very hot smell. She turned it off at the wall and unplugged it.

The electrician turned up on Monday, diagnosed reasonably serious malfunctions and said it was lucky one of the problems was the pump. That had meant there was water round the hot bits and our daughter had turned up before it evaporated.

Had she not made this timely visit we’d probably have come home to charred remains.

As it is we’ve had a lucky escape and a reminder to follow the advice not to leave appliances running when you leave home.

Feds asks councils to stick to basics

Federated Farmers is asking councils to stick to basics in its first manifesto for local body candidates and voters.

President Don Nicolson says:

“New Zealand’s 85 current local councils collected in rates last year, enough money to fund the New Zealand Police more than two and half times over.  For many farmers, rates are now among their biggest working expenses,”

“The vital role of councils has been underlined by the Canterbury earthquake.  Basic services are taken for granted until the likes of water, wastewater and roads are suddenly lost.

“Our local councils also control assets worth nearly $99 billion with debts of around $7.5 billion.  Every aspiring councillor needs to understand, the huge governance role they are seeking election to undertake.

“Candidates need to understand that rates are not there to fund ‘dreams and schemes’, but come from the hard work of property owners.   This is the reason why Federated Farmers believes its Manifesto is a positive contribution to the 2010 local authority campaigns.

There hasn’t been much policy from any of the candidates standing in our area and campaign statements often combine the mutually exclusive desires of lower rates and more services.

“It provides both candidates and voters a yardstick to assess policies, pledges and positions.  While there’s naturally a rural dimension to the Manifesto, the points are pretty much universal for urban and rural voters alike.

“What we want to see emerge are councillors committed to sound and equitable policies. Yet to get them, voters actually have to vote.

Nicolson said that in the last local body election on 44% of those eligible to vote did so.

“ You can’t help but suspect that most of the people who ‘demand’ more be spent on local services, come from the other 56 percent who never bothered voting.

“It’s a major reason why farmers must vote in high numbers to ensure quality candidates are either elected or retained.  Yet it’s doubly important to ensure these candidates understand the concerns of farmers and have the wherewithal to do something about them.

“While the system of funding local government is badly flawed, a bold council can take positive action that will make a real difference to the amount farmers and property owners pay in rates.

“Good councillors should focus on what the core job of their council is, no mater how unsexy it seems.  It means resisting the ‘dreams and schemes’ of interest groups who are quick to spend other people’s hard earned dollars,” Mr Nicolson concluded.

A property based tax will always disadvantage farmers but there’s no simple way to reform the rating system that would be easy to sell to voters.

However, the best way to reduce the rates burden is to increase the rating base. That requires more people and more businesses.

September 17 in history

On September 16:

1111 Highest Galician nobility led by Pedro Fróilaz de Traba and the bishop Diego Gelmírez crowned Alfonso VII as “King of Galicia“.

1176  The Battle of Myriokephalon.

  

1462  The Battle of Świecino (also known as the Battle of Żarnowiec) during Thirteen Years’ War.

1577  The Peace of Bergerac was signed between Henry III of France and the Huguenots.

1631  Sweden won a major victory at the Battle of Breitenfeld against the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War.

1683  Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society describing “animalcules“: the first known description of protozoa.

1778  The Treaty of Fort Pitt was signed, the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native American tribe (the Lenape or Delaware Indians).

1787 The United States Constitution was signed in Philadelphia.

1809  Peace between Sweden and Russia in the Finnish War, the territory which became Finland was ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Fredrikshamn.

1859 Joshua A. Norton declared himself “Emperor Norton I” of the United States.

1862 American Civil War: George B. McClellan halted the northward drive of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army in the single-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history.

1862  American Civil War: The Allegheny Arsenal explosion resulted in the single largest civilian disaster during the war.

1883 William Carlos Williams, American writer, was born (d. 1963).

1894  The Battle of Yalu River, the largest naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War.

1900  Philippine-American War: Filipinos under Juan Cailles defeated Americans under Colonel Benjamin F. Cheatham at Mabitac.

1908  The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashed killing Selfridge who became the first airoplane fatality.

 

1914  Andrew Fisher becamePrime Minister of Australia for the third time.

1916 Mary Stewart, English novelist, was born.

1916   World War I: Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron”), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, won his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.

1923 Hank Williams, American musician, was born (d. 1953).

1924  The Border Defence Corps was established in the Second Polish Republic for the defence of the eastern border against armed Soviet raids and local bandits.

1928  The Okeechobee Hurricane struck southeastern Florida, killing upwards of 2,500 people.

 

1929 Sir Stirling Moss, English race car driver. ws born.

 

1931 Anne Bancroft, American actress, was born (d. 2005).

1939  World War II: A German U-boat U 29 sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous.

 

1939  Taisto Mäki became the first man to run the 10,000 metres in under 30 minutes, in a time of 29:52.6.

1941 New Zealand abolished the death penalty for murder.

1941  World War II: A decree of the Soviet State Committee of Defense, restoring Vsevobuch in the face of the Great Patriotic War, was issued

1944  World War II: Allied Airborne troops parachuted into the Netherlands as the “Market” half of Operation Market Garden.

1945 Bruce Spence, New Zealand actor, was born.

1948  The Lehi (also known as the Stern gang) assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the UN to mediate between the Arab nations and Israel.

1949 The Canadian steamship SS Noronic burned in Toronto Harbour with the loss of over 118 lives.

 

1956 Television was first broadcast in Australia.

1976 The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, was unveiled by NASA.

1978  The Camp David Accords were signed by Israel and Egypt.

1980  After weeks of strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, the nationwide independent trade union Solidarity was established.

 

1980 Former Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle was killed.

1983 Vanessa Williams became the first black Miss America.

1991 – The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) was released to the Internet.

1992 An Iranian Kurdish leader and his two joiners were assassinated by political militants in Berlin.

 

1993 Last Russian troops left Poland.

2001  The New York Stock Exchange reopened for trading after the September 11 Attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression.

2004 Tamil was declared the first classical language in India.

தமிழ்

2006  Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupted, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years.

2007  AOL, once the largest ISP in the U.S., officially announced plans to refocus the company as an advertising business and to relocate its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to New York.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Bus Stop

Happy birthday Bernie Calvert – 68 today.

Word of the day

Sapience – discernment, judgement.

Computer memories

David Farrar is at the New Zealand Computer Society’s 50th anniversary conference.

When mentioning this on The Panel on Afternoons on Monday the question of when the first computers came to New Zealand was raised.

While preparing the daily history posts I’ve noticed references to computer technology years earlier than I was aware of them.

The first memory I have of computers was in my last year at school, 1974, when one was introduced to the maths department. But I didn’t actually get my hands on one until I started work on the Oamaru Mail in 1979.

Reporters still used typewriters, but after our work was subbed it was typed onto word processors for printing. An agreement with the printers’ union prevented the journalists from typing straight onto the word processors but we were permitted to use them for proof-reading.

The following year I used a word processor again when I was office temping in London.

Six years later my farmer bought me an electronic typewriter for Christmas – it held a line in it’s memory before printing and it could keep a whole page in it’s memory for editing.

Soon after that I went to a course at Lincoln where I was introduced to spread sheets and word processing. When I came home I bought a computer. At first it was used mostly by me for writing but gradually it was used for farm accounting and record keeping.

We connected to the internet in 1996. Initially it was used more for communication with friends but as programmes and connection speeds improved we used it more and more for the farm.

 I posted last week on economist Ha-Joon Chang’s theory that the washing machine did more for productivity than the internet.

When I look at just how much the internet does for us, I’m not so sure. We get killing sheets via email, and check the quality and quantity of each day’s milk collection on-line. We also do most of our banking, including wages and account payments, communicate with staff and the people who support and supply us, research markets and products and get advice and technical support via the internet.

In the last four years computers have become as essential to our operation as tractors and the internet has definitely helped our productivity.

When the washing machine breaks down it makes domestic life more trying. When the internet connection goes our whole operation slows down.

Milk price consolidates

The trade weighted price for milk sold at Fonterra’s globalDairyTrade auction, this morning consolidatedthe 16.9% in the previous auction a fortnight ago.

The price of Anhydrous Milk fat increased by 10.2%; Butter Milk Fat dropped 6.4%; Skim Milk Powder increased 1%; Whole Milk Powder increased 1.4% and the trade weighted price for all products went up 1.9%.

This reinforces confidence that the milk payout for this season will stay within the forecast range of $6.90 to $7.10.

Better to fess up early

If  there’s something in your past which doesn’t reflect well on you it’s far better to admit it publicly before you get in to parliament, especially if it makes you look like a hypocrite.

Using the birth certificate of a dead child to obtain a false passport is a despicable act. Even if it happened years ago and the person who did it was discharged without conviction, it’s the sort of thing people ought to know before he becomes an MP.

According to the court file, the judge told him: “There is no public interest in what you did 20 years ago.”

The judge also said Mr Garrett had led a “blameless life”, and reporting his crime would have consequences disproportionate to the crime that he committed.

For someone who wasn’t in the public eye that may be true. But according to the report the trial was in 2005, the year in which Garrett entered parliament, three years later Garrett entered parliament.

Politicians don’t have to have had blameless past. But any who don’t confess any misdeeds to the public early are inviting trouble when, as is almost inevitable in a country where most people know someone who knows someone who knows you, it eventually comes out.

P.S.

If your name’s been suppressed can you make it public?

September 16 in history

On September 16:

1386 King Henry V of England, was born (d. 1422).

1400  Owain Glyndŵr was declared Prince of Wales by his followers.

1701 James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the “Old Pretender”, becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.

1776 American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Harlem Heights was fought.

1795  The first occupation by United Kingdom of Cape Colony, South Africa with the Battle of Hout Bay.

1810  With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo began Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain.

1812  Russians set fire to Moscow shortly after midnight.

 

1858 Andrew Bonar Law, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1923)Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born (d. 1923).

1863  Robert College of Istanbul, the first American educational institution outside the United States, was founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.

1875 James C. Penney, American department store founder, was born (d. 1971).

 

1893 Settlers race in Oklahoma for prime land in the Cherokee Strip.

1898 H.A. Rey, American children’s author, creator of “Curious George”, was born (d. 1977).

 

1905 New Zealand’s first fully representative rugby team to tour the Northern Hemisphere, the ‘Originals, started the All Black tradition including the haka and the ‘All Black’ name.

1908 General Motors was founded.

1919  The American Legion was incorporated.

1920 The Wall Street bombing: a bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City – 38  killed and 400 injured.

1923 Lee Kuan Yew, Minister Mentor of Singapore, was born.

1924 Lauren Bacall, American actress, was born.

1925 – B. B. King, American musician, was born.

 

1925 – Charles Haughey, Prime Minister of Ireland, was born (d. 2006).

1930 Anne Francis, American actress, was born.

1931 Hanging of Omar Mukhtar.

 

1942 Bernie Calvert, British musician (The Hollies), was born.

1945  World War II: Surrender of the Japanese forces in Hong Kong, presided over by British Admiral Cecil Harcourt.

1947 Typhoon Kathleen hit Saitama, Tokyo and Tone Rivr area, at least 1,930 killed.

1948 Kenney Jones, English musician (The Small Faces; Faces; The Who), was born.

1955  Juan Perón was deposed in Argentina.

 

1956 David Copperfield, American magician, was born.

1963  Malaysia was formed from Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak.

1966  The Metropolitan Opera House opened at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s opera, Antony and Cleopatra.

 

1970  King Hussein of Jordan declared military rule following the hijacking of four civilian airliners by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which resulted in the formation of the Black September Palestinian paramilitary unit.

1975  Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia.

1975  The first prototype of the MiG-31 interceptor made its maiden flight.

1976  Shavarsh Karapetyan saved 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into Erevan reservoir.

1978 An earthquake measuring 7.5-7.9 on the Richter scale hit the city of Tabas, Iran killing about 25,000 people.

1982  Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon.

1987  The Montreal Protocol was signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.

 

1990  A rail link between China and Kazakhstan was completed at Dostyk, adding an important connection to the Eurasian Land Bridge.

1991  The trial of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega began in the United States.

1992  Black Wednesday: the Pound Sterling was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and forced to devalue against the Deutschmark.

2005  Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro was arrested in Naples.

2007  One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew and passengers crashed in Thailand killing 89 people.

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

Word of the day

Galeanthropy – the belief that one is a cat.

Would you vote for someone who doesn’t follow the rules?

Credo Quia Absurdum Est found most of those for peoplestanding for councils and the health board in Southland are unauthorised.

He says it’s small beer in the scheme of things but every candidate gets a little book covering election rules. It clearly states that every advertisement needs an authorisation statement.

Now, I’m not into wasting police time.  They’re busy enough.  But are you really going to vote for people who:

• pay no attention to detail
• and/or ignore the law
• don’t fix things when they are brought to their attention?

. . . So it’s not necessarily that these potential Councillors and ILT members and Health Board wannabes are breaking the law (they are), it’s that if they can’t even be bothered to read the fine print, how the hell are they going to get on with an Annual Plan or an LTCCP?

Local government needs accountability and transparency, and people who are going to read and question the fine print.  Not lawbreakers.  Some people may say it’s petty, but it is still the law.

I’ve seen only three hoardings in North Otago and was driving past at 100 kph so didn’t notice whether or not they were authorised.

But CQAE makes a very good point about attention to detail.

Councillors and health board members have to follow legislation, make decisions and decide on policy all of which require them to pay attention to and understand a lot of detail.

If they don’t bother to read and follow the rules on electioneering how can we trust them to read the fine print in the often complex documents they’d have to deal with round the council or board table?