Striking on a political whim

The NBR reports:

Thousands of workers from Kaitaia to Bluff will stop work for two hours on Wednesday to attend union meetings protesting against the Government’s employment laws, says the Council of Trade Unions (CTU).

Imagine the chaos if employers, contractors and sole operators stopped work every time they disagreed with government policy.

It wouldn’t happen of course because these people can’t afford to stop work on a political whim. Funny how the people they pay, can.

Is it just coincidence the strike is being called by the CTU which played a big role at the Labour conference last weekend?

Is it another coincidence that they they didn’t strike at the many actions of the previous Labour-led government which compromised productivity and provided disincentives to employment?

October 19 in history

On October 19:

202 BC  Second Punic War: At the Battle of Zama, Roman legions under Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal Barca, leader of the invading Carthaginian army.

439  The Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, take Carthage.

1216  King John of England died and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.

 

1453 The French recapture of Bordeaux brought the Hundred Years’ War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil.

1466 The Thirteen Years War ended with the Second Treaty of Thorn.

 

1469   Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paved the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.

1512  Martin Luther became a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia).

1789 John Jay was sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.

1813 The Battle of Leipzig concluded, giving Napoleon Bonaparte one of his worst defeats.

1822  In Parnaíba; Simplício Dias da Silva, João Cândido de Deus e Silva and Domingos Dias declared the independent state of Piauí.

1850  Annie Smith Peck, American mountaineer, was born (d. 1935).

1864 Battle of Cedar Creek – Union Army under Philip Sheridan destroy the Confederate Army under Jubal Early.

1864 – St. Albans Raid – Confederate raiders launched an attack on Saint Albans, Vermont.

1882  Umberto Boccioni, Italian painter and sculptor, was born (d. 1916).

1899  Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan writer, Nobel Prize laureate, was born (d. 1974).

1904 Polytechnic University of the Philippines founded as Manila Business School through the superintendence of the American C.A. O’Reilley.

1914 The First Battle of Ypres began.

1921 Portuguese Prime Minister António Granjo and other politicians were murdered in a Lisbon coup.

1931  John le Carré, English novelist, was born.

1943  Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.

 1946 Philip Pullman, English writer, was born.

1950 The People’s Liberation Army takes control of the town of Qamdo in what is sometimes called the “Invasion of Tibet”.

1950  Korean War:  China joined the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river to fight United Nations forces.

1954 First ascent of Cho Oyu.

1959  The first discothèque, The Scotch Club in Aachen,  opened.

1966 President Lyndon Johnson, the first NZ president to visit New Zealand,  and his wife, Lady Bird, arrived at Ohakea airfield at the start of a 24-hour visit.

1969  The first Prime Minister of Tunisia in twelve years, Bahi Ladgham, was appointed by President Habib Bourguiba.

1974 – Niue became a self-governing colony of New Zealand.

1976  Battle of Aishiya in Lebanon.

1983  Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, was overthrown and executed in a military coup d’état led by Bernard Coard.

1986 Samora Machel, President of Mozambique and leader of FRELIMO, and 33 others died when their Tupolev 134 plane crashed into the Lebombo Mountains.

1987  Black Monday – the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22%, 508 points.

 

1989  The convictions of the Guildford Four were quashed by the Court of Appeal  after they had spent 15 years in prison.

2001 SIEV-X, an Indonesian fishing boat en-route to Christmas Island, carrying over 400 asylum seekers, samk in international waters with the loss of 353 people.

2003 Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II.

2004 Myanmar prime minister Khin Nyunt was ousted and placed under house arrest by the State Peace and Development Council on charges of corruption.

2004 – Care International aid worker Margaret Hassan was kidnapped in Iraq.

 

2005  Saddam Hussein went on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

2005 – Hurricane Wilma became the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum pressure of 882 mb.

2007  A bomb explosion rocked Glorietta 2, a shopping mall in Makati. It killed 11 and injured more than 100 people.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

PM’s literary awards for Cowley, McQueen & McNeish

Joy Cowley, Cilla McQueen and James McNeish received the annual Prime Minister’s Award for Literay Acheivement tonight.

Each receive $60,000 in recognition of their contribution to New Zealand literature.

Minister for Arts and Culture Christopher Finlayson, presenting the awards at Premier House on behalf of the Prime Minister, said the awards rewarded excellence and helped raise the profile of New Zealand writers.

These awards aren’t for a particular work, they recognise significant contribution to New Zealand literature over many years.

Previous winners are:

•Fiction: Janet Frame (2003), Maurice Gee (2004), Margaret Mahy (2005), Patricia Grace (2006), Fiona Farrell (2007), Lloyd Jones (2008), CK Stead (2009)

•Poetry: Hone Tuwhare (2003), Kevin Ireland (2004), Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (2005), Vincent O’Sullivan (2006), Bill Manhire (2007), Elizabeth Smithers (2008), Brian Turner (2009)

•Non-fiction: Michael King (2003), Anne Salmond (2004), Philip Temple (2005), Judith Binney (2006), Dick Scott (2007), WH (Bill) Oliver (2008), Dr Ranganui Walker (2009).

If you’re looking for some Labour Weekend reading I can recommend Cowley’s just-published memoir, Navigation.

 

Word of the day

Generica  – features of the built landscape (malls, motels, housing . . . ) which are exactly the same wherever you are.

Monday’s quiz

1. Who is the President of Chile?

2. Who is the patron saint of miners?

3. Who said, “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”?

4. It’s trabajador in Spanish, travailleur in French, lavoratore in Italian and kaimahi in Maori – what is it in English?

5. Who is the outgoing Director General of Agriculture & Forestry and who is his successor?

Strong rhetoric, fuzzy logic

Phil Goff has announced a change in policy which he says will mean most sales of land to foreigners will fail. 

“Buyers will have to prove that selling land to them will be good for our economy,” he told the conference.

“We will force would-be buyers of New Zealand rural land to invest in New Zealand and our people by bringing jobs, transferring technology, increasing exports or bringing other benefits.”

Force is a very strong word but he doesn’t explain how he’ll measure the benefits required of would-be buyers nor what will happen if promised benefits don’t eventuate.

That could be because Goff spent 15 years in past governments when thousands of hectares of farmland were sold to foreigners and he knows there is more to be gained than lost from it.

That isn’t stopping him from talking tough though:

“Labour will reverse the current approach to overseas sales of land,” he said at the party’s annual conference in Auckland.

“Instead of the overwhelming majority of farm sales being approved, the overwhelming majority will be declined.”

They would be rejected unless the overseas buyer of farm or forestry land also invested in significant further processing of primary products and brought new technology into New Zealand.”

About 75% of our forestry is already foreign-owned and most of our wool is sold unprocessed. But only a tiny percentage of farmland is the property of overseas investors who already have to pass strict criteria before they buy.

Goff”s rhetoric will touch a chord with the xenophobes but it might not make much difference to what happens now.

The Overseas Investment Office runs a very strict ruler over any applications from foreign-based buyers of farmland.

Applicants for consent must satisfy a number of criteria, including the core “investor test” criteria. In addition, consent to acquire sensitive land will only be granted if:

• the transaction will, or is likely to, benefit New Zealand, or alternatively
• the relevant overseas person intends to reside in New Zealand indefinitely.

Some types of land (such as farm land) also have specific consent criteria.

 Applicants have to jump some high  hurdles and those who get approval already bring in capital, introduce technology, employ locals, increase exports and/or bring other benefits.

Friends sold their farm to an international company which owns a lot of land in New Zealand and overseas.

This year they budgeted $980,000 for depreciation and will be spending $2.33 million on farm improvements, excluding maintenance fertiliser. That means things like machinery, houses and fences. It also includes planting tree seedlings on several hundred hectares of erosion prone land. These trees aren’t being planted for forestry, they may earn some carbon credits but they won’t be harvested, they are being planted to protect the land.

There wouldn’t be many New Zealand owned farms spending more than twice their depreciation on improvements and prepared to do that much for an environmental rather than economic return. If they did it would be a lot less than $2.33 million.

Some controls over foreign purchases is sensible. What we have now balances vendors’ rights to get the best price with the national interest.

Goff is responding to the xenophobic opposition to foreign ownership with strong rhetoric based on very fuzzy logic. Applying it to Australians, as he says he will, also contravenes our CER agreement and the reciprocal rights we have for land purchases there.

If he and his party really want most sales to foreigners to fail they need to explain how they will compensate for the lost investment and the cost of that to individual farmers and the country.

Conspiracy theory

Labour’s conference was a chance for the party and its leader to give the public reasons to vote for them.

Q & A interviewed Phil Goff who looked like he was trying, and failing, to defend the indefensible.

The Nation chose to interview Russel Norman and do a feature on Winston Peters.

If I was trying to draw up a list of reasons to vote for a Labour-led government neither Norman nor Peters would be on it.

October 18 in history

On October 18:

1009  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, was completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacked the Church’s foundations down to bedrock.

1016 The Danes defeated the Saxons in the Battle of Ashingdon.

1081  The Normans defeated the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Dyrrhachium.

1210  Pope Innocent III excommunicated German leader Otto IV.

 

1356  Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroyed the town of Basel.

1386  Opening of the University of Heidelberg.

 

1561  Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima – Takeda Shingen defeated Uesugi Kenshin in the climax of their ongoing conflicts.

1599 Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, defeated the Army of Andrew Bathory in the Battle of Şelimbăr, leading to the first recorded unification of the Romanian people.

1648  Boston Shoemakers formed the first U.S. labour organization.

1748The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of the Austrian Succession.

1767 Mason-Dixon line, survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania was completed.

 

1775  African-American poet Phillis Wheatley freed from slavery.

 

1851  Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was first published as The Whale.

1860 The Second Opium War  ended at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.

1867  United States took possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.

1898  United States took possession of Puerto Rico.

1912  The First Balkan War began.

1914  The Schoenstatt Movement was founded in Germany.

 

1919 Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 15th Prime Minister of Canada, was born (d. 2000).

1921  The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed as part of the RSFSR.

1922 The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) was founded.

1924  Amateur radio operator Frank Bell sent the first trans-global radio transmission from Shag Valley, East Otago to London were it was received and replied to by amateur operator Cecil Goyder.

1925  The Grand Ole Opry opened in Nashville, Tennessee.

1926 Chuck Berry, American musician, was born.

1927 George C. Scott, American actor, was born (d. 1999).

1929  Women were considered “Persons” under Canadian law.

1929 Violeta Chamorro, President of Nicaragua, was born.

1934 Inger Stevens, Swedish actress, was born (d. 1970).

1936 Adolf Hitler announced the Four Year Economic Plan to the German people. The plan details the rebuilding of the German military from 1936 to 1940.

1939 Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, was born (d. 1963).

1944 – Adolf Hitler ordered the public funeral procession of Nazi field Marshall Erwin Rommel, commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps

1945  The USSR’s nuclear programme received plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1945 – A group of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, led by Mario Vargas, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, staged a coup d’état against then president Isaías Medina Angarita.

1954 The New Zealand Opera Group (later renamed NZ Opera Company) had its first opening night when it performed The Telephone in Wellington.

1954  Texas Instruments announced the first Transistor radio.

1967 The Soviet probe Venera 4 reached Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.

1968 Bob Beamon set a world record of 8.90 m in the long jump at the Mexico City games.

1989 East German leader Erich Honecker resigned.

1991  Azerbaijan declared independence from USSR.

2003 Bolivian Gas War: President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, was forced to resign and leave Bolivia.

2007  Karachi bombings: attempted assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Ugsome - disgusting, loathsome.

Did you see the one about . . .

Undo, cut, tape . . . wait that’s not right - old technology meets new at Something Should Go Here.

Graham Lay on New Zealand English – guest post at  Quote Unquote

My shoes don’t eat meat – Laughy Kate on vegan footwear.

The recession made us poorer - Macdoctor puts the blame where it ought to be.

Silver Ferns turn into golden ferns - RivettingKate Taylor shares her excitement.

Who is punching above their weight - Eye To The Long Run does the numbers on the Australian & New Zealand medal tally.

An alternative to Breakfast - the fifth of Keeping Stock’s daily posts for those missing Paul Henry.

If real wars were like trade wars -Cafe Hayek  shows how silly it all is (Hat Tip Anti Dismal). 

Who should pay for university - Anti Dismal on student loans.

Three views on Chilean miners’ rescue

Theodore Dalrymple in the Wall Street Journal - In Chile the lessons of isolation:

That they behaved with great fortitude, courage, faith and dignity will hardly be denied by anyone; the efforts to save them were inspiring. . .  Angels could hardly have done better. . .

 . . . The miners were also aided by another factor. While they were isolated in the physical sense, they were far from isolated in any other. For once, media attention was wholly beneficial in its effects. The miners were in the eye of the world. They knew that what they did, how they acted, would be known to untold millions.

You have only to consider an alternative scenario to realize how important this was to their survival. Suppose that they had been trapped underground all that time, with enough food and drink to survive, but not knowing whether anyone was making an effort to reach them, or whether their plight was of any concern to anyone other than their immediate family (something that they could pretty well assume, but which in those circumstances would have been a cause of anxiety rather than of consolation). Would their conduct then have been so admirable? Would they have been able to maintain their equanimity to such a remarkable degree?

It seems intuitively very unlikely . . . Here, then, is an illustration of the evident but often forgotten fact that social pressure is conducive to virtue as well as to vice. . . No man but an out-and-out psychopath wants to appear worse than his fellows in the eyes of the world; and the miners’ (justified) pride in appearing brave and self-composed helped them to survive their ordeal. . .

Jim Hopkins in the NZ Herald: 33 reasons to make us feel more alive.

Take a bow, humanity. We made it happen. Or, more precisely, our inventions did.

So many inventions from so many inventors: cables and pulleys and machines that harness electricity; gears and cogs and pumps making oxygen; wires and winches and wirelesses, too.

And there, turning slowly on top of its simple wooden frame, raising the Phoenix upward, one of the earliest of them all, our liberating, rescuing wheel.

Throughout our time on this planet, it’s the things we’ve invented that have masked our frailty and freed us from it. Not completely, of course; we’re too frail for that.

//

Disease and disaster still have their wicked way with us. So, for the frailties invention cannot master, we have faith and hope, prayer and drama. . .

. . .  No one watching the drama unfold on their picture machine can feel so intensely alive as those rescued miners must. Nor can we be as grateful and relieved as their families and lovers and friends. But we can share some part of those emotions and know that they make us feel more human and more alive.

“Be strong, my love. I love you,” one miner wrote to his wife from deep in the earth. “I love you.” That is all any of us can hope to hear. “Be strong, my love.” And that is all that any of us can be, whatever hole we’re in.

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal – Capitalism saved the miners (HatTip: Roger Kerr):

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism. . .

If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?

Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.

This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill’s rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock’s president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.

Longer answer: The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That’s why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.

This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above. . .

Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection. . .

 In an open economy, you will never know what is out there on the leading developmental edge of this or that industry.But the reality behind the miracles is the same: Someone innovates something useful, makes money from it, and re-innovates, or someone else trumps their innovation. Most of the time, no one notices. All it does is create jobs, wealth and well-being. But without this system running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead. . .

Update:

Hamish Collins at No Minister writes on The Chilean miners and capitalism.

And Pablo at Kiwi Politico  posts on The real Chilean miracle.

Update 3: Robert Tracinski at Not PC on Something heroic in their way of trading.

His place and her place

An email arrived inviting me to complete an on-line survey.

I accepted and found nothing startling until I got near the end. 

There the options given for the respondent’s occupation included: Businessman/Business owner and Female – Housework.

In the 21st century you’d think people who compose surveys might know that female isn’t an occupation it’s a gender; and that a woman’s place could be in business and a man’s at home.

Surveys aren’t the only place with very old fashioned views. The Herald on Sunday announces a birth:

It was once, twice, three times a baby girl for Dean and Mandy Barker.

But at the fourth time of trying, Auckland’s glamour couple have produced a young son and male heir to the Barker family dynasty.

There are no quotes from the Barkers. It’s just the reporter’s gross assumption that the couple were “trying” for a son and in spite of modern laws of inheritance he, rather than his sisters, will eventually lead the family business.

Shades of policy past

Labour will require the Reserve Bank to do more to keep the value of the dollar down if it’s elected to government.

As an incoming government, Mr Cunliffe says, Labour would require the bank to “play a much more activist role in currency markets, intervening on occasion to impose costs on speculators and, if you like, make the New Zealand dollar less attractive as a risk punt”.

I wonder how that sits with the party leader? Phil Goff  was part of the Labour government which floated the dollar and part of subsequent governments which didn’t try to change that policy.

Mind you, a few more mad policies from the distant past like this and they won’t have to do anything to lower the value of the dollar, anyone with any sense will take their money elsewhere.

October 17 in history

On October 17:

539 BC – King Cyrus The Great of Persia marched into  Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile and making the first Human Rights Declaration.

1091 T8/F4 tornado struck the heart of London.

1346  Battle of Neville’s Cross: King David II of Scotland was captured by Edward III of England near Durham.

1448  Second Battle of Kosovo: the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi was defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.

1456  The University of Greifswald was established, making it the second oldest university in northern Europe.

1604 Kepler’s Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observed a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus.

 

1610   Louis XIII was crowned in Rheims.

1660 Nine Regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, were hung, drawn and quartered.

1662  Charles II of England sold Dunkirk to France for 40,000 pounds.

1771 Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Wolfgang Mozart, age 15.

1777 American troops defeated the British in the Battle of Saratoga.

1781 General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the American revolutionists at Yorktown, Virginia.

1797  Treaty of Campo Formio signed between France and Austria.

1800  England took control of the Dutch colony of Curaçao.

1806  Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperr Jacques I was assassinated.

1814  London Beer Flood killed nine.

1860 First The Open Championship for golf.

1877 Chief Justice Sir James Prendergast declared the Treaty of Waitangi “worthless” and a simple “nullity”

1888 Thomas Edison filed a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).

1907  Guglielmo Marconi‘s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and Clifden, Ireland.

1912  Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War.

 

1915 Arthur Miller, American playwright, was born (d. 2005).

1918 Rita Hayworth, American actress, was born (d. 1987).

1930 Robert Atkins, American nutritionist, was born (d. 2003).

 

1931  Al Capone convicted of income tax evasion.

1933 Albert Einstein, fled Nazi Germany and moved to the U.S.A.

1941 Jim Seals American singer (Seals and Crofts), was born.

1941 – German troops executed the male population of the villages Kerdyllia in Serres, Greece and burned the houses down.

1942 Gary Puckett, American musician, was born.

1943  Burma Railway (Burma-Thailand Railway) was completed.

 

1945  A  large crowd headed by CGT (trade union) and Evita, gathered in the Plaza de Mayo  to demand Juan Peron’s release. Known to the Peronists as the Día de la lealtad (Loyalty Day), it is considered the founding day of Peronism.

1956 The first commercial nuclear power station was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth in Sellafield, Cumbria.

1961  Scores of Algerian protesters were massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.

 

1964  Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies opened the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the middle of  Canberra.

1965 The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair closed after a two year run.

 

1966 A fire at a building in New York, killed 12 firefighters

1969 Ernie Els, South African golfer, was born.

1970 Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte  was murdered by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1973  OPEC started an oil embargo against a number of western countries, considered to have helped Israel in its war against Syria.

1977  German Autumn: Four days after it was hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 landed in Mogadishu.

1979  Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

1987  First commemoration of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

1989  Loma Prieta earthquake (7.1 on the Richter scale) hit the San Francisco Bay Area, causesd57 deaths directly and 6 indirectly.

 

1998 At Jesse, in the Niger Delta,  a petroleum pipeline exploded killing about 1200 villagers, some of whom are scavenging gasoline.

2000 Train crash at Hatfield, north of London, led to collapse of Railtrack.

2003 The pinnacle was fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper which became the World’s tallest highrise.

2006  The United States population reached 300 million.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Saturday smiles

A blonde motorist was about two hours from the Gold Coast when she was flagged down by a man whose truck had broken down. He walked up to the car and asked, ‘Are you going to the Gold Coast?’

‘Sure,’ answered the blonde, ‘do you need a lift?’

‘Not for me. I’ll be spending the next three hours fixing my truck.,” he said. ‘My problem is I’ve got two chimpanzees in the back which have to be taken to the Gold Coast Zoo. They’re a bit stressed already so I don’t want to keep them on the road all day. Could you possibly take them to the zoo for me? I’ll give you $100 for your trouble..’

‘I’d be happy to,’ said the blonde.

 The two chimpanzees were ushered into the back seat of the blonde’s car and carefully strapped into their seat belts. Off they went.

Five hours later, the truck driver was driving through the heart of the Gold Coast when suddenly he was horrified!! There was the blonde walking down the street and holding hands with the two chimps, much to the amusement of a big crowd.

With a screech of brakes he pulled off the road and ran over to the blonde. ‘What the heck are you doing here?’ he demanded, ‘I gave you $100 to take these chimpanzees to the zoo.’

‘Yes, I know you did,’ said the blonde,’ but we had money left over — so now we’re going to Sea World.

Hat Tip: The Ag Letter – sample and subscription details here.

Word of the day

Screever – a professional writer of begging letters.

The dignity of work

They were young by today’s standards when they married and had four children in just over four years.

He was the sole income earner but she worked too and a lot of her work (gardening, preserving, cooking, sewing . . . ) made a significant contribution to the family economy by saving a lot of money.

Saving was necessary because although he was a tradesman he wasn’t a well paid one. The family would have had a better income if he’d stopped work and claimed a benefit.

The dignity of work is an old fashioned concept but this was part of what motivated them to stay off a benefit even if, in the short term, it would have given them more money.

They took a long term view and it paid off. His income gradually improved and when the children were old enough she started part-time paid work.

Now the children are independent adults, both parents have fulltime jobs, their house is mortgage-free, they have good savings and money to spare to give them both security and choices.

The dignity of work and the long-term benefits of it must have escaped Tao Wells. He’s the artist who received a $40,000 grant from Creative NZ to create a beneficiaries’ office which promotes the benefits of being unemployed.

He described himself as an unemployed artist with a masters degree who had been “off and on” the unemployment benefit since 1997. Wells said he was receiving welfare and admitted his benefit was at risk by him speaking out.

Late yesterday afternoon his benefit was cut off after Work and Income learned of the project.

This doesn’t reflect well on two government agencies – Creative NZ which signed off the grant while unaware of  the installations “precise contents”; and WINZ for being unaware a beneficiary was double dipping.

But it paints an even worse picture of the artist who:

. . .  advocates the opportunities and benefits of unemployment and says it is unfair that long-term beneficiaries are labelled bludgers for exploiting the welfare system.

Wells’ installation, The Beneficiary’s Office, urges people to abandon jobs they don’t like rather than suffering eight hours of “slavery”.

Tell that to the people who are working, sometimes for less or little more, than a benefit to pay the taxes to support this madness.

Press Council upholds grieving mother’s complaint

The sudden death of a young woman might be news but in May the Oamaru Mail made the mistake of turning it into a front-page sensationalisation of a troubled life.

Her family, confronted with this just two days after the death, was understandably upset. So was the community which responded with a torrent of letters, phone calls and cancelled subscriptions.

The editor, who had written the story, apologised and explained the reasoning behind the decision to run the story. The family wasn’t placated and Elle’s mother complained to the Press Council.

The council upheld her complaint and in doing so said:

The council does not deny the newspaper its right to publish the fact of the death – but it is the way the newspaper went about it that has brought it into conflict with Elle’s family, the local community and the council’s principles.
Publications, particularly those serving small communities, have a particular duty to report tragic events with sensitivity. The untimely death of a young person is distressing to such communities as there is a greater likelihood of individuals being known to one another and, in the event of a highly publicised sudden death, the community becomes alight with speculation.
In this case, the front-page lead article and its accompanying photograph added fuel to fire. It contributed to increased distress and trauma of Elle’s family and friends at this time of tragedy.
The editor did not try hard enough to obtain positive details about Elle; the article was simply a list of her problems with the law.

The paper had tried to contact the family but they understandably had other priorities immediately after the death. Had the Mail stuck to reporting the bare facts at first then waited it might have had the opportunity for another and better story later.

Its haste and insensitivity, compounded by the use of a photo of Elle being arrested, cost it dearly in loss of reputation and readers.

The sudden death of a young woman might be news but the Press Council’s decision shows that coverage of it must be sensitive.

Happy to be a list MP?

The Oamaru Mail reports the Labour Party has selected its candidate to contest the Waitaki electorate next year:

Local building contractor Barry Monks has been selected as the Labour Party candidate for Waitaki, The Oamaru Mail can exclusively reveal.

The announcement was delayed because Mr Monks, 40, was standing for an Oamaru Ward council seat in the local body elections.

At the next general election he will take on National’s Jacqui Dean, who beat David Parker in the 2005 and 2008 polls. Mr Monks faces an uphill battle to overturn Mrs Dean’s 11,000-vote majority.

Taking any seat off a popular MP is never easy and the size and configuration of Waitaki make it even harder for a newcomer.

Oamaru is the biggest town in the electorate and tends to be red but Jacqui won every polling booth in the town at the last election. She also won all but two of the 89 polling booths in the more than 20 distinct communities over the 34, 888 square kilometres the electorate covers. Getting traction with voters across that large area is a huge task for a new candidate.

The more interesting part of this announcement is the implication that David Parker isn’t seeking a seat.

When he didn’t seek selection for the Dunedin North seat after Pete Hodgson’s retirement announcement some wondered if he was going to have another tilt at Waitaki.

He won what was then the Otago seat in 2002 but lost it to Jacqui three years later. Boundaries then changed making the electorate even bigger and it gained a new name, Waitaki,  for the 2008 election. David stood against Jacqui in the bigger seat but upset local party people by conceding the seat at a public meeting in Geraldine a couple of weeks before the end of the campaign.

That he didn’t seek selection for either Dunedin North or Waitaki suggests he’s content to remain a list MP.

October 16 in history

On October 16:

456  Magister militum Ricimer defeated Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.

1384  Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland, although she was a woman.

1758 Noah Webster, American lexicographer, was born (d. 1843).

 

1781 George Washington captured Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.

1793  Marie Antoinette, was guillotined.

 

1793  The Battle of Wattignies ended in a French victory.

1813  The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.

1834  Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster burned to the ground.

1841  Queen’s University was founded in Kingston, Ontario.

1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton came up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.

1846  William TG Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.

1854 Oscar Wilde, Irish writer, was born (d. 1900).

1859  John Brown led a raid on Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

1869  The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, was “discovered”.

 

1869  Girton College, Cambridge was founded, becoming England’s first residential college for women.

1875  Brigham Young University was founded in Provo, Utah.

1882  The Nickel Plate Railroad opened.

1890 Michael Collins, Irish patriot, was born (d. 1922).

1905 The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.

1906 The Captain of Köpenick fooled the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.

 

1916 Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic.

1922 Max Bygraves, English singer/songwriter, was born.

1923 The Walt Disney Company was founded by Walt and Roy Disney.

1925 Angela Lansbury, English-born actress, was born.

1928 Mary Daly, American feminist philosopher and theologian, was born (d. 2010).

1934  Chinese Communists began the Long March.

1936 Jean Batten crossed the Tasman on the last leg of her flight from Britain, landing in Auckland 10 1/2 hours after leaving Sydney.

1940 Benjamin O. Davis Sr. was named the first African American general in the United States Army.

1940 The Warsaw Ghetto was established.

 

1943 Fred Turner, Canadian bass player (Bachman-Turner Overdrive), was born.

1945  The Food and Agriculture Organization was founded in Quebec City.

1946  Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.

 

1949 Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announced a “temporary cease-fire”, effectively ending the Greek Civil War.

 

1951  The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated.

1964  Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin were inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively.

1968  United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carloswere kicked off the USA’s team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.

 

1968   Rodney Riots in Kingston Jamaica,  inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.

1970 In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invoked the War Measures Act.

1973  Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1975 The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), were killed by Indonesian troops.

1975 Rahima Banu, a 2-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, was the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.

 

1975  The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, voted to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government’s annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.

1978 Pope John Paul II was elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave.

1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1984 Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1986  Reinhold Messner became the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.

1986  Ron Arad, Israeli Weapons System Officer, is captured by Lebanese Shi’ite militia Amal.

1987  Great Storm of 1987: Hurricane force winds hit much of the South of England killing 23 people.

 

1991  Luby’s massacre: George Hennard ran amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby’s Cafeteria.

1993 Anti-Nazi riot  in Welling in Kent, after police stopped protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.

1995  The Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

 

1995 – The Skye Bridge over Lock Alsh was opened.

1996  Eighty-four people were killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeezed into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.

1998  Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.

2002  Bibliotheca Alexandrina: a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, was officially inaugurated.

 

2006  A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocked Hawaii.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia