Vulgarity rules

Noelle McCarthy is hosting Critical Mass today and we began with Letters From Wetville where Sandra posts on Acting Like Normal, Hibernation, In Solidarity with Our Town and Waiting, Hoping and Praying.

These are insider’s thoughts on the Pike River mine explosion. She’s writing from inside about her own community and people which gives her posts a poignancy and intimacy which other media, looking from the outside in, can’t replicate.

We moved on to something completely different – Theodore Dalrymple believes that vulgarity is now the ruling characteristic of England.

And we finished by discussing Noelle’s column in the Herald on the problem of having too many Facebook friends.

Ressurection

This Tuesday’s poem is Ressurection by Michael McKimm.

Other Tuesday poets linked in the sdie bar include:

Elizabeth Welsh who went back to her childhood with Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Creaming Before Dawn by Helen Lehndorf - a tribute to Ruth Dalla’s Milking Before Dawn.

Alicia Ponder’s Murdering Poetry.

How She Holds Her Head by Mary McCallum.

And Havery McQueen’s choice - Piwakaka by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman.

School buses need better identification

The sign before the corner recommended a speed of 80 kilometres an hour.

My farmer, who was driving, slowed, rounded the corner and was starting to accelerate again when he noticed a mini van stopped on the side of the road a short distance ahead.

But only when we were a few metres from it did we both realise it was a school bus which meant we should have been passing it at no more than 20 kph.

Rural Women has a campaign to require all school buses to have flashing lights to identify them. It’s a very good idea because with no uniformity of model and colour, it’s too hard to work out what’s a school bus and what’s not when you’re on the open road.

Too poor to save?

New Zealand’s public debt levels aren’t high by international standards but our private debt levels are and that’s the main reason Standards and Poor’s has put our currency on negative outlook.

Standard and Poor’s decision to put New Zealand’s foreign currency rating on negative outlook highlights the need to reduce our heavy reliance on foreign debt, Finance Minister Bill English says.

“This is a long-standing problem for New Zealand and has left us vulnerable as a country,” he says. “The Government is taking steps to reduce this external vulnerability and to move the economy towards savings and exports.

“They include the tax changes in the Budget this year and work currently underway with the Savings Working Group. From here, it’s important that our economic programme continues.

“Standard and Poor’s praised the New Zealand Government’s commitment to get back to budget surplus by 2016, and it noted that New Zealand had outperformed most other advanced economies in the past two years.

“However, it said the negative outlook on New Zealand’s AA+ foreign currency rating reflected risks stemming from its widening external imbalances and relatively low levels of national savings.

“As Standard and Poor’s notes, New Zealand’s household liabilities – at about 156 per cent of disposable income – are 50 per cent higher than 10 years ago.

“Banks and the Government, which are borrowing in volatile international financial markets, face higher interest costs on their increasing debt. In the past 10 years alone, New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities have jumped from about $90 billion to more than $160 billion.”

Mr English noted that, despite the negative outlook on its AA+ rating with Standard and Poor’s, New Zealand still enjoys the highest possible Aaa (stable) rating with Moody’s.

Standards and Poor’s isn’t the first to be concerned by our high level of foreign debt and their announcement wasn’t all bad – it resulted in a fall in the value of the New Zealand dollar which could be of some help to exporters.

But a high, and growing reliance, on foreign borrowings isn’t anything to be proud of and something which must be addressed.

We can blame the tax and spend policies of the 1999-2008 Labour government for some of the problem. It took too much from us and in doing so increased the burden of government. We’re still paying for it and that means too many of us are too poor to save.

National has made a start on reducing that burden and leaving us with more of our own money. But there’s still a long way to go.

The 2005 election bribes played a big role in the increase in the size of government, its spending and middle income welfare.

Given recent utterances, it’s probably too much to hope that Labour has learned from that, accepts we’re only just coming out of recession and tempers its inclination for growth restricting take and redistribution when developing policy for next year.

But that gives National the opportunity to trust us with the truth – we can’t keep spending more than we earn. If we want first world health, education other services and infrastructure we’re going to have to save more of our own money.

It would be much easier to do that if the burden of the state was reduced.  Not PC shows, the public sector consumes, it’s producers who produce.

If we carry on with too much of the former and too little of the latter we’ll carry on being too poor to save.

November 23 in history

On November 23:

534 BC – Thespis of Icaria became the first actor to portray a character onstage.

 

1227 – Polish Prince Leszek I the White was assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa.

1248 – Conquest of Seville by the Christian troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile.

1499 – Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck was hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London.

1531 – The Second war of Kappel resulted in the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland.

1644 – John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.

1808 – French and Poles defeated the Spanish at battle of Tudela.

1844 – Independence of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark.

1859 Billy The Kid, American outlaw, was born (d. 1881).

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga began.

 

1867 – The Manchester Martyrs were hanged for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish nationalists from custody.

 

1876 –  Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) was delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.

1887  Boris Karloff, British actor, was born (d. 1969).

1888 Harpo Marx, American comedian, was born (d. 1964).

1889 – The first jukebox went into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco.

 

1890 – King William III of the Netherlands died without a male heir and a special law was passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to become his heir.

1903 – Governor of Colorado James Peabody sent the state militia into the town of Cripple Creek to break up a miners’ strike.

1910 – Johan Alfred Ander was the last person in Sweden to be executed.

 

1914 – Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdrew from Veracruz.

1918 – Heber J. Grant succeeded Joseph F. Smith as the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1934 – An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovered an Italian garrison at Walwal, well within Ethiopian territory which led to the Abyssinia Crisis.

1936 – The first edition of Life was published.

 

1940 – World War II: Romania became a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.

1943 – World War II: The Deutsche Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße in the Berlin was destroyed.

1946 – French Navy fire in Hai Phong, Viet Nam, killed 6,000 civilians.

1947 A civis funeral was held for the 41 victims of the Ballantynes Fire.

1949  Sandra Stevens, British singer, member of pop group Brotherhood of Man, was born.

1955 – The Cocos Islands were transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.

1959 – General Charles de Gaulle,  declared in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a “Europe, “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”

1963 – The BBC broadcast the first episode of Doctor Who (starring William Hartnell) which is the world’s longest running science fiction drama.

1971 – Representatives of  China attended the United Nations, for the first time.

1976 – Apneist Jacques Mayol was the first man to reach a depth of 100 m undersea without breathing equipment.

1979 –  Provisional Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.

1980 – A series of earthquakes in southern Italy killed approximately 4,800 people.

1981 – Iran-Contra Affair: Ronald Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1985 – Gunmen hijacked EgyptAir Flight 648,  when the plane landed in Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed the  jetliner, but 60 people died in the raid.

1990 – The first all woman expedition to the south pole (3 Americans, 1 Japanese and 12 Russians), set off from Antarctica on the 1st leg of a 70 day, 1287 kilometre ski trek.

1992  Miley Cyrus, American actress and singer/songwriter, was born.

1993 – Rachel Whiteread won both the £20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the £40,000 K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year.

1996 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked, then crashed into the Indian Ocean after running out of fuel, killing 125.

2001 – Convention on Cybercrime was signed in Budapest.

2003 – Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigned following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections.

2005 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia and became the first woman to lead an African country.

2007 – MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sank in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg. There were no fatalities.

2009 – The Maguindanao massacre. 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Lethologica – inability to recall the precise word; difficulty recalling words.

6/10

6/10 in NZ History Online’s weekly quiz.

Criticised for what don’t do not appreciated for what do do

National’s doing well but I’m disappointed it’s not being stronger on alcohol.

This was the message a party member gave me when I ran in to him last week.

The next day I was at a meeting where Invercargill MP Eric Roy mentioned that the legislation the government introduced to the House has 52 of the 63 recommendations from the Law Commission’s report on alcohol.

That may not be going far enough for some but it’s more than a very good start – especially when you acknowledge that the root of the problem with alcohol abuse is a cultural one which requires change in people and behaviour not legislation.

However, the conversation with the party member illustrates one of the perennial problems in politics – you’re far more likely to be criticised for what you don’t do than recognised for what you do do.

Democracy requires participation

When asked on Morning report last Monday how many people had attended United Future’s annual conference the previous weekend, Peter Dunne replied ( http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/20101115):

“It varied during the day but around about 40 to 50 at most points.”

The National Party could expect that many people at many of its electorate AGMs and there would still be some areas where they’d worry if they didn’t get that many at a branch AGM.

But then National is the only party which can say it’s got a reasonable grassroots membership. It’s not measured in six figures as it used to be, but it can still claim tens of thousands of members.

Labour would be scratching to make it to five figures – and I suspect that would be when union membership is counted. The wee parties would be lucky to muster much more than the 500 required to register – and some may not even make that.

That makes them not so much parties as interest or lobby groups.

Declining membership isn’t peculiar to political parties. Sports and service clubs, churches and most other groups which depend on volunteer members are in the same boat.

But these organisations don’t get to run the country, political parties do and under MMP parties and their leaders have more power.

Most National and Labour MPs are electorate ones so they are not only answerable to party members, they are also answerable to their constituents.

Maori Party MPs are too but only because of the Maori seats which by definition and in practice are not broadly representative.

Most MPs from the other wee parties, with the exception of the two one-man parties United Future and whatever Jim Anderton’s current  incarnation is called, are list MPs, chosen by their parties and answerable to them.

Given how small their memberships are that’s not very healthy.

We’re supposed to be an open and representative democracy. It’s difficult to be that when participation for most means no more than voting once every three years, if that.

Update:  Maybe we need to make politics more like this: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/11/now_this_is_a_great_get_out_the_vote_advertisement.html (warning sexual imagery).

November 22 in history

On November 22:

498 – Symmachus was elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius was elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore.

845 – The first King of all Brittany, Nominoe defeated the Frankish king Charles the Bald at the Battle of Ballon near Redon.

1307 – Pope Clement V issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.

1574 – Discovery of the Juan Fernández Islands off Chile.

1635 – Dutch colonial forces on Taiwan launched a pacification campaign against native villages, resulting in Dutch control of the middle and south of the island.

 

1718 –  British pirate Edward Teach ( “Blackbeard“) was killed in battle with a boarding party led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

1808  Thomas Cook, British travel entrepreneur, was born.

1812 – War of 1812: 17 Indiana Rangers were killed at the Battle of Wild Cat Creek.

1819  George Eliot, (Mary Ann Evans) British novelist, was born (d. 1880).

1830 – Charles Grey, (2nd Earl Grey), became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1837 – Canadian journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie called for a rebellion against Great Britain in his essay “To the People of Upper Canada”, published in his newspaper The Constitution.

1869 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark was launched – one of the last clippers ever to be built, and the only one still surviving to this day.

 

1890 Charles de Gaulle, President of France  was born (d. 1970).

1899 Hoagy Carmichael, American composer, was born (d. 1981).

1908 – The Congress of Manastir established the Albanian alphabet.

 

1913 – Benjamin Britten, British composer, was born (d. 1976).

 

1917 Jon Cleary, Australian author, was born (d 2010).

1928 – The premier performance of Ravel’s Boléro in Paris.

1932 – Robert Vaughn, American actor, was born.

1935 – The China Clipper took off from Alameda, California for its first commercial flight, reaching its destination, Manila, a week later.

 

1939 General Bernard Freyburg  took command  of the British Expeditionary Force.

1940 –  Following the initial Italian invasion, Greek troops counterattack into Italian-occupied Albania and capture Korytsa.

1943  Billie Jean King, American tennis player, was born.

1943 – Lebanon gained independence from France.

1954 – The Humane Society of the United States was founded.

1958  Jamie Lee Curtis, American actress, was born.

1963 – In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy was killed and Texas Governor John B. Connally seriously wounded. 

1963 – US Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.

1967 – UN Security Council Resolution 242 is adopted by the UN Security Council, establishing a set of the principles aimed at guiding negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement.

1973 – The Italian Fascist organization Ordine Nuovo was disbanded.

1974 – The United Nations General Assembly granted the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.

1975 –  Juan Carlos was declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco.

1977 – British Airways started a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.

1986 – Mike Tyson defeated Trevor Berbick to become youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history.

1987 – Two Chicago television stations were hijacked by an unknown pirate dressed as Max Headroom.

1988 – The first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber was revealed.

1989 – In West Beirut, a bomb exploded near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad, killing him.

1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdrew from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership.

1995 – Toy Story was released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery.

2002 – In Nigeria, more than 100 people were killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest.

2004 – The Orange Revolution began in Ukraine, resulting from the presidential elections.

 

2005 – Angela Merkel became the first female Chancellor of Germany.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Lost links

Has anyone else using WordPress lost the ability to link?

When I select the words I want to highlight and click on the link symbol I get a mesage saying error on page.

I first noticed this when using my laptop so borrowed my farmer’s laptop and then tried the PC at home. All get the same result which suggests it’s not the computer but something to do with either WordPress in general or my blog in particular.

Word of the day

Petrichor – the smell of rain on dry ground.

In search of the top bookshelf

Una casa sin libros es una casa sin corazón – a house without books is a house without heart.

If yours is a house with heart it will almost have at least one bookshelf and that could be the one Booksellers is seeking.

 http://www.booksellers.co.nz/book-news/trade-news/searching-new-zealands-most-inspired-bookshelf 

Whether it’s colour-coded, alphabetised or sorted by publication date, the hunt is on for New Zealand’s most inspired, well-stocked and lovingly-crafted bookcase.

Booklovers from Kaitaia to Bluff are invited to take a second look at the bookshelves in their lives, take a snapshot of themselves next to their inspired bookshelf, and email it to us by 12 December 2010.

All entries will be posted on the and judged by an expert panel of New Zealand booksellers. The winner will receive a $500 Booksellers Token before Christmas– so they can add to their beautiful bookshelf!

“When it comes to entries, there are no restrictions. Entries could include a treasured bookshelf in a family home, a precariously-balanced book sculpture, or a series of four-by-two planks and a few old bricks in a student flat, laden with text books, crime novels and dog-eared Lonely Planet travel guides.” says Lincoln Gould, Chief Executive of Booksellers NZ.

“This competition is a bit of fun, but also an opportunity to really appreciate the beauty that a whole lot of books carefully placed, cunningly coerced or simply shoved into a bookshelf can be.“ says Gould. . .

“Whether it’s the way in which the books have been arranged, the shape of the bookcase itself, or simply the selection of books contained, bookcases are always inspiring, and tell a fascinating story all of their own. They’re so much more than just a rambling collection of books gifted, bought, borrowed or loaned.“ says Gould.

You can follow the campaign on Twitter  and see the photos as they come in on Flickr.

Hat Tip: Beatties Book Blog. http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/booksellers-seeks-new-zealands-most.html

A time to hold back #2

Keeping Stock notes the large number of media representatives descending on the West Coast: http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2010/11/pike-river-wait-continues.html

Sandra at Letters From Wetville  gives a local’s view:

I would like the media to piss off.

They do not need to swarm around our town, vultures in search of a product to sell on their ‘news’ programmes.

I too, am desperate for news of the Pike River miners. I too, checked the internet and the radio about a zillion times today, hungry for word that the rescue team can begin their job. Like everyone else in Wetville, I appreciate the messages of support from all over New Zealand, all over the world.

But none of this requires news crews to be in our faces, prodding our pain, trying to get names of miners despite a request from the miners’ families that they retain privacy in this time of hell. . .

The full post is at: http://lettersfromwetville.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-solidarity-with-my-town.html

When there’s nothing to say the media needs to stop trying to make news from people’s anguish.

Was apathy the winner?

The election results for Mana show 22,387 people voted: http://www.electionresults.org.nz/electorate-21.html

BUCHANAN, Kelly			ALL		37
CRAWFORD, Julian Lloyd			ALCP		107
DU PLESSIS, Colin			ACT		132
FAAFOI, Kris			LAB		10,397
FITZPATRICK, Sean			LIB		43
LOGIE, Jan			GP		1,493
McCARTEN, Matt			IND		816
PARATA, Hekia			NAT		9,317

To put that number of votes cast in to perspective, compare that with results for the electorate in the 2008 election: http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/MPP/Electorates/EPData/f/2/a/DBHOH_Lib_EP_Mana_Data_3-Mana-Electoral-Profile.htm#_64

LABAN, Winnie (LAB)	18,070	53.06
PARATA, Hekia (NAT)	11,915	34.99
GILCHRIST, Michael (GP)	2,288	6.72
COLLINS, Mike (ACT)	628	1.84
GUNSTON, Robin (UFNZ)	472	1.39
MACLACHLAN, Renton (KIWI)	337	0.99
MANU, Tim Salele’a (NZPP)	282	0.83
GOODE, Richard (LIB)	64	0.19
Total Valid Votes	34,056	100.00
Total Votes Cast	34,333	100.81

Compare that with the 2008 results for Waitaki:

 http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/MPP/Electorates/EPData/2/3/4/DBHOH_Lib_EP_Waitaki_Data_3-Waitaki-Electoral-Profile.htm

Candidate	Valid Votes	Share (%)
DEAN, Jacqui (NAT)	23,649	60.13
PARKER, David (LAB)	12,610	32.06
BRIGGS, Oliver (GP)	1,916	4.87
FRASER, John (ACT)	516	1.31
MAIN, Claire (JAP)	333	0.85
VAN WIEREN, Hessel (NZDSC)	140	0.36
MacRITCHIE, Norman (ALL)	93	0.24
GUY, Simon (DDP)	70	0.18
Total Valid Votes	39,327	100.00
Total Votes Cast	39,688	100.92

Jacqui Dean got nearly as many votes in 2008 as the total votes cast in the Mana by-election.

Does this mean the real winner in Mana was apathy?

(P.S. sorry about the cumbersome links – when I try to link the usual way I get a message saying error on page).

Waiting and hoping and praying

Waiting and hoping and praying is all anyone can do until air tests show it is safe to begin rescuing the 29 miners trapped in the Pike River mine.

What will it be like for the rescuers once they get the go-ahead to enter the mine?

Oswald Bastable describes a much simpler cave rescue and that must have been hard enough:  http://oswaldbastable.blogspot.com/2010/11/that-there-is-always-worse-job.html

November 21 in history

On November 21:

164 BC – Judas Maccabaeus restored the Temple in Jerusalem, an event commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

 

235 – Pope Anterus succeeded  Pontian as the nineteenth pope.

 

1272 –  Prince Edward became King of England.

1620 – Plymouth Colony settlers signed the Mayflower Compact.

 

1694 Voltaire, French philosopher, was born (d. 1778).

1783 –  Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis d’Arlandes, made the first untethered hot air balloon flight.

1787 Samuel Cunard, Canadian-born shipping magnate, was born.

1789 – North Carolina ratified the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.

1791 – Colonel Napoléon Bonaparte was promoted to full general and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic.

1863 Maori surrendered at Rangiriri.

1877 – Thomas Edison announced his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

1894 – Port Arthur massacre: Port Arthur, Manchuria fell to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First Sino-Japanese War.

1905 – Albert Einstein‘s paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, was published in the journal “Annalen der Physik”. This paper revealed the relationship between energy and mass which led to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².

1910 – Sailors onboard Brazil’s most powerful military units, including the brand-new warships Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia, violently rebelled in what is now known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Whip).

 

 

1916 – World War I: A mine exploded and sank HMHS Britannic in the Aegean Sea, killing 30 people.

1918 – Flag of Estonia, previously used by pro-independence activists, is formally adopted as national flag of the Republic of Estonia.

1920 – Irish War of Independence: In Dublin, 31 people were killed in what became known as “Bloody Sunday“.

1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia took the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.

1927 – Columbine Mine Massacre: Striking coal miners were allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.

1936 Victor Chang, Australian physician, was born.

1941 Juliet Mills, British actress, was born.

1942 – The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) was celebrated (however, it was not usable by general vehicles until 1943).

1945  Goldie Hawn, American actress, was born.

1948  George Zimmer, American entrepreneur, was born.

1953 – The British Natural History Museum announced that the “Piltdown Man” skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.

1962 – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army declares a unilateral cease-fire in the Sino-Indian War.

1964 – The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened to traffic.

1964 – Second Vatican Council: The third session of the Roman Catholic Church’s ecumenical council closed.

1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato agreed on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972.

1969 – The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI.

1970 – Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast – A joint Air Force and Army team raided the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there.

1971 – Indian troops, partly aided by Mukti Bahini (Bengali guerrillas), defeat the Pakistan army in the Battle of Garibpur.

1974 – The Birmingham Pub Bombings killed 21 people.

1977 – Minister of Internal Affairs Allan Highet announced that ‘the national anthems of New Zealand would be the traditional anthem “God Save the Queen” and the poem “God Defend New Zealand“, written by Thomas Bracken, as set to music by John Joseph Woods, both being of equal status as national anthems appropriate to the occasion.

 

1979 – The United States Embassy in Islamabad, was attacked by a mob and set on fire, killing four.

1980 – A fire broke out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally’s Las Vegas). 87 people were killed and more than 650  injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.

1980 – Lake Peigneur drained into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole. The resulting whirlpool sucked the drilling platform, several barges, houses and trees thousands of feet down to the bottom of the dissolving salt deposit.

 

1985 – United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations.

1986 – Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1990 – The Charter of Paris for a New Europe refocused the efforts of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europeon post-Cold War issues.

1995 – The Dayton Peace Agreement was initialed ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1996 – A propane explosion at the Humberto Vidal shoe store and office building in San Juan, Puerto Rico killed 33.

2002 – NATO invited Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.

2004 – The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election led to massive protests and controversy over the its integrity.

2004 – The island of Dominica was hit by the most destructive earthquake in its history.

2004 – The Paris Club agreed to write off 80% (up to $100 billion) of Iraq’s external debt.

2006 – Anti-Syrian Lebanese Minister and MP Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in suburban Beirut.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Close loss but still a win

Hekia Parata may have lost the election for the seat of Mana but she’s still a winner: http://www.electionresults.org.nz/electorate-21.html

BUCHANAN, Kelly			ALL		37
CRAWFORD, Julian Lloyd			ALCP		107
DU PLESSIS, Colin			ACT		132
FAAFOI, Kris			LAB		10,397
FITZPATRICK, Sean			LIB		43
LOGIE, Jan			GP		1,493
McCARTEN, Matt			IND		816
PARATA, Hekia			NAT		9,317

She finished only 1080 votes behind Labour’s Kris Kris Faafoi and with 1352 special votes to be counted he won’t be entirely confident the seat is his for at least a week.

The official result is expected to be posted on December 1.

By-elections usually go against a government so National will be delighted that its candidate managed to whittle the 6155 majority retiring MP Winnie Laban had in 2008 to just 1080.

This close loss is a win for Hekia, her campaign team and her party.

They didn’t turn the red seat blue but they did turn it to a faded shade of pink.

Haven’t they done well? To quote her campaign slogan – Heak, Heck Yeah!

Kiwiblog is at campaign HQ: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/11/mana_results.html.

Word of the day

Quidnunc – one who always wants to know what’s happening; a gossip or busybody.

A time to hold back

The imperative to get the news and get it first sometimes has to be put on hold.

The interviewer on TV3 did his best to get some of the names of the miners trapped in the Pike River mine from those he was interviewing this morning. All have held firm because their families want privacy.

That should be respected.

There aren’t many degrees of separation in New Zealand so many will know people, or know people who know people, who may be among those trapped.

But our understandable interest in the names must come second to the needs and wishes of the families and rescuers.

The media have a right to keep us up to date with what’s happening but they should respect the decision not to identify the miners and families.

West Coast MP Chris Auchinvole told the interviewer that he and  the Ministers, Gerry Brownlee and Kate Wilkinson who had come to the Coast, were there to help but keeping out of the way until needed.

They recognise there is a time to hold back and the media should too.