November 14 in history

On November 14;

1533 – Conquistadors from Spain under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro arrived in Cajamarca, Inca empire.

1770 – James Bruce discovered what he believed to be the source of the Nile.

1805  Fanny Mendelssohn, German composer and pianist, was born  (d. 1847).

1840  Claude Monet, French painter, was born (d. 1926).

1845 – Governor George Grey arrived in New Zealand.

1878 –   Julie Manet, French painter, was born (d. 1966).

 

1889 – Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) began a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days.

1908  Joseph McCarthy, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, was born.

1910 – Aviator Eugene Ely performed the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia when he took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.

1918 – Czechoslovakia became a republic.

1919  Veronica Lake, American actress, was born (d. 1973).

1921 – The Communist Party of Spain was founded.

1921 – Brian Keith, American actor, was born. (d. 1997).

1922 – The BBC began radio service.

1922 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian UN Secretary-General, was born.

1923 – Kentaro Suzuki completed his ascent of Mount Iizuna.

1935  King Hussein of Jordan was born  (d. 1999).

1940 – Coventry was heavily bombed by  Luftwaffe bombers. Coventry Cathedral was almost completely destroyed.

 

1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sank after torpedo damage from U-81 sustained on November 13.

1947 P. J. O’Rourke, American writer, was born.

1948  Prince Charles  was born.

1952 – The first regular UK singles chart published by the New Musical Express.

 

1954 – Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State, was born.

1957 – The Apalachin Meeting outside Binghamton, New York was raided by law enforcement, and many high level Mafia figures were arrested.

1959  Paul McGann, British actor, was born.

1965 – Vietnam War: The Battle of the Ia Drang began – the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.

1967 – The Congress of Colombia, in commemoration of the 150 years of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declared this day as “Day of the Colombian Woman”.

1969 – NASA launchds Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon.

1970 – Soviet Union enters ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of organisation.

1970 – Southern Airways Flight 932 crashed in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75, including members of the Marshall University football team.

1971 Adam Gilchrist, Australian cricketer, was born.

1971 – Enthronment of Pope Shenouda III as Pope of Alexandria.

1973 –  The passage of the Social Security Amendment Act introduced the Domestic Purposes Benefit to New Zealand’s social welfare system.

1973 –  Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.

1975 – Spain abandoned Western Sahara.

1982 – Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, was released after 11 months of internment.

1984 – Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, was assassinated in his home city.

1990 – After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder-Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.

1991 – Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returned to Phnom Penh after 13 years of exile.

1991 – In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee went on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide.

1995 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forced the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.

2001 – War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters took over Kabul.

2002 – Argentina defaulted on an $805 million World Bank payment.

2003 – Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discovered 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.

2007 – The last direct-current electrical distribution system in the United States was shut down in New York City by Con Edison.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikiepdia

One of my picks came third

Just as well I hadn’t bet anything on my picks for the New Zealand Cup.

 The winner was Showcause,  Tich was second and the only one of my picks that was in the money was Zabene which came third.

My other two picks were Electronic Socks and Wotabuzz which came 14th and 17th respectively.

Word of the day

Jumentous – having a strong animal odour, smelling like horse or donkey urine.

When life imitates satire

Like the many people who left comments I read Dim Post’s announcement that he’s leaving the blogosphere, at least temporarily, with regret.

His decision was prompted by life imitating satire when Peter Dunne handed Jonathan Coleman a two-year-old speech to introduce a Bill to parliament.

It happened again when Winston Peters complained about the dearth of investigative journalism because of foreign-owned media (and do check the comments, some are priceless).

And another example:

But it was Donatella Versace who got the big award of Woman of the Year for her charity work; she was presented with it by a grateful Janet Jackson after Versace made the funeral outfits for the Jackson family at brother Michael’s funeral.

“We were dressed in Versace we knew we were dressed in love,” she said.

But that story wasn’t all bad, it did introduce a new (at least to me) noun of assemblage:

As a starve of models from around the world gathered ahead of the lingerie lines much awaited preview show.

A starve of models, if it wasn’t so sad it would be very funny.

The Hand That Signed the Paper

The Hand That Signed the Paper by Dylan Thomas was this Tuesday’s poem.

Among the 0ther Tuesday poets linked in the side bar which caught my eye were:

Ruby the Dark Haired Girl (1887-1997) at Bigger Than Ben Hur.

How to Pour Madness into a Teacup by Abegail Morely at A Writer’s Life.

Influenza at Vesper Sparrow’s Nest.

And Masking Tape’s a Must by Clare Beynon.

Travel rules, monitoring must change

Pansy Wong’s resignation was the right response to her husband’s misuse of a travel allowance.

Her media release makes it quite clear she accepts responsibility:

“It is beyond my wildest dreams that a baby girl born in Shanghai, China, grew up in a Hong Kong apartment where eight families shared a single kitchen and bathroom to be New Zealand’s first List M.P., first constituent M.P. of Botany and first Cabinet Minister of Chinese and Asian ethnicity,” says Pansy Wong.

“That dream is not mine alone and it comes with expectation, responsibility and hope. I havetried every single day to keep that dream alive and nothing should happen to dash that dream.

“That dream can only be kept alive by living up to the high standard set by the Prime Minister and myself.  Therefore I have given my resignation as a Cabinet Minister to the Prime Minister.

“This action follows questions about use of my parliamentary travel entitlement to pay for my husband to travel within China at the end of 2008.

“Although the trip was a holiday, my husband did conduct some business. Further, I am not able at this point to give the Prime Minister an assurance that this is a one-off situation.

“As a Member of Parliament it is my responsibility to ensure that the travel entitlement is used within the rules and that does not appear to be the case on this occasion.

“Given that, the appropriate and honourable thing to do is to offer my resignation to the Prime Minister. He has been gracious enough to accept it.

“I have asked the Speaker of the House to have Parliamentary Service review the use of my entitlement.

“In the event that any of my or my husband’s international travel is found to be outside the rules, I will be making a full refund to Parliamentary Service.

“I do not intend to make any further comment to the media pending the outcome of the investigation.”

I like and admire Pansy and am very sorry about this.

Beyond the personal it raises, once again, questions about MPs’ travel entitlements.

I don’ t think the taxpayer should be paying for anything for MPs except their salaries and expenses directly related to doing their work. There is no jsutification for paying spouses/partners travel whether it’s business or personal.

I have very little sympathy for the argument that subsidised travel was part of a salary package. I doubt ihat would have been palatable to the public when it was settled. It is even less so now particularly when it is obvious it if far too easy to misuse.

Does anyone ask the retired MPs if their trips were entirely personal or had an element of business?

What is busienss and what’s personal? If a retired MP who was a farmer visited an agricultural show, or an ex-MP who was a lawyer watched proceedings in court, while on holiday overseas does that become business?

Payment to MPs, past or present, for anything not directly related to their work should stop. If retired MPs are doing something for the country that should be applied for and judged on a case by case basis. If it’s for themselves – whether business or personal – the taxpayer should not be paying.

If that’s not done then travel subsidies should only be paid for in retrospect after the claimant signs a declaration that they are abiding by the rules.

New Zealand Cup picks

Fresh from proving I know nothing about horses with my Melbourne Cup picks I’ve had a look at the field for the New Zealand Cup which is being run at Riccarton today:

1. Butch James
2. Kerdem
3. Titch
4. Zabene
5. Bakup
6. No Cash
7. Chase The Sun
8. Blood Brotha
9. Roi d’jeu
10. Electronic Socks
11. Nightime Jockey
12. Outrage
13. Aronsay
14. Ginella
15. Seaflyte
16. Wotabuzz
17. Yours
18. Showcause
19. Prix Du Sang
20. Iriodes (scratched)
21. The Jungle Boy
22. Dadzadreamer
23. Bradnor
24. Selenus

My picks are:

Zabene (because the jockey will be wearing blue).

Electronic Socks (because the name amuses me).

and Wotabuzz (because it would be if it won).

November 13 in history

On November 13:

1002 – English king Æthelred II ordered the killing of all Danes in England, in the St. Brice’s Day massacre.

1160 – Louis VII of France married Adele of Champagne.

 

1642 – First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green – Royalist forces withdrew in the face of the Parliamentarian army and failed to take London

1715  Dorothea Erxleben,  first German female medical doctor, was born (d. 1762).

1841 – James Braid first saw a demonstration of animal magnetism, which led to his study of the subject he eventually called hypnotism.

1850 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer, was born (d. 1894).

1851 – The Denny Party landed at Alki Point, the first settlers in what would become Seattle, Washington.

1864 – The new Constitution of Greece was adopted.

1887 – Bloody Sunday clashes in central London.

 

1901 – The 1901 Caister Lifeboat Disaster.

 

1906 Eva Zeisel, American industrial designer, was born.

1916 – Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes was expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.

1927 – The Holland Tunnel opened to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.

1934 - Peter Arnett, New Zealand-born American journalist, was born.

1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal was torpedoed by U 81.

1942 – World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal – U.S. and Japanese ships engaged in an intense, close-quarters surface naval engagement.

1947 – Russia completed development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles.

1950 – General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, President of Venezuela, was assassinated.

1954 – Great Britain defeated France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris.

1955  Whoopi Goldberg, American actress, comedian, and singer, was born.

1956 – The United States Supreme Court declared Alabama and Montgomery, Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1965 – The SS Yarmouth Castle burned and sanks60 miles off Nassau with the loss of 90 lives.

 

1969 – Vietnam War: Anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. staged a symbolic March Against Death.

1970 – Bhola cyclone: A 150-mph tropical cyclone hit the  Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night. This is regarded as the 20th century’s worst natural disaster.

 

1971 – The American space probe, Mariner 9, became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.

1982 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans.

 

1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupted and melted a glacier, causing a lahar that buried Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

1985 – Xavier Suarez was sworn in as Miami, Florida’s first Cuban-born mayor.

1988 – Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian law student in Portland, Oregon was beaten to death by members of the Neo-Nazi group East Side White Pride.

1990 –  David Gray shot dead 13 people, in the Aramoana Massacre.

1992 – The High Court of Australia ruled in Dietrich v The Queen that although there was no absolute right to have publicly funded counsel, in most circumstances a judge should grant any request for an adjournment or stay when an accused was unrepresented.

1994 – In a referendum voters in Sweden decided to join the European Union.

1995 – A truck-bomb exploded outside a US-operated Saudi Arabian National Guard training center in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians.

2000 – Philippine House Speaker Manuel B. Villar, Jr. passed the articles of impeachment against Philippine President Joseph Estrada.

2001 – War on Terrorism:  US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.

2002 – The oil tanker Prestige sank off the Galician coast and causes a huge oil spill.

2005 – Andrew Stimpson, a 25-year old British man, was reported as the first person proven to have been “cured” of HIV.

2007 – An explosion hit the south wing of the House of Representatives of the Philippines killing four people, including Congressman Wahab Akbar, and wounding six.

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

Word of the day

Captious – Marked by an ill-natured inclination to stress shortcomings and raise objections; disposition to find and point out trivial faults;  calculated to confuse, entrap or entangle in argument.

Real pavs don’t come from packets

Is this an indictment on the cooking skills of a nation or just an enterprising company spotting a gap in the market which it’s filled with Pavlova Magic?

Edmonds Pavlova Magic is a dessert mix product that takes the frustration out of pav making . . . 

Frustration, what frustration?

A friend’s mother gave me her pavlova recipe years ago, it’s easy to follow and the result is delicious – a crisp shell with  marshmallow inside.

I’ve made scores of them since then and only once had a failure which was my fault, not the recipe’s.

Having found the recipe for the perfect pavlova I’ve become very picky about any others so I won’t be tempted by this product.

Magic or not, in my kitchen real pavs don’t come from packets.

Old fashion new attitude – upadated

This could have been written when I was at high school in the 1970s:

The school’s guidelines require girls’ skirts to touch the ground when they kneel . . .

However, while the fashion has gone back a few decades, the rest of the story is very much one of the times:

A pupil told that she “looked like a slut” by her school dean says she feels unfairly singled out and her parents are furious the school has done little in response to their complaints.

Would a teacher 40 years ago have told a pupil she looked like a slut?

Possibly.

Would a pupil 40 years ago have gone home and told her parents a story like this?

Probably not.

Would her parents  have taken their daughter’s side if she did?

Almost certainly not.

Would they have gone to the media?

Almost certainly not.

Would the media have reported the story?

No.

But 40 years later a teacher says something she shouldn’t have, although reading through the lines I suspect she may have been provoked.

The pupil runs home to her mother who calls the school, which admits the teacher was wrong but says her verbal apology was enough. The mother then goes to the media which turns a bit of nonsense into news.

Sigh.

A friend who’s a senior teacher with responsibility for discipline relaxes by building stone walls. He says it’s therapeutic and better to hammer rocks than pupils.

If he has to deal with the sort of behaviour reported in this story I wouldn’t wonder if he was only partly joking.

Hat Tip: Roarprawn

UPDATE: Brian Edwards puts it better in: why absolutely no apology was due to Amethyst Staladi or her parents.

green = good Greens = red

The word ”green” has a powerful meaning in our public life in a way it never did before. It has connotations of habitat, nature, trees, wilderness and also moral connotations – stewardship of the landscape, sustainable ways of living, openness, honesty and transparency.

I would vote for a green party, if such a party existed, but instead we have the Greens, a bipolar coalition of genuine environmentalists and genuine hard-left, anti-corporate progressives hiding under the flag of convenience of environmentalism.

Quote of the week from In bed with the devil – a deal that has tainted Green politics by Paul Sheehan.

He’s writing about Australia but these paragraphs apply in New Zealand politics too.

Hat Tip: Trans Tasman.

November 12 in history

On November 12:

764 – Tibetan troops occupied Chang’an, the capital of the Chinese Tang Dynasty.

1028 – Future Byzantine empress Zoe married Romanus Argyrus.

1439 – Plymouth, became the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.

1555 – The English Parliament re-established Catholicism.

1651  Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexican mystic and author, was born.

1729  Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French explorer, was born.

1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, was guillotined.

1840 Auguste Rodin, French sculptor, was born.

 

1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, was the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.

1866 Sun Yat-sen, the 1st President of the Republic of China was born.

1892 – William “Pudge” Heffelfinger became the first professional American football player on record.

1893 – The treaty of the Durand Line was signed between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan.

1905 – Norway held a referendum in favor of monarchy over republic.

1912 Striking worker Fred Evans was fatally injured in a clash with police and strikebreakers during the bitter six-month-long dispute at the goldmining town of Waihi.

1912 – The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

 

1918 – Austria became a republic.

1920 – Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rapallo.

1927 – Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1929  Princess Grace of Monaco, was born.

1933 – Hugh Gray took the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster.

1934 Charles Manson, American cult leader, was born.

1936 – The San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic.

1938 – Hermann Göring proposed plans to make Madagascar the “Jewish homeland”.

1941 – World War II: Temperatures around Moscow dropped to -12 ° C and the Soviet Union launcheed ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.

1941 – World War II: The Soviet cruiser Chervona Ukraina was destroyed during the Battle of Sevastopol.

1942 – World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began.

1943  Bjorn Waldegard, Swedish rally driver, was born.

1944 – World War II: The Royal Air Force launched 29 Avro Lancaster bombers in one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sinks the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs.

1944  Booker T. Jones, American musician and songwriter (Booker T and the MG’s), was born.

1945 Neil Young, Canadian singer and musician, was born.

1948 – An international war crimes tribunal sentenced seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.

1958 – A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completed the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

1962  Naomi Wolf, American author and feminist, was born.

1969 – Vietnam War: Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story.

1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempted to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous “exploding whale” incident.

1970 – The 1970 Bhola cyclone makes landfall on the coast of East Pakistan becoming the deadliest tropical cyclone in history.

1978 – As Bishop of Rome Pope John Paul II took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter ordered a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.

1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I made its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

1981 – Mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marked the first time a manned spacecraft was launched into space twice.

1982 -  Yuri Andropov became the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.

1982 – Lech Wałęsa, was released from a Polish prison after eleven months.

1990 – Crown Prince Akihito was formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.

1991 – Dili Massacre, Indonesian forces opened fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili.

1996 – A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collided in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.

1997 – Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1998 – Vice President Al Gore signed the Kyoto Protocol.

1998 – Daimler-Benz completed a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler.

1999 – The Düzce earthquake struck Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.

2001 – American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashed minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.

2001 – Taliban forces abandoned Kabul, Afghanistan, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.

2003 – Iraq war: In Nasiriya, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 Iraq war, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.

2003 – Shanghai Transrapid set a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph)) for commercial railway systems.

2006 – The region of South Ossetia held a referendum on independence from Georgia.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikiepdia

Appeal to mandom

The LTSA is appealing to mandom to stay in mantrol.

It’s a good concept – but Lindsay Mitchell points out that mantrol is a brand name for something else which may or may not be intentional.

Word of the day

Kalon – moral and physical beauty; beauty which is more than skin-deep.

7/10

7/10 in this week’s NZ History Online quiz.

Three of those were lucky guesses.

7/10

Just 7/10 in this week’s Dominon Post political triva quiz.

Since Keeping Stock’s not one to boast I’ll do it for him – he got 10/10.

UPDATE: I feel better knowing Kiwiblog found it hard.

Lest we forget

It’s 92 years since the armistice was signed to end the war that was supposed to end all wars.

. . . They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. . .

From For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon.

Management requires measurement

Significant water takes will have to be metered to enable better management of fresh water.

Environment Minister Nick Smith said:

“We can’t manage what we don’t measure,” Dr Smith said. “We know that over the past decade we have doubled the amount of water that can be legally taken from our rivers, lakes and aquifers to 450 million cubic metres per week. That is 18 Olympic-sized swimming pools every minute. We also know we are reaching resource limits in significant areas.  We need to know how much water is actually taken and when if we are to properly manage New Zealand’s hugely valuable freshwater resource.”

The Resource Management (Measurement and Reporting of Water Takes) Regulations 2010 take effect today and require all new water takes of more than 5 litres a second to be metered. Existing takes of more than 20 litres a second must be metered within two years (10 November 2012), those more than 10 litres a second must be metered with four years (10 November 2014) and all takes more than 5 litres a second within six years (10 November 2016).

“These regulations will hugely improve the information we have on water takes.  We currently measure only 31% of allocated water. These regulations will increase this to 92% in 2012, 96% in 2014 and 98% in 2016,” Dr Smith said.

This is sensible and already happens in many areas.

We take water from the North Otago Irrigation Scheme, which comes from the Waitaki River, underground and from the Kakanui River for irrigation and all of the takes are metered.

“These pragmatic regulations do not apply to small water takes less than 5 litres per second that make up 39% of consents but only 2% of the volume of water taken. Requiring small takes such as households and stock water to be metered could not be justified nationally.

“The Government is providing $90,000 to Irrigation New Zealand to develop guidance about water meters, verification and installation to irrigators so as to ensure the smooth implementation of these new regulations.  We also want irrigators to be well informed as to how to use this information to improve the efficiency of water use.

“These new regulations on water metering are part of a broader programme to improve New Zealand’s freshwater management.  This has included major investments in lake and river clean-ups, toughened penalties and stronger enforcement of resource consents, doubling funding for the New Zealand Landcare Trust, addressing Environment Canterbury’s problems and progressing the work of the Land and Water Forum. This Government recognises how important water will be to New Zealand’s future economic and environmental well being.”

Environment Canterbury and Irrigation New Zealand have welcomed the move.

NIWA’s lake water quality report was also released yesterday and the Minister gave it a could-do-better:

“This report concludes that New Zealand lake water quality compares favourably with Europe and North America but there are signs of real concern,” Dr Smith said. ”It is unacceptable that 32% of our monitored lakes have poor water quality and that more lakes are deteriorating in water quality than are improving.

“Lake water quality is worst in low-land intensively farmed areas such as the Waikato and Manawatu.  The Government is ramping up spending on freshwater clean-up initiatives, from $17 million from 2003-2008 to $94 million from 2009-2014.  It is encouraging the lake showing the greatest improvement in water quality is Lake Rotoiti in the Bay of Plenty, proving the success of the Rotorua Lakes Water Quality initiative.”

Sixty-eight lakes had reliable data for the period 2005 to 2009 to enable trends in water quality to be measured.  Nineteen lakes showed deterioration and eight showed improvement.

“The deterioration in lake water quality was worst in Canterbury between 2005 and 2009, making up 15 of the 19 lakes nationwide that went backwards,” Dr Smith said.  “This reinforces the Government’s decision to intervene in water management in Canterbury, and the need to fast-track water plans and rules to better manage pollution.

“The data in this report is not comprehensive and has some gaps. More information is required on why the greatest deterioration in water quality has occurred in catchments with more native than pastoral land cover. The data is also limited to 112 out of 4000 New Zealand lakes, although I am encouraged that the number of lakes being monitored has trebled since 2000.

Federated Farmers welcomed the report as a vindication, albeit grudging, of the work farmers have done to improve water quality in the past decade.

“Turning water quality around is no different from a supertanker.  It takes time but we’re now seeing some positive indicators,” says Lachlan McKenzie, Federated Farmers Dairy chairperson.

“Over the past decade, we’ve invested massively in effluent management systems and other on-farm improvements.  There’s been a hell of a lot of great work done on-farm and in the industry which goes completely unreported. . .

. . . “This NIWA report raises important questions and we must answer those. . .

. . . “Interpreting these results must be lake specific with multiple factors at play. LakeSPI, for one, is influenced heavily by exotic aquatic plants and fish, which aren’t cows.

“But are farmers denying any impact of agriculture on lake water quality? Of course we’re not.  That’s why we’ve made a massive investment over the past decade and why we’re open to public scrutiny.

“But we cannot be expected to make all the improvements when agriculture is far from all of the problem.

“I, for one, would dearly love to know what’s causing the decline in 40 percent of lakes with ‘dominant native catchment cover’.

“Could it be introduced water fowl, koi carp, aquatic plants and trout perhaps?  NIWA has instead strayed into ‘gosh, it must be farming’, instead of staying science informed. . .

There are many causes for declining water quality. Indentifying them and finding solutions must be based on science and requires the co-operation of land owners, visitors, water users and relevant agencies.

November 11 in history

November 11 in history:

1215 – The Fourth Lateran Council met, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.

1500 – Treaty of Granada – Louis XII of France and Ferdinand II of Aragon agree to divide the Kingdom of Naples between them.

1620 – The Mayflower Compact was signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.

 

1634 – Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passed An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery.

1673 – Second Battle of Khotyn in Ukraine: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth forces under the command of Jan Sobieski defeated the Ottoman army. In this battle, rockets made by Kazimierz Siemienowicz were successfully used.

 

1675 – Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).

1724 – Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, a highwayman was hanged.

1778 – Cherry Valley Massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attacked a fort and village in eastern New York  killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.

1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Dürenstein – 8000 French troops attempted to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force.

1813 – War of 1812:  Battle of Crysler’s Farm – British and Canadian forces defeated a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign.

1839 – The Virginia Military Institute was founded in Lexington.

1854 – The Ballarat Reform League Charter adopted “At a Meeting held on Bakery Hill in the presence of about ten thousand men”

1864 – American Civil War: Sherman’s March to the Sea – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman began burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.

 

1865 – Treaty of Sinchula was signed:  Bhutan ceded areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.

1869 – The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act was enacted, giving the government control of indigenous people’s wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.

1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was hanged at Melbourne Gaol.

1887 – Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were executed.

1887 – Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal began at Eastham.

 

1889 – Washington was admitted as the 42nd U.S. state.

1911 – Many cities in the Midwestern United States broke their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolled through.

1918 –  The signing of the Armistice between the Allies and Germany was celebrated in many cities and towns around New Zealand. Enthusiasm was dampened, though, by the ongoing impact of the influenza pandemic then ravaging the country.  Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiègne in France. The war officially ended at 11:00 (The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month).

1918 – Józef Piłsudski came to Warsaw and assumed supreme military power in Poland. Poland regained its independence.

1918 – Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquished power.

1919 – The Centralia Massacre  resulted in the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the Industrial Workers of the World.

1919 – Lāčplēša day – Latvian forces defeated the Freikorps at Riga in the Latvian War of Independence.

 

1921 – The Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

1922  Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist, was born  (d. 2007).

1924 – Prime Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaimed the first recognized Greek Republic.

1926 – U.S. Route 66 was established.

1928  Carlos Fuentes, Mexican writer, was born.

1930 – Patent number US1781541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.

1934 – The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne was opened.

1940 –  Battle of Taranto – The Royal Navy launched the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.

1940 – The German cruiser Atlantis captured top secret British mail, and sent it to Japan.

1940 – Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard killed 144 in the U.S. Midwest.

1942  Trans tasman liner Awatea was attacked by swarms of German and Italian bombers. Although its gunners shot down several planes, the Awatea was set on fire and holed by torpedoes. Remarkably, everyone on board got off safely (except for the ship’s cat, which was apparently killed by a bomb blast).

1944 – Dr. jur. Erich Göstl, a member of the Waffen SS, was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, to recognise extreme battlefield bravery, after losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy.

1945 Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua, was born.

Chris Dreja, British musician (The Yardbirds), was born.

1960 – A military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam was crushed.

1962 – Kuwait’s National Assembly ratified the Constitution of Kuwait.

1962 – Demi Moore, American actress, was born.

1965 – In Rhodesia (mpw Zimbabwe), the white-minority government of Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence.

1966 – NASA launched Gemini 12.

1968 – Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated.

1968 – A second republic was declared in the Maldives.

1974 Leonardo DiCaprio, American actor, was born.

1975 – Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam, appointed Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and announced a general election to be held in early December.

 

1992 – The General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow women to become priests.

1999 – The House of Lords Act was given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.

2000 – In Kaprun, Austria, 155 skiers and snowboarders died when a cable car caught fire in an alpine tunnel.

 

2001 – Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton and Volker Handloik were killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they are traveling in.

2004 – New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington.

2004 – The Palestine Liberation Organization confirmed the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas was elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.

2006 – Queen Elizabeth II unveiled the New Zealand War Memorial in London, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand and British Armies.

2008 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) set sail on her final voyage to Dubai.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia