Friday’s answers

Thursday’s questions were:

1. Where was Julia Gillard born?

2. What is the common name of Australia’s naitonal flower, Acacia pycnantha?

3. Who said: “Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.”?

4. Who wrote the series of books featuring Scobie Malone which started with The High Commissioner ?

5. Who in Banjo Patteron’s poem came from Eaglehawk and caught the cycling craze?

Points for answers:

Gravedodger wins an electronic watermelon for five right and a bonus for commentary.

JC got three right and a bonus for being able to quote the first vers of Mulga Bill.

David got one and a bonus for extra  information.

Adam got two right and a smile to compensate for the frown.

Answers follow the break:

Is XT working properly yet?

Alcatel-Lucent, which designed telecom’s XT network has been employed to find out if it’s working properly.

We still have concerns with it.

When we were in Wanaka over Christmas/New Year my farmer’s phone and mine kept disconnecting mid call even when the display showed full reception.

I have an XT t-stick for my computer and it kept losing reception and/or disconnecting too.

I suspect that means the system can’t cope with the population influx.

We haven’t had any problems with phones in Wanaka since then but computer connection, in Wanaka and other places, while better is not 100% reliable.

We also both find that coverage for our XT phones isn’t as good as it was with the old system. There’s always been a black spot between the Otematata saddle and Omarama but anywhere else in the Waitaki Valley used to be okay.  It’s not with XT phones which go in and out of reception in several other places in the valley and other places between home and Christchurch and throughout Otago and Southland where we used to have no problems.

The system has got over its initial problems and is certainly working better than it was but there’s still room for improvement.

High food prices good for NZ

Quote of the week:

At times of rising food prices, the rest of the world must look at NZ  and see strong growth prospects, and the benefits from the world buying our products at higher prices are shared across the economy. The NZ dollar tends to follow broad movements in international commodity prices. Among the benefits of this are lower prices for imported goods, leaving more money to be spent elsewhere. In the upshot, the effect of high international foodprices is a net positive for the economy. “To think otherwise, would be like thinking higher oil prices are  a negative for Saudi Arabia. It would just not make sense.”  Economist Doug Steel in Trans Tasman.

Apology

On Wednesday I wrote a post asking why use wheat for ethanol when there’s a shortage of food?

I concluded it by saying,  could it be a Green plot to reduce world population by starving people to death?

Robert Guyton understandably took exception to that and responded with mad cow in the homepaddock (which was later revised to mad comments from the home paddock).

I write a lot of posts in advance. That posts keep appearing doesn’t mean I’m sitting in front of the computer and even if I am checking this blog I might not have time to read others.

Real life has taken priority  in the last couple of days so I only caught up with Robert’s post and the comments on it last night.

I then re-read my post and realised how stupid the final comment was. I meant it as hyperbole and was referring not to the Green Party but the eco-extremists who have talked about population control as a planet-saving measure.

However, that wasn’t what I wrote and although I have now corrected it that will be too late for the people who were upset by it.

I was wrong, I’m sorry and I apologise unreservedly.

p.s.

I will take more care in future but if I get something wrong it’s much easier for me to correct it if you let me know with a comment on the offending post which I’d usually see within a few hours than on another blog which I might not read for days, if at all.

February 18 in history

On February 18:

3102 BC Epoch of the Kali Yuga.

1229 The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signed a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.

Frederick II (left) meets al-Kamil (right).

1268 The Livonian Brothers of the Sword were defeated by Dovmont of Pskov in the Battle of Rakvere.

1478 George, Duke of Clarence, who was convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, was executed.

1685 Fort St. Louis was established by a Frenchman at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France’s claim to Texas.

1745 The city of Surakarta, Central Java was founded on the banks of Bengawan Solo river, and became the capital of the Kingdom of Surakarta.

1797 Trinidad was surrendered to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby.

1814 The Battle of Montereau.

1841 The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate began and lasted until March 11.

1846 Beginning of the Galician peasant revolt.

1861 Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

1861 King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumed the title of King of Italy.

1873 Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski was executed in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities.

1878 John Tunstall was murdered by outlaw Jessie Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War.

 Jessie Evans.

1884 Mark Twain‘s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published for the first time.

1901 Winston Churchill made his maiden speech in the House of Commons.

 

1906 Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician was born (d. 1980).

1911 The first official flight with air mail took place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 km away.

1913 Raymond Poincaré becomes President of France.

1922 Helen Gurley Brown, American editor, was born.

1929 The first Academy Awards  were announced.

1930 Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

1930 – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.

 

1932 – The Empire of Japan declared Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) independent from the Republic of China.

1933  Yoko Ono, Japanese-born singer, was born.

1933  Mary Ure, Scottish actress, was born  (d. 1975).

1936 Jean Auel, American writer, was born.

1943 – The Nazis arrested the members of the White Rose movement.

 Monument to the “Weiße Rose”

1943 – Joseph Goebbels delivered the Sportpalast speech.

 

1946 Jean-Claude Dreyfus, French actor, was born.

1948 – Eamon de Valera resignsed as Taoiseach of Ireland.

1948 Keith Knudsen, American drummer and songwriter (The Doobie Brothers), was born (d. 2005).

1950 Cybill Shepherd, American actress, was born.

1953 Robbie Bachman, Canadian drummer (Bachman-Turner Overdrive), was born.

1954 John Travolta, American actor, was born.

1954 The first Church of Scientology was established in Los Angeles, California.

1955 Operation Teapot: Teapot test shot “Wasp” was successfully detonated at the Nevada Test Site with a yield of 1.2 kilotons.

 

1957 Walter Bolton, a Wanganui farmer was the last man to be hanged in New Zealand.

1957  Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi was executed by the British colonial government.

 

1960  Greta Scacchi, Australian actress, was born.

 

1965 The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

1969 The Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flight 708 disaster occurred, killing all on board.

1972 The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628 invalidates the state’s death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death ro innmates to life in prison.

1977  The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle was carried on its maiden “flight” sitting on top of a Boeing 747.

1979 Snow fell in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history.

1982 “Queen of Crime” Dame Ngaio Marsh died.

 1983 Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee Massacre in Seattle, Washington. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.

1991 The IRA exploded bombs in the early morning at both Paddington station and Victoria station in London.

2001 FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union.

2003 Nearly 200 people died in the Daegu subway fire in South Korea.

 

2003 Comet C/2002 V1 (NEAT) made perihelion, seen by SOHO.

2004 Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, died near Neyshabur in Iran when a run-away freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertiliser caught fire and exploded.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Tacent – silent.

Thursday’s quiz

1. Where was Julia Gillard born?

2. What is the common name of Australia’s naitonal flower, Acacia pycnantha?

3. Who said: “Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.”?

4. Who wrote the series of books featuring Scobie Malone which started with The High Commissioner ?

5. Who in Banjo Patteron’s poem came from Eaglehawk and caught the cycling craze?



Not the right time even if deal good value

The news that the crown fleet of three-year old BMW’s was being replaced understandably raised the ire of many, including National supporters .

Then came the news that it wasn’t a decision made by the government but by the Department of Internal Affairs:

Mr Key revealed this afternoon that the Government was not kept in the loop about the decision. A six-year deal for the cars was signed by Labour with a three-year rollover clause.

“That decision to invoke that rollover and bring new cars in was made by the Department of Internal Affairs without reference either to their minister or to me,” he said.

Mr Key found out about the new cars when one of the drivers told him last week.

The department did not think it had to check as it had authority from the former Labour Government.

“I can’t take responsibility for a contract that was entered into by the previous Labour Government, that wasn’t bought to my attention or to my ministers’ attention,” Mr Key said.

“I am surprised, I would’ve thought they (Internal Affairs) would have referenced it to us… politically we should have known about it, we didn’t.”

He said Internal Affairs did understand sensitivities about spending but felt they got a good deal.

Good deal or not this is not the time to be spending a few million dollars of public money if it is not absolutely necessary.

A spokesman for Internal Affairs told NZPA there was no requirement to inform the Government about its decision to chose the option of buying new vehicles.

“It’s our contract, we administer it. Our assessment was it was the best value for money to replace the vehicles now and we got a good deal in the first place and we got a good deal now,” he said.

Had the cars been kept they would have lost value and the resale price would be considerably lower.

Even if that is so, a government department is supposed to operate on  a no-surprises basis with its minister.

If the person in charge doesn’t understand that something as politically charged as a fleet of flash new cars would come into that category at any time, let alone when the government is calling for restraint, s/he ought not be in a position to make that sort of decision.

Labour’s stance on pastoral leases will force more into freeholding

If there was a single group which had more reason than most to be delighted when Labour was defeated in 2008 it was pastoral leaseholders.

Families who had loved and looked after the South Island high country for generations had their livelihoods and their property rights threatened when the then-government tried to rewrite the rules on their rents.

It was expensive not only in financially but emotionally too.

When pastoral leases were set up,  legislation established that rents were based on land exclusive of improvements. That meant the land was the Crown’s but all improvements – including soil fertility, pasture, fences and buildings were the property of the leaseholder.

Then Labour decided to add the amenity values to the equation. Land which happened to be close to a lake, river or have a good view was suddenly deemed to be worth more and the rent was based on that even though that figure was often many times higher than the property’s earning capacity.

To make it worse the main reason amenity values were so high was they were based on the ridiculous prices, well above market norms, that Labour had paid to buy high country properties like St James Station.

A test case taken by Minaret Station to the Otago District Land Value Tribunal backed farmers  ruled against the inclusion of  amenity values in rent reviews.

By then National was in power and came up with a much more equitable formula for pastoral rents which was accepted by farmers and Labour, or at least that’s what their agricultural spokesman Damien O’Connor said back in August last year.

It’s not what he’s saying now Crown Pastoral land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill is in the House for its first reading.

But at least he’s saying it without the vitriol which punctuated the speech of his colleague David Parker, who as the then-Minister was responsible for much of the mess which resulted in the test case.

The rural grapevine reckons the seeds which drove Labour’s determination on this issue were planted when Helen Clark’s request to land a helicopter on a high country property to shorten a tramp was declined by the landowner. I don’t know if that is true. But if it is Parker often tramped with her and even if he wasn’t with her on that occasion he’d no doubt have been told the story.

If it’s not true I have no idea what is behind his apparent dislike of farmers.

We were part of a small group of pastoral lessees who met him when he was Minister. He didn’t appear to understand our concerns and made it quite clear he wasn’t prepared to make any concessions.

But I never thought I’d hear an MP say, as he did in Tuesday’s speech:

. . .   what comes around goes around and I will never put up with an argument now from the lessees coming to me and saying ‘please respect my property rights under this lease’ because what comes around goes around and this is a licence for a future government to go in and fix these things up and to change the terms of this lease. . .

That is a threat lessees should take seriously because it means when Labour regains power they will mess with rents again.

The message lessees should take is to do all they can to freehold their property through the tenure review process before that happens.

Spot the irony - Labour’s stance on pastoral leases and the anti-farmer sentiment of its former minister, are going to force lessees into freeholding. It’s the only way they can be sure their property rights are secure.

Hat tip: Kiwiblog

February 17 in history

On February 17:

1500 The Battle of Hemmingstedt.

1600 The philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned alive at Campo de’ Fiori in Rome for heresy.

1801 An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

 

1809 Miami University was chartered by the State of Ohio.

1814 The Battle of Mormans.

 1819 The United States House of Representatives passed the Missouri Compromise.

 The Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in the Unorganized territory of the Great Plains (dark green) and permitted it in Missouri (yellow) and the Arkansas Territory (lower blue area).

1848 Louisa Lawson, Australian suffragist and writer, was born  (d. 1920).

 

1854 The United Kingdom recognised the independence of the Orange Free State.

1864  Banjo Paterson, Australian poet, was born  (d. 1941).

1864 The H. L. Hunley became the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.

1867 The first ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1873 The editor of the Daily Southern Cross, David Luckie, published a hoax report of a Russian invasion of Auckland by the cruiser Kaskowiski (cask of whisky).

1877  Isabelle Eberhardt, Swiss explorer and writer, was born  (d. 1904).

 

1904 Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini received its premiere at La Scala in Milan.

1913 The Armory Show opened in New York City, displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.

 

1917 Guillermo González Camarena, Mexican inventor (colour television), was born.

 

1924  Johnny Weissmuller set a new world record in the 100-yard freestyle swimming competition with a time of 52-2/5 seconds.

1924 Margaret Truman, American novelist, was born (d. 2008).

1925 Harold Ross and Jane Grant founded The New Yorker magazine.

 2004 cover with dandy Eustace Tilley, created by Rea Irvin. Eustace Tilley debuted on the first cover and reappears on anniversary issues

1925 Ron Goodwin, English composer and conductor, was born  (d. 2003).

 

1929 Patricia Routledge, English actress, was born.

1930 Ruth Rendell, English writer, was born.

1933 Newsweek magazine was published for the first time.

 

1933 – The Blaine Act ended Prohibition in the United States.

1934 Barry Humphries, Australian actor and comedian, was born.

1940  Gene Pitney, American singer, was born (d. 2006).

1945 Brenda Fricker, Irish actress, was born.

1947 The Voice of America began to transmit radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union.

1958 Pope Pius XII declared Saint Clare of Assisi (1193~1253) the patron saint of television.

 

1959 Vanguard 2 – The first weather satellite was launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.

1962 A storm killed more than 300 people in Hamburg.

1963 Michael Jordan, American basketball player, was born.

1964 Gabonese president Leon M’ba was toppled by a coup and his archrival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, was installed in his place.

 

1965  The Ranger 8 probe launched on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions.

1972 Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceeded those of Ford Model-T.

1978 A Provisional IRA incendiary bomb was detonated at the La Mon restaurant, near Belfast, killing 12 and seriously injuring 30.

1979 The Sino-Vietnamese War started.

1995 – The Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador ends on a cease-fire brokered by the UN.

1996 World champion Garry Kasparov beat the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

1996 – NASA’s Discovery Programme started as the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lifted off on the first mission ever to orbit and land upon an asteroid, 433 Eros.

2003 The London Congestion Charge scheme began.

 

2006 A massive mudslide occurred in Southern Leyte, Philippines; the official death toll was 1,126.

 

2008 Kosovo declared independence.

Sourced from NZ History Online and Wikipedia

Word of the day

Cobber – friend, mate.

Why use wheat for ethanol when there’s a food shortage?

Phil Clarke reports that hundreds of farmers in Britain are signing up to supply wheat to a new bio ethanol plant.

Presumably they are responding to market signals and getting a better price for their crop than they would if they were selling it for milling or stock feed.

However, given the shortage of wheat internationally it’s difficult to understand how that can be.

The drought in Russia last northern summer, China, the United States and drought and floods in Australia will all put pressure on supply which ought to result in better prices.

Something must be out of kilter if farmers get more for selling crops for fuel when there’s a growing shortage of food. 

Could it be a Green plot to reduce world population by starving people to death by eco-extremists who have talked about population control as a planet-saving measure?

Price of milk not the problem

Milk’s more expensive than petrol.

Given we export most of the former and import most of the latter that ought to be cause for celebration but not everyone sees it that way:

Manaia Health PHO Chief Executive Chris Farrelly has slammed the high cost of milk saying it is a national outrage that a country that produces 15 billion litres annually cannot supply cheap milk to the domestic market . .

The price of milk in a Whangarei supermarket for a two litre bottle of milk was up to $4.79 and the cheapest was $3.65. Families in Australia are paying A$2. Recently the price of milk in Australia was slashed by 33%, while the price of milk continues to rise. . .

Australia doesn’t export as high a proportion of its milk as we do and the price is low because of strong competition between supermarkets.

“Low income families simply cannot afford to drink milk,” says Mr Farrelly. “It’s no wonder we are seeing increasing childhood obesity and diabetes if families are swapping milk for fizzy.

“The argument that milk sold in New Zealand must match international prices is a nonsense particularly when only 5% of our milk production is for the domestic market. We should note the wisdom of the large middle east oil producing states which ensure cheap petrol for their own people” Mr Farrelly says.

The argument domestic prices must match international ones isn’t nonsense. Farmers go for the best price and if the export price was better than the domestic one then they’d give up town supply.

One way to bring the domestic price down is subsidies which would be very expensive and not necessarily help the people who need it most.

The other is to restrict exports which would sabotage the economic recovery and might not make any difference to domestic prices. When Argentina did that farmers swapped from dairying to soya which was more profitable, supply dropped and the country had to start importing milk which was more expensive. 

The problem isn’t that the price is too high, it’s either that incomes are too low or people don’t budget well.

Increasing incomes requires sustainable growth in the tradable sector. That won’t be achieved by subsidies but is helped by better prices for milk and there was more good news on that front in this morning’s globalDairyTrade auction.

The trade weighted index went up 3.9%.

The recipe for anhydrous milk fat dropped 2.4%; skim milk powder went up .7%; and the whole milk powder price  increased 7.9%.

Growing in all the wrong places

Growing in  the all the wrong places isn’t difficult – that’s what happened from 2003 to 2009:

Finance Minister Bill English explains:

. . . non-tradable jobs grew strongly from 2003 to 2009 – up about 300,000 – as New Zealanders borrowed against the rising value of their homes to go on an unprecedented retail spendup. Many of these jobs turned out to be as unsustainable as the borrowing that fuelled them.

By contrast, during this period the tradables sector – the part of our economy that earns our living with the rest of the world – actually went into recession and shed about 55,000 jobs as it was smothered by poor government policy settings, rising interest rates and a rising dollar.

Economic recovery depends on more jobs from export industries.

I’m pleased to see that in the last five quarters, jobs in the tradables sector have increased by 25,000 – or about 6 per cent. That growth needs to pick up pace, but it is an encouraging start.

February 16 in history

On February 16:

1032 Emperor Yingzong of China, was born  (d. 1067).

1646  Battle of Great Torrington, Devon – the last major battle of the first English Civil War.

 An allegory of the English Civil War by William Shakespeare Burton. It depicts a Cavalier lying on the ground wounded, while a Puritan in black stands in the background.

1770 Captain James Cook sighted what he called Banks Island but later discovered was a peninsula.

 1804  First Barbary War: Stephen Decatur led a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia (1799).

1838 Weenen Massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal were killed by Zulus.

1852 Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.

 The Studebaker brothers

1859 The French Government passed a law to set the A-note above middle C to a frequency of 435 Hz, in an attempt to standardize the pitch.

1899 President Félix Faure of France died in office.

1899 – Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur Iceland‘s first football club was founded.

1918 The Council of Lithuania unanimously adopted the Act of Independence, declaring Lithuania an independent state.

1923 - Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharoh Tutankhamun.

1926 Margot Frank, German-born Dutch Jewish holocaust victim, was born (d. 1945).

1934 – Austrian Civil War ended with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republican Schutzbund.

1934 – Commission of Government was sworn in as form of direct rule for the Dominion of Newfoundland.

1936 – Elections brought the Popular Front to power in Spain.

1937 – Wallace H. Carothers received a patent for nylon.

1940 Altmark Incident: The German tanker Altmark was boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. 299 British prisoners were freed.

1941  –Kim Jong-il, North Korean leader, was born.

1947 – Canadians were granted Canadian citizenship after 80 years of being British subjects. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King became the first Canadian citizen.

1954 – Iain Banks, Scottish author, was born.

1956 Vincent Ward, New Zealand director and screenwriter, was born.

1957 The “Toddlers’ Truce“, a controversial television close down between 6.00pm and 7.00pm was abolished in the United Kingdom.

1959 John McEnroe, American tennis player, was born.

1959 Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.

1960 Pete Willis, English guitarist (Def Leppard), was born.

1961 Andy Taylor, English musician (Duran Duran, The Power Station), was born.

 

1961 – Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) was launched.

1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system went into service.

1973  Cathy Freeman, Australian athlete, was born.

1978 – The first computer bulletin board system was created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois).

 Ward Christensen and the computer that ran the first public Bulletin Board System, CBBS

1983 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claimed the lives of 75 people.

1985 – The founding of Hezbollah.

1986 – The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds.

1987 – The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard dubbed “Ivan the Terrible” in Treblinka extermination camp, started in Jerusalem.

1991 – Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermúdez was assassinated in Managua.

1999 – Across Europe Kurdish rebels took over embassies and hold hostages after Turkey arrested one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan.

2005 – The Kyoto Protocol came into force, following its ratification by Russia.

 Participation in the Kyoto Protocol, as of June 2009, where green indicates the countries that have signed and ratified the treaty, grey is not yet decided and red is no intention to ratify.

2005 – The National Hockey League cancelled the entire 2004-2005 regular season and playoffs, becoming the first major sports league in North America to do so over a labour dispute.

2006 – The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) was decommissioned by the United States Army.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Famicide – slanderer, destroyer of reputation.

Was Pooh Bear a romantic?

Discussion with Noelle McCarthy on Critical Mass began with the Last Post on Stoatspring in which Anne Else, his widow, gave the news of his death.

In response to that she is now using her blog, Elsewoman, to write about learning to live by herself for the first time in her life.

Still on the subject of love we looked at the 10 most romantic lines in English Literature.

Emily Bronte penned the winning words: ” Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” in Wuthering Heights.

A.A. Milne’s Pooh Bear (or was it Christopher Robin to Pooh?) was voted second with:  ”If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you” .

If you find this to sugary, pop across to Today Is My Birthday for Ally’s amusing reaction to the romance.

Poem for a Hard Time

Canadian poet Lorna Crozier’s Poem for a Hard Time is this week’s Tuesday Poem.

Among the poems linked in the side bar are:

She Who Is Like The Moon by James K Baxter

In/Let by Jo Thorpe

Big Stupid Grin by Andrew Bell

Ode to Things by Pablo Neruda

Gypsy Girl by Alicia Ponder

Knowing by Helen Lowe

Old People Love  by Susan Landry

Roses by Sue Wootton

Bus Stop by Harvey Malloy

Mackenzie Trust trusts locals

The Mackenzie Sustainable Futures Trust proposal is being set up to bring together a variety of interest groups to develop a shared vision for resolving land use issues in the Mackenzie, Ohau and Omarama basins.

The impetus for the trust came from the debate on land use in the area. What happens is of interest to people throughout New Zealand but Environment Minister Nick Smith has said from the start that solutions must be locally driven:

“. . .  this Government believes the best solutions are going to come locally. We see any solutions which are imposed on the community as flawed and will fail.”

He reinforced this at a meeting on Friday:

[He] told the 40 stakeholder representatives present that locals who were concerned they could be ‘out-voted’ by outsiders need not be concerned, as the Trust would not work like that.

“The Government would not support anything unless it had local buy-in, particularly from the district councils,” he said.

Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean who has responsibility for setting up the trust said she was pleased with the high degree of good will and open mindedness displayed by those who attended.

“Those concerned about personal property rights had their fears allayed when, after an intelligent and constructive debate, the meeting unanimously agreed to add a special statement on property rights as part of the scope of work.

“This includes an assurance that any individual property owner can veto any proposal on or affecting their property rights, but not the working party’s findings.  It was an illustration of the collaborative spirit in action, and bodes well for the future of the process.”

That is a very important step which reinforces the commitment to local solutions the the trust being put in locals to do what’s best for their backyard.

The hard work involved in getting groups like  Forest and Bird, Mackenzie Tourism and Development Trust, Waitaki and Mackenzie District Councils, ECan, Fonterra, Twizel and Omarama communities, mountain clubs, irrigation interests and Federated Farmers engaged and co-operating should not be underestimated.

There are many competing and opposing interests represented by these organisations and Jacqui should be congratulated on getting them to this stage.

The chances of sustainable solutions for the Mackenzie Basin are greatly improved now these diverse groups are talking to each other and working together.

Labour wants power with the politicians

Labour has confirmed it will work with Winston Peters if he gets back into parliament.

Phil Goff says no one in caucus asked him to rule out working with the New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, should he be returned to Parliament.

Mr Goff says the caucus is unanimous in its position on any post-election coalition deals.

Labour will make its decisions after the election in November on the basis of compatibility and policies that it wants to pursue for all New Zealanders.

In other words if you vote for Labour you’re voting for a pig in a poke and will get whatever deal the party needs to cobble together to get into government.

This gives the power to the politicians.

National, by contrast, has given the power to the people.

John Key has ruled out working with Peters so voters know where they stand – they can have a National-led government without him or a Labour-led one with him.