Here to help which cause?

The principal and all but a couple of teachers at a primary school were happy with the introduction of National Standards.

Then the people turned up to train them and mixed with the training they had a lot of criticism of the introduction of the standards.

How unprofessional is that?

As former States Services Commissioner  Mark Prebble told Kathryn Ryan:

“Public servants have to implement the policies of the government of the day

Many people come to government to try to support a good cause. They don’t realise the one who has to determine which good cause is to be supported is the democratically minister of the day.  . . .

 A key part of the role of senior public servants is to explain to them well it is the minister who has to take the heat in public about that and the public servant really isn’t just employed to follow their own interests and if they want to follow their interests they can go and work in the private sector like anyone else. . .

. . . No public servant should be zealous about the particular cause they’re interested in. They should be zealous about democracy and respecting the law. . .”

The  public service must be apolitical. . .

The people who visited the school were paid from the public purse to help implement government policy but instead were doing their best to sabotage it.

If it happened at one school, how many others also found the people sent to help were advancing their own cause rather than giving the professional development the teachers sought and how often does this happen with other policies?

We’ve spent this week with a group of farmers. Each time tenure review was raised the glacial pace at which it proceeds was criticised.

You could be excused for wondering if this is a deliberate policy on the part of some of the public servants involved in the hope that they can delay the process until the government changes.

Inappropriate is the appropriate word

Inappropriate is an often overused word but it is the appropriate one to apply to the most generous interpretation of the story which has resulted in Darren Hughes standing down from his positions of Labour Party whip and education spokesman.

Rob Hosking writes in the NBR:

The 32-year-old Otaki MP may not have broken any laws. But the picture his behaviour paints is hardly that of a diligent and seriously hard working MP. 

No charges have been laid, it is possible none will be and that the generous interpretation is the correct one.

But even if that turns out to be the case, the story has already damaged Hughes’ reputation and calls into question his judgement.

It is also adding to speculation on whether or not Phil Goff will lose the Labour  leadership before the election.

Hughes did the right thing by admitting he was the MP whose behaviour was being investigated which removed suspicion from his colleagues. But even so the personal damage from what appears to be at best inappropriate behaviour could result in equally serious political damage to his leader and party.

March 25 in history

On March 25:

1199 Richard I was wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France.

1306 Robert the Bruce became King of Scotland.

1347 Catherine of Siena, Italian saint, was born d. 1380).

1409 The Council of Pisa opened.

1584 Sir Walter Raleigh was granted a patent to colonize Virginia.

1634  The first settlers arrived in Maryland.

1655 Saturn‘s largest moon, Titan, was discovered by Christian Huygens.

1802 The Treaty of Amiens was signed as a “Definitive Treaty of Peace” between France and Britain.

James Gillray, The first Kiss this Ten Years! —or—the meeting of Britannia & Citizen François (1803)

1807 The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.

1807 – The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, became the first passenger carrying railway in the world.

 

1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.

1821 Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence.

1847 Duel between Dr Isaac Featherston, editor of the Wellington Independent, and Colonel William Wakefield, the New Zealand Company’s Principal Agent in New Zealand.

1881 Mary Gladys Webb, English writer, was born  (d. 1927).

 1894  Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, left Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.

 

1897 John Laurie, Scottish actor, was born (d. 1980).

 

1899 Burt Munro, New Zealand motorcycle racer, was born (d. 1978).

 

1903 Racing Club de Avellaneda, one of the big five of Argentina, was founded.

1908 Clube Atletico Mineiro was founded in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

1911 In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers.

 People and horses draped in black walk in procession in memory of the victims.

1913 Sir Reo Stakis, Anglo-Cypriot hotel magnate, was born (d. 2001).

 

1914 Norman Borlaug, American agriculturalist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was born (d. 2009).

1917 The Georgian Orthodox Church restored its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.

1918 The Belarusian People’s Republic was established.

1922 Eileen Ford, American model agency executive, was born.

1924  On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaimed the Second Hellenic Republic.

1934 Gloria Steinem, American feminist and publisher, was born.

1937 Tom Monaghan, American fast-food industry entrepreneur, was born.

1939 Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli beccame Pope Pius XII.

1940 John A Lee was expelled from the Labour Party.

1941 The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.

1942 Aretha Franklin, American singer, was born.

1947  An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois killed 111.

1947 Elton John, English singer and songwriter, was born.

1948  The first successful tornado forecast predicted that a tornado would strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.

1949  The March deportation was conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deported more than 92,000 people from Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.

 “Enemies of the people”: 72% of deportees were women and children under the age of 16

1957  United States Customs seized copies of Allen Ginsberg‘s poem “Howl” as obscene.

 

1957  The European Economic Community was established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).

1958  Canada’s Avro Arrow made its first flight.

1960 Steve Norman, British saxophonist (Spandau Ballet), was born.

1960 Peter O’Brien, Australian actor, was born.

1965  Sarah Jessica Parker, American actress, was born.

 

1965  Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully completed their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

 

1969  During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).

1971 Beginning of Operation Searchlight of Pakistan Army against East Pakistani civilians.

1975 Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.

1979  The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, was delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.

1988  The Candle demonstration in Bratislava - the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

1992  Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station.

1995  The world’s first wiki, a part of the Portland Pattern Repository, was made public by Ward Cunningham.

 

1996  An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, began.

1996  The European Union’s Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).

 

2006  Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman killed six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

2006 Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006 clashed with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin was among several protesters arrested.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Kinkle – a slight kink.

Thursday’s quiz

1. What is ombrology?

2. Who said: “Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death”?

3. Who wrote the poem The Magpies?

4. Name three of the seven instruments usually found in the woodwind section of an orchestra.

5. Name the ship which landed at Port Chalmers with the first settlers for Otago on March 23rd 1848.

What do we want from a public broadcaster?

RadioNZ National’s website features photos of its listeners listening in many varied locations.

The people are as diverse as the places from which they listen.

Quite how diverse has been brought home to me because since I’ve been contributing to Critical Mass on Afternoons all sorts of people in all sorts of places have told me they’ve heard me on the radio.

In theory my blue political leanings should lead me to question whether there should be a public broadcaster but given how often I listen to it I’d be on very shaky ground in doing so.

I am in good company here because many people on the right listen to what most of us still refer to as National Radio and support the concept of public broadcasting even though it tends to have a leftward lean.

Karl du Fresne discussed this in a recent post and concluded:

. . . what could be more boring than listening to people expressing the same views as your own? This is known as the echo chamber effect, where the same opinions are heard and repeated over and over again.

It’s not only tedious, it’s bad for democracy, because democracy depends on a degree of tolerance and understanding of other people’s positions. That’s why I continue to listen to Radio New Zealand, much to my friend’s puzzlement, even though I sometimes fume and splutter at the views being expressed.

I don’t want to be bombarded with ideas that I’m comfortable with. All I insist is that the state broadcaster presents us with information and opinion that fully reflects the diversity of the population it ostensibly serves.

I agree it is good to be challenged but a public broadcaster shouldn’t just be challenging the views of those on the right.

Feedback to programmes like Morning Report, Checkpoint, Nine to Noon and Afternoons  seems to get a reasonable spread of support and opposition from across the political spectrum which suggests that they generally balanced in their approaches.

If there is any bias it seems to be strongest in Maori and Pacific programmes on both radio and television. It could be that I haven’t listened to or watched a representative selection or programmes, but those I have paid attention to do seem to have a distinctly leftward lean.

The importance of science

“The key to reducing the risks is not in the scaremongering from the likes of Ken Ring but investing in the next generation of young scientists and engineers to improve our knowledge and understanding of earthquakes and the design of buildings and infrastructure to better withstand them.”

Quote of the week from Environment Minister Nick Smith after attending the non-event lunch with the Skeptics Society on the Port Hills.

This reinforcement to the importance of science doesn’t apply just to making buildings and infrastructure safer. It also applies to sustainable development and the application of agricultural research will be an important part of that.

Population growth and economic development are increasing demand for food and without improvements in production, supply will not keep pace.

However, increasing production must not be the only goal.  The challenge is to produce more and do it in a way which protects and enhances the environment so that future generations will be able to enjoy the benefits of healthy soils, clean water and fresh air.

March 24 in history

On March 24:

1401 Turko-Mongol emperor Timur sacked Damascus.

1603 James VI of Scotland also became James I King of England.

1731 Naturalization of Hieronimus de Salis Parliamentary Act was passed.

 

1765 The Britain passed the Quartering Act that required the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.

1770 Kidnap victim, Ngati Kahu leader Ranginui, died on board the French ship Saint Jean Baptiste.

1820 Fanny Crosby, American hymnist, was born (d. 1915).

  

 1832 In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tarred and feathered Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr..

1834 William Morris, English writer and designer, was born (d. 1896).

1837 Canada gave African men the right to vote.

1878  HMS Eurydice sank, killing more than 300.

1882 Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (mycobacterium tuberculosis).

1886 Athenagoras I, Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, was born.

 

1900 New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck broke ground for a new underground “Rapid Transit Railroad” that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.

1907 The first issue of the Georgian Bolshevik newspaper Dro was published.

1923 Greece became a republic.

1930 Steve McQueen, American actor, was born (d. 1980).

 

1934 U.S. Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act allowing the Philippines to become a self-governing commonwealth.

1944 Ardeatine Massacre: German troops killed 335 Italian civilians in Rome.

 

1944  In an event later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape, 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.

 

1947  Christine Gregoire, 22nd governor of Washington, was born.

1949 Nick Lowe, British musician, was born.

1951 Tommy Hilfiger, American fashion designer, was born.

1959 The Party of the African Federation (PFA) was launched by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Modibo Keita.

1965 NASA spacecraft Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television, brought images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash landing.

1970 Sharon Corr, Irish musician (The Corrs), was born.

1972 The United Kingdom imposed “Direct Rule” over Northern Ireland.

1973 Kenyan track runner Kip Keino defeated Jim Ryun at the first-ever professional track meet in Los Angeles, California.

1976 Argentina’s military forces deposed president Isabel Perón and start the National Reorganization Process.

1976 A general strike took place in the People’s Republic of Congo

1980 Archbishop Óscar Romero was killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.

1986 The Loscoe gas explosion ledto new UK laws on landfill gas migration and gas protection on landfill sites.

1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spilt 240,000 barrels (42,000 m³) of petroleum after running aground.

 

1990 Keisha Castle-Hughes, Australian/New Zealand actress, was born.

1998 Jonesboro massacre: two students, ages 11 and 13, fired upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people were killed and ten were wounded.

1998 A tornado swept through Dantan in India killing 250 people and injuring 3000 others.

1999 Kosovo War: NATO commenced air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.

1999 – Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire: 39 people died when a Belgian transport truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel.

 

2003 The Arab League voted 21-1 in favor of a resolution demanding the immediate and unconditional removal of US and British soldiers from Iraq.

2008 Bhutan officially became a democracy, with its first ever general election.

		Jigme Thinley	Sangay Ngedup

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Mumpsimus -  A traditional custom or notion adhered to although shown to be unreasonable;  a person who obstinately adheres to such a custom or notion.

                       Adherence to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, memorization, practice, belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy.

                       An ignorant and bigoted opponent of reform.

                       An obvious error that is obstinately repeated despite correction.

Hat tip: Today is my Birthday via Quote Unquote.

5/10

Oh dear – a lowly 5/10 in the NZ Herald news quiz.

Stealing from the future

My parents generation came through the Depression with the very firm belief that saving for a rainy day was better than borrowing to enjoy the sun today.

My generation got a reminder of the good sense of that when the ag-sag of the 1980s hit.

We didn’t like it at the time but the tough prescription of Roger Douglas’s Budgets were a very necessary correction of the policies of successive governments from the early 1970s. They spent more than they earned, taking the country into debt which was in effect stealing from future generations.

Reducing the burden of the state and freeing the economy to allow better growth were worthy aims which were subverted by Labour from 1999. Michael Cullen reduced public debt and achieved Budget surpluses but he also increased government spending, gave welfare to people in want rather than need and increased taxes.

The worst damage was done by the extravagant promises which Helen Clark used to win the 2008 election. The productive sector was in recession but it was disguised by high government spending and consumer spending and escalating property prices fuelled by borrowing.

We were already in recession when the global financial crisis hit. Recovery has been patchy at best and the economic impact of the Christchurch earthquake has been the last straw.

The government has recognised the seriousness of the situation and is making it clear there will be no pre-election lolly scramble. There won’t be any increased spending at all – if there is more in one area it will have to come from less in another.

The left either can’t or won’t see the sense in this which gives voters a very real choice in the election.

Labour and its potential allies  want to steal more from the future. National knows the lesson the Depression taught my parents still hold true.

What’s fair?

It’s not fair!

Any parent will be familiar with that plaintive cry from a child and it’s also heard from people old enough to know that life isn’t fair.

Bad things happen to the good; good things happen to the bad and we don’t always get our just deserts.

During a discussion after a farm tour on Monday discussion got round to succession. A banker addressing the issue spoke of how difficult that can be when equal might not be fair and fair might not be equal.

That doesn’t only apply to farm succession.

The book The Spirit Level argues that equal societies are better and this is used by the left to justify redistributive policies.

The UK think tank Reform’s Fairness Test which concludes:

While there is no one single agreed view on fairness most people would accept that the extent to which government actions combat disadvantage should be central to any definition. This supports a focus on education and welfare reform. This does not support encouraging high-earners’ migration, maintaining the middle class money-go-round, increasing personal tax allowances or postponing difficult decisions.

The easiest way to make society equal is to drag the top down.

But taking more from people who, largely through their own efforts rather than luck, have more, is definitely unfair and as the collapse of communist regimes shows, ultimately does not work.

The most sustainable, though not easiest, way to help the poor and disadvantaged is to equip them with the skills to help themselves and to increase economic growth.

That will be expensive in the short term but will increase the number of people making a positive contribution to the economy in the long term.

Hat Tip: Roger Kerr.

March 23 in history

On March 23:

1174 Jocelin, abbot of Melrose, was elected bishop of Glasgow.

1568 Peace of Longjumeau ended the Second War of Religion in France. Again Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX of France make substantial concessions to the Huguenots.

1645 William Kidd, Scottish sailor, was born (d. 1701).

1708  James Francis Edward Stuart landed at the Firth of Forth.

1775 American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech – “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” – at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia.

 

1801  Tsar Paul I of Russia was struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael’s Castle.

1806  After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their “Corps of Discovery” began their journey home.

 

1821 Battle and fall of city of Kalamata, Greek War of Independence.  

1848 The immigrant ship John Wikcliffe anchored at Port Chalmers carrying the first Scottish settlers for Dunedin, New Zealand.

1848 Otago province was founded.

 

1857 Elisha Otis‘s first lift was installed at 488 Broadway New York City.

1862 The First Battle of Kernstown, Virginia, marked the start of Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign.

1868 The University of California was founded.

1879 War of the Pacific  between Chile and the joint forces of Bolivia and Peru. Chile successfully took over Arica and Tarapacá leaving Bolivia as a landlocked country.

1889 – The free Woolwich Ferry officially opened in east London.

1889 The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was established by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian India.

1896 The Raines Law was passed by the New York State Legislature, restricting Sunday sale of alcohol to hotels.

1903 The Wright Brothers applied for a patent on their invention of one of the first successful airplanes.

 

1905 Joan Crawford, American actress, was born (d. 1977).

 

1919  Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement.

1921 Donald Campbell, British car and motorboat racer, was born (d. 1967).

1929  Sir Roger Bannister, English runner, was born.

1933 The Reichstag passed the Enabling act of 1933, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany.

 

1935 Signing of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.

1939 Hungarian air force attacked the headquarters of Slovak air force in the city of Spišská Nová Ves, killed 13 people and began the Slovak–Hungarian War.

1942 In the Indian Ocean, Japanese forces captured the Andaman Islands.

1949 Ric Ocasek, American musician (The Cars), was born.

 

1956 Pakistan becamesthe first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan).

1956 José Manuel Barroso, Portuguese politician, president of the European Commission, was born.

1962 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, was launched as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative.

1965  NASA launched Gemini 3, the United States’ first two-man space flight.

1980  Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador gave his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.

1982 Guatemala’s government, headed by Fernando Romeo Lucas García was overthrown in a military coup by right-wing General Efraín Ríos Montt.

1983 Strategic Defense Initiative: President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.

1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced cold fusion at the University of Utah.

 

1994 Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated by Mario Aburto Martínez.

 

1994 – Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed in Siberia when the pilot’s fifteen-year old son accidentally disengaged the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.

1994 – A United States Air Force (USAF) F-16 aircraft collided with a USAF C-130 at Pope Air Force Base and then crashes, killing 24 United States Army soldiers on the ground in the Green Ramp disaster.

1996 Taiwan held its first direct elections and elected Lee Teng-hui as President.

1999 Gunmen assassinated Paraguay’s Vice President Luis María Argaña.

2001 The Russian Mir space station was disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean.

2003 In Nasiriyah, Iraq, 11 soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company and 18 U.S. Marines were killed during the first major conflict of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

2005 – A major explosion at the Texas City Refinery killed 15 workeers.

2007 Burnley Tunnel catastrophe in Melbourne.

 

2007 – The Iranian Navy seizes Royal Navy personnel in the waters between Iran and Iraq.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Obstriction - being bound, constrained or obliged; obligation, bond.

A royal woman’s place is where?

When Diana Spencer was engaged to Prince Charles one theory on the differences on their ages was he had to marry someone really young so she’d still be a virgin.

When I read this, I wondered if there’d been any progress for women in the intervening 30 years:

Powerful husband? No problem. Money? Got that too. Clothes, good looks? Ditto. What does the woman who has it all do after her honeymoon? That’s a tough one. . .

. . .  So Middleton’s top tasks are simple come April 30: Rejuvenate the monarchy, end poverty in Britain, have kids, and make sure her marriage is a success.

 Is this an indictment on royalty, perceptions of a woman’s role in it or both?



Sensible precaution or paranoia?

At the entrance to the supermarket there’s a new stand offering sanitising wipes for hands, baskets and trolley handles.

Is this a sensible sanitary precaution or paranoia?

Is it making life safer or potentially paving the way for the rise of superbugs?

If we wash our hands before preparing and eating food and after going to the loo do we really have to worry about where the hands that touched the handles we touch before we touch them have been?

In praise of a civil society

When the earthquake struck Haiti just over a year ago the United Nations was deployed to help.

We can be grateful they’re not needed  to help in Christchurch. The UN generally only steps in to help when countries can’t help themselves.

Assistance of people and equipment from our international friends has been gratefully accepted but there is no need for an international agency.

We have fully functioning central and local governments. We also have many non-governmental organisations, groups and individuals helping themselves and others in need.

That they have and will continue to work well is something to honour and applaud.

March 22 in history

On March 22:

238 Gordian I and his son Gordian II were proclaimed Roman emperors.

1599 Anthony van Dyck, Flemish painter, was born (d. 1641).

 

1621  The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.

1622 Jamestown massacre: Algonquian Indians killed 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony’s population.

 

1630  Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.

1638 Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

 

1765  British parliament passed the Stamp Act, which introduced a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.

 

1784 The Emerald Buddha was moved to its current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand.

1809 Charles XIII succeeded Gustav IV Adolf to the Swedish throne.

1818 John Ainsworth Horrocks, English-born explorer of South Australia, was born  (d. 1846).

 

1829 The three protecting powers (Britain, France and Russia) established the borders of Greece.

1849 The Austrians defeated the Piedmontese at the Battle of Novara.

1871 William Woods Holden became the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment.

1873 A law was approved by the Spanish National Assembly in Puerto Rico to abolish slavery.

1887 Chico Marx, American comedian and actor, was born (d. 1961).

1894 The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup started.

1895 First display (a private screening) of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

1906 First Anglo-French rugby union match at Parc des Princes in Paris

1908 Louis L’Amour, American author, was born  (d. 1988).

1910 Nicholas Monsarrat, British novelist, was born (d. 1979).

 

1916 The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicated the throne and the Republic of China was restored.

1923 Marcel Marceau,  French Mime, was born  (d. 2007).

1930 Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist, was born.

1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law a bill legalizing the sale of beer and wine.

1936 Roger Whittaker, British singer, was born.

1939  Germany took Memel from Lithuania.

 

1941 Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam began to generate electricity.

1942 Britain’s Royal Navy confronted Italy’s Regia Marina in the Second Battle of Sirte.

 

1942 Keith Relf, English musician (The Yardbirds), was born (d. 1976).

 

1943 The entire population of Khatyn in Belarus was burnt alive by German occupation forces.

1945 The Arab League was founded when a charter was adopted in Cairo.

1948 Andrew Lloyd Webber, English theatre composer, was born.

1954 The London bullion market reopened.

1955 Valdis Zatlers, 7th President of Latvia, was born.

1960  Arthur Leonard Schawlow & Charles Hard Townes received the first patent for a laser.

 

1978 Karl Wallenda of the The Flying Wallendas died after falling off a tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1982 NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia, was launched on its third mission, STS-3.

1993 The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path.

1994 Anna Paquin won an Oscar for her part in The Piano. Director Jane Campion won the award for best screen play.

 

1995 Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returned after setting a record for 438 days in space.

1997 Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest champion of the women’s world figure skating competition.

1997 – The Comet Hale-Bopp had its closest approach to earth.

2004 Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas, two bodyguards, and nine civilian bystanders were killed in the Gaza Strip when hit by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles.

2006 ETA, armed Basque separatist group, declared permanent ceasefire.

2006 – BC Ferries’ M/V Queen of the North ran aground on Gil Island British Columbia and sinks; 101 on board, 2 presumed deaths.

2006 – Three Christian Peacemaker Teams Hostages were freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days captivity and the death of their colleague, American Tom Fox.

2009 Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska began erupting after a prolonged period of unrest.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipeida

Word of the day

Ratiocinate – form judgments by a process of logic; reason or argue logically.

Rural round-up

Water rich New Zealand points to a brigther future -

“Being ‘water-rich’ means that future trade prospects, and therefore future standards of living, for New Zealanders are very bright,” Water NZ CEO, Murray Gibb told a meeting of the Kapiti Central Combined Probus Club yesterday.

His presentation showed how New Zealand is one of only very few developed countries that are net food exporters. “We are actually a sustainable virtual water exporter,” he said.

Woolly walls new dream for telco deal maker:

A prominent figure in the hi-tech sector, former CallPlus shareholder and managing director Martin Wylie, has put together a new investment group and finalised its first deal, purchasing the fast growing Eco Insulation Group of companies.

Eco, with franchised operations throughout New Zealand, is a leader in the supply and installation of insulation, specialising in unique green products using planet-friendly locally-sourced sheep’s wool insulation products. The company has seen huge growth in revenue in the last three years. . .

EU relaxes GM rules – NZ Farmers Weekly reports:

British farmers could soon be given access to genetically modified animal feed after the European Union voted to relax its zero-tolerance policy to contaminated feed being imported into Europe.

It marks a step-change in the EU’s approach to GM and comes following warnings of feed shortages and inflated prices with importers increasingly wary of shipments being turned away from ports in the EU.

Europe imports about 80% of its animal feed, much of it from GM growing countries in North and South America. . .

Farmy Army comes from far and wide –  Rural News reports:

FARMERS FROM all over the country have converged on Christchurch to help clean up the February 22 quake aftermath.

A force of 800 went in during the first weekend, at first using shovels and wheelbarrows before wheeled loaders got clearance.

“It’s been incredible the number of offers of help we’ve had,” Federated Farmers Dairy chairman for North Canterbury, Kieran Stone, told Dairy News. . .

McNee the man? – Rural News picks the man most likely to head the new Primary Industry Ministry:

THE MOST likely head of the new super ministry is current MAF Director General, Wayne McNee. He will oversee the merger and be acting Fisheries CE as well as DG of MAF, until the merger takes effect on 1 February 2012.

McNee is highly regarded in government circles. He’s seen as a skilled leader and change manager. He’s also credited with re-organising MoF – which was said to be in poor shape when he took it over two years ago. Prior to heading up fisheries, McNee worked in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC).

Since taking over at MAF, just before Christmas, McNee has already been ringing the changes. . .