Many happies North & South

The ag-sag had well and truly hit us in 1986.

We’d cut out luxuries and reassessed what were necessities. Magazines were definitely in the former category but a friend mentioned the launch of a new magazine – North and South.

I looked, I bought, I read and was hooked. My farmer and I gave each other a subscription for combined birthday and Christmas presents and we’ve kept on renewing it ever since.

The magazine quakcly earned a reputation for the quality of its  journalism and nothing in my working life gave me as much of a thrill as seeing stories I’d written published in it.

Founding editor Robyn Langwell had high standards and was rewarded with loyal readers whose judgement was backed up by the more than 200 awards North and South and its staff won in the 22 years she was in charge.

The March edition which celebrates the magazine’s 25th anniversary tells its story and looks aback on some of the people and issues which it has featured in its first quarter century.

Few people had computers when North and South was launched and there was much less competition for discretionary dollars. In spite of this it has respectable sales of 29,000 and a readership of around 300,000.

That increase from sales to readers seems high but our copies are passed among family and staff before being taken to the hospital so each magazine we buy is easily read by more than 10 people.

I don’t always read the magazine from cover to cover as I used to. But I still get enough enjoyment and satisfaction from it to justify continuing the subscription and look forward to the second 25 years of good education, entertainment and inspiration.

Higher prices aren’t grim

Is this just poor journalism or economic ignorance?

High milk prices for consumers look set to continue into the foreseeable future, with a report to the Government showing grim price predictions beyond May.

In a report to Agriculture Minister David Carter, the ministry said high domestic costs were being driven by overseas dairy prices.

“International prices are currently at high levels and are likely to remain for the remainder of the year to May 2011 and into the next. This will keep retail milk prices up,” the report said.

Grim price predictions? What’s grim about increased prices for one of our most important exports?

Fortunately Minister of Agriculture David Carter has a better grasp on the facts:

“We are dependent, as an export nation, on what we receive for our products internationally, and while that does have a negative, immediate impact on New Zealand consumers, frankly, the better the primary sector performs the better all New Zealanders will be,” he said.

Dairy giant Fonterra choosing to freeze the price for the rest of the year had taken the heat out of the issue, he said.

Mr Carter said it would be a bad decision for the Government to intervene to lower domestic prices.

“We could, if we were silly enough, impose some sort of subsidy on domestic milk, but it would be an impractical, silly move in my opinion,” he said.

“We’re a nation that argues passionately for the chance to freely trade to other markets in the world, we would ruin a well-established reputation around an advocate for free trade if we were now attempting to put subsidies in place domestically.”

Quite.

We can not preach free trade overseas if we went back to the bad old days of subsidies at home.

Rising prices are hard for people whose budgets are stretched but the answer to that isn’t to hobble one of our best performing export industries.

More money for exports is the key to economic growth which will help to provide more and better paying jobs.

Bid for Meads’ jersey $33,000

The highest bid for Colin Meads’ No 8 All Black jersey is $33,000.

He wore the jersey in 1957 when the All Blacks lost to Canterbury at Lancaster Park and donated it to be auctioned on The Farming Show with all money raised going to the Christchurch earthquake appeal.

AllFlex Platinum Primary Producers Group which has more than 50 members representing m any of the largest farming operations in New Zealand and Australia made the bid last week.

All Flex general manager Shane McManaway said the highest bid for the jersey before the group began raising funds last Thursday evening was just over $5,000. When the amount got to $10,000, one of the group’s members pledged another $10,000 and many others committed to pledges of more than $1000 each during the evening and the following morning before the conference closed.

There was no mention of the jersey on the Farming Show yesterday so I think bids are still being accepted.

To bid: Text 5009.  Put FS [space] your bid, name and where you’re from.

Christchurch down not out

Several people have told me if the conference I’m helping to organise in May is held in Christchurch as scheduled they won’t be going.

My response is that’s unfortunate. The original venue, the Latimer Hotel, won’t be open for 12 months but we have booked an alternative venue and intend to use it.

Fundraising is an important way to help Christchurch rebuild but supporting its businesses is even better and holding the conference there will do that.

The city is down but not out. We can build on the harm the earthquake did by staying away, or – when it is safe and practical to do so - we can go there and do our small bits to help the recovery.

Any city which can, by helping itself and with assistance from outside, make the transformation shown in the video deserves support:

March 15 in history

On March 15:

44 BC Julius Ceasar was stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

 

221 Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declared himself emperor of Shu-Han and claimed his legitimate successionto the Han Dynasty.

351 Constantius II elevated his cousin Gallus to Caesar, and put him in charge of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

933  After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeated a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade.

1311 Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeated Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens. 

1493  Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1545 First meeting of the Council of Trent.

 

1672 Charles II issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.

1767  Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States, was born (d. 1845).

1776 South Carolina became the first American colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and set up its own government.

1779 Lord Melbourne, (William Lamb) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,, was born  (d. 1848).

1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse: 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeated an American force of 4,400.

1783 George Washington asked his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea was successful and the threatened coup d’état never eventuated.

 The Newburgh Address.

1809 Joseph Jenkins Roberts, first President of Liberia, was born (d. 1876).

1844 The New Zealand Company ended its colonising efforts.

1848 Revolution broke out in Hungary.

 

1877 The first cricket test started between England and Australia.

1906 Rolls-Royce Limited was incorporated.

1916 President Woodrow Wilson sent 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1917 Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke Michael becomes Tsar.

1922  Fuad I becomes King of Egypt.

1926 The dictator Theodoros Pangalos was elected President of Greece without opposition.

 

1931 SS Viking exploded off Newfoundland, killing 27 of the 147 on board.

1933 Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss kept members of the National Council from convening, starting the austrofascist dictatorship.

1939 German troops occupied the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceased to exist.

1941 Mike Love, American musician (The Beach Boys, was born.

1943  Third Battle of Kharkov – Germans retook the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.

 

1944 Sly Stone, American musician, was born.

1944 New Zealand forces captured Castle Hill  during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

 1952 In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain fell in one day, setting a new world record.

1961 South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations.

1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, told U.S. Congress “We shall overcome” while advocating the Voting Rights Act.

1985 The first Internet domain name was registered (symbolics.com).

1988 The Halabja poison gas attack of the Iran–Iraq War began.

1990 Iraq hung British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying.

1990 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Carrots!

My best friend’s mother had a collection of the Anne of Green Gables books which I fell in love with when I was at primary school.

We didn’t know about role models then but I wonder how many girls learned to stand up for themselves and their rights because of her example?

I haven’t re-read the books for years but I did enjoy the mini-series which starred Megan Follows who celebrates her 43rd birthday today.

Money won’t make it better

The head of the Chinese embassy’s disaster relief centre, Cheng Lei, is asking for more compensation for the parents of children who were killed by the Christchurch earthquake.

Mr Cheng says that because of China’s one child policy, parents have lost a loved one and a major source of income after their retirement.

He says the Government should give economic assistance above what’s available under provisions such as ACC.

Mr Cheng says that would demonstrate the importance attached to the Chinese students based in this country, and those who may wish to come here in the future.

The dead students will be covered by ACC and insurance, but as a member of the bereaved parents club I know that no amount of money can make it better.

All the deaths are tragic.

If there is more tragedy for the Chinese families that is the consequences of their country’s one-child policy and we can’t be expected to pay for that.

Hat tip: NZ Conservative

Word of the day

Maieutic -  helping to bring forth ideas; of or relating to the aspect of the Socratic method that induces a respondent to formulate latent concepts through a dialectic or logical sequence of questions.

How much would you pay . . .

 . . . for a date with Labour list MP Sue MaroneyMoroney?

Spend this Saturday with Labour List MP Sue Moroney!

A day of fun filled adventure at the Te Rapa race course in Hamilton, and all for a good cause! A few racing tips included
All the money raised from this Auction will be going to World Vision to help them combat “The Global Food Crisis” which see’s over 1 billion people go hungry every day! That’s one in every six of us. . .

  . . . Seller Comment: Also up for Auction Coffee with Chris Carter 10:07 pm, Sun 13 Mar

Bidding started at $4.50, it is now at $15 and the reserve has been met.

Show shows farmers are happy

The Upper Clutha A&P Show is the South Island’s second biggest and in my – admittedly biased opinion – the best.

It would be difficult to find a more picturesque place to hold a show than just over the road from Lake Wanaka and the second weekend in March usually guarantees good late summer/early autumn weather.

While some shows have been shrinking, Upper Clutha has grown, creeping further and further on to Brownston Park each year. It’s only a few years ago that the show had a couple of hundred exhibitors, this year there were 300.

That makes it big enough to have plenty to see and do without being so big you can’t see it all.

The show always attracts good numbers from throughout the lower South Island and further afield – we had a couple of French visitors with us – and numbers were boosted by Christchurch refugees.

The mood this year was particularly buoyant. 

Farmers haven’t had a season like this with lamb, ewe, wool, beef, dairy, crop and forestry prices all up at the same time for years, if at all.

Usually farmer-to-farmer questions over the season get at least a few grumbles.  This weekend while no-one was boasting, there was a quiet confidence in farming.

It’s not often that all the stars align for primary producers but it’s happening now. Farmers are happy and it showed at the show.

This New Place

This New Place by Robert McGonigal was last week’s Tuesday Poem.

As always there are other gems from Tuesday poets in the side bar including:

For My Daughter in her Fifteenth Year (for International Women’s Day) by Catherine Bateson.

Maginificence  by Mary McCallum.

Mule Heart by Jane Hirshfield. 

and Orchid Tierney who has 3 x Flashcards  asks what happens when cultural signs and processes become disturbed?

MaCA only applies to wet bit

The Coastal Coalition has done a very good job of stirring up opposition to the Marine and Coastal Area Bill.

One of the lines they keep repeating is that the MaCA will enable Maori to prevent access to the beach.

But the MaCA doesn’t apply to the beach.

The beach is the dry bit. The MaCA applies to the wet bit, the foreshore and seabed which goes from the high tide mark to the 12 mile limit?

Hard options, hard truth

Jim Hopkins tells the hard truth:

“Easy options are off. Whichever we choose in the next little while, they’ll come from the hard, harder or hardest range. That’s all there is in stock.

And it’s not just politicians who need to understand this – some do already, they just ain’t saying nowt.

It’s us, ladies and gentlemen. We’re the ones who’ve got to understand how hard it’s going to be. And not only understand it but accept it too. If easy options are off, so are most of the petty complaints that preoccupy us.”

New Zealand went into recession before the  rest of the world, the recovery was at best hesitant before the earthquake and it was obvious that there was no money for an election-year spend-up.

The need for reduced spending and increased efficiency is even greater than it was, as is the need to produce more.

Don’t blame the MPs, people. It’s our neglect as much as theirs. They took their NIMBY cue from us. In this most insular of lotus lands, we were the ones who didn’t want any ripples on the pond. Well, forget ripples. Now we’ve got to save the pond.

And you don’t need to pay $880,000,000 to realise that’s just got 100 times harder. There’s a whole city to rebuild. No. There’s actually two cities to rebuild. One tangible, the other intangible, but no less real. New Zealand is a city. We are. In population terms, we’re a city trapped in a country’s body. And the city’s got to put the country to work.

Starting now, we must do more things and new things here. That’s not an option. It’s a necessity.

The commodities we produce are getting record prices but we need to produce more of them and more of different produce the world wants too.

We don’t have enough people here now. We could soon lose even more. The city of New Zealand could get even smaller.

And if you think that’s fine, because we don’t need a crowd, then you’re missing the point. We do need a crowd. No ifs, no buts. All the problems we had have just got worse. A trouble shared, remember … More people aren’t part of the solution. They are the solution.

Immigration, irrigation, excavation; like it or not, and many won’t, they’ve just become necessities. We’ve got to welcome more people, make more milk, mine more stuff. We can do all those things quickly. Or start to, anyway – and more besides, of course – provided we realise how urgent things are.

That isn’t a call for unfettered growth.

It is possible to have economic growth with the population and production increases that requires without threatening our culture and environment.

But it isn’t possible to maintain, let alone achieve much needed improvements to, our standard of living unless and until our economy grows.

March 14 in history

On March 14:

1489 The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sold her kingdom to Venice.

1590 Battle of Ivry: Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots defeated the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne during the French Wars of Religion.

 

1647 Thirty Years’ War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden signed the Truce of Ulm.

1681 – Georg Philipp Telemann, German composer, was born (d. 1767).

1757 Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad, on-board the HMS Monarch, for neglecting his duty.

 

1794 Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin.

 

1804 – Johann Strauss, Sr., Austrian composer, was born (d. 1849).

 

1833 – Lucy Hobbs Taylor, first female dentist in the United States, was born (d. 1910).

1844 – King Umberto I of Italy, was born (d. 1900).

1864 – Casey Jones, American railroad engineer, was born (d. 1900).

 

1868 – Emily Murphy, Canadian women’s rights activist, first female magistrate in the British Empire, was born (d 1933).

1869 Defeat of Titokowaru.

 

1879 – Albert Einstein, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)

1900 The Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.

1903 The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, was ratified by the United States Senate.

1905 Chelsea Football Club was founded.

1910 Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vented to atmosphere.

 

1914 – Bill Owen, British actor, was born (d. 1999).

1915 Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden was abandoned and scuttled by her crew.

 

1933 – Sir Michael Caine, British actor, was born.

1936 – Sir Bob Charles, New Zealand golfer, was born.

1939 Slovakia declared independence under German pressure.

1942  Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.

 

1945 World War II – The R.A.F. first operational use of the Grand Slam bomb, Bielefeld, Germany.

1945 – Walter Parazaider, American saxophonist (Chicago), was born.

1947 – Pam Ayres, British poet, was born.

 

1948 – Billy Crystal, American actor and comedian, was born.

1951  Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recaptured Seoul.

1958 – Albert II, Prince of Monaco, was born.

1964  A jury in Dallas, Texas found Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of John F. Kennedy.

1968 – Megan Follows, Canadian actress, was born.

1972  Italian publisher and former partisan Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was killed by an explosion.

1976 – Daniel Gillies, Canadian born New Zealand actor, was born.

1978  The Israeli Defense Force invades and occupies southern Lebanon, in Operation Litani.

 

1979 A Hawker Siddeley Trident crashed into a factory near Beijing, killing at least 200.

1980 Split Enz reached No 1 with I Got You from their True Colours  album.

  1980 A plane crashesd during final approach near Warsaw killing 87 people, including a 14-man American boxing team.

1984 – Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.

1989 General Michel Aoun declared that he will act for the liberation of Lebanon.

1994 Linux kernel version 1.0.0 was released.

1995 Astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle.

1998 An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hit southeastern Iran.

2005 Cedar Revolution: hundreds of thousands of Lebanese went into the streets of Beirut to demonstrate against the Syrian military presence in Lebanon and against the government.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Key vs Warne – 3 4s

Politics and sports mixed for a very good cause when Prime Minister John Key faced Shane Warne at the Baisn Reserve today.

Word of the day

Lachrymogenic – causing tears or weeping.

Biggest number or biggest noise?

Quote of the week from the NBR’s editorial:

The government is trapped by a public that believes holding on to state-owned enterprises is better than turning them into state-controlled listed companies; that income transfers to students and beneficiaries generate greater economic growth; and that squeezing the private sector is the best way to create more jobs.

Is this the majority view or merely the view of those who shout the loudest; the biggest number or those who make the biggest noise?

Open farms welcome visitors for Farm Day

Today is Farm Day when farmers open their gates to visitors to introduce, or reintroduce, urban people to country life and work.

“Farm Day is about getting folk who live in our towns and cities to come out to a farm to experience the animals, the crops and other features that make up New Zealand’s most important industry,” says Don Nicolson, Federated Farmers President.

“South Canterbury and the Bay of Plenty will be holding their Farm Days one week later on Sunday 20 March 2011.

“This is the third annual Federated Farmers Farm Day and farmers hope people and families will take the opportunity to get on the paddocks to discover just what we do. . .

New Zealand boasts some of the highest urbanisation rates in the world and Federated Farmers Farm Day 2011 is a chance for those that have never been to a farm to pull on gumboots and get an insight into a working farm

“When I talk to non-farmers, I’m continually struck by how many don’t understand what it takes to farm animals or grow crops. So instead of wondering how, come onto a farm to ask, see and learn.

“We’ve had incredible support from our staff and volunteers this year and each Farm Day is different. You can go 4×4 off-roading at the Auckland Farm Day to pony riding in the Bay of Plenty. In Nelson we’re focussing on wool, even alpacas, while Rotorua/Taupo is looking at the dairy side of things.

“Our farms have some wonderful scenery and some even back on to bush or coastal areas with great views.

“The Stewart Farm, hosting the Manawatu/Rangitikei Farm Day won the Horizon’s Regional Council’s Region Ballance Farm Environment Award in 2009 for sustainability that will be their focus on the day.

“Depending on the farm, we’re offering everything from sheep shearing and sheepdog demonstrations, through to talks by Fonterra, Fish and Game and a range of others. . .

“This is a great chance for anyone interested to have a face to face chat with the farmers and learn something about their trade. Who knows, hopefully some may be inspired enough to look at farming as a career choice,” Mr Nicolson concluded.

More information on Farm Day, including directions to participating farms can be found here.

March 13 in history

On March 13:

1138 Cardinal Gregorio Conti was elected Antipope as Victor IV.

1639  Harvard College was named for clergyman John Harvard.

 

1764 Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born  (d. 1845).

1781  William Herschel discovered Uranus.

1809  Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden was deposed in a coup d’état.

1845  Felix Mendelssohn‘s Violin Concerto received its première performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist.

 

1862  The U.S. federal government forbade all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

1881 Alexander II of Russia was killed when a bomb was thrown at him.

1884 Sir Hugh Walpole, English novelist, was born (d. 1941).

 

1884 The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan began.

1897 San Diego State University was founded.

1900  British forces occupied Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.

1900 The length of the workday for women and children is limited by law to 11 hours in France.

1920 The Kapp Putsch briefly ousted the Weimar Republic government from Berlin.

 

1921 Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declared its independence from China.

1925 Scopes Trial: A law in Tennessee banned the teaching of evolution.

1930 The news of the discovery of Pluto was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.

  

1933 Banks in the U.S. began to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandated a “bank holiday“.

1938 – Anschluss of Austria to the Third Reich.

 

1939  Neil Sedaka, American singer and songwriter, was born.

1943 German forces destroyed the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.

  

1954  Battle of Điện Biên Phủ: Viet Minh forces attacked the French.

1956 – New Zealand won its first cricket test - playing against the West Indies at Eden Park.

 1957 Cuban student revolutionaries stormed the presidential palace in Havana  in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.

1960  Adam Clayton, Irish bassist (U2), was born.

 

1969  Apollo 9 returned safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

1979 The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d’etat in Grenada.

 

1986 Microsoft had its initial public offering.

  

1989 A geomagnetic storm caused the collapse of the Hydro-Québec power grid.

1991 The United States Department of Justice announced that Exxon had agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

 

1992 An earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale killed  over 500 in Erzincan, eastern Turkey.

1996 Dunblane massacre: 16 children and 1 teacher were shot dead by Thomas Watt Hamilton who then committed suicide.

1997 India’s Missionaries of Charity chose  Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader.

1997 The Phoenix lights were seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.

 

2003 The journal Nature reported that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human had been found in Italy.

2005 Terry Ratzmann shot and killed six members of the Living Church of God and the minister before killing himself.

2008 Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

悲しみ – sorrow.