Labour doesn’t care about breaking law – again

If the three strikes law applied to breaking the law on campaigning then Labour would be well and truly out by now.

You’d think after the condemnation from across the political spectrum for previous breaches (pledge card anyone?) they’d be especially careful about sticking to the law this time.

But no, they’re using stop-sign look-alikes which are on or visible from the road.

Kiwiblog, Keeping  Stock , Whaleoil   and Roarprawn all posted on how this contravenes Land Transport Rules and Andrew Geddis pointed out it also contravenes the Electoral Act because there’s no promotor’s statement on them.

Whaleoil has also found Facebook entries which shows they’re going to carry on breaking the law with car stickers.

It’s bad enough that a party which is supposed to be one of the major ones doesn’t know the law as it applies to campaigning. Worse still is Phil Goff’s reaction:

Labour leader Phil Goff, who launched the campaign last week, said he didn’t know who within his party had put the signs up, “but if the council has a problem of course they can talk to whoever might have put them out”.

While the signs were modelled on stop signs “nobody’s going to mistake it as a stop sign, that’s just silly”. . .

. . .”We’ll keep using those signs. If the council’s got a problem we’ll listen to them of course, but nobody thinks they’re going to be a traffic hazard, that’s just nonsense.”

The leader of the second biggest party in parliament thinks law is silly and Labour is going to keep on ignoring it – that’s not a responsible stance for anyone let alone a party which is supposed to be a government in waiting.

Cactus Kate says Labour should stop the bad social media campaigns. The party should also stop thinking the law doesn’t apply to them.

A party which doesn’t know the law with a leader that doesn’t care about it can’t be trusted back into government where it can make the law.

Labour doesn’t get it, National and the public do

Trans Tasman gets to the nub of Labour’s failure and National’s support:

Labour’s bigger problem is its failure to communicate a relevant message in the current political climate.

On the other side of the fence, Finance Minister Bill English reckons there hasn’t been a time in NZ’s recent history when the need for change in how the country is run has been more widely understood by the public. Get spending down, cut out waste, make the country more efficient, lift exports, start paying our way in the world again: it’s a simple plan which every household understands.

Rob Muldoon once said, “Most people wouldn’t recognise a deficit if they fell over it.”

Whether or not that was true at the time it certainly isn’t now.

There can’t be many people who don’t understand the dire state of the economy and the need for tough medicine to cure it.

We can’t keep spending more than we earn and the situation is sufficiently grave that a bit of tinkering won’t fix it.

Election year Budgets usually have a few sweeteners. The government has made it quite clear this one won’t – no more extra spending in total, increases in any areas will have to be matched by cuts in others.

National recognises the problem and has a solution. The public understands what they’re doing and why. 

Meanwhile on anotehr planet Labour is still talking of spending increases and tinkering with GST and that’s one of the reasons they’re not making traction.

They don’t get it but National and the public do.

April 21 in history

On April 21:

753 BC – Romulus and Remus founded Rome (traditional date).

 

43 BC Battle of Mutina: Mark Antony was again defeated in battle by Aulus Hirtius, who was killed.

 

1509  Henry VIII ascended the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII.

1519 Hernán Cortés landed in Veracruz.

1651 Blessed Joseph Vaz, Apostle of Ceylon, was born.

1671 John Law, Scottish economist, was born  (d. 1729) .

1729 Catherine II of Russia, known as ‘Catherine the Great’, was born  (d. 1796) .

1792 Tiradentes, a revolutionary leading a movement for Brazil’s independence, was hung, drawn and quartered.

1809 Two Austrian army corps were driven from Landshut by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France as two French corps to the north held off the main Austrian army on the first day of the Battle of Eckmühl.

1816  Charlotte Brontë, English author, was born  (d. 1855) .

1836 Texas Revolution: The Battle of San Jacinto – Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeated troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.

1838 John Muir, Scottish environmentalist, was born (d. 1914) .

1863 Bahá’u’lláh, considered the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, declared his mission as “He whom God shall make manifest“.

 

1894 Norway formally adopted the Krag-Jørgensen rifle as the main arm of its armed forces, a weapon that would remain in service for almost 50 years.

1898 Spanish-American War: The U.S. Congress, recognised that a state of war existed between the United States and Spain.

1915 Anthony Quinn, Mexican-born American actor, was born (2001) .

1918 World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, known as “The Red Baron”, was shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme.

 

1922 The first Aggie Muster was held as a remembrance for fellow Aggies who had died in the previous year.

 

1923 John Mortimer, English barrister and writer, was born (d. 2009) .

1926  Queen Elizabeth II was born.

 

1942 World War II: The most famous (and first international) Aggie Muster was held on the Philippine island of Corregidor, by Brigadier General George F. Moore (with 25 fellow Aggies who are under his command), while 1.8 million pounds of shells pounded the island over a 5 hour attack.

 

1952 Secretarys’ Day (now Administrative Professionals’ Day) was first celebrated.

1959 Robert Smith, British musician (The Cure), was born.

1960 Brasília, Brazil’s capital, was officially inaugurated. At 9:30 am the Three Powers of the Republic were simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro.

1960 – Founding of the Orthodox Bahá’í Faith in Washington, D.C.

1961 The first Golden Shears contest was held – won by Ivan Bowen.

 1962 The Seattle World’s Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opened - the first World’s Fair in the United States since World War II.

 

1963 The Universal House of Justice of the Bahá’í Faith was elected for the first time.

 

1964 A Transit-5bn satellite failed to reach orbit after launch; as it re-entered the atmosphere, 2.1 pounds of radioactive plutonium in its SNAP RTG power source was widely dispersed.

 

1965 The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair opened for its second and final season.

1966  Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visited Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day.

1967  A few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel George Papadopoulos led a coup d’état, establishing a military regime that lasted for seven years.

1970 The Hutt River Province Principality seceded from Australia.

1975  Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu fled Saigon, as Xuan Loc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, fell.

 

1987 Tamil Tigers were blamed for a car bomb that exploded in Colombo, killing 106 people.

1989 – Tiananmen Square Protests: In Beijing, around 100,000 students gathered in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang.

1993 – The Supreme Court in La Paz, Bolivia, sentenced former dictator Luis Garcia Meza to 30 years in jail without parole for murder, theft, fraud and violating the constitution.

1994 – The first discoveries of extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Receptary - accepted as fact but unproved; generally or popularly admitted or received.

Just wondering . . .

. . . why someone who can carry dirty plates and cutlery to a bench can’t take them a few centimetres further to the dishwasher below it.

How do we bring power to the people?

Environment Minister Nick Smith has released the National Policy Statement on Renewable Electricity Generation under the Resource Management Act to encourage investment in wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal power.

“This National Policy Statement is about Government recognising the importance of renewable energy and will help New Zealand meet its targets of 90% renewable electricity by 2025 and 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” Dr Smith said.

“New Zealand’s electricity emissions have increased 122% since 1990 despite a Kyoto commitment to stabilise them at 1990 levels. Policy failed badly during the last decade when coal-generated power doubled and the Labour Government intervened to build new gas and diesel plants. The NPS on Renewable Electricity Generation is part of a plan to reverse this negative trend.

“The NPS requires local authorities to recognise the importance of new renewable generation for New Zealand in their resource management plans and consent decisions. The result will be more consistent and pragmatic rules that will encourage investment in renewable energy.

“The Government is determined that New Zealand better utilises its extensive wind, geothermal, hydro and tidal energy resources. In our first year we streamlined the consent process. In our second year we introduced the amended Emissions Trading Scheme that provides a clear price signal and competitive advantage for renewables. Our third step this year is the National Policy Statement on Renewable Electricity Generation. I am confident these policy changes will stimulate a new era of investment in renewable electricity generation in New Zealand.”

Renewable energy is usually regarded as good in theory but it attracts strong opposition when plans to generate it are unveiled.

It’s not just nimbyism. A lot of people aren’t keen on new hydro, wind or tidal generation in their own backyards or anywhere else in the country. If none of them is acceptable then how do we bring power to the people and industry?

Bill Ralston looks at this in the latest Listener and asks:

“If we can’t have tidal turbines, wind turbines, more hydro-electric or nuclear power, how are we to produce enough energy to drive an expanding economy?”

No-one is seriously suggesting nuclear generation. We shouldn’t need it when we’ve got water and wind to provide renewable energy but that requires building generators in someone’s backyard.

You have to break eggs to make an omelette. You’ve also got to cook it and we won’t have the power to do that unless we produce more.

If we don’t want to use non-renewable energy, we’re going to have to accept dams, wind turbines and/or tidal generators. They’ll all have to be in someone’s backyard and every protest against them adds to the costs which will eventually be passed on to the consumers.

Milk prices up a wee bit

Milk prices went up a wee bit in this morning’s globalDairyTrade auction. A tiny wee bit in fact –  the trade weighted index increased just .1% after falling in the last two sales.

The price of anhydrous milk fat dropped .8%; skim milk powder went down .6%; and whole milk prices increased .8%.

Businesses like party but not all policies

The latest MYOB Business Monitor special report show considerably more business people favour National than the total of all other parties but they’re less enthusiastic about some policies:

The survey of the policy and voting preferences of over 1000 business owners from around the country found that, if the election was held today, 62% of business owners would vote National, 10% Labour and 3% Act, 2% for the Greens and 1% for the Maori Party, with 21% undecided.

Support for the Government is slightly higher among female business owners (63%), and the owners of larger and more established businesses, although the ACT Party enjoys considerable favour with the owners of medium sized businesses (20 – 199 employees), garnering 8% of the vote with this group. Labour found the strongest support among younger business owners, aged between 18 – 39 years, with 17% likely to vote for the party, 54% for National and 3% for the Maori Party – although a larger number of young business voters are undecided, at 24%.

Support for National is slightly weaker in Wellington (57%) and support for Labour slightly stronger (13%) compared with other areas in New Zealand.

The Government is most popular with business owners in the finance and insurance sector (75% National, 4% Labour, 10% Act) and the Agriculture sector (71% National, 8% Labour, 3% Maori), while Labour enjoys the most favour with business voters in the retail and hospitality sector (17% Labour, 62% National, 4% Greens) and the transport industry (11% Labour, 58% National, 2% Greens).

What on earth has Labour done to get 8% support from agricultural businesses and why would anyone in the transport industry vote Green?

The 17% support for Labour in retail and hospitality also astounds me. They generally have low margins and should have benefitted from policies which make it easier to employ staff.

MYOB general manager Julian Smith says, based on the performance of all parties over the last six months, businesses are firmly in favour of the Government being returned at the next election.

“National is the clear choice for Kiwi business, according to this survey, which looks both at policy and party preferences of New Zealand business owners,” says Julian Smith.

“However, several of the key policies likely to be in contention in the next election, may well see National lose some votes.”

The survey found 44% of business owners would vote against state asset sales, while only 27% would vote for the policy.

That surprises me too – you’d think people who ran their own businesses would appreciate the need to reduce debt and the added accountability there would be at governance level if some assets were partially floated.

Julian Smith says what businesses are looking for – from any party – is a way to cut red tape and the cost of compliance.

“The number one policy that would win support of Kiwi business owners is the simplification of provisional tax rules and processes to make it easier for businesses to meet tax obligations, which 76% would vote for,” says Julian Smith.

Other policies popular with business owners are additional tax cuts, which 63% would vote for, Government-sponsored initiatives to reward innovation and success (61% support) and the creation of a single flat personal and company tax (53% support).

“Interestingly, businesses are also focused on policies that would benefit their employees and the broader community,” says Julian Smith.

Removing GST from selected essential goods and services, such as fresh food and doctors’ visits, would be supported by 57% of the business community, with just 23% voting against. Business owners also supported Mondayising public holidays (45% vote for, 22% against), and the introduction of compulsory Kiwisaver, provided at least 50% are invested in New Zealand (41% vote for, 25% against).

How can they reconcile the desire for less red tape, lower compliance costs and simplified tax with the wish to complicate GST?

How do they think they could get more tax cuts and a single flat personal and company tax as well as a reduction in GST?

It’s often assumed that all business people support the National Party. Unfortunately in my – admittedly biased – opinion, as this survey shows they don’t.

I didn’t expect unanimous support for National and all its policies but I am surprised about the apparent confusion over policies. I’d have thought business people would have a better understanding of economics than the results indicate.

April 20 in history

April 20 in history:

1303 The University of Rome La Sapienza was instituted by Pope Boniface VIII.

1453 The last naval battle in Byzantine history when three Genoese galleys escorting a Byzantine transport fought their way through the huge Ottoman blockade fleet and into the Golden Horn.

1494 Johannes Agricola, German Protestant reformer was born (d. 1566) .

 

1534  Jacques Cartier began the voyage during which he discovered Canada and Labrador.

1535 The Sun Dog phenomenon observed over Stockholm and depicted in the famous painting “Vädersolstavlan“

 

1653  Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament.

 

1657 Admiral Robert Blake destroyed a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

1657  Freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).

1689 The former King James II of England,  then deposed, lay siege to Derry.

1775 American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston began.

1792 France declared war on Austria, beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.

1809 Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four day campaign which ended in a French victory.

1810 The Governor of Caracas declared independence from Spain.

1828 René Caillié becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbouctou.

 

1861 American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.

1862 Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed the first pasteurisation tests.

 

1871 The Civil Rights Act of 1871 became law.

1884 Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Humanum Genus.

1889 Adolf Hitler, German Nazi dictator, was born  (d. 1945) .

1893 Joan Miró, Spanish painter, was born  (d. 1983).

1902 Pierre and Marie Curie refined radium chloride.

    

1914 Forty-five men, women, and children died in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner’s strike.

 

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shot down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1926 Western Electric and Warner Bros. announced Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.

 

1939  Billie Holiday recorded the first Civil Rights song “Strange Fruit“.

1941  Ryan O’Neal, American actor, was born.

1945  World War II: US troops captured Leipzig, Germany.

1945 World War II: Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler made his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.

1948 Craig Frost, American musician (Grand Funk & Bob Seger), was born.

1949  Jessica Lange, American actress, was born.

 

1953 Sebastian Faulks, British novelist, was born.

1958  The first temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Southern Hemisphere opened in Hamilton.

 

1961 Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed troops against Cuba.

1964  BBC Two launched with the power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station.

1968  Enoch Powell made his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.

1972 Apollo 16 landed on the moon commanded by John Young.

1978  Korean Air Flight 902 was shot down by Soviets.

1980 Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists were arrested.

1985 ATF raid on The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.

1986 Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years.

1986 Cameron Duncan, New Zealand director, was born.

1986 Professional basketball player Michael Jordan set a record for points in an NBA playoff game with 63 against the Boston Celtics.

1998 German terrorist group Red Army Faction announcesd their dissolution after 28 years.

1999 Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado.

 

2007 Johnson Space Center Shooting: A man with a handgun barricaded himself in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston before killing a male hostage and himself.

2008 Danica Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.

2010 – Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion killed 11 and causes rig to sink, initiating a massive oil discharge in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sourced from Nz History Online and Wikipedia

Word of the day

Povertous – impoverished, poor, poverty-stricken.

Hat tip: Today is My Birthday

Best last lines, English good and bad and the best paper plane

The American Book Reviews 100 best last lines from novels opened the discussion with Jim Mora on Critical Mass today.

Some lines and phrases were familiar although I hadn’t read the books, for example:

Number 8:

  ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’ –Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Number 77:

“Vaya con Dios, my darklin’, and remember: vote early and vote often, don’t take any wooden nickels, and”—by now I was rolling about helplessly on the spare-room floor, scrunched up around my throbbing pain and bawling like a baby—“always leave ’em laughin’ as you say good-bye!” –Robert Coover, The Public Burning (1977).

And at 77:

 ”Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” –Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

 Was she the first to use the phrase tomorrow is another day?

The next website (for which I offer a hat tip to Political Dumpground) we discussed was Dear Blank, please blank:

It was designed and built by Jared Wunsch, and Hans Johnson and, if you believe what they write on the about page, it’s moderated by Jared’s cat Louie.

It allows people to pithy one-line letters such as:

Dear spellcheck,

If you have no spelling suggestions for a particular word, please don’t say that it is misspelled.

Sincerely, I have no time for your nonsense, this paper is due in an hour.

 Dear art teacher,

No, my canvas is not empty, I was painting with all the colours of the wind.

Sincerely, Pocahontas fan.

Dear Internet connection,

This whole “playing hard to get” strategy isn’t doing it for me.

Sincerely, frustrated.

Dear iPhone,

Thank you for giving meaning to my life.

Sincerely, fingerless gloves.

Dear purple grape,

BREATHE!

Sincerely, green grape.

 Dear Green grape

You’re just jealous.

Sincerely, purple grape.

Dear Americans,

If you like our accents so much, why didn’t you keep them?

Sincerely British people.

Apropos of matters British, Jan Freeman responded to the outrage over the inclusion of initialisms in the OED. (Jan has a website throw grammar from the train - notes from a recovering nit picker)

And Stephen Fry pays lyrical homage to P.G. Wodehouse in  What Ho My Hero in the Independent.

Then for something different in creative work avidiance (with a hat tip to Larvatus Prodeo): how to build the best paper airplane in the world.

Phone shouldn’t think for itself unless it thinks like me

One of the most frustrating things about the technology which has become a necessary part of modern life is that sometimes it thinks for itself.

It is altogether possible that a computer knows more about what it’s doing than I do but that doesn’t mean I want it to do it without my permission.

The same applies to a mobile phone.

Mine has started thinking it’s a good idea to take an incoming call when I’m already on another.

A message appears on the screen asking me if I want to swap calls but I can’t see the message when the phone is clasped to my ear. I just get a beep and the first call goes on hold. One second I’m listening or talking to someone, the next there’s silence and if I don’t push the right option I find I’ve started another conversation with the second caller while the original one is left in limbo.

I didn’t ask my phone to start doing this and I haven’t worked out how to stop.

I don’t want a phone that thinks for itself unless it thinks like me  and I think abandoning one call to check another is rude.

It might be excused if the second was a matter of life and death but that hasn’t happened yet and I wouldn’t know whether it was until I took it anyway.

I’d rather go with the almost certainty that the second caller could leave a message to which I could respond in a few minutes when I’ve finished the first call than drop someone I’m talking to while I check whether someone else is more important.

When buying the phone I didn’t think to ask about its manners. A smart phone should be smart enough to be polite – or at least ask its owner for permission to be rude and comply when it doesn’t get it.

Working for welfare for the wealthy

The advertisements encouraging people to apply for Working for Families made it quite clear it was aimed at middle and upper income earners and this is the result:

 . . . 3 News has obtained the details for 2009 – the latest data available.

It shows: 

• Those with a household income of between $60,000 to $80,000 claimed $240 million on Working For Families tax credits
• While those on $80,000 to $100,000 claimed $55 million
• Families on more than $100,000 claimed $10 million that year in tax credits.

“Working For Families does some important and good things – it relieves child poverty and gets solo parents into work – but at the same time it’s not very well targeted, so a lot of money goes to the wrong type of people,” says Jean-Pierre de Raad of the NZ Institute of Economic Research.

Few would begrudge welfare for people in genuine need but giving to people in want means we’re all working to provide welfare to the wealthy.

It wouldn’t be a good idea if there was a budget surplus, it’s a really bad idea when we’re in deficit.

No sensible individuals would borrow to buy luxuries when they didn’t have enough for necessities and it makes even less sense for a country to do it.

Brrrrr

What happened to autumn?

Last week we were enjoying the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, this week it’s winter.

It was only three degrees at 7.30 last night and the clear sky promised frost.

Cloud and a breeze early this morning saved us from that but it’s still very chilly.

April 19 in history

On April 19:

1012 – Martyrdom of Alphege in Greenwich, London.

1529 At the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers and independent cities protested the reinstatement of the Edict of Worrms, beginning the Protestant Reformation.

1587 Francis Drake sank the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbour.

  

1713 With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria (not actually born until 1717).

 

1770 Captain James Cook sighted Australia.

1770 Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI by Proxy marriage.

 

1775  American Revolutionary War began at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

1782 John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, became the first American embassy.

1809 An Austrian corps was defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition.

1809 The Austrian main army was defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria; part of a four day campaign which ended in a French victory.

1810 Venezuela achieved home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General was removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta was installed.

1839 The Treaty of London established Belgium as a kingdom.

1847  New portico at British Museum opened

1855 Visit of Napoleon III to Guildhall, London.

1861 American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861, a pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacked United States Army troops marching through the city.

1892 Charles Duryea claimed to have driven the first automobile in the United States.

1893 The Liberals subdivided the Cheviot Estate.

 1919 Leslie Irvin of the United States made the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.

1927 Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.

1928  The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

1935  Dudley Moore, English actor, comedian and composer, was born  (d. 2002) .

1936 First day of the Great Uprising in Palestine.

 

1937 – Joseph Estrada, actor and 13^th President of the Philippines, was born.

1941 Alan Price, English musician (The Animals, The Alan Price Set), was born.

1942 World War II: In Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto was established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp.

1943 World War II: German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1943 Eve Graham, Scottish singer (The New Seekers), was born.

1943 – Bicycle Day – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately took LSD for the first time.

 

1946 Tim Curry, British actor, was born.

1951 – General Douglas MacArthur retired from the military.

1954 – Constituent Assembly of Pakistan decided Urdu and Bengali to be national languages of Pakistan.

1955 The German automaker Volkswagen,  founded Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

1956 Actress Grace Kelly married Rainier III of Monaco.

1960 Students in South Korea held a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.

1961 The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ended in success for the defenders.

 

1971  Siaka Stevens became first president of Sierra Leone Republic.

1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begia a five-day demonstration in Washington, DC.

1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.

1975 India’s first satellite Aryabhata was launched.

1984 Advance Australia Fair was proclaimed as Australia’s national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.

1987 The Simpsons premiered as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show.

1989  A gun turret explodesd on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.

1993 The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, ended when a fire broke out. Eighty-one people died.

1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others were killed when a state-owned aircraft crashed in Iowa.

1995 Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, was bombed, killing 168.

1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms the city of Grand Forks, ND. Fire breaks out and spreads in downtown Grand Forks, but high water levels hamper efforts to reach the fire, leading to the destruction of 11 buildings.

1999 The German Bundestag returned to Berlin.

2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave.

Sourced from NZ History Online and Wikipedia

RSA on-line for Anzac Day

The RSA has gone on-line for Anzac Day with its poppy appeal and  remembrance website www.anzacpoppy.com.

Visitors to the website will be able to leave a message on the Wall of Remembrance,  find an Anzac Day Service and other activities around the country related to Anzac Day and remembrance and   follow bloggers in Gallipoli, Timor Leste, Christchurch and around New Zealand as they prepare for and commemorate Anzac Day.

It’s also possible for people to upload their own photos of their Anzac Day commemorations and support the RSA’s welfare fund for returned servicemen and women and their families by making a donation to the 2011 Poppy Appeal.

Word of the day

Gourmandise – relish and taste for good food; appreciation of or interest in good food and drink.

Has best-by reached its use-by date?

The delights of oysters are lost on me.

Some food takes several tries before you acquire a taste for it but the strength of my dislike at my first taste of an oyster was such I’ve never bothered to try one again.

When they’re so expensive and those who like them really, really like them it would be stupid to waste them on me.

No oysters are a good oysters to me which means that I am not the best judge of whether or not they’ve have gone off. When I discovered some when cleaning out the fridge in our crib in Wanaka and noticed they’d reached their use-by date I sought the advice of friends who were visiting.

All were sure that the use-by date for oysters should be taken seriously so I threw them out.

When I got home later that day, my farmer who’d left Wanaka before me, asked if I’d found the oysters and brought them with me.

He was less than impressed when I said yes to the first part of the question and explained my no to the second part.

Had it been a best-by date I would almost certainly have ignored it and left it to him to do the look-and-smell-test but I take use-by dates seriously.

The distinction between the two is however, lost on many people:

Economist Richard Denniss, executive director of the Australia Institute, said yesterday its survey of New Zealand households found each threw out about $450-worth of food a year.

This equates to a national figure of about $751 million of food being discarded annually. . .

“Whether it’s because it was off, or people just didn’t like the look of it, we don’t know,” Dr Denniss said.

“We know best-before dates for some people are an indicator that they should be cautious, and for others they are a deadline they wouldn’t possibly cross.”

“Milk and yoghurt don’t become poisonous the day after the best-before date. It’s possible to put your nose in and determine whether they are still okay or not. We found younger people in particular, and also higher-income people, pay more attention to the best-before dates.”

He said shoppers needed more information about the health consequences of food spoilage.

“The consequences of processed meat going off are quite different to the consequences of milk going sour.”

Best-by and use-by dates are relatively new.

We used to use our eyes, noses, tastebuds and judgement to determine whether on not food was safe to eat.

Given the danger and costs of food poisoning, to the sufferer and potentially employers and the health system, use-by dates on food which could cause problems are sensible.

But a produced-on date for other food would leave it up to consumers to use their senses, and sense, to determine if it was safe to eat.

That might save some waste and make it more likely use-by dates were taken seriously.

That would not, however, be enough to convince my farmer that I was right to throw out the ones  he left in Wanaka.

They’re loans not gifts

Student loans might be interest free while studying and for those who stay in New Zealand afterwards but they’re not gifts.

They are required to be repaid and, for those who go overseas, with interest.

Tightening up the rules around who gets a loan, how much they can claim and the requirement to repay it is long over due.

People who with overdue fines are stopped at the border if they try to leave the country. There would be an uproar if people with student loans were treated that way but when the 15% of those with loans are overseas and owe 55% of the debt they are an obvious target for tighter rules.

Suggestions by Tertiary Minister Steven Joyce are reasonable. Giving those who’ve had loans and go overseas a three year holiday before they’re required to start repayments is far too generous:

. . . we have this thing called the three-year repayment holiday right now, which the previous government started, which seems to have been a pragmatic decision that they made that they weren’t collecting it anyway, so let’s pretend that we won’t collect it. I’m concerned about that. I think it sends the wrong message that somebody can sit overseas for three years and not make any commitment at all towards repayment. Now, when you go on your OE, perhaps you go six months or a year without getting an income, but, actually, once you’re over there for about a year, you’ve got to be living on something, and we’re thinking that we might change the length of that repayment holiday. . .

. . . Everybody who goes overseas automatically gets it, and I’m thinking maybe we’ll look at something like an application requiring them to leave a contact in New Zealand, for example, and actually limiting the period of time to a lot less than three years.

 Using debt collection agencies and recalling the whole loan if people ignore requests to make repayments; and allowing people over 55 to take loans for fees but not living costs is also sensible.

Interest-free student loans was an election bribe before the 2005 election. It was one of the dead rats National swallowed during the 2008 campaign.

Swallowing it doesn’t mean the government can’t tighten the rules to make it a bit easier to digest.

These changes will do that, saving money without imposing unreasonable costs on graduates.

The only way is . . . ?

Any hopes Labour might have taken from last week’s One News Colmar Brunton poll which showed a slight increase in support will have been dashed by last night’s 3 News Reid poll which shows they’ve dropped 3.8 to just 27.1%.

That would mean they’d get just 34 seats. Several sitting MPs would lose their jobs and only one new MP would come in on the list – former party president Andrew Little.

If, as often happens, loss of party support leads to fewer votes for individual MPs the party could also lose some electorate seats. That wouldn’t affect the overall number of MPs they get but it would further weaken the party.

The only way to go from 27% ought to be up  which is what happened last time Labour was there and it could happen again. But this poll shows not just Labour but left as a whole is less popular.

The two coalition supporters Labour could rely on also lost support. The Green Party dropped .5 to 7.7%. New Zealand First had a similar drop to 2.8% which is only just over half way to the 5% threshold needed to get into parliament without winning an electorate.

The Maori Party which could choose to go with Labour or National, or stay out of government had a slight increase in support – up .2% to 2.5% and Act which would go with National or stay on the cross benches was up 1.1 t0 1.7%.

National went up 2.9 to 57.5% and dearly as I would like that sort of result on election night it would be virtually impossible to translate that level of support into votes.

Although Kiwiblog says the TV3 poll was the most accurate one in the last two elections it’s still seven and a bit months until election day and anything could happen before then.

Labour might be in despair about their lack of traction but National can’t afford to be complacent when the only likely way to go from these poll heights is down.

However, those of us on the centre right can take heart that the public does appear to realise that borrow and spend policies won’t help and policies which lead to more savings, investment and export growth is what we need.