14/15

14/15 in Stuff’s budget quiz – a few lucky guesses.

Unlike Kiwiblog I didn’t have to guess the colour of Bill English’s tie. I got it by ruling out the wrong answers though I’m not sure I’d use the colour given as the right answer for the tie as it shows in videos on the internet.

Struggling on $85,000?

The headline says Working for Families cuts makes life harder for families .

In Richard London’s house they bring in $85,000 a year. With three children, that means $85 dollars a week from Working for Families.

They’ll lose about $2.55 a week under today’s changes, life’s hard enough as it is.

“It’s difficult so any cuts to Working for Families, it affects us quite immensely,” he says.

It depends on how you define hard but would a family of three really struggle on $85,000 a year? That’s well above the average income and if they need the extra $2.55 a week, they do have options.

One or both parents could do more paid work or they could look at their budget, give up some luxuries and reassess what’s necessary.

That’s what the government is having to do because previous administrations have given money to people in want rather than need.

A couple of tradesmen called in last night, they brought up the this topic and neither had any sympathy at all for the families who will be losing a little bit of their WFF payments.

They’d both brought up their children on incomes well under $85,000 and without any government assistance. Like me they didn’t mind paying tax to help people in need but neither approved of paying for people in want.

Budget headlines

We spent, taxed, borrowed too much – Labour

PSA accepts need for fiscal rectitude

CTU gives tick to savings, investment & exports

EPMU welcomes jobs forecast

Hawarira says thanks

Budget a bit tough: Act

Greens applaud focus on building economy

Students satisfied – NZUSA

We’re grateful – social service agencies

Flying pigs spotted

Met Service forecasts low temperatures in Hell

May 20 in history

On May 20:

325 The First Council of Nicea – the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church was held.

526  An earthquake killed about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia.

685  The Battle of Dunnichen or Nechtansmere is fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who are decisively defeated.

1217  The Second Battle of Lincoln resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke.

1293  King Sancho IV of Castile created the Study of General Schools of Alcalá.

1497  John Cabot set sail from Bristol,on his ship  Matthew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date).

1498  Vasco da Gama arrived at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.

 

1521  Battle of Pampeluna: Ignatius Loyola was seriously wounded.

1570  Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas.

 

1609  Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1631  The city of Magdeburg in Germany was seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.

1733 Captain James Cook released the first sheep in New Zealand.

1772  Sir William Congreve, English inventor, was born  (d. 1828).

 

1776 Simon Fraser,Canadian Explorer, was born  (d.1862).

1799 Honoré de Balzac, French novelist, was born  (d. 1850).

 1802 By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies.

1806 John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, was born (d. 1873).

1813 Napoleon Bonaparte led his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia.

1818 William Fargo, co-founder of Wells, Fargo & Company  was born (d. 1881).

1835  Otto was named the first modern king of Greece.

1840  York Minster was badly damaged by fire.

 

1845  HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sailed from the River Thames, beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

1861  American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality.

1862  Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law.

 

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church – in the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fight in this Confederate victory.

1873  Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1882  The Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was formed.

 

1883  Krakatoa began to  erupt.

 

1891 The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype kinetoscope.

1896  The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier fell on the crowd resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.

 

1902  Cuba gained independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma became the first President.

1916  The Saturday Evening Post  published  its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (“Boy with Baby Carriage”).

 

1920  Montreal radio station XWA broadcast the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.

1927  By the Treaty of Jedda, the United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1927  At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh took  off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, touching down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

 

1932  Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.

  

1940  Holocaust: The first prisoners arrived at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1941 New Zealand, British, Australian and Greek forces defending the Mediterranean island of Crete  fought desperately to repel a huge airborne assault by German paratroopers.

1946  Cher, American singer, was born.

 1949  In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, was established.

1949  The Kuomintang regime declared  martial law in Taiwan.

 

1956  In Operation Redwing the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean;

 

1965  PIA Flight 705, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 720 – 040 B, crashed while descending to land at Cairo International Airport, killing 119 of the 125 passengers and crew.

1969  The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ended.

1980  In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

1983  First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo individually.

1983  A car-bomb explosion killed 17 and injures 197 in the centre of Pretoria.

1985  Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, began broadcasting to Cuba.

 

1989  Chinese authorities declared martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations.

1990  The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections were held in Romania.

1995  In a second referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a slight majority the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

1996   The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

2002  Protugal recognised the independence of East Timor , formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and 3 years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

Sourced from Wikipedia & NZ History Online

Budget poll

Not a Labour Party one tonight – this one’s on the  NZ Herald website:

 

1700–1750 votes

 

What do you think of today’s Budget?

1. It’s what we needed to get back in the ‘black’ (63%)
    
2. Govt cuts will leave too many people hurting (37%)
    

 

Word of the day

Redivivus – living again, brought back to life, revived.

No surprises Budget

Jane Clifton wrote in her column in The Listener:

“It has been a couple of decades since any Budget truly surprised anyone. All the measures are carefully explained in advance – as they should be – and only the fiscal details, again, containing few surprises are kept secret .  . . by Budget day, there are only two questions of any real novelty: what colour tie will the Finance Minister wear and will there be sausage rolls?”

She got it right. Today’s  Budget held few surprises - increased spending for education and health, necessary support for Canterbury earthquake recovery, much needed, but pretty restrained, changes to Kiwisaver, student loans and Working for Families, some partial sale of assets . . .

There was no sign of the usual election-year lolly scramble but there was good news. The Budget will return to surplus in 2014/15 – a year sooner than forecast in December.

This is a significant achievement given the impact of February’s earthquake since the forecast was made. We’ll all benefit from the reduced need for Government borrowing and the lift in national savings.

We’ll also benefit from the escape from a credit rating downgrade:

Standard&Poor’s has made no change to New Zealand’s credit rating and says the Government must achieve its fiscal targets for its external position to improve.

Last November the credit rating company placed the outlook for New Zealand’s AA plus rating on a negative outlook.

Today it said that the contents of the Government’s 2012 budget were “consistent with the assumptions that feed into our sovereign ratings on New Zealand”.

Finance Minister Bill English said:

Budget 2011 builds a strong platform for jobs and growth, sets a credible path back to surplus by 2014/15 and helps increase national savings . . .

“This is a responsible and balanced budget for the times,” Mr English says. “It ensures New Zealand will build faster growth based on savings and exports, so New Zealanders have the jobs and higher incomes they deserve.”

It will not surprise regular readers that I agree with that.

As for the tie – I couldn’t see it on the radio and I don’t know whether there were sausage  rolls.

Thursday’s quiz

1. Which Finance Minister presented the Black Budget in 1958?

2. Who holds the position of Associate Finance Minister?

3. It’s preventivo  in Italian, presupuesto in Spanish, (I can’t find it in Maori) – what does it mean in English?

4. Who said  ”Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.‘”  And in whcih book written by whom?

5. Who wrote: Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less?

Farm books win children’s book awards

The Moon & Farmer McPhee  written by Margaret Mahy and illustrated by David Elliot has won the 2011 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards.

It also won the best picture book.

I came across the book in Dunedin’s University Bookshop on Tuesday. It’s a delightfully quirky story, as many of Mahy’s are, with beautiful illustrations. That she’s still writing such wonderful stories at 75 is an achievement in itself.

Another book with a rural theme, Baa Baa Smart Sheep by Mark Sommerset, illustrated by Rowan Sommerset, a husband and wife team, was overall winner of the Children’s Choice Award.

When most children are further removed from farms and farming than any previous generation it’s good to see two books set in the country doing so well.

Beattie’s Book Blog has more on the awards and the full list of winners.

Election strategy working

Prime Minsiter John Key in Federated Farmers National Farming Review (not online):

“The environment in which we farm is more challenging than ever before. Retailers and consumers are increasingly expecting farmers to produce a better quality product, while providing transparency of production and maintaining high standards of integrity and sustainability.

Whether we like it or not, these expectations are here to stay and as a farming nation we need to think no only of how we’re going to meet them, but how we’re going to exceed them to take advantage of the opportunities on offer. . .”

Just as well the government appreciates the importance of farming and the challenges it faces because the opposition doesn’t.

Stuart Nash’s strange pronouncement on dairy farmers’ tax payments yesterday got him publicity. However, the real point wasn’t what he said but the underlying message – Labour neither understands nor cares about farming.

If Imperator Fish is right and pissing off farmers is Labour’s new election strategy, it’s working.

More here from less there

No increase in total spending is a big ask for any budget.

It’s even bigger for one that has to deal with the rebuilding of the country’s second biggest city.

Any more money allocated here will have to be matched by savings there.

That’s unusual at any time and even more so in election year.

Not only will there be no lolly scramble, any extra meat and vegetables will be paid for by cutting back on pudding.

The government has six months to persuade voters to accept the low-fat diet it will put on the menu today.

The opposition will be hoping it causes indigestion even though it has no nutritional alternative.

May 19 in history

1499  Catherine of Aragon, was married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine was 13 and Arthur 12.

  

1535  Jacques Cartier set sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona’s two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).

1536  Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII , was beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.

 

1568  Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots.

 

1643 Thirty Years’ War : French forces under the duc d’Enghien decisively defeated Spanish forces at the Battle of Rocroi, marking the symbolic end of Spain as a dominant land power.

1649  An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth was passed by the Long Parliament.

 

1749 King George II granted the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River.

 

1780 New England’s Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover caused complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.

1795 – Johns Hopkins, American philanthropist, was born  (d. 1873).

1802  Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Légion d’Honneur.

1828 President John Quincy Adams signsedthe Tariff of 1828 into law, protecting wool manufacturers in the United States.

1846 Thomas Brunner, Kehu, a Ngati Tumatakokiri Maori, and Charles Heaphy reached Mawhera Pa.

1848 Mexican-American War: Mexico ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for $15 million USD.

 

1861  Dame Nellie Melba, Australian opera singer, was born (d. 1931).

 

1864 American Civil War: the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House ended.

 

1879 Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, American-born politician, was born (d. 1964).

1881 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1st President of Turkey, was born (d. 1938).

1890 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese leader, was born  (d. 1969).

1897  Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol.

1919 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed at Samsun on the Anatolian Black Sea coast, initiating the Turkish War of Independence.  The anniversary of this eventis also regarded as a date of remembrance for Pontic Greeks on the Greek genocide.

1921  The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.

1922 The Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union was established.

 

1925 Malcolm X, American civil rights activist, was born (d. 1965).

1925   Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator , was born (d. 1998).

1928 Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Cars, was born (d. 1982).

1939 Nancy Kwan, Hong Kong actress, was born.

1941 Bobby Burgess, dancer, singer and original Mouseketeer, was born.

1943 World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the cross-English Channel landing (D-Day). It was later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

1945 Pete Townshend, English musician (The Who), was born.

1948 Grace Jones, Jamaican singer and actress, was born.

 

1951 Joey Ramone, American musician (The Ramones), was born  (d. 2001).

1953 Victoria Wood, English comedian and actress, was born.

1954 Phil Rudd, Australian drummer (AC/DC), was born.

1961  Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

1962 A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy took place at Madison Square Garden. The highlight is Marilyn Monr0e’s rendition of Happy Birthday.

1966  Jodi Picoult, American writer, was born.

1971   Mars 2 was launched by the Soviet Union.

 

1983 Jessica Fox, English actress, was born.

1987 The attempted hijacking of an Air New Zealand Boeing 747 at Nadi airport was thwarted when a member of the cabin crew hit the hijacker over the head with a whisky bottle.

1991 Croatians voted for independence at their independence referendum.

2009  Sri Lanka announced victory in its 27 year war against the terrorist organisation, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

The hair has it?

It must be election year.

Peter Dunne has posted a video on the Untied Future website defending his hair.

I can’t find the video but TV3 says:

“What’s this thing about my hair. I’m getting fed up with being described as having a dead possum on top, all sorts of other things like that from people who think it’s untidy, it’s too grey, it’s too coiffeured.

“I think it’s really bald-headed men. I go on the Close Up show with Mark Sainsbury. It’s really very awkward because he is not looking at me, he is looking straight up here.”

He said he doesn’t appear on Campbell Live because John Campbell doesn’t like him, but added: “Sorry John, I quite like your plastic hair, too.”

Mr Campbell has since posted on Twitter that he’ll have Mr Dunne and his hair on his show tonight.

“I’ll interview them both at once. Or, my hair will interview his.”

He’s obviously combing hair, here, there and everywhere for publicity. Does someone this desperate deserve the brush off?

Word of the day

Querulent – abnormally given to suspicion and accusation; habitually and abnormally suspicious; constantly complaining.

South Devon/Friesian X sirloin NZ’s best

A South Devon/Friesian X sirloin steak from Phil Hoskin in Pahiatua was judged New Zealand’s tenderest and tastiest in the 2011 Beef + Lamb New Zealand Steak of Origin competition.

Twenty finalists, carved down from nearly 400, were tasted by a panel of judges at the grand final today during the Beef Expo in Feilding.

The judging panel comprised Commonwealth Gold Medallist Alison Shanks, All Black Legend Richard Loe, food writer and television personality Julie Biuso, radio host Jamie Mackay and top chef, Graham Hawkes.

Each steak was assessed on aroma, juiciness, tenderness, texture and taste.

Head judge and chef, Graham Hawkes said the competition just keeps growing and the entries just keep getting better.

“The quality of New Zealand beef is simply the best and the entries this year were no exception,” says Hawkes.

The Grand Champion was awarded the prestigious Beef + Lamb New Zealand Steak of Origin Trophy, the original Beef Carcass shield and $5000.

The supreme brand award went to Bowmont Wholesale Meats in Invercargill with their Hereford Prime entry.

The Steak of Origin contest has been run for more than eight years on behalf of Beef + Lamb NZ .

 The competition process involves an initial assessment of the sirloin steak at Carne Technologies in Cambridge. Each steak is aged for three weeks before being tested for tenderness, pH and % cooking loss. The most tender steaks make the semi-final and are cooked and tasted by a panel of judges in Christchurch. The finalists (four from each of the five classes) are tasted at the Beef Expo in Feilding by top chefs and celebrities to find the most tasty and tender steak in the country.

The full results of the final:

Class 1: Best of Breed – European
1st: Rob & Mary Ann Burrows, Culverden (Charolais), processed at Ashburton Meat Processors
2nd: Charlie Stephens, Christchurch (Piedmontese) processed at Ashburton Meat Processors/Ellesmere Butchery
3rd: Cornwall Park, Auckland (Simmental), processed at Auckland Meat Processors/Wilson Hellaby
4th: TD & BR O’Shea, Whangarei (Limousin), processed at Auckland Meat Processors/Wilson Hellaby

Class 2: Best of Breed – British
1st: DC & LJ Redmond, Rakaia (Angus) processed at Ashburton Meat Processors
2nd: Robin & Jacqueline Blackwell, Inglewood (Angus) processed at Taranaki Abattoir
3rd: Tim & Kelly Brittain, Otorohanga (Angus), processed at Auckland Meat Processors/Wilson Hellaby
4th: Tim & Kelly Brittain, Otorohanga (Angus), processed at Auckland Meat Processors/Wilson Hellaby

Class 3: Best of Breed – Crossbreed & Other
1st: Phillip Hoskin, Pahiatua (South Devon/Friesian X) processed at Silver Fern Farms, Hastings
2nd: Nigel Foster, Kaitaia (Angus X) processed at Silver Fern Farms, Dargaville
3rd: Kate & Paula Jordan, Blenheim (Charolais/Jersey X) processed at CMP Kokiri
4th: Julia & Stewart Eden, Gore (Dexter/Friesian X) processed at Alliance Mataura

Class 4: Best of Brand – Retail
1st: Bowmont Wholesale Meats, Invercargill (Hereford Prime)
2nd: Foodstuffs, North Island (AngusPure)
3rd: Glanworth Partnership, Pahiatua (AngusPure)
4th: Chef’s Choice, Wanganui (AngusPure)

Class 5: Best of Brand –Wholesaler and Foodservice providers
1st: Angus Meats, Christchurch (Angus Reserve)
2nd: Progressive Enterprises, Auckland (Countdown Finest Angus)
3rd: Land Meat NZ Ltd, Wanganui (AngusPure)
4th: Neat Meat, Auckland (AngusPure)

On a related matter, rivtettingKate Taylor has been at the Beef Expo and is all beefed out.

Small drop in milk price

The trade weighted index for GlobalDairy Trade’s latest auction dropped 1.1%

Results were:

• WMP (Whole Milk Powder) up 0.1% to $3,863/MT
• SMP (Skim Milk Powder) down 1.5% to $3,824/MT
• AMF (Anhydrous Milk Fat) down 5.8% to $5,340/MT
• RenCas (Rennet Casein) at $9,778/MT
• MPC70 (Milk Protein Concentrate) at $6,113/MT

 This was the first time Casein and Milk Protein were offered at a GDT auction.

Tough tax talk fail – updated

Are farmers paying enough tax? the headline asks.

The answer Labour’s revenue spokesman Stuart Nash wants is no but his tough tax talk just shows how little he understands business and tax.

The average dairy farmer pays less tax than a couple on the pension – raising questions about whether the sector touted as the backbone of the economy is paying its fair share.

A couple on a pension doesn’t usually employ several people, produce anything incurring the costs associated with that and earn export income as farmers do, all of which make a positive contribution to the economy in addition to any tax paid.

As the Government prepares one of the tightest Budgets in recent years, cutting into middle-class family benefits and KiwiSaver subsidies, new figures suggest the cuts will hit those also shouldering the greatest tax burden – wage and salary earners.

Inland Revenue Department figures provided to Labour revenue spokesman Stuart Nash show that, in the latest full year for which figures were available, the average tax paid by dairy farms was $1506 a year, despite an average Fonterra payout understood to be well over $500,000.

 The payout is a gross figure, tax is paid on income after expenses which include wages, repairs, maintenance, power, fuel and interest. If you’re heavily indebted as many dairy farmers are there’s little if anything left after all that on which tax is due.

The figures also show that more than half – 9014 – reported a loss for the 2009 year and 2635 reported trading income of between $1 and $20,000.

Federated Farmers chief executive Conor English said he was not surprised by the figures.

“The reason why there’s not much tax being paid is because there hasn’t been much money made. The average dairy farmer … made a cash loss of $50,000.”

This is why most farmers are using this year’s good returns to pay down debt. Too many took advantage of relatively easy credit, found costs rose faster than income and made little if any profit.

The sensible ones have learned from this and are taking a more Presbyterian approach to their businesses. 

Of the nearly 72,000 companies in the primary sector, nearly 40,000 were unprofitable.

This  includes sheep and beef farmers who’ve have had a series of very bad years. But making a loss in one, or even a few years, doesn’t make a business unprofitable. Most businesses in the establishment and development stages make losses. That’s even more likely in primary industries which are subject to so much variation in climate and markets.

“Either we have a sector in dire financial trouble or the sector is simply writing off a lot of income against expense and not paying tax,” Mr Nash said. “I hope it’s the latter. If they are facing dire financial trouble then we as a nation are in the poo.”

When you’re in business you  are legally allowed to write income off against expenses – providing they’re business related ones and anyone who tries to get away with non-business related claims won’t get far.

Mr English said the primary sector was responsible for 66 per cent of exports but, for each dollar earned overseas, only 6c went to the farmer. “So the other 94c goes in rates to the local councils, road user charges … all the cost structures around getting that kilo of meat from the farmgate to the shore …”

Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said the figures released by Mr Nash did not raise any policy issues. The $26m tax mentioned came from those who identified themselves as in dairying, he said.

Those not classified by industry paid another $1.5b in tax and a significant number would be dairy farmers.

“We don’t think the [tax] figure is as low as $26m by any stretch of the imagination.”

There has been a problem of low profitability in the last few years. But most farmers have got the message the government is sending – consumption fuelled by borrowing isn’t sustainable. They’re containing costs, paying off debt and most will be paying a lot more tax on this season’s income.

Busienss NZ says the claims are misleading:

Operating costs and business debt shouldered not only by farms but all businesses are reflected in their level of taxes paid, says BusinessNZ.

Commenting on claims by Labour revenue spokesman Stuart Nash that dairy farmers pay less tax than a salary earner earning $50,000 a year, BusinessNZ said the comparison was misleading.

“Businesses have income structures that take into account the cost of doing business. This is a cost not borne by a salary earner.

“Farm businesses face capital investment and depreciation servicing costs, debt costs, feed costs and labour costs, in the context of fluctuating cash flows often affected by weather, necessitating further debt for operating costs before receiving end of year payouts.

“This means that many businesses would not have the $50,000 income that is being used as a comparison.

“Comparing this situation to an employed person’s $50,000 income – that does not have to account for operating and business debt costs – is not a valid comparison.”

Peter Dunne says dairy farmer tax headlines simply wrong:

Media headlines today comparing dairy farmers’ tax bills with those of the average wage earner were based on “an inexcusable fudging of turnover and income”, Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said today.

“This is a classic case of comparing apples and oranges – the media and the Opposition have conveniently ignored the fact that businesses, including farmers, are not taxed on turnover, they are taxed on the income they have as profit,” Mr Dunne said.

“The particular instance cited was for 2008-2009, when dairy farmers received significantly lowered Fonterra pay-outs, and were servicing very high debt levels across the sector at high interest rates.

“Federated Farmers has stated that the average dairy farmer made a $50,000 cash loss in that year. In that case, pointing to $500,000 incomes is patently ridiculous. Again it is the difference between turnover and profit,” Mr Dunne said.

He said that suggestions of the Government going soft on any businesssector did not fit with the $119.3 million allocated over four years in Budget 2010 to clamp down on tax evasion.

Turnover, income- what’s the difference when you’re chasing headlines?

Old rules give way to common sense with proposed rule changes

The public is being consulted on proposed changes to give way rules.

Proposed changes to New Zealand’s give way rules released for public comment today are expected to reduce intersection crashes and improve safety for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists, the NZ Transport Agency says.

New Zealand’s current give-way rules place complex demands on road users, and changes were identified last year as a road safety priority in the Government’s 10 year Safer Journeys road safety strategy.

Intersection crashes currently account for 17 percent of fatal crashes on New Zealand roads, and over 80 percent of intersection crashes causing injuries occur in urban areas. In the ten years to 2009, the number of crashes involving pedestrians and turning vehicles at intersections doubled.

It is expected that the proposed changes to the give-way rules will reduce intersection crashes and improve safety, especially for pedestrians and cyclists, as the proposed changes will result in less complex decision-making at intersections.

When in doubt give way to the right generally applies on our roads so in theory a vehicle turning left at an intersection should give way to an on-coming one turning right.

But it doesn’t work well in practice. It requires the driver of the left turning vehicle to check mirrors to ensure there’s no vehicle approaching from behind to which the on-coming one would have to give way; and the right turning vehicle has to be certain the left turning one is going to yield. This leads to hesitation and confusion.

Giving the left turning vehicle right of way is merely applying the guiding principle of right turning vehicles gives way to all other traffic.

The other change applies to who gives way at T-intersections. At the moment a vehicle on the through road turning right gives way to one turning right from the trunk road which often leads to congestion as it holds up traffic behind.

Both changes ought to make traffic flow more easily after the initial inevitable period of confusion, when most drivers will hesitate because  either they won’t be sure whether or not they have the right of way or  whether or not the other driver will yield to them.

If you want to check your knowledge of current give way rules, the NZ Transport agency has activity cards here. I got all but # 11 right.

Diversity in electorates takes pressure off list

Damien O’Connor was criticised for the intemperate language he used to describe the Labour list.

His criticism shouldn’t have been directed at the list, one of its roles is supposed to be to add to the diversity of parliament.

The question to ask of Labour is why doesn’t it have much diversity among its electorate MPs?

Labour’s selection is strongly influenced by unions and head office which makes it relatively easy to select people who don’t fit the WMM (white middle-aged male) category as candidates for red seats.

In National, providing an electorate has 200 members, it is they who select the candidate and the party hierarchy has no influence at all over who they select.

In spite or because of that, Kiwiblog points out, National has eight MPs of Maori descent now.

Georgina te Heuheu is retiring in November but the party has new candidates of Maori descent in Northland (Mike Sabin), Wellington Central (Paul Foster-Bell), Dunedin South (Joanne Hayes) and Mangare (Claudette Hauiti).

That means 11 out of 63 National candidates in general seats are of Maori descent.

Is part of Labour’s problem the Maori seats? Has it taken for granted it would win them and thought that means it doesn’t need Maori in general seats?

Perhaps if Labour trusted its members and exercised a little more democracy in selecting candidates for electorates,  it wouldn’t have to depend so much on its list to get a caucus more representative of New Zealand.

Footnote:

 Apropos of yesterday’s post on participation, National’s Northland selection would be the most democratic of any for any party in the country. It was made by 275 voting delegates representing a membership of more than 4,000.

May 18 in history

1048 Omar Khayyám, Persian mathematician, poet and philosopher, was born (d. 1131).

1152  Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine.

1268  The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, fell to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Battle of Antioch.

1302 Bruges Matins, the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia.

1498 Vasco da Gama reached the port of Calicut, India.

1593  Playwright Thomas Kyd‘s accusations of heresy led to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe.

1652 Rhode Island passed the first law in North America making slavery illegal.

1765  Fire destroyed a large part of Montreal.

1783  First United Empire Loyalists reached Parrtown, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada after leaving the United States.

 

1803  Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom revoked the Treaty of Amiens and declared war on France.

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.

 

1811  Battle of Las Piedras: The first great military triumph of the revolution of the Río de la Plata in Uruguay led by Jose Artigas.

1812  John Bellingham was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.

 

1843  The Disruption in Edinburgh of the Free Church of Scotland from the Church of Scotland.

 

1848  Opening of the first German National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt.

 

1860  Abraham Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination over William H. Seward.

1863  American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg began.

1828 -  Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia  was born (d. 1918).

1896  The United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate but equal is constitutional.

 

1896 – Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of  Tsar Nicholas II resulted in the deaths of 1,389 people.

 

1897  Dracula,  by Irish author Bram Stoker was published.

1897 Frank Capra, American film producer, director, and writer, was born  (d. 1991).

1900  The United Kingdom proclaimed a protectorate over Tonga.

1910  The Earth passed through the tail of Comet Halley.

1912  Perry Como, American singer, was born (d. 2001).

1917 World War I: The Selective Service Act of 1917 was passed, giving the President of the United States the power of conscription.

1919  Dame Margot Fonteyn, English ballet dancer, was born  (d. 1991).

1920 Pope John Paul II was born (d. 2005).

1926 Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared while visiting a Venice, California beach.

 

1927  The Bath School Disaster: Forty-five people were killed by bombs planted by a disgruntled school-board member in Michigan.

1933 New Deal: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1937 New Zealand nurses René Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds, and Millicent Sharples were detained at Auckland police station before leaving for the Spanish Civil War as recruites for the Spanish Medical Aid COmmittee.

1944  World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino – Conclusion after seven days of the fourth battle as German paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger) evacuated Monte Cassino.

1944  Deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union  government.

1948  The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convened in Nanking.

 1949 Rick Wakeman, English composer and musician (Yes) was born.

 

1949 – Bill Wallace, Canadian musician (The Guess Who) was born.

1953  Jackie Cochran beaome the first woman to break the sound barrier.

1955  Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended.

 

1956 First  ascent of Lhotse 8,516 metres, by a Swiss team.

1958 An F-104 Starfighter set a world speed record of 2,259.82 km/h (1,404.19 mph).

1959 Launching of the National Liberation Committee of Côte d’Ivoire in Conakry, Guinea.

1966 Koroki Te Rata Mahuta Tawhiao Potatau Te Wherowhero, the fifth Maori monarch heading the Kingitanga movement, died.

1969  Apollo 10 was launched.

1974 Nuclear test: Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.

1974 – Completion of the Warsaw radio mast, the tallest construction ever built at the time.

1980  Eruption of Mount St. Helens: killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

1980  Gwangju Massacre: Students in Gwangju, South Korea began demonstrations, calling for democratic reforms.

 

1983  In Ireland, the government launched a crackdown, with the leading Dublin pirate Radio Nova  put off the air.

1990 In France, a modified TGV train achieved a new rail world speed record of 515.3km/h (320.2 mph).

1991 Northern Somalia declared independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland but is unrecognised by the international community.

1993  EU-riots in Nørrebro, Copenhagen caused by the approval of the four Danish exceptions in the Maastricht Treaty referendum. Police opened fire against civilians for the first time since World War II and injured 11 demonstrators.

1998 United States v. Microsoft: The United States Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states filed an antitrust case against Microsoft.

 

2006 The post Loktantra Andolan government passd a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country.

2009  Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE were defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.