Labour’s fair not fair

Labour is trying to sell its proposal to impose a selective capital gains tax on us as an issue of fairness.

But as Trans Tasman argues it’s proposal isn’t so equitable:

It is difficult to understand why, if the fairness arguments are taken down the track Labour argues for, all gains are not taxed at the same rate. For example, why should the occupant of a substantial coastal lifestyle block escape this new tax when the person running a productive farm falls directly within it?

And why should art, gambling proceeds and  stamp collections be spared, when businesses aren’t?

Multimillionaires Sam Morgan and Selwyn Pellet have become Labour’s poster-boys to justify the CGT and new top rate. Both are said by Goff to have thought it unfair they did not pay tax on their huge gains. But Goff needs to be careful, Shewan says, not to overplay this hand. The public will quickly tire of extreme examples being rolled out to justify changes which will have a deeply pervasive effect on ordinary transactions much closer to home like the family farm or window cleaning business.

It is difficult to design a tax system which catches everyone but while Morgan and Pellet weren’t taxed on the proceeds of their sales they would have paid plenty of tax while running their businesses.

If a CTG is imposed, sales like this would be designed to avoid at least some of the tax by, for example, giving shares in lieu of cash.

But there are just extreme examples which Labour is using to stoke up envy and distract people from the impact their flawed proposal would have on many more people of very modest means.

Among them would be siblings who sell the family home after their parents die and couples who divest themselves of matrimonial property during a divorce settlement.

Retirement savings could also be eroded. The Shareholders Association warns that shareholdings in Kiwisaver would be hit by a CGT and that younger people would be most severely disadvantaged by this.

July 23 in history

1632  Three hundred colonists bound for New France departed from Dieppe, France.

1793 Prussia re-conquered Mainz from France.

1829 William Austin Burt patented the Typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.

1833 Cornerstones are laid for the construction of the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio.

1840  The Province of Canada was created by the Act of Union.

1851 Twenty-six lives were lost when the barque Maria was wrecked near Cape Terawhiti, on Wellington’s rugged south-western coast.

<img src="http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/files/images/maria-event.preview.jpg" alt="The Maria wrecked near Cape Terawhiti ” />

1862 American Civil War: Henry W. Halleck took command of the Union Army.

1874  Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos was appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa.

1881  The Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, the world’s oldest international sport federation, was founded.

1881  The Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina was signed in Buenos Aires.

 

1888 Raymond Chandler, American-born author, was born (d. 1959).

1892  Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, was born (d. 1975).

1903  The Ford Motor Company sold its first car.

1914  Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

1926 Fox Film bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.

1929  The Fascist government in Italy bannedthe use of foreign words.

1936  The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia was founded through the merger of socialist and communist parties.

 

1940 United States’ Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles‘s declaration on the U.S. non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

 

1942 The Holocaust: The Treblinka extermination camp  opened.

 

1942  World War II: Operation Edelweiss began.

 

1945  The post-war legal processes against Philippe Pétain began.

1947 David Essex, English singer, was born.

1950 Blair Thornton, Canadian guitarist (Bachman-Turner Overdrive), was born.

1952  New Zealand’s first female Olympic medallist, Yvette Williams (now Corlett) won gold in the long jump with an Olympic-record leap of 6.24 metres (20 feet 5 and 3/4 inches).

1952 Establishment of the European Coal and Steel community.

1952 General Muhammad Naguib led the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser– the real power behind the coup) in the overthrow of King Farouk of Egypt.

1956 The Loi Cadre was passed by the French Republic in order to order French overseas territory affairs.

1961 Martin Lee Gore, English musician and songwriter (Depeche Mode), was born.

1961 The Sandinista National Liberation Front was founded in Nicaragua.

1962 Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

1962  The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos was signed.

1965 Slash, American guitarist (Guns N’ Roses), was born.

1967  12th Street Riot in Detroit, Michigan  began in the predominantly African American inner city (43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned).

1968 Glenville Shootout: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins that lasted for five days.

1968  The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft  when a 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers was taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

1970 Qaboos ibn Sa’id became Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Sa’id ibn Taimur.

1972 The United States launched Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.

1973 Himesh Reshammiya, Indian Bollywood composer, singer and actor, was born.

1980 Michelle Williams, American singer (Destiny’s Child), was born.

1982  The International Whaling Commission decided to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.

 

1983 The Sri Lankan Civil War began with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam .

1983  Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel and made a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba.

 

1986  Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

1988 General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigned after pro-democracy protests.

1992 A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI) established that it was necessary to limit rights of homosexual people and non-married couples.

1992 Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia.

1995 Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered and becomes visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.

1997 Digital Equipment Company filed antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.

1999 Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan was crowned King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the death of his father.

1999  ANA Flight 61 was hijacked in Tokyo.

2005 Three bombs exploded in the Naama Bay area of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.

 

2008 Cape Verde  joined the World Trade Organization, becoming its 153rd member.

2009 Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox  became the 18th pitcher to throw a perfect game in Major League Baseball history, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays 5-0.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

NZ women’s 8 rowing in World Cup U23 tonight

The daughter of a friend is with the New Zealand rowers in Amsterdam for the under-23 World Cup.

She’s been emailing progress reports on training and will be racing in heats for the eight at 10.36 (NZ time) tonight.

The NZ rowing website has news updates on the World Cup and you can watch the race live here - click ”Live” which is on the left hand panel of options.

Word of the day

Zoilism – resemblance to Zoilus in style or manner; carping criticism; detraction.

Friday’s answers

Thursday’s questions were:

1. Who is New Zealand’s current poet laureate?

2. What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile?

3. It’s chanson; canzone in Italian; canción in Spanish and harihari in Maori, what is it in English?

4. What was Sam Hunt’s dog called?

5. Who wrote The Magpies and what did they the magpies) say?

Points for answers:

Andrei got three (and an apology if the song’s still in his head).

Cadwallader got 4 1/2 (#5 required what the Magpies said as well as the poet’s name) which earns him an electronic bottle of whatever goes well with poetry.

Gravedodger got 4 and a bonus for reminding me of the play which I enjoyed too.

Robert got one and a bonus for reminding me of Chez Elco (which might still have the name no longer has Elco).

Paul got me confused with several partially right and a bonus for wit.

Adam got 1, a good try for the Magpie sound and the thought that sometimes as an adult you’re able to appreciate arts whose attractions eluded you in your youth.

Answers follow the break:

National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day.

 The link above will take you to a list of events aroudn the country.

 

Tuesday Poem has three poems for the day at the hub and links in the sidebar will take you to choices of other Tuesday poets.

 

I especially enjoyed The Raspberry-Coloured Hand-Knitted Cardigan by Jennifer Compton and in response to it by Mary McCallum (and her other) -If you buy the raspberry-coloured hand-knitted cardigan and unpick it .

 

Beattie’s Bookblog posts on Eden Tautali who won the National Schools Poetry Award with Nan a moving poem about her grandmother’s funeral.

 

Poems by all those shortlisted and the judges’ reports are online here.

 

Greens picking National win

The Green Party is picking a National win in November’s election.

Trans Tasman reports on the debate over the oath MPs must take and writes:

Green’s Kevin Hague, say they’re going to test Smith when the new Parliament is sworn in after the November general election.

Although Lockwood Smith has been a very good speaker, including raising the standard of answers required by Ministers which his colleagues don’t always appreciate, it is most unlikely that he’d remian in that office if Labour won the election.

Hague’s comments show he’s expecting a National win.

It must be tough for Labour when even their friends assume they’ll lose.

Still shaking

A 5.1 magnitude earthquake in Canterbury at 5.39 this morning was felt throughout the South Island.

Reference Number	3550173 [View event in Google Maps][View Felt Reports in Google Maps]
Universal Time	July 21 2011 at 17:39
NZ Standard Time	Friday, July 22 2011 at 5:39 am
Latitude, Longitude	43.64°S, 172.20°E
Focal Depth	12 km
Richter magnitude	5.1
Region	Canterbury
Location	20 km north-west of Leeston 20 km north-east of Rakaia 40 km west of Christchurch

The Press says there’s been no reports of injuries or property damage but that might change when people inspect buildings in daylight.

The Paper also reports on the probabilityof future quakes:

. . . for the 12 months to July 15 next year there is:

a nearly one in two chance of a magnitude-5.5 to 5.9 aftershock

a one in seven or eight chance of a magnitude-6.0 to 6.4 quake

a one in 15 chance of a magnitude-6.5 to 6.9 shake, and

a one in 50 probability of a quake of magnitude 7.0 or higher.

In monthly terms, those figures translate to:

a one in 10 chance of a magnitude 5.5 to 5.9

a one in 25 chance of a magnitude 6.0 to 6.4

a one in 100 chance of a magnitude 6.5 to 6.9, and

a less than 1 per cent probability of a magnitude 7.0 or more.

Based on the same calculations, there could be up to five magnitude-5.0 to 5.4 aftershocks in the next 12 months, with a one in three chance of one in the next month.

I presume this story was written before this morning’s quake so that’s one of the probabl 5.0 – 5.4 quakes down.

 

July 22 in history

838 Battle of Anzen: the Byzantine emperor Theophilos suffered a heavy defeat by the Abbasids.

1099  First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon was elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.

1298 Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk – King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeated William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons.

1456 Ottoman Wars in Europe: Siege of Belgrade – John Hunyadi, Regent of Kingdom of Hungary defeated Mehmet II of Ottoman Empire.

1484  Battle of Lochmaben Fair – a 500-man raiding party led by Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas were defeated by Scots forces loyal to Albany’s brother James III of Scotland.

1499  Battle of Dornach – the Swiss decisively defeated the Imperial army of Emperor Maximilian I.

1510 Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was born  (d. 1537).

1587  Colony of Roanoke: a second group of English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.

1793 Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.

1805  Napoleonic Wars: War of the Third Coalition – Battle of Cape Finisterre – an inconclusive naval action was fought between a combined French and Spanish fleets under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve of Spain and a British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder.

 

1812  Napoleonic Wars: Peninsular War – Battle of Salamanca – British forces led by Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) defeated French troops.

1844 William Archibald Spooner, English priest and scholar, was born  (d. 1930).

1849 Emma Lazarus, American poet, was born (d. 1887).

1864 – American Civil War:  Battle of Atlanta – Confederate General John Bell Hood led an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill.

1890  Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, American Kennedy family matriarch, was born (d. 1995).

1894  First ever motorised racing event was held between the cities of Paris and Rouen - won by comte Jules-Albert de Dion.

1908 Amy Vanderbilt, American author, was born (d. 1974).

1916 A bomb exploded on Market Street, San Francisco during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40.

1932 Oscar De la Renta, Dominican/American fashion designer, was born.

1933 Wiley Post became the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

1934 “Public Enemy No. 1″ John Dillinger was mortally wounded by FBI agents.

1936 Tom Robbins, American author, was born.

1942  The United States government began compulsory civilian gasoline rationing due to the wartime demands.

1942  Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto began.

1943  Bobby Sherman, American singer and actor, was born.

1944 Anand Satyanand, Governor-General of New Zealand, was born.

1944 Estelle Bennett, American singer (Ronettes), was born (d. 2009).

1944  Rick Davies, British musician (Supertramp) , was born.

1944  The Polish Committee of National Liberation published its manifesto, starting the period of Communist rule.

1946  King David Hotel bombing: Irgun bombed King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British civil and military administration, killing 90.

1947  Don Henley, American musician (Eagles), was born.

1951 Dezik (Дезик) and Tsygan (Цыган, “Gypsy”) were the first dogs to make a sub-orbital flight.

1962 Mariner programme: Mariner 1 spacecraft flew erratically several minutes after launch and had to be destroyed.

1970 Craig Baird, New Zealander racing driver, was born.

1976  Japan completed its last reparation to the Philippines for war crimes committed in Japan’s imperial conquest of the country in the Second World War

1977  Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was restored to power.

1980 Scott Dixon, New Zealand racing driver, was born.

1983 Martial law in Poland was officially revoked.

1987 Lotto went on sale for the first time with a first division prize of $360,000.

1992   Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison.

1993  Great Flood of 1993: Levees near Kaskaskia, Illinois ruptured, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barges operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

1997 The second Blue Water Bridge opened between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario.

2002 Israel killed terrorist Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas’s military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

2003 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attacked a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, plus Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.

2005  Jean Charles de Menezes was killed by police as the hunt started for the London Bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 London bombings.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Praise for PI Ministry

Trans Tasman praises the Ministry for Pacific Island Affairs:

The Ministry for Pacific Island Affairs is one of the smallest agencies but it has helped reduce one of the great evils of our region. Pacific people around the world – many of them in NZ – are responsible for sending approximately $US600m a year back to the Pacific Islands. It is the major source of income in the region and until recently, charlatans were charging 25% fees or more to process the remittances. Now this can be done for 3 to 4%. Sure, the Ministry had some powerful friends helping it such as the Reserve Bank, but without its drive, the usurious rates taking money from the most needy could still be in place.

Usurious is the word for processing fees of 25% or more.

I think these rates were also applied to money earned by workers employed for harvest under the Recognised Seasonal Employment Scheme.

They do a really good job for orchardists and market gardeners and are paid reasonably for that. But skimming 25% or more off their pay in fees when they took it home would leave them with far less than minimum wages.

Word of the day

Bdelygmia - litany of abuse, series of critical epithets, descriptions, or attributes.

Thursday’s quiz

1. Who is New Zealand’s current poet laureate?

2. What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile?

3. It’s chanson; canzone in Italian; canción  in Spanish and harihari in Maori, what is it in English?

4. What was Sam Hunt’s dog called?

5. Who wrote The Magpies and what did they the magpies) say?

(In case you’re wondering  about the motivation for these questions, it’s National Poetry Day tomorrow).

If you can’t trust them with the rules you can’t trust them to rule

What can you say about a party that breaks the rules it helped to enact, makes a half-hearted apology, says it won’t do it again then does it again while under investigation by the police?

Whaleoil has a flyer that was delivered in West Auckland yesterday.

It has the parliamentary crest which means you and I paid for it. That is stretching the rules because it is for political not parliamentary purposes.

It has no authorisation statement. That is breaking the rules.

What does it say about Labour?

They’re broke and so desperate they’ll stretch the rules around parliamentary funding and they’ll break the law - again – even while under investigation for the same offence.

If you can’t trust a party to work within the rules you can’t trust them to rule.

Can’t keep borrowing and hoping

Quote of the week from Liberty Scott:

You cannot keep borrowing to pay for consumption now in the hope you can borrow more in the future.

The post, which I recommend reading in full,  is about the European Union. The line quoted has universal application for individuals, businesses and nations.

It highlights one of the flaws of Labour’s tax policy. It’s not balanced by any policy to reduce spending and will require an enormous amount of extra borrowing in the short to medium term.

Borrowing for infrastructure and other investment which will help economic growth isn’t necessarily bad. Borrowing to pay for consumption was part of what Labour did wrong in its last term and they don’t appear to have learned from that mistake.

To stand or not to stand

National and Act are being criticised for a possible deal under which Act wouldn’t stand candidates in marginal seats.

MMP allows such deals and it’s not very different from parties telling supporters how to rank their preferences under Preferential Voting systems.

While there might not have been an overt deal before, minor parties have made it clear they aren’t seeking electorate votes in previous elections.

I’ve attended meet-the-candidates meeting in Waitaki, and before that Otago every election since MMP was introduced and every Green candidate has told supporters s/he’s only interested in the party vote and they should give their electorate vote to Labour.

Minor parties are unlikely to win electorate seats and when it’s the party vote that determines the make-up of parliament, not winning seats doesn’t affect how many MPs they get. But standing or not standing candidates in electorates can influence the outcome for those seats.

In 1999 the Green Party candidate for Otago got 1,872 votes. In the 2002 election the party didn’t stand a candidate in the electorate and Gavan Herlihy, the sitting National MP lost to Labour’s David Parker by 684 votes. Act’s candidate Gerry Eckhoff got 1,294 votes and while not all those votes would have gone to National, enough probably would have to have enabled him to hold the seat.

Not putting up electorate candidates can come at a cost. Regardless of whether or not they’re seeking electorate votes, having a candidate contesting a seat can help boost list votes.

However, standing in every electorate is expensive and it also requires a party to have enough potential candidates, of sufficient calibre, to ensure they don’t do more harm than good.

If a party doesn’t have enough resources – human and financial – to contest all seats properly, it’s  better putting its efforts into the party vote alone.

July 21 in history

356 BC Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

285 Diocletian appointed Maximian as Caesar and co-ruler.

365 A tsunami caused by an earthquake estimated to be 8.0 on the Richter Scale devastated Alexandria, killing 5,000 people in Alexandria, and 45,000 more outside the city.

1403 Battle of Shrewsbury: King Henry IV defeated rebels to the north of  Shropshire.

1545  The first landing of French troops on the coast of the Isle of Wight during the French invasion of the Isle of Wight.

1568 Eighty Years’ War: Battle of Jemmingen – Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva defeated Louis of Nassau.

1718 The Treaty of Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Republic of Venice was signed.

1774 Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji ending the Russo-Turkish war.

 Here at 10-21 July 1774 was signed the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. . .

1831 Inauguration of Léopold I of Belgium, first king of the Belgians.

1858 Alfred Henry O’Keeffe, New Zealand artist, was born (d. 1941).

1861 American Civil War: First Battle of Bull Run – the first major battle of the war began.

1865 Governor George Grey oversaw the capture of the Pai Marire (Hauhau) pa at Weraroa, Waitotara.

1865  Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.

1873 Jesse James and the James-Younger gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.

1899 Ernest Hemingway, American writer, Nobel laureate, ws born (d. 1961).

1904  Louis Rigolly,  became the first man to break the 100 mph (161 km/h) barrier on land. He drove a 15-liter Gobron-Brille in Ostend.

1918  U-156 shelled Nauset Beach, in Orleans, the first time that the United States was shelled since the Mexican-American War.

1919  The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, killing 12 people.

1920 Isaac Stern, Ukrainian-born violinist, was born  (d. 2001).

1922  Mollie Sugden, British comedic actress, was born  (d. 2009).

1924 Don Knotts, American actor, was born (d. 2006).

1925  Scopes Trial: high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1925  Sir Malcolm Campbell became the first man to break the 150 mph (241 km/h) land barrier at Pendine Sands in Wales. He drove a Sunbeam to a two-way average of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).

1944 World War II: Battle of Guam – American troops land on Guam starting the battle.

1944  Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators were executed in Berlin, Germany for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

1946 Barry Whitwam, British musician (Herman’s Hermits), was born.

1948 Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English singer/songwriter, was born.

1948 Garry Trudeau, American cartoonist, was born.

1949 Hirini Melbourne, New Zealand musician and composer, was born (d 2003).

1949  The United States Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty.

1951 Robin Williams, American comedian/actor. was born.

1953 Jeff Fatt, Chinese-Australian actor was born.

1954  First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference partitioned Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

1955 Howie Epstein, American musician (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), was born (d. 2003).

1956 Michael Connelly, American author, was born.

1959 Elijah Jerry “Pumpsie” Green became the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last team to integrate.

1961 Jim Martin, American musician (Faith No More), was born.

1961  Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission – Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 became the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).

1964  Singapore Race Riot – every year since then, Racial Harmony Day is celebrated on this day.

1966 Sarah Waters, British novelist, was born.

1969  Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission.

1970  After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed.

1972  Bloody Friday bombing by the Provisional Irish Republican Army around Belfast, Northern Ireland – 22 bomb explosions, 9 people killed and 130 people seriously injured.

1973 In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents killed a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in 1972′s Munich Olympics Massacre.

1976 Christopher Ewart-Biggs British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland was assassinated by the Provisional IRA.

1977  The start of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War.

1983 The world’s lowest temperature was recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2°C (−129°F).

1994  Tony Blair was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way for him to become Prime Minister in 1997.

1995 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People’s Liberation Army began firing missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.

1997  The fully restored USS Constitution (aka “Old Ironsides”) celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

2004 The United Kingdom government published Delivering Security in a Changing World, a paper detailing wide-ranging reform of the country’s armed forces.

2005  Four terrorist bombings in London – all four bombs failed to detonate.

2008  Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Serbia and indicted by the UN’s ICTY tribunal.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

6/10

6/10 in the Herald’s changing world quiz.

Once more not reading answer properly cost a point. Sigh – shades of school reports and teacher’s comments on lack of attention to detail.

Word of the day

Otiant – idle, resting; to make someone else grow dull.

Old ashes not always dead ashes

Every winter the fire service warns about the need to carefully dispose of ashes and every winter at least one fire is caused by someone who doesn’t follow that advice.

We’ve had a couple on the dairy farm in the past.

The first was caused when a worker put the ashes in a plastic bucket and put the bucket on the wooden verandah.

He rang to tell my farmer and said he’d put it out. My farmer told him to call the fire brigade anyway, went to check and found smoke coming from behind the wall boards.

The brigade got there just in time to stop the fire spreading into bird nests in the ceiling.

The second fire was caused by a staff member who put old ashes on a vegetable garden. Wind fanned them into life again and blew sparks into a macrocarpa hedge several metres away.

Neither of these examples was as bad as one covered in the media a couple of years ago. It told of someone who vacuumed up the ashes then put the vacuum cleaner in the hall cupboard where it burst into flames.

Steam going out of milk price

The trade weighted price dropped 5.1% at this morning’s GlobalDairyTrade auction.

Prices were: Whole milk powder down 4% to $3,475/MT;  skim milk powder down  5.2% to $3,488/MT; anhydrous milk fat down  12.5% to $4,614/MT;  butter milk powder up 0.3% to $3345; rennet casein down 1.4% to $9,992/MT; milk protein concentrate down 10.2% to $5,525/MT.

Cheese which sold on this platform for the first time went for $4,315/MT.

This is the third auction in a row in which the TWI has dropped suggesting the steam is going out of dairy prices. Prices are now at a similar level to this time last year and still above the long term average.

In a newsletter to shareholders Fonterra chair Sir Henry van der Heyden says the company has signed an agreement with the government of Yutian County to develop 3rd China farm.

This is expected to increase Fonterra’s production in there to around 90 million litres. They’re on track to start milking on a 3,200 cow farm in November.

The next step in the company’s strategy is to build high-quality fresh milk supply for Chinese customers.