Art good, business bad

Whaleoil has a copy of an email from Labour’s campaign manager Trevor Mallard instructing supporters to ignore the details of the party’s proposed capaital gains tax.

He says people aren’t interested.

Why wouldn’t people be interested when the details show just how flawed the plan is?

Collectables such as art, antiques, stamps and vintage cars won’t be taxed, businesses will.

Cactus Kate calls it the Jenny Gibbs exemption.

Buy something, hold onto it while it appreciates due to a combination of time and luck and you can keep all the proceeds when you sell it.

Take a risk and pour your money, time and energy into a business and you’ll lose 15% of the value of what you achieve when you sell it.

What do we need more of? Collectables or successful businesses.

The answer to that is obvious to all but Labour.

July 17 in history

180 Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa  were executed for being Christians. This was the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.

1203 The Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople by assault. The Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus fled into exile.

1402  Zhu Di, better known by his era name as the Yongle Emperor, assumed the throne over the Ming Dynasty of China.

1453  Hundred Years’ War:  Battle of Castillon: The French under Jean Bureau defeated the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was killed in the battle in Gascony.

1586 A meeting took place at Lüneburg between several Protestant powers to discuss the formation of an ‘evangelical’ league of defence, called the ‘Confederatio Militiae Evangelicae’, against the Catholic League.

1674 Isaac Watts, English hymnwriter, was born (d. 1748).

1717  King George I  sailed down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel’s Water Music was premiered.

1762  Catherine II became tsar of Russia on the murder of Peter III.

1771  Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, travelling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacred a group of unsuspecting Inuit.

1791 Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette opened fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.

1794  The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne were executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.

1815  Napoleonic Wars: In France, Napoleon surrenders at Rochefort, Charente-Maritime to British forces.

1856  The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania killed over 60 people.

1863 The British invasion force led by General Duncan Cameron had its first significant encounter with Waikato Maori at Koheroa, near Mercer.

1867  Harvard School of Dental Medicine, the first dental school in the US, was established in Boston.

1870 Charles Davidson Dunbar, British military piper, was born (d. 1939).

1889 Erle Stanley Gardner, American lawyer and author (Perry Mason), was born  (d. 1970).

1899 James Cagney, American actor, was born  (d. 1986).

1899  NEC Corporation was organised as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.

1902 Christina Stead, Australian novelist, was born  (d. 1983).

1912 Art Linkletter, Canadian television host, was born  (d. 2010).

1917 Phyllis Diller, American comedienne, was born.

1917  King George V of the United Kingdom issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family will bear the surname Windsor.

 “A Good Riddance”. Propaganda cartoon from Punch, Vol. 152, 27 June 1917, commenting on the King having ordered the relinquishing of the German titles held by members of His Majesty’s family.

1918  The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, was sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; 5 lives were lost.

1920 Juan Antonio Samaranch, Spanish chairman of the International Olympic Committee, was born (d. 2010).

1920 Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser , was born (d. 2005).

1933 After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashed in Europe.

1935 Donald Sutherland, Canadian actor, was born.

1936 Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain started the civil war.

1938  Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn to fly the “wrong way” to Ireland and becames known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

1939 Paddy, a ginger and brown Airedale terrier, which achieved national celebrity status due to his exploits on the Wellington waterfront (and beyond)., died.

1939  Spencer Davis, British singer and guitarist (Spencer Davis Group), was born.

1940  Tim Brooke-Taylor, English comedian, was born.

1942  World War II: The Battle of Stalingrad started.

1944 Port Chicago disaster: Two ships laden with ammunition for the war exploded in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.

1944  World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs were dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near St. Lô, France.

1945 World War II: Potsdam Conference – U.S. President Harry Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the three main Allied leaders, began their final summit of the war.

1947 Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was born.

1948  The South Korean constitution was proclaimed.

1954 Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, was born.

1955  Disneyland televised its grand opening in Anaheim, California.

1962  Nuclear weapons testing: The “Small Boy” test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site.

1968   Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown and the Ba’ath Party installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.

1973  King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan was deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.

1975 Andre Adams, New Zealand Cricketer, was born.

1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock edwith each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1976  East Timor was annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.

1976  The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal was marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team.

1979  Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned and fled to Miami.

1981 The opening of the Humber Bridge.

1981  Structural failure led to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.

1989  First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.

1996  TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 exploded, killing all 230 on board.

1997  The F.W. Woolworth Company closed after 117 years in business.

1998 Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.

1998  A diplomatic conference adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.

1999 The animated television show Spongebob Squarepants made its official series premiere on Nickelodeon.

2002 Apple Inc. premiered iCal at Macworld Expo, this date appears default on Dock.

2007  TAM Airlines (TAM Linhas Aéreas) Flight 3054 crashed on landing during rain in São Paulo with an estimated 199 deaths.

2007 – Trans-Neptunian Object 2007 OR10 is discovered.

2009   Jakarta double bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotels killed 9 people including 4 foreigners.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Gosstitutes -  people who are paid not to have sex but to talk about having sex so the media can run their uncorroborated tales of steamy lust.

Hat tip: Jim Hopkins

4/10

Just 4/10 in the Herald’s travel quiz – silly to get the flag one wrong, I knew it was that country’s colours but didn’t recall the emblem.

Just wondering . . .

. . .  if there is a smaller  distance than that between too hot and too cold on the temperature control of a shower?

7/10

7/10 in the NZ Herald’s changing world quiz.

Counting for nothing

The on-line registration form wanted to know what area of business I was in.

The options were:

Accountancy & tax advice; aerospace and defence; automobiles; banking; basic resources/mining; chemicals/comms/publishing/media; consulting/business services; education/academia; energy/utilities; engineering/construction; financial services/food and beverages; fund/asset management; government/ public service/NGO; health and pharmaceuticals/IT/computing; industrial goods and services; insurance; personal & household goods; property; retail; telecommunications; transport/logistics; travel & leisure.

Obviously this organisation thinks agriculture and other areas of primary production count for nothing.

A few days later another form gave a more comprehensive list which included agriculture and some unpaid work:

Professional or senior government official; business manager or executive; business proprietor or self-employed; teacher, nurse police or other trained service worker; clerical or sales employee; farm owner or manager; technical or skilled worker; semi skilled worker; domestic worker, labourer or agricultural worker; home duties (not otherwise employed) student tertiary; student secondary; secondary primary/intermediate; retired/ superannuitent; unemployed/beneficiary; other not listed above.

Home duties (not otherwise employed)? Ah well I suppose it’s better than housewife/husband/person.

But it doesn’t take into account the unpaid work which people, usually but not only women, do outside the home, apropos of which Sandra thinks we need to ask some new questions.

We’ve made a lot of progress in accepting that women can have careers, but there has been little if any progress in recognising the importance of unpaid work which is so important in extended families and the wider community.

Growth in spite of problems

Labour faced few real difficulties not of its own making duirng its last nine years in government.

In spite of that the productive sector went into recession under their watch and the economy stayed buoyant only because of consumption fuelled by borrowing.

National has faced an unprecedented series of financial and natural disasters since it won the 2008 election and yet the economy has still grown in the past year.

GDP increased .8% in the March quarter, in spite of the impact of the Christchurch earthquake, and 1.5% in the year to the end of March.

Imagine what might have happened if the government which led us into recession in good times, had been mismanaging the economy in the past three years.

Imagine what will happen if Labour leads the next government – more tax and spend.

Bill English makes  clear the contrast between those policies and National’s:

“We’re also confident this recovery will be built on a sound platform of higher savings, exports and productive investment, rather than the excessive borrowing, consumption and government spending of much of the past decade.

“That will remain the focus of the Government’s economic programme,” Mr English says.

Labour hopes its tax policy will be a game-changer. But all it does is reinforce that it plans to continue the tax and spend policies which failed us in its last term.

July 16 in history

622 The beginning of the Islamic calendar.

1054 Three Roman legates fracture relations between Western and Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal Bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during Saturday afternoon divine liturgy. Historians frequently describe the event as starting the East-West Schism.

1194 Saint Clare of Assisi, Italian follower of Francis of Assisi, was born (d. 1253).

1212  Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: Forces of Kings Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre, Pedro II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal defeated those of the Berber Muslim leader Almohad, thus marking a significant turning point in the Reconquista and medieval history of Spain.

1377  Coronation of Richard II of England.

1661 The first banknotes in Europe were issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco.

1683 Manchu Qing Dynasty naval forces under traitorous commander Shi Lang defeated the Kingdom of Tungning  in the Battle of Penghu near the Pescadores Islands.

1769  Father Junipero Serra founded California’s first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá.

1779 American Revolutionary War: Light infantry of the Continental Army seized a fortified British Army position in a midnight bayonet attack at the Battle of Stony Point.

1782  First performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio.

1809  The city of La Paz  declared its independence from the Spanish Crown during the La Paz revolution and formed the Junta Tuitiva, the first independent government in Spanish America, led by Pedro Domingo Murillo.

1862 American Civil War: David Farragut was promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold an admiral rank.

1872 Roald Amundsen, Norwegian polar explorer, was born (d. 1928).

1880 Emily Stowe became the first female physician licensed to practice medicine in Canada.

1911 Ginger Rogers, American actress and dancer, was born (d. 1995).

1915  Henry James became a British citizen, to dramatise his commitment to England during the first World War.

1918  Czar Nicholas II, his family, the family doctor, their servants and their pet dog were shot by the Bolsheviks, who had held them captive for 2 months in the basement of a house in Ekaterinberg, Russia.

1928 Anita Brookner, English novelist, was born.

1931 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia signsedthe first constitution of Ethiopia.

1935 The world’s first parking meter was installed in the Oklahoma capital, Oklahoma City.

1941 Joe DiMaggio hit safely for the 56th consecutive game.

1942 Holocaust: Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv): the government of Vichy France orderswsthe mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who were held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.

1945 World War II: The leaders of the three Allied nations, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Harry S Truman and leader of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin, met in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.

1945  Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age began when the United States successfully detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon.

1948 Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, capitulated to Israeli troops during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War’s Operation Dekel.

1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, markedthe first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.

1951 King Léopold III of Belgium abdicated in favor of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium.

1951  J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye was published by Little, Brown and Company.

1952 Stewart Copeland, American drummer (The Police, was born.

1957  United States Marine major John Glenn flew a F8U Crusader supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds, setting a new transcontinental speed record.

1960  USS George Washington (SSBN-598) a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fired the first Ballistic missile while submerged.

1965 New Zealand’s 161 Battery, stationed at Bien Hoa air base near Saigon, opened fire on a Viet Cong position in support of the American 173rd Airborne Brigade.

1965 The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opened.

1969 Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the Moon was launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

1973 Watergate Scandal: Former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield informed the United States Senate that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.

1979 Iraqi President Hasan al-Bakr resigns and was replaced by Saddam Hussein.

1981 Mahathir bin Mohamad became Malaysia’s 4th Prime Minister; his 22 years in office, ending with retirement on 31 October 2003, made him Asia’s longest-serving political leader.

1983 Sikorsky S-61 disaster: A helicopter crashed off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities.

1990  Luzon Earthquake struck in Benguet, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, La Union, Aurora, Bataan, Zambales and Tarlac, Philippines with an intensity of 7.7.

1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter.

1999  John F. Kennedy, Jr., piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, died in a plane mishap, with his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.

2004  Millennium Park, considered Chicago’s first and most ambitious early 21st century architectural project, was opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley.

2007  2007 Chūetsu offshore earthquake: an earthquake 6.8 in magnitude and aftershock of 6.6  off Japan’s Niigata coast, killed 8 people, with at least 800 injured, and damaged a nuclear power plant.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Dyslogy - an inability to express ideas or reasoning in speech because of a mental disorder; dispraise, uncomplimentary remarks.

6/10 and 2/10

6/10 in the Herald’s news quiz.

Just  2/10 in the sports quiz.

Friday’s answers

Thursday’s questions were:

1. Who said: A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.

2. Who sang Je ne regret rien?

3. Which is France’s (and Western Europe’s) highest mountain?

4. Which city is regarded as the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere?

5. It’s rire in French, ridere  in Italian, reír in Spanish and kata in Maori, what is it in English?

Points for answering:

Andrie got three with a bonus for a whole lot more extra information.

Bulaman got four (accepting the translation of Mont Blanc).

Cadwallader got three; a nearly for the second attempt (you got the city on the wrong side of the Rio Plato) and a bonus for good try for the third.

Gravedodger got three (and a you’re welcome to hum but you really don’t want me to sing).

Adams wins an electronic batch of croissants for five right.

Answers follow the break:

Activist or MP?

Activists fight the system, MPs must work within the law to change it.

Hone Harawira showed by his refusal to read the affirmation at his swearing in yesterday, as required by law, he is still a better activist than an MP.

It has given him publicity and will probably please his supporters.

But an electorate MP is supposed to represent all his/constituents, and it has left them without an MP until parliament sits again on August 2.

In The House has the video of the swearing in here (was his cloak falling off – at about 1:44 – as he walked up, a sign?).

Lockwood Smith’s explanation (starts about 5:10) makes it clear Harawira knew what was requried by law and his decision to not comply with the law as advised was deliberate.

What’s fair?

Labour justifies policies of high taxation and redistribution as being “fair”.

But a question from Michael Woodhouse to Bill English shows that the income tax burden already falls on very few people:

2.MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Finance: What progress has the Government made in making the tax system fairer?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): In Budget 2010 we recognised there were parts of the community who, over the past decade, have simply not paid their fair share of tax. The Government raised the effective tax rate on property with a number of different measures, including denying depreciation on long-life assets, tightened the eligibility for Working for Families so that those with high economic incomes could not use paper losses to qualify, and allocated $120 million to the Inland Revenue Department to better enforce the rules. These measures have been successful, and we have achieved a more balanced and fair tax system that supports growth and provides good incentives in the economy.

Michael Woodhouse: How does the tax system interact with income support, which the Government provides?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Income support and the tax system need to be seen together. We tax those who earn income at progressive rates, although 75 percent of taxpayers pay no more than 17.5c in the dollar now. We also support those on low and median incomes with dependent children. A single-income family with two children pays no net tax until their income reaches $50,000 a year. This year Treasury projects we will collect $26 billion of income tax. Net of tax we will pay about $12 billion in income support and another $8 billion for superannuation.

Michael Woodhouse: Which groups now pay most of the tax collected by the Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Our tax and transfer system is highly redistributive, and the number of people paying income tax is surprisingly small. The lowest-income 43 percent of households currently receive more in income support than they pay in income tax. The 1.3 million households with incomes under $110,000 a year collectively pay no net tax—that is, their total income support payments match their combined income tax. The top 10 percent of households contribute over 70 percent of income tax, net of transfers—over 70 percent of income tax, net of transfers. This system is highly redistributive and we believe it is fair.

Michael Woodhouse: What steps has the Government taken to prevent the erosion of the tax base?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: When we became the Government we found a pretty chaotic tax system, where a lot of wealthier people were simply not paying their fair share of tax, so we set out to tighten the taxation of property, beef up enforcement by the Inland Revenue Department, and reduce widespread income-sheltering through trusts. The Inland Revenue Department did an exercise where it tabulated New Zealand’s 100 richest people, and found that over half of them were not paying the top personal tax rate. That is how badly the tax system was operating.

Kiwiblog has a chart which shows how many – and how few – New Zealanders are net taxpayers.

Labour’s justification for a capital gains tax is fairness, but given how few people pay income tax now the policy is really motivated by envy, as Mike Hosking put it

The only people who truly believe in more taxes, and more taxes at the top end, are the envious who want to chop the tall poppies and somehow see it as unfair that they don’t have what others do and the true lefties who argue income redistribution is good for a fair and just society. But they’re the ones who paused to tell you that by putting down their book on Marxism, the world has moved on from the Labour style tax approach.

This is a country built on graft, inspiration, risk taking and just a lot of ordinary people who want to rely on themselves and their skills to do well in life. They don’t like Governments picking their pockets in a needlessly overt fashion.

Hat tip Keeping Stock

Lawyers, accountants welcome Labour’s tax package

Lawyers and accountants were delighted with the official announcement of Labour’s tax package.

Principal for legal tax specialists Grabbit and Grabmore, Ms Finda Loophole, said the complexity of the proposed tax changes would provide a welcome fillip for tax professionals.

“The average punter might think no tax is a good tax and simple taxes are better, but for us the more complex and the more exemptions there are the better,” she said.

“We’ve been having a lean time since National lowered tax rates and simplified the system and there’s no doubt Labour’s policy would provide a welcome boost to our business.

“Where there’s complexity in law there’s an opportunity for us to interpret it; where there’s an exemption there’s an invitation for us to assist our clients to qualify for it.

“Show me the tiniest gap and we’re duty bound to turn it into a loophole through which our clients will cruise.”

Tax accountant Ms Fairly Numbered said her practice also welcomed the announcement.

“If they’ve got complexity and exemptions, we’ve got business,” she said.

July 15 in history

1099 First Crusade: Christian soldiers took the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem  after the final assault of a difficult siege.

1207 John of England expelled Canterbury monks for supporting Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton.

1240  A Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes in the Battle of the Neva.

1381  John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, was hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II of England.

1410  Battle of Grunwald: allied forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the army of the Teutonic Order.

1573 Inigo Jones, English architect, was born (d. 1652).

1606 Rembrandt, Dutch artist, was born (d. 1669).

1685  James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth was executed at Tower Hill  after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor.

1741 Alexei Chirikov sighted land in Southeast Alaska and sent men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.

1779 Clement Clarke Moore, American educator, author, and poet, was born  (d. 1863).

1789 Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, was named by acclamation colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris.

1799  The Rosetta Stone was found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign.

1806  Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike began an expedition from Fort Belle Fountaine to explore the west.

1815  Napoléon Bonaparte surrendered aboard HMS Bellerophon.

1823 A fire destroyed the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacted with outrage.

1850  Mother Cabrini, Italian-born Catholic saint, was born  (d. 1917).

1870 Reconstruction era of the United States: Georgia became the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1870 Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory were transferred to Canada from the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the province of Manitoba and the North-West Territories were established from these  territories.

1870 The Kingdom of Prussia and the Second French Empire started the Franco-Prussian War.

1888  The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupted killing approximately 500 people.

1905  Dorothy Fields, American librettist and lyricist, was born (d. 1974).

1906 Rudolf “Rudi” Uhlenhaut, German automotive engineer and test driver (Mercedes Benz), was born  (d. 1989).

1911 Edward Shackleton, English explorer, ws born  (d. 1994).

1914 Akhtar Hameed Khan, pioneer of Microcredit in developing countries, was born (d. 1999).

1914 Hammond Innes, English writer, was born (d. 1998).

1916  In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporated Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).

1918 World War I: the Second Battle of the Marne began near the River Marne with a German attack.

1918 – Joan Roberts, American actress, was born.

1919   Iris Murdoch, Irish writer, was born (d. 1999).

1920 The Polish Parliament establishes Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship before the Polish-German plebiscite.

1926  Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine dictator, was born (d. 2003).

1927  Massacre of July 15, 1927: 89 protesters were killed by the Austrian police in Vienna.

1929  First weekly radio broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir radio show, Music and the Spoken Word.

1931 Clive Cussler, American author, was born.

1933 Jack Lovelock’s set a world record for a mile run at Princeton University, beating the old record for the mile, held by Jules Ladoumegue, by almost two seconds. It was dubbed the ‘greatest mile of all time’ by Time Magazine.

1934 Continental Airlines commenced operations.

1943 Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Irish astrophysicist, was born.

1946 Linda Ronstadt, American singer, was born.

1946  Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei, was born.

1947 Peter Banks, British guitarist (Yes), was born.

1954 First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series.

1955 Eighteen Nobel laureates signed the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others.

1956 Marky Ramone, American musician (Ramones), was born.

1959  The steel strike of 1959 began, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.

1974  In Nicosia, Greek-sponsored nationalists launched a coup d’état, deposing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as Cypriot president.

1979 U.S.President Jimmy Carter gave his famous “malaise” speech, where he characterised the greatest threat to the country as “this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

1983 The Orly airport attack in Paris left 8 people dead and 55 injured.

1996  A Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules carrying the Royal Netherlands Army marching band crashed on landing at Eindhoven Airport.

2002  Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan handed down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2003  AOL Time Warner disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation was established on the same day.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Gallophile - lover of France and the French; Francophile.

Theo Spierings new Fonterra CEO

Fonterra has named its new CEO – Theo Spierings, a Dutchman with 25 years experience in the global dairy industry.

Fonterra chair Sir Henry van der Heyden said:

“Mr Spierings has a wealth of experience in managing dairy businesses across Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe,” Sir Henry said.

“Most importantly, Mr Spierings has an in-built respect for the co-operative structure and for farmers and their commitment to co-operative principles. He is well recognised by his peers for his people leadership, delivery of results and strong strategic skills.”

This will resonate with Fonterra’s shareholders who are resolute in their determination to retain farmer control and the co-operative structure.

Mr Spierings was acting CEO of Royal Friesland Foods when he presided over all aspects of its complex and highly sensitive merger with Campina. He left the company shortly after completing the merger as, prior to the transaction, both parties had already agreed on an independent CEO to take the new entity forward.

Sir Henry said as well as a 25 year history in the global dairy industry, Mr Spierings had held a variety of general management, operations and supply chain and sales and marketing positions across a number of geographies.

Mr Spierings said the role of CEO for Fonterra was a great opportunity, working in the industry he loved.

“I am honoured to be invited to lead Fonterra into its second decade,” Mr Spierings said.

“The Fonterra Board, Andrew Ferrier and his team have established a strong foundation and my challenge is to build an even more successful global dairy co-operative.

Mr Spierings said he was familiar with both Fonterra and its key people and had great respect for the foresight New Zealand farmers had shown in creating Fonterra in the first place.

“A huge amount has been achieved in the past 10 years since Fonterra was established. Trading Among Farmers – the newly approved capital structure – is a good example. But what makes Fonterra really unique is its combination of low-cost pasture based farming and its status as the world’s largest milk processor.”

With the co-operative already performing strongly, Mr Spierings said it was clear that the challenge ahead was to add another layer of value across the business.

“I am used to working for farmers and I know they demand results. Being entrepreneurs themselves, they expect continuous improved performance of both their co-operative and through-out the value chain,” Mr Spierings said.

”I am acutely aware of Fonterra’s importance to the New Zealand economy and look forward to leading an organisation that has the potential to have such a positive impact on its home country. I thrive on the prospect of contributing to Fonterra’s continued success, which I know is of great importance to not only its farmers and employees, but to every New Zealander.”

Mr Spierings, aged 46, holds a Bachelor of Arts-degree in Food Technology/Biotechnology and a Masters in Business Administration. He is married with three children and currently lives in The Netherlands. He owns and runs his own company which focuses on corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions in fast moving consumer goods.

The 2011 financial year would be a record one for Fonterra and announcing thre results will be one of Andrew Ferrier’s last duties with the co-operative before his successor takes over on September 26.

Thursday’s quiz

1. Who said: A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.

2. Who sang Je ne regret rien?

3. Which is France’s (and Western Europe’s) highest mountain?

4. Which city is regarded as the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere?

5. It’s rire in French, ridere  in Italian, reír in Spanish and kata in Maori, what is it in English?

MMP/SM can’t work for ever with South Island quota

When MMP was first introduced we had 60 general and five Maori electorates, and 55 list seats.

Each time the boundaries changed, as they do after every census, we’ve got at least one more electorate and therefore at least one fewer list seat.

We now have 70 electorates (63 general and seven Maori) and 50 lists seats.

That is because the number of South Island seats is set at 16. After every census the Mainland’s population is divided by 16 to give the number of people in each electorate. The North Island is divided into electorates with that population, plus or minus 5%.

The North Island population grows faster than the South’s so each time the boundaries change the North gets at least one more electorate and the list reduces by a corresponding number.

An increase in the number of Maori seats also eats into list seats.

Whatever system the country opts for in the forthcoming referendum we’ll still have 120 MPs (or more if there’s an overhang).

But if we stick with MMP and no change to the South Island quota the number of electorates will increase and the number of list seats will fall bringing a small drop in proportionality each time.

It will take ages, but if the quota remains we’ll get to a stage where National and Labour have so many electorates there could be big overhangs and the few list seats will go only to the wee parties.

If we opt for Supplementary Member in the referendum we’ll have a similar problem of electorate increases decreasing the number of list seats.

The obvious solution is to reduce the South Island quota but then electorates would have to cover even bigger areas than they do now and the bigger ones are already far too big.

The other alternative, to increase the number of MPs, is unlikely to win support of voters.