August 21 in history

1192  Minamoto Yoritomo became Seii Tai Shōgun and the de facto ruler of Japan. 

1680  Pueblo Indians captured Santa Fe from Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.

1689  The Battle of Dunkeld in Scotland.

1770  James Cook formally claimed eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.

1772 King Gustav III completed his coup d’état by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and installing himself as an enlightened despot.

1808 Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeated French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot.

 

1810  Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Marshal of France, was elected Crown Prince of Sweden by the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates.

1821  Jarvis Island was discovered by the crew of the ship, Eliza Frances.

1831  Nat Turner led black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion.

1863  Lawrence, Kansas was destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill’s Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre.

1878  The American Bar Association was founded.

1888  The first successful adding machine in the United States was patented by William Seward Burroughs. 

1904  William “Count” Basie, American bandleader, was born  (d. 1984).

 

1911 Mona Lisa was stolen by a Louvre employee.

1918   The Second Battle of the Somme began.

1920 Christopher Robin Milne, inspiration for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, was born (d. 1996). 

1930 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was born  (d. 2002). 

1942  Allied forces defeated an attack by Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru.

1944  Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, began.

1945  Physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. was fatally irradiated during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1952 Glenn Hughes, British bassist and vocalist (Finders Keepers/Trapeze/Deep Purple), was born.

 

1952  Joe Strummer, British musician and singer (The Clash), was born  (d. 2002).

 

1958  Auckland became the first city in New Zealand to introduce the ‘Barnes Dance’ street-crossing system, which stopped all traffic and allowed pedestrians to cross intersections in every direction at the same time.

1959  President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union - now commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day.

1963  Xa Loi Pagoda raids: the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces vandalised Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.

 

1968  Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring and Nicolae Ceauşescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemned the Soviet maneuver, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals. 

1968  James Anderson, Jr. posthumously received the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1969 Michael Dennis Rohan, an Australian, set the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire.

1971  A bomb exploded in the Liberal Party campaign rally in Plaza Miranda, Manila, with several anti-Marcos political candidates injured.

1976  Operation Paul Bunyan at Panmunjeom, Korea.

1983  Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. was assassinated at the Manila International Airport.

1986 Carbon dioxide gas erupted from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range. 

1991  Latvia declared renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union.

1991  Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapsed. 

1993  NASA lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.

 

2007   Hurricane Dean made its first landfall in Costa Maya, Mexico with winds at 165 mph (266 km/h). 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Mammock -a fragment or scrap; to shred or tear.

4/10

Just 4/10 in Stuff’s Biz Quiz.

8/10

8/10 in the Herald’s changing world quiz.

There’s hogget and there’s hogget

My farmer noticed the price on the lamb rack I’d bought to serve friends for dinner and wasn’t impressed.

I didn’t think to point out that someone who makes a living selling stock shouldn’t complain about the price.

But next time I was at the supermarket I bypassed the lamb in favour of hogget chops which I grilled and served for dinner.

They were so tough I gave up after half a chop. My farmer persevered with one before giving the rest to the dog.

He then looked at the label on the package the meat had come in snorted.

Hoggets are supposed to be one-year old sheep but my farmer spends a lot of time at stock sales and reckons that butchers buy anything from one to three year-olds.

The chops I’d bought were definitely from a sheep at the older end of that range. They would probably have been okay if I’d casseroled them but they were definitely well past grilling.

Still, we both learned from the experience. I won’t grill hogget chops again and he won’t complain about the price of meat I buy.

 

 

State sector still in need of a cull

Roger Kerr asks a very good question:

Two things in my view are much more important than rearranging the bureaucratic furniture.

The first question that should be asked is whether we need parts of the furniture at all.
On coming to office John Key as minister of tourism abolished the Ministry of Tourism.  Has anybody noticed or cared?

I am sure there are still many parts of the furniture we don’t need and I neither noticed nor cared that the Tourism Ministry had gone.

Second, instead of focusing on restructuring the bureaucracy (often by establishing advisory groups of bureaucrats), the government would do better to focus on leadership by top quality CEOs . . .  The government would find that top CEOs would solve many of the problems of bureaucratic sprawl and inflated headcounts by themselves.

I am not among those who criticise high pay for state servants in general. The good ones earn their salaries and the best would more than justify their pay if they reversed the bureaucratic sprawl.

National has made a good start to reducing the burden of the state but there is still more to be done and good CEOs would play an important role in doing it.

Tourists good, cement bad?

Holcim began investigating building a cement plant in North Otago’s Waiareka Valley nearly 30 years ago but pulled back after the 1987 share market crash.

The company returned for further investigations and plans a few years ago. This time it got consent and the New Zealand  division put a proposal to the international board in Switzerland, but still we wait for a decision:

Oamaru leaders have been expecting a final decision this week at Holcim’s international board meeting in Switzerland.

Holcim New Zealand says the meeting did review the project, but did not make any final decisions.

The $400 million plant would employ about 120 people. That would make a significant economic and social contribution to North Otago and strict conditions on the building and operation would safeguard the environment.

In spite of that the plans have engendered vigorous opposition and among the arguments against the development were that it would threaten tourism.

We passed a cement plant while driving through a national park near Banff in the Rocky Mountains last month . We didn’t know it was there until we were almost upon it and it didn’t appear to be having a negative impact on tourism.

Those opposing the plant also argued that tourism would be better for the economy and environment than a cement plant.

I wonder how many tourists it would take to generate 120 fulltime jobs and what impact transporting, accommodating and feeding them would have on the environment?

August 20 in history

636  Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid took control of Syria and Palestine , marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia.

917  Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeated a Byzantine army. 

1000  The foundation of the Hungarian state by Saint Stephen.

1083  Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric.

1391 Konrad von Wallenrode became the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order. 

1672  Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis were murdered by an angry mob in The Hague. 

1778 Bernardo O’Higgins, South American revolutionary, was born  (d. 1842).

1794  Battle of Fallen Timbers – American troops forced a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganised retreat.

1804  Lewis and Clark Expedition: the “Corps of Discovery”, exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffered its only death when sergeant Charles Floyd died, apparently from acute appendicitis. 

1858 Charles Darwin first published his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace’s same theory.

1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declared the American Civil War over.

1882 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow. 

1888  Mutineers imprisoned Emin Pasha at Dufile. 

1900 Japan’s primary school law was amended to provide for four years of mandatory schooling.

1923  Jim Reeves, US country music singer, was born  (d.1964).

1926 Japan’s public broadcasting company, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) was established.

1927 Yootha Joyce, English actress, was born  (d. 1980).

1940 The New Zealand Shipping Company freighter Turakina was sunk by the Orion 260 nautical miles west of Taranaki, following a brief gun battle – the first ever fought in the Tasman Sea. Thirty-six members (some sources say 35) of its largely British crew were killed. Twenty survivors, many of them wounded, were rescued from the sea and taken prisoner. 

1940 In Mexico City exiled Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader.

1941 Dave Brock, British musician and founder of Hawkwind, was born.

1941 Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia (d. 2006).

1944 Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was born (d. 1991).

1944  - 168 captured allied airmen, accused of being “terror fliers”, arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp. The senior officer was Phil Lamason of the RNZAF.

1944 The Battle of Romania began with a major Soviet offensive.

1948 Robert Plant, British Musician (Led Zeppelin), was born.

1955 In Morocco, a force of Berbers  raided two rural settlements and killed 77 French nationals.

1960 Senegal broke from the Mali federation, declaring its independence. 

1974 Amy Adams, American actress, was born.

1975  NASA launched the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.

1977 NASA launched Voyager 2.

1979  The East Coast Main Line rail route between England and Scotland was restored when the Penmanshiel Diversion opens.

1982 Lebanese Civil War: a multinational force landed in Beirut to oversee the PLO’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

1988  ”Black Saturday” of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park. 

1988 – Iran–Iraq War: a cease-fire was agreed after almost eight years of war.

1989 The pleasure boat Marchioness sank on the River Thames following a collision, 51 people were killed.

1989 The O-Bahn in Adelaide, the world’s longest guided busway, opened. 

1991  August Coup: more than 100,000 people rallied outside the Soviet Union’ss parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.

1991 Estonia seceded from the Soviet Union.

1993 The Oslo Peace Accords were signed.

1997  Souhane massacre in Algeria; more than 60 people were killed and 15 kidnapped.

1998 The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec couldn’t legally secede from Canada without the federal government’s approval.

1998 The United States military launched cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2008 – Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. 146 people are killed in the crash, 8 more died afterwards. Only 18 people survived. 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Bletcherous – disgusting in design or function; aesthetically unappealing.

In-season produce cheaper

I picked up a couple of capsicums and half a dozen kiwifruit on my way round the supermarket without looking at the prices.

When I got to the checkout I found that the two capsicums cost nearly $5 each but the six kiwifruit came to just 93 cents.

The lesson from that is to buy in-season. 

Horticulture New Zealand points out  that seasonality and weather have a big impact on prices:

Horticulture NZ says . . .  an expected shortage of some vegetables due to this week’s adverse weather, highlights the seasonality of produce which determines the retail price.

Chief executive Peter Silcock says a lot of the products that are expensive now such as tomatoes, capsicums and lettuces, are not in season now so therefore they will not be cheap.

Another lesson is that I’d have gained a lot more from the removal of GST from buying the out-of-season capcicums than in-season kiwifruit.

That’s not surprising. Geoff Simmons points out there are holes in Labour’s health by stealth line.

The poorest 10 per cent of New Zealand families spend about $10 a week on fruit and vegetables. At the other end of the spectrum, the richest 10 per cent spend around $30 a week.

This means taking GST off fruit and vegetables will give the poorest just over $1 extra a week. That will barely make a dent in their food bill. Meanwhile, the richest will get just under $4.

John Pagani disputes that but Scrubone dug deeper and found

In short, there is basically no evidence that this policy will do a heck of a lot – and that’s an admission from people who really really wish it did.

The removal of GST from fresh fruit and vegetables is a feel-good policy based on emotion not fact.

It might reduce the price but not significantly for the people who need it most.

Friday’s answers

Thursday’s questions were:

1. Who said. “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

2. In which year did National first win an election and who was its first Prime Minister?

3. It’s compleanno  in Italian; cumpleaños  in Spanish; and huritau in Maori, what is it in English? (In case you’re wondering why no French, it would have made it too easy).

4. Who were Cain & Abel’s parents?

5. Which is Africa’s highest mountain and in which country is it?

Points for answers:

Andrei wins an electronic banana cake for five right (is this the third week in a row?)

David got two.

Gravedodger got four with bonuses for extra information and wit.

Cadwallader got 3 1/2.

James got four with a bonus for knowing how to get to the mountain.

Answers follow the break:

6/10

6/10 in NZ History Online’s quiz.

National + Labour -

Trans Tasman spots the differences between National and Labour:

Key’s skill has been to make National look positive, and Labour negative. National wants to improve life in NZ, Labour simply to soften the rough edges. National seeks to fix policies which clearly haven’t worked in the past, Labour still clings to a “tax-and-spend” ethic, which is well past its “use-by” date. Even in areas which have proven controversial such as national standards in education, National is seen to be striving to lift performance.

National’s policies are aspirational, Labour’s are motivated by envy; National wants to foster independence, Labour wants to encourage dependence; National aims to reduce the burden of the state, Labour plans to increase it.

National’s aim to win 48% of the vote in the election is very ambitious.

But it’s offering positive policies which appeal to a broader group in contrast to Labour which has negative policies of little appeal to anyone beyond its core supporters.

Positive engagement beats political posturing

Federated Farmers is promising to engage positively on new rules for the way livestock are treated for tax purposes.

Feds President Bruce Wills said:

“Federated Farmers will now examine Inland Revenue’s proposals for reasonableness and real-world workability. Let me also stress that farmers do understand the importance of paying their fair share of tax.

“With livestock, there’s been some concern at the ease farmers have switched between the Herd Scheme and the National Standard Cost scheme. This is especially the case when livestock values are extremely volatile.

“Broadly speaking, the Herd Scheme treats livestock as a capital asset using Inland Revenue’s national average market values. The National Standard Cost scheme values purchased livestock at cost plus associated costs of husbandry.

“Farmers, as small and medium sized businesspeople, are heavily reliant on their accountant for tax advice. It’s a complicated area and you do rely on your advisors to interpret it for you.

“Federated Farmers will now start consultation with our membership to develop a position to take back to Inland Revenue,” Mr Wills concluded.

The conciliatory tone reflects the recent change in leadership of Feds and the reasoned response is a pleasant change from the political posturing which is too often the first reaction to new proposals.

The paper on proposed changes to taxing livestock was one of two released by the government yesterday.

The other is seeking feedback on proposals on the tax treatment of mixed-use assets such as cribs which are used for private purposes and also let for financial return.

The issues papers and a fact sheet are available here.

August 19 in history

1504 Battle of Knockdoe.

1561 An 18-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, returned to Scotland after spending 13 years in France. 

1612  The “Samlesbury witches“, three women from  Samlesbury, were put on trial, accused for practising witchcraft, one of the most famous witch trials in English history. 

1631  John Dryden, English poet, was born  (d. 1700).

 

1666  Second Anglo-Dutch War: Rear Admiral Robert Holmes led a raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling, destroying 150 merchant ships, an act later known as “Holmes’s Bonfire“. 

1689 Samuel Richardson, English writer, was born  (d. 1761).

 

 

1692 Salem witch trials:  one woman and four men, including a clergyman, were executed after being convicted of witchcraft. 

1745  Prince Charles Edward Stuart raised his standard in Glenfinnan – the start of the Second Jacobite Rebellion, known as “the 45″.

1768 Saint Isaac’s Cathedral was founded in Saint Petersburg. 

1772  Gustavus III of Sweden staged a Coup d’état, in which he assumed power and enacted a new constitution that divided power between the Riksdag and the King.

1782 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Blue Licks – the last major engagement of the war, almost ten months after the surrender of the British commander Lord Cornwallis.

1812 War of 1812: American frigate USS Constitution defeated the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, earning her nickname “Old Ironsides”.

 

1813  Gervasio Antonio de Posadas joined Argentina’s second triumvirate.

1839  Presentation of Jacque Daguerre’s new photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences.

1853 Edward Gibbon Wakefield was elected to the New Zealand Parliament.

1861 First ascent of Weisshorn, fifth highest summit in the Alps.

 

1883 Coco Chanel, French clothing designer, was born  (d. 1971).

 

1895 American frontier murderer and outlaw, John Wesley Hardin, was killed by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso.

1902 Ogden Nash, American poet, was born  (d. 1971).

1919 Afghanistan gained full independence from the United Kingdom.

1927  Metropolitan Sergius proclaimed the declaration of loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet state.

1928 Bernard Levin, English journalist, author, and broadcaster, was born  (d. 2004). 

1930 Frank McCourt, Irish-American author, was born  (d. 2009).

1934  The first All-American Soap Box Derby was held in Dayton, Ohio.

1934  The creation of the position Führer was approved by the German electorate with 89.9% of the popular vote.

1939 Ginger Baker, English musician (Cream), was born.

 

1940 Johnny Nash, American singer-songwriter, was born.

 

1940 First flight of the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber.

1942  Operation Jubilee – the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division led an amphibious assault by allied forces on Dieppe, France and failed. 

1944  As his damaged Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber rapidly lost height, Pilot Officer James Stellin struggled to avoid crashing into Saint-Maclou-la-Brière, a village of 370 people in the Seine-Maritime region. He succeeded, but at the cost of his own life.

1944  Liberation of Paris – Paris rose against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.

1945   Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh took power in Hanoi.

1946 Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, was born.

 

1951 John Deacon, English musician (Queen), was born.

 

1953  Cold War: the CIA helped to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and reinstated the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

1955 In the Northeast United States, severe flooding caused by Hurricane Diane, claimed 200 lives.

 

1960  Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage. 

1960  Sputnik 5 – the Soviet Union launched the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants. 

1980  Saudia Flight 163, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar burned after making an emergency landing at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killing 301 people.

 

1981  Gulf of Sidra Incident: United States fighters intercepted and shot down two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets over the Gulf of Sidra.

 

1987  Hungerford Massacre: Michael Ryan killed sixteen people with an assault rifle and then committed suicide.

1989  Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominated Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be the first non-communist Prime Minister in 42 years.

1989  Raid on offshore pirate station, Radio Caroline in North Sea by British and Dutch governments.

1989 Several hundred East Germans crossed the frontier between Hungary and Austria during the Pan-European Picnic, part of the events which began the process of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. 

1990  Leonard Bernstein conducted his final concert, ending with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. 

1991  Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest..

1991  Hurricane Bob hit the Northeast, United States. 

1999  Tens of thousands of Serbians rallied to demand the resignation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milošević.

2002 A Russian Mi-26 helicopter carrying troops was hit by a Chechen missile killing 118 soldiers.

2003 A car-bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Iraq killed the agency’s top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other employees.

2003  A Hamas planned suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem killed 23 Israelis, 7 of them children in the Jerusalem bus 2 massacre.

2005 The first-ever joint military exercise between Russia and China, called Peace Mission 2005 began.

2005 A series of strong storms lashed Southern Ontario spawning several tornadoes as well as creating extreme flash flooding in Toronto and its surrounding communities. .

 

2009  A series of bombings in Baghdad, killed 101 and injured 565 others.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Larmoyant – tearful, weeping.

A good goodbye

A funeral should be about the person who has died and for the people who mourn her/him.

I’ve been to funerals so bad, so irrelevant to the dead and lacking in comfort for the living, that I’ve wondered who’s in the coffin.

I’ve also been to funerals so good that had I not known the one who had died before the service I’d have known them well by the end of it.

Today’s service for Sir Paul Reeves was a very good one, helping those who knew only  the public figure learn about the husband, father, grandfather and friend.

He was a good man and was given a good goodbye.

Thanks to RadioNZ National and Maori Television people who couldn’t be there in person were able to hear and see it.

Telecom abstaining from abstinence campaign

Telecom has canned its abstain for the All Blacks campaign.

Sex sells but abstinence would have been a big ask, even if it was tongue in cheek.

A campaign asking people to abstain from something they chose to forgo might have worked.

The one exhorting New Zealanders to touch, crouch and not engage for six weeks ought to have been chucked in the bad-idea bin long before it reached the public.

Thursday’s quiz

1. Who said. “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

2. In which year did National first win an election and who was its first Prime Minister?

3. It’s compleanno  in Italian; cumpleaños  in Spanish; and huritau in Maori, what is it in English? (In case you’re wondering why no French, it would have made it too easy).

4. Who were Cain & Abel’s parents?

5. Which is Africa’s highest mountain and in which country is it?

Thank goodness for the 5% threshold

One of the changes being mooted for MMP is a lowering of the 5% threshold parties are required to reach if they don’t hold any seats.

One very good argument against that is Graham Capill.

The convicted sex offender has been granted parole. He was leader of the Christian Heritage party which, as part of the Christian Coalition, gained 4.3% of the party vote in the 1996 election.

The threshold by itself doesn’t stop unsuitable people entering parliament, but in this case it did and for that we can be grateful.